WTF?
Check out this excellent article by the Middle of the East, especially the part in which it refers to this piece in The National.
Egyptians Plan to “Topple the Regime” on #June30
6 minutes ago
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From & About Lebanon
Books:
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A Very well researched monograph by on the problems on the southern boundary of
"The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy", By Matthew Simmons..
The focus is on
"How
"The Weather Makers", By Tim Flannery.
This is easily a “groundbreaking and essential” book. Tim Flannery “argues passionately for the urgent need to address - NOW - the implications of a global climate change that is damaging all life on earth and endangering our very survival”. I have little to add to that…
"How the Bible Became a Book", By William M. Schniedewind.
By answering two question;: “when was the Bible written?” and “why was it written?”, the author places the Hebrew Bible in its historical/social context, and much of it becomes clearer to understand. He also unwittingly illuminates the pre-Islamic Arab word…
"How to Lie With Statistics", By Darrell Huff.
"There are lies, damned lies and statistics"… Enough said, go read the book. The math is not too hard, and it should be required reading for anyone who is ever planning in discussing numbers. There are timeless classic; this is one of them.
"Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran", By Christoph Luxenberg.
This is a reading of the Koran from the perspective of the ancient Jahiliyya dialects, closer in some respects to an Aramaic-Arabic mixed language than to modern Arabic. A challenging read and many may consider that the author oversimplifies. But it makes you think and ponder, and the author makes many excellent points.
"The Bible Came From
Many will disagree strongly with Prof. Saliby’s conclusions, many of which fly in the face of archeological evidence. True, this once acclaimed Lebanese historian now apparently belongs to the group of “everyone's got it wrong, I've got it right" conspiracy theorists, but he does raise a few good questions. The mental exercise of debunking him when he overreaches is worth it; all too often, we tend to forget those aspects of Monotheism that go back to Akhenaton…
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3 comments:
The July 2006 war was not another Coventry. One just has to take very seriously Israel's report that it killed 600-800 Hizballah fighters. Hizballah lost more than it cares to admit. Naturally, Israel did not want to insist it was right.
Even with good intel, you can have bad plans, and the Israeli plan just to bomb all the targets it got from its intel was not a good one. It did not stop the short range rockets which were mostly hidden in fields. Also, Hizballah did hide behind the population, so Israel's hands were tied.
Hizballah will have a heck of a time moving everything it built since 2006. This is good for Lebanon since it means Hizballah will not be ready for another war for a long time.
Makes sense, except for the "good for Lebanon" part.
Whatever one thinks of Hezb, it represents a powerful ideology, and ideologies cannot be defeated by the force of arms.
"Whatever one thinks of Hezb, it represents a powerful ideology, and ideologies cannot be defeated by the force of arms."
Not necessarily. The ability of any ideology to attract adepts rests, on the long term, on its perceived success. For a militant ideology (or a 'culture of resistence'), this means military success. HA gained a lot of respect and support after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. Likewise, if Israel (hypothetically) beat them decisively over and over again, they will likely lose support. The previous generation of Israel's foes, pan-arabists and baathists, have ideologically faded from view largely because of their consistent proclivity to get beaten by the IDF. By the same token, jihadism became popular largely from its (real or perceived) successes in the battlefield.
BTW, HA has been moving away from the more lunatic jihadi tactics (suicide bombing and the like) for a while now. But generally, while jihadis are largely undeterred by the prospect of death, and seem to be able to regenerate losses easily, they have shown time and again that they are deterrable by a high likelihood of failure. To put in another way, suicide bombers will go forward on the face of certain death, but not near certain failure.
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