China's Africa policy backfiring?

I'm not sure why Niger Delta secessionists should target China over any other country exporting oil, and of course they have targetted other countries' oil workers, but China better learn to deal with this before it blows up in their face. They can't just pretend they are not involved, because they are going to be involved on one side or the other of every dispute in Africa, whether they like it or not.

Need more proof that the Iraq war is counterproductive?

The CIA says so, officially. This is what you can read when the administration doesn't order them to cook the books on intelligence.

"US admits Iraq is terror 'cause'"
By Tom Baldwin
"Report says that 11,000 attacks worldwide shows the war has become driving factor for extremists"

"THREE years after its invasion of Iraq the US Administration acknowledged yesterday that the war has become “a cause” for Islamic extremists worldwide and there is a risk of the country becoming a safe haven for terrorists hoping to launch fresh attacks on America.

"According to CIA data released yesterday, there were 11,111 terrorist incidents last year, killing more than 14,600 non-combatants, including 8,300 in Iraq. Of the 56 American civilians killed by terrorists in 2005, some 47 of them were in Iraq."

Read the rest of the story.

Yes, it's true

They're trying to take the Internet away, and give it to the highest bidder. Say goodbye to the open-access Information superhighway, say goodbye to the democratizing of news and bebate, say goodbye to the new world of information equality. It was nice while it lasted.

Not a Republican war?

Tyrrell: Not just a Republican war

This is wrong and outrageous on so many levels. Let me count some of them:

1) American soil was attacked in the US embassy bombings in east Africa. Most Republicans insisted the real threat to the United States was Monica Lewinsky, and that Clinton and the Democrats were involved in a "wag the dog" strategy to distract America with a phony Islamic threat.

2) It is not "a" war. Iraq has absolutely NOTHING to do with September 11. For the first time in American history we are at two wars at once. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, famously said "one war at a time" when one of his cabinet officers suggested starting a second war to convince the seceding southern states to come back in the Civil War. We have to explain to people that Iraq was the "wag the dog" distraction from our real national security business.

3) Who made it a Republican war? Who politicized it by refusing to cooperate with Democrats? Who used national security for partisan political gain at the expense of the national interest? Who outed a CIA agent to take petty revenge on her husband? Who ignored the professional advice of non-political generals? Who invaded Iraq for no real reason and then tried to use the Iraq invasion for partisan political ends?

If the Iraq war, or even the war against Al-Qa'ida, is a Republican war (and don't forget that the latter started under Clinton and most Republicans refused to get on board) Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for their mismanagement. Democrats were not the ones who let bin Ladin get away, not the ones who lied America into an unrelated war that prevents us from dealing with our real enemies, not the ones alienating moderate Muslims, and not the ones who have been mismanaging the wars America finds itself fighting, one thrust upon us and one Bush chose.

We have to get the word out. Real information about these two wars has to reach the American people, so that articles like this one will no longer be taken seriously, and Tyrrell will be scoffed off of CNN. I have only dealt with the obvious errors here, but Americans in general need a crash course on the Islamic world and how the Bush regime is playing into the hands of our enemies. We don't need more lies about how Democrats are umpatriotic. Republicans have been losing the war. If Lincoln's administration had done this badly we would be reading about President McClellan in our American history books.

Clark, Firing Rumsfeld and politics

It was great to start downloading and listening to Wes Clark's "clarkcast" podcasts. I was especially pleased to hear the first one say that they would take a non-partisan tone, but that the policies of the Republican administration and Congress had to be gotten rid of. Listening to Clarkcasts is going to be a priority for me from now on.

I was also glad to hear that Clark had joined the increasing calls of other retired generals for replacement of Donald Rumsfeld. I'd like to add an additional reason for getting rid of Rumsfeld that I haven't seen offered by others yet. Rumsfeld is a Republican.

No, I'm not suggesting that Bush's cabinet should be replaced with Democrats. I'm still in favor of replacing Bush with a Democrat. When that Democrat (and I hope it's Wes Clark) takes office, I hope he replaces the Secretary of Defense with a Republican. We're at war.

It makes good political sense for the President and the Secretary of Defense to be from opposite parties, but no one figured that out before Honest Abe Lincoln appointed Democratic politician Edwin M. Stanton his Secretary of War. Secretary Stanton not only helped rally Democrats to the war effort but he eventually became a Republican himself.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt imitated Lincoln by appointing William Howard Taft's old Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, as his own Secretary of War as the United States prepared for World War II. Again this paid off by helping assure Republican support for the war.

Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson appointed a non-political technocrat, Robert McNamara, as Secretary of Defense. He may not have been the best Secretary, but he did help to keep the Republicans on board during the Vietnam War. Nixon had Republican Secretaries of Defense, Melvin Laird, Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, and (gasp) Donald Rumsfeld, but that only left Democrats more free to oppose the War.

Woodrow Wilson also had a Secretary of War from his own party, Newton D. Baker, during World War I. Of course the Republicans weren't about to oppose World War I. They'd been screaming for it when Wilson was campaigning as the guy who kept us out of it. But they sure weren't going to cut him any slack about his "League of Nations" idea when he came home from France with the Treaty of Versailles. He may have sold it to the Europeans but he couldn't sell it to the Republicans, not after he left them out of both the war cabinet and the peace negotiations. Reductionists might blame World War II on Wilson's decision (and it should bear part of the blame - it did doom US participation in the League of Nations, which might have helped stop the war before it got out of hand) but that would be going too far. Hoover's Secretary of State Henry Stimson (yes, the same Stimson) offered to help the League stop Japanese aggression in Manchuria if they would grow a backbone, but they turned him down. Still, it's easy to find fault with Wilson's "my way or the highway" attitude and most historians today would.

The lesson of history in this case? Yes, we need a Democrat president to replace Bush, but we also need a non-partisan administration that can unite the country afterwards. That means whichever of the Democrats who wins in 2008 should appoint a sane, honest, qualified Republican (assuming one can be found at this late date) as Secretary of Defense for the duration of the War against Al-Qa'ida and possibly beyond.

Need more proof that "Ann" Coulter is a man?

Try her "blame the victim" attitude to rape:

"Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money."

Personally I don't mind seeing beautiful women take off their clothes. I've seen it before and I hope to see it again. I do mind that some people think that's an excuse to rape the women who do it. That would severely discourage women, especially beautiful women, from taking off their clothes.

More double standard?

"WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- The CIA has fired an employee for leaking classified information to the news media, the agency announced in Washington Friday."

So . . . when does the leaker in chief get fired? Don't tell me it's legal when he does it. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That shouldn't be the issue. The issue should be that he is not interested in the national interest, or even national security. He is interested in his own short-term political future, in taking revenge on people who cross him, and his own crackhead delusions.

Darfur and the Chad insurgency

Chad has been providing refuge to refugees and rebels from Darfur in Sudan, probably less from sympathy than from inability to do anything about it. Wadai in Chad is right over the border from Darfur. Wadai and Darfur used to be neighboring kingdoms. The capital of Chad is all the way across the country, near Cameroon. Chad itself has never had a democratic government and is one of the most artificial, unviable and ungovernable states in Africa.

The government in Chad has accused the government in Sudan of supporting the rebels in Chad, as Sudan has accused Chad of supporting the rebels in Sudan. Maybe they have, maybe they don't have enough control of, or enough concern with, the area to do anything about it. Modern states in Africa are often more a way to get money from the International Community (OECD? G8+? what does that term mean?) in foreign aid, especially in French Africa where La France pays for the government expenses in order to maintain French as the official language.

The Chad rebels are promising a national conference, which has worked in many other Francophone countries, but as long as French is the official language, and as long as literacy rates (measured in French of course) are miniscule, there is not much hope for democracy.

Is the tide turning?

I decided to take a listen to wingnut talk radio yesterday, just to see what the other side was saying. I went to Shoutcast, got the list of talk streams, and clicked the most popular one that looked most clearly right wing. Sure enough there were ads for right wing bumper stickers, and ads telling me how to put my money into gold because the Federal Reserve Board was a bunch of conspirators trying to make away with my hard earned money. But what were they talking about?

IMPEACHMENT!

Yes, I couldn't believe it. They had a some guy from Vermont on the air talking about how to impeach Bush, and people were calling in wanting to know more. The news that President Bush himself had been behind the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame all along had finally gotten people to realize that this administration was not about national security at all.

Out of control hypocrisy

First the Bush administration reclassifies old documents needlessly.

Then they casually leak pertinent, sensitive, current national security secrets for political gain.

Finally they pretend they are protecting American citizens from foreign terrorists.

How can approximately one third of the country not yet see through these people?

Bush and the question from a North Carolina man

I originally heard this exchange on NPR, but I can't find it on their site. I have to give Bush praise for telling the audience to let the man speak, even if he was only being political about it. There is a real question historically about the limits of dissent in wartime, just as there is a real question, Constitutionally, whether we are at war or not right now. However, since the Vietnam War (or "conflict" if you prefer) there has been an emerging consensus that patriotic dissent is possible in wartime, and that it is different from treason, i.e. "levying War against them [i.e. the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Hopefully we won't see any Alien and Sedition Acts anytime soon.

Nevertheless, I wondered why the guy didn't ask the obvious question that's been bugging me for months, namely, why can't Bush get a warrant for his wiretapping, if he really has nothing to hide? I think maybe too many of us are too emotional, or maybe we find these questions to be too self-evident, that we don't always pose them correctly.

Bush is obviously trying to position himself as the defender of America, so he can rise in the polls and avoid a Congress that will investigate his illegal activities, and, if necessary, move to impeach him and remove him from office.

Bush and signing statements

from the Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

This presidency is the first time I've ever heard the idea that signing statements have the force of law, in fact that they have more force than the law being signed. I always thought they were just kind of a political speech in writing, a press release saying how nice it was that the law had been passed and how we should all thank the president for his support of it.

Of course this is red meat to those who hate America, not to mention the fact that it creates more and more such people. I don't hate America, and in fact what disturbs me about Bush is how his actions create more and more hatred of America. Pro-Union slave owners in the American Civil War denounced secessionists as "practical abolitionists" because they actually promoted abolitionism (against their intentions, of course) by seceding from the Union. Bush seems to be the most practical anti-American alive.

What I would like to know is whether his oath of office,

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

is modified by some kind of signing statement that gives him the right to ignore all or part of the Constitution of the United States.

A radical proposal for immigration

Radical doesn't really, originally mean extreme. It comes from the Latin word "radix" which means "root". Radical means getting to the root of a problem. In this case, let's look at what the root cause of out of control immigration from Mexico and Central America and see what can be done to control it. No one in the current debate is talking about it.

Why are so many people from Mexico and Central America streaming into the United States? Because they are desperately poor and they see prosperity and opportunity in the United States. There is almost no place else on earth where the developed and underdeveloped worlds meet so closely as the US Mexico border. On one side there are lawn sprinklers, soccer moms and SUVs. On the other side there are dusty desert towns with barefoot children begging for coins. The only other border that stark is the one between North and South Korea. Some Americans would like to see our border as fortified as the inter-Korean one, but for the time being, you can walk or drive across the US Mexico border. It's not so easy to cross the Korean border.

This is very similar to what is happening with Africans trying to get into Europe via the Canary Islands, or even Turkey trying to join the EU. But the borders between the developed and underdeveloped world are not so stark between Europe and Africa and Asia around the Mediterranean. The relative prosperity fades out even within countries (as in Italy or the former Yugoslavia - although we should keep in mind that factor is divisive in those countries) as much as it does between countries, and there are no economic borders as stark as that between Texas or California and Mexico.

The Hispanic population in the United States, which is mostly Mexican, is disproportionately young. The half the population was less than 26.0 years old, compared with 35.4 for the population at large (and it was even higher for the non-Hispanic population). In part this was because the Hispanic population was largely immigrant (which also explains the fact that there are more Hispanic men than women, the opposite of the case with the population at large), but this is more a result of fact that the Hispanic population, even the Cubans in Florida, is from underdeveloped countries, with high birth and death rates, especially infant mortality. This leaves a demographic pyramid that is wide at the base, narrow at the top, rather than the rough cylinder that is the population of the developed countries.

In underdeveloped countries children are not just the expensive hobby they are in the US, Europe and Japan. They are their parents Social Security and old age pension. It is not just sentiment that makes people have children there. It is naked, cold self interest. The only way to stop Mexican population from hemorrhaging into the US is to develop Mexico, and give the Mexican people the individual, personal self-interest in controlling their population that people in developed countries have now.

Can one country develop another by either foreign investment or foreign aid? I suppose if it could be done it would have been done somewhere, but it hasn't been. However, the United States has a very serious national security interest in seeing that Mexico becomes developed, and Mexicans become prosperous. This would mean not only investment, but the ability of Mexicans to collectively bargain, in their own country, for better remuneration from their employers, to raise Mexican living standards to the level of those in the United States.

Will the Dems adopt my slogan?

GET BIN LADIN! was my first post here. I was still trying to recover from the Bush baby's re-election.

Today Dick Cheney said the Democrat plan was to "get bin Laden". Al Sharpton, not my favorite Democrat, points out that Bush said he was going to get bin Laden. Just a few weeks ago Bush himself said he was going to "get bin Laden." Even in South Carolina people are finally beginning to see that Bush can't come through on that promise. People everywhere are finally beginning to see that the invasion of Iraq was at best a diversion from the war, at worst a boon to bin Ladin.

So what are the Democrats offering as an alternative?

The Democrat plan offers to "Eliminate Osama Bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan, and end the threat posed by the Taliban.

"Double the size of our Special Forces, increase our human intelligence capabilities, and ensure our intelligence is free from political pressure."

YES! We need more money for human intelligence, not just buying information from others overseas, but training more Americans who can understand what's happening around the world in other societies. And the Special Forces? They seem to be the only people who can get things right. They were Kennedy's idea, just like the Peace Corps.

Boy, do I miss Jack Kennedy! There was a president.

Everyone's entitled to a day in court.

Or so we were taught in America when I was young. The Constitution doesn't limit this right to citizens, as some would have us believe. It doesn't even limit the right to a jury trial. Here's what it says, even before the Bill of Rights was added (Article III, section 2):

"The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury;"

Everyone's entitled to a day in court, with a jury. Not a jury of their peers (that's the Magna Carta you're thinking of, which applied only to nobles, or "peers") but a jury nonetheless.

Americans as diverse as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and General Billy Mitchell have deliberately violated the law in order to get a day in court and use it as a forum for changing policies and laws.

Is this era coming to an end? The administration seems to think so. They might even reject the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, arguably placing the President above the law. If the US is fighting a war, then the Guantanamo detainees are POWs and entitled to Geneva Convention rights. If the US is suppressing criminal activities, then the Guantanamo detainees are criminal suspects and entitled to criminal law protections. Either way they are human beings, and entitled to the rights that human beings are naturally entitled to, according to American belief.

But not according to Justice Scalia.

Why don't the media call Bush on these lies?

I listened to Bush's press conference on NPR. Now I'm listening to it again on C-Span.org. I can believe the guy lies constantly. I'm used to that by now. But why does no one call him on the lies? Helen Thomas tried to but she could barely get any words in. Then the discussion on NPR never mentioned that he kept lying and lying and lying. Is the man a pathological liar? Does he think Americans are stupid?

Let me count the lies (or at least some of the biggest):

I didn't plan the Iraq war until 9/11 . . .
Iraq had something to do with al-Qa'ida . . .
The UN Security Council resolutions authorized the invasion . . .
Saddam Hussein wouldn't obey the Security Council resolutions . . .
Saddam wouldn't allow the inspectors to finish their work . . .

and that's just to one question by Helen Thomas. He wouldn't even answer her question about what was the real reason we went to war.

What else:

The enemy wants us out of Iraq. (Ultimately yes, but for the time being they want us in, alone, because not only is it easier to kill us there, but it inflames the Muslim world and gives them more and more recruits and imitators. Their plan is to bankrupt us through this war, which will make us withdraw not just from Iraq but from the entire Islamic World, by making us collapse (as they think they made the Soviet Union collapse), which is also the Grover Norquist plan to destroy the Federal government. Isn't that usually considered treason?)

Let's not even talk about what he says about Social Security, "democracies don't war" (Is he admitting that, thanks to Diebold, the US is no longer a democracy? Is that the real reason we went to war?), the decision about troop strength will be made by commanders on the ground or all the other lies.

And then there's the stuff he won't even talk about anymore, like yellowcake uranium from Niger and outing a CIA agent.

The biggest question to me is why the press is not performing its watchdog role by calling this man on his lies. They know the facts. Anyone who has been paying attention knows the facts. What is going on that our "free, independent" fourth estate cannot call the president on his lying?

My two cents about censure

Senator Russ Feingold has introduced a bill to censure President Bush. Democrats are rushing to support that bill. I am opposed. Let me explain why.

Censure is not in the Constitution. It does nothing in a practical sense. It's just a means of getting steam off your chest about something. Henry Clay created it for political reasons. He didn't like what Andy Jackson was doing as president (specifically about the Bank of the United States) but he knew, even if he had the support of the Congress, that he couldn't legally impeach Jackson without the Constitutionally required "high crimes and misdemeanors" to charge him with.

Now, I think censure would have been perfect in Clinton's case, although impeachment would have been inappropriate. What Clinton did was clearly wrong. But it wasn't illegal. It certainly wasn't worth removing him from office. The whole thing was a political move. If they had the votes to impeach Clinton for zippergate, they would have had the votes to remove Gore for the Buddhist Temple thing. Then guess who gets to be President. That's right, Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, would have become our next Commander in Chief. Of course he'd have had to call out troops to quell the public outcry, but dictatorship would be a small price to pay for (what? what possible advantage could Gingrich have offered over Clinton?)

The point is that impeachment was in no way justified by Clinton's actions, it is every way justified by Bush's actions, which are not just wrong, not just incompetent, but criminal. Censure may make people feel better about what's happening, but it won't fix the problems.

Anonymity: let me count the wherefores

1. Who am I? Why should it matter? Shouldn't the ideas, the facts, and the interpretation of them be important? What does it matter to you whether I am male or female, black, white or other, tall or short, skinny or fat, smoker or drinker or sex addict? Aren't these all just ad hominem arguments? Who cares? As the Diamond Sutra teaches us, material characteristics are not, in fact, characteristics. Don't ask me what that means. I don't claim to have had a satori, in Paris or elsewhere. I would just rather my ideas were judged on their own merits than on the basis of who they were espoused by. I've had good and bad experiences with academic "blind peer review" of my writings, and some bad ones. The bad ones were always caused by people trying (and sometimes failing) to figure out who I was, what my ethnic and/or national identity was, and judging the value of my ideas by who they thought I was (sometimes mistakenly), instead of judging the ideas on their own.

2. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I probably say much more dangerous things under my own name than I do here. Maybe the idea that I might lose out on some future job, or be dismissed from one of the ones I hold now, for what I say here is just crazy. But I think it was Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell who said that even paranoids have real enemies. He saw the enemies list, and he should know. I'm not under any illusion that I'm important enough to have a spot on Bush II's enemies list. However, I do feel a little more secure not putting my name out there for what's on this blog, and the crossposts at DailyKos and Wesley Clark's blog. I started my blog after Bush was re-inaugurated. John Dean (who should know) said that the Bush II administration was "worse than Watergate" and I remember Watergate. In fact I remember handing out flyers for McGovern in '72, when someone took me aside and said that I shouldn't be doing this because Nixon was going to be much harder on the opposition after he was re-elected with a landslide. I said I was too deep in it anyway. I probably am again. I can only hope Bush is impeached. After that, when I feel safer, maybe I'll tell everyone who I am. If anyone's actually reading this stuff enough to be interested.

3. OK, I admit, it just feels kind of neat to let off some steam anonymously. Think of it like cybergraffiti, only I'm not defacing anything except my own site. There's an old Latin satire that claims "The names of fools are inscribed on the walls of public buildings." (Yes, Rome had a graffiti problem, too.) I can write something wittier than my own name in Roman letters. In fact I could write my name in a few other scripts, too. I guess I don't have an ego that insists I must get credit (if not get paid) for everything I do. It's the deed that matters more than the doer. And the deed here is just a long, anguished scream.

4. I figure if I keep this up long enough I'll probably get outed sooner or later. I'd just as soon let it be later rather than sooner. I've been slowly dropping a lot of hints about who I might be. A good detective could probably figure it out now. How many people know Francis Fukuyama's SAT scores, what "fitnah" means in Arabic, and regularly submit articles for blind peer review? Maybe Alberto Gonzales, or his underlings, already know who I am and are preparing to render me to Gitmo. Maybe they could care less. Myself, I've become curious to see who figures out my identity first. Should I give them something my state is famous for producing?

5. When people ask me questions privately I can answer them here. For example, someone from the Clark blog asked me about my Arabic. I studied classical Arabic, a dead language, for a few years. I even studied Islamic studies, and Middle Eastern Studies (they're not the same), at one of the best universities in the US. I try to contribute whatever I can to the desperate need of the American public, if not the current American administration, for more and better information, as I'm trying to continue educating myself. After 9/11 half the US wanted to learn more about what was happening in the Islamic world, the other half were going "NUKE THE CAMEL JOCKEYS!" I'd rather address the first group. I don't think they need to know who I am, especially if what I say can be independently confirmed.

6. That really brings up another point. I don't really have anything to say that depends on my identity. Unlike RiverBend, whose veracity depends on her identity as an Iraqi woman living in Baghdad (but who nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, remains anonymous), nothing I say here depends on who I am. It's all verifiable independently of me. You have no need to know who I am. All I know is what I read on the Internet (to update Will Rogers). Or at least all I post here is what I read on the Internet.

7. I suppose Google could find out who I am if they wanted to. I have to take the risk that they would turn me in to the Chinese government, or the US government as soon as the Bush administration gets around to bumping off its domestic opponents, but I just think that risk is small enough that I'll take a chance on it for the opportunity to mouth off like this. I guess Kos could find out who I am, too, but I'll take my chances on him. If he's going to turn me in I might as well give up.

8. General Clark can find out who I am anytime he wants just for asking, although he could probably ask the guys who run the blog for him, if he cares. I still have a lot of faith in General Clark, but not idealistic faith. (I still remember the guy working on the Carter campaign who said he would resign if we saw a Cy Vance as Secretary of State or Zbigniew Brzezinski as National Security Advisor. He didn't when we did.) I expect General Clark to administer from the center if he ever becomes president, like the Democratic Eisenhower many see him as. I'd even support him if he appointed a Republican (John McCain?) as Secretary of Defense. Lincoln, FDR and JFK had Secretaries of War or Defense from the other party and got a lot of support for their policies for it. Wilson and Nixon didn't. Wilson couldn't get the Republicans to support his League of Nations idea, with disastrous consequences for the US, not to mention the world. We all know what happened to Nixon. Not that I'm blaming the Democrats for going after him. In retrospect we can all be happy he didn't have a Democrat Secretary of Defense.

9. Well, that's about it. It's about all the reasons I can think of offhand. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm a fox, maybe it doesn't matter at all. You can ask me questions privately if you want. I'll just answer them here. Or you can ask them as comments on my blog, and I can answer them as other comments there. When I get around to it. I really don't have time to get online everyday.

Ali's America

Anyone know what happened to a podcast called "Ali's America"? This was done by a rather conservative American from the heartland who happened to be Muslim, happened to be a Bush supporter in fact, and had an interesting, quirky sense of humor.

I've long been interested in the interaction of Islam and the United States, the way each poses challenges to the ohter, and just the general way they interact. America is a challenge to the Islamic tradition of religious states. Muslims who want to be Muslim in America will have to be Muslim on their own. The state neither enforces Islam nor persecutes it. They also have no normative Islam to reference. All the various immigrant and convert groups have different conceptions of Islam and none of them dominates. Pan-Islam can't be romantic anymore.

Islam challenges the US not only by having a stronger tradition of ties to the state than any other major religion, but in other ways as well. I'm not just talking about the al-Qa'ida challenge here, but the communitarian nature of Islam, it's close family values, and the potential it has (as Malcolm X pointed out) for being anti-racist.

Not that Muslims are necessarily more racist than other immigrants. The largest group of converts is African Americans, yet most immigrants are whites, not always anxious to associate with blacks. That's another challenge the US poses for Muslims. Can they really live up to their ideals on their own? America might be better if they did.

Michael Jackson, Daniel Pipes and Islam

Daniel Pipes had the following to say about Michael Jackson's possible conversion to Islam:

"Given Mr. Jackson's famous eccentricities, it is unclear what his Bahraini venture amounts to, but if he does convert to Islam, he will be following a path in place since the late 1940s, of African-Americans under stress turning to some form of Islam. . . .

"These and other examples establish Islam – in both its normative and Nation variants – as a leading solace for African-Americans in need. That helps explain why the United States has by far the largest Muslim convert population in the Western world (about 750,000 adherents). Each black public figure who converts to Islam or accepts Nation of Islam support creates an added impetus for other blacks to change religions, a pattern that has also emerged in other Western countries."

It is unfortunate that Professor Pipes only sees Michael as black. Americans (myself included) are so racist. What's the saying? "Americans can't see class because they're blinded by race. Brazilians can't see race because they're blinded by class." Can't Michael Jackson, like every other black, just be an individual human being without everyone making him represent the black community? Isn't it unfair?

But this isn't about race or even about class (how many Americans can afford to fly to Bahrain on a whim?) Not even class in the American sense in which Michael doesn't have any. (Not that he has much race, either.)

This conversion, if it happens at all, may have less to do with Jackson's (confused) racial identity than with his sexual proclivities. Like the use of slave soldiers, which Daniel Pipes is an acknowledged expert on, homosexual child-molesting is found in Islamic civilization but is against Islamic law, in fact it's even more obviously and clearly against Islamic law than are slave soldiers and officials although it may also be less coincident with Islamic civilization. I don't know off hand anyone who's written about it. I do know that Islamic states have more and more outlawed polygyny because it makes many men, especially those who can't afford to buy a bride, put off marriage, exacerbating their sexual frustration. They haven't been able to stamp it out. Maybe it has more to do with purdah than with polygyny as such, though.

Like the use of slave soldiers, it's an example of how Islam as a religion and Islam as a civilization can be in conflict. But most people don't want to talk about it. It would be completely unfair to characterize Islam as a faith as promoting homosexual child-molesting, of course, because it is a heinous crime meriting the death penalty. It is an example of contradictions within Islamic civilization, as well as an example of ancient Greek influence on Islam that neither Greeks nor Muslims wants to draw attention to.