Comments on: The Islamic Vortex (Part 3a)

By: admin

admin — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 02:37:40 +0000

There’s only one commentator here who regularly fishes up evidential links of such devastating, stand-alone articulacy
(recently seen wearing a funny hat)

By: VXXC

VXXC — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 22:34:49 +0000

Da Bug?

By: VXXC

VXXC — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 21:36:06 +0000

“Who’s going to print up the T-shirts? We demand democratic restoration now!!”

You can count on me.

Which was already known.

By: Manjusri

Manjusri — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 07:17:26 +0000

In the case of Deng, he had the advantage that his predecessor had spent the previous ten years trying to demolish the party bureaucracy, not restore it. This, along with the lack of an enormous military albatross around it’s neck, was one of the key differences between the soviet union and China in the 1980s.

Both China and the US are so thoroughly Brezhnevified that it might take another cultural revolution before things get better…

By: admin

admin — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 04:25:24 +0000

The quality of this illustrated push-back is so remarkable that it serves as a signature.
In response: 3b (pending).

By: admin

admin — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 03:37:54 +0000

This is extremely interesting — but it’s also making me quibblish. Can we seriously talk about “institutions of national self-determination” being over-written by the S-P agreement? The precursor was the Ottoman order, of Turkish suzerainty over tribal entity and the relics of long-collapsed imperial polities, with regard to which any attribution of ‘nationality’ seems like a reckless stretch. So I am still tempted to see the West and the Islamic world as symmetrically diverging from a central, two-way historical mirror (rather than merely de-synchronized within a consistent time-stream). Despite that, where you take the argument is very close to the heading I see this on … final incomprehensible question included.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 03:19:55 +0000

If no restoration can be anything other than a momentary interruption of the decay trajectory, then we are indeed utterly screwed. Were it not for the example of Deng Xiaoping, I would surrender to your gloomy interpretation unconditionally. Certainly, in the Egyptian case your prediction is more than likely to be vindicated. For the moment, however, we can at least revel in the awkwardness it introduces into the progressive narrative (at least in its most popular and mindless form).

By: admin

admin — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 03:10:44 +0000

When things are unfolded with due regard to the objective order of priorities, the Israel topic has not yet earned the right to intrude.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 03:08:35 +0000

OK, that was over-excitedly stated. When from some hypothetical distant future, an attempt is made to retrospectively identify the point of Peak Democracy, it is hard for me to conceive any formula that would more exactly identify it. “In effect, they were restoring democracy.” But perhaps you are right, and the forces of farcical repetition are strong enough to reduce this high-water mark to a random inscription in the chronicles of chaos.

[‘Alat’ (below) has more on this wavelength — make sure to follow the link]

By: Alat

Alat — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 02:37:52 +0000

this is one of those rare moments in which everything changes, and we have to catch up with it Nah, this is just a "back to the future" moment. When the new Egyptian regime consolidates itself, it will then be undermined by the Cathedral in the name of democracy, and the wheel will turn one more time. Exhibit A