The Agonist - Histories

'Travelling The Silk Road' Exhibition Review

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:19:28 -0800

This is an exceptional review not necessarily about the exhibition but some of the current thinking emerging about the role of the Silk Road on Western History. I suggest reading it. Here's the clincher:

[T]he critical intellectual shortcoming of the exhibition is that with Baghdad, the Silk Road seems to come to a prematurely celebratory end. Why, instead of dealing with the development of Arab shipping in a final gallery, didn’t the show follow a narrative, visible on one of its maps, leading past Baghdad and to the port of Venice? By extending the history another few centuries, we would have seen how the Silk Road led to a fertilization of Western thinking, not just with the discoveries of Islamic scientists but also with a variety of philosophical and religious perspectives that proved influential over the course of centuries. We know how deeply affected Marco Polo was by the Silk Road in the 13th century: he passed that enthusiasm on.

This would have helped the exhibition make a more cogent contribution to Western cultural self-understanding. It would have also helped explain why, once European shipping and exploration took off in the late Renaissance, the overland Silk Road route became more and more a commercial backwater, leading to centuries of cultural and political decline, whose effects are still being felt.

After my first trip across the Silk Road in 2003 I began to devour, wholesale, as much scholarship on it as I possibly could. And one thing that became very clear early on was that the official narrative of the Silk Road wasn't anything close to the reality. Sadly, it has been extremely slow going. (I now have an extensive library--at least two hundred books and countless scholarly articles relating to the subject. And growing.) Most of the scholarship is either at least a century old, or in Russian, German and French--of which I only speak one. (The Russian scholarship suffers from the Marxist dialectic, as well.) And yet I found a lot of truth in the old saw, 'read an old book and learn something new.' Even before I read Beckwith's book my ideas had shifted drastically towards his own. His book was a much appreciated validation of my own.

More after the jump.

However, Christopher Beckwith's book, which I reviewed in brief a few weeks ago, goes a long way toward rectifying this. The pollination between East and West is much more tremendous than we think. The sheer amount of ideas and innovations which moved from East to West are enough to give one pause: paper, the divine right of kings from China via Persia, Islamic motifs in Western sacred architecture, religious iconography including halos, paper currency, the stirrup--this one alone had a massive impact on Europe. The list is long. But the most profound idea that emerged from the littoral states of the West's contact with the great Asian hinterland is the millenia-old dialogue between 'the other' and the settled states. And then their is the troublesome problem of those pesky Indo-Europeans, who migrated from the Pontic Steppe sometime around 3,000BC and took with them a cultural complex that would literally change the world: the domestication of the horse, the wheel and the chariot. And the concomitant spread of the linguistics that forms the basis of existing languages from the Indian sub-continent, to Iran to Western Europe. And dead languages whose sounds can still be heard in the Tarim Basin.

While I don't have much truck with 'world systems' theorists the sheer amount of evidence behind the idea that the West could not have arisen without pollination from the East is inescapable. But it's a very complicated story and sadly one that doesn't fit into a snap narrative. Too much energy is spent on Central Asian studies now that focus on only the last hundred or so years. It simply has to go much, much further back in time than that. It's also a subject that is endless fascinating. For me, the conquest of Central Asia by the Russians is much less interesting that the role of trade between China and the Steppe Nomads hundreds of years before Christ. The Chinese, who adopted much of the cultural complex of the Indo-Europeans needed horses. What did they do? They slowly encroached on the lands of the Steppe Nomads to feed their war machine. (One Chinese emperor nearly lost everything, surrounded by a horde of horseman in the dead of a Chinese winter, as he was. By the way, our word for horde comes from a region of China called the Ordos Loop. Google it.) When the nomads fought back the decided to trade. The Chinese traded silk and the nomads horses. A revolution began. (And no, I am not oversimplifying.) The old world, although tenuously linked, was linked forever after this. Silk soon began appearing in great amounts in Western markets--and with it so much more.

The genius of Beckwith's book isn't the reinterpretation of Central Asian history, although it is quite an achievement. The genius is in the questions he raises. One question he brought up was this: how is it that between the Seventh and Eighth Centuries AD the great states of the world at the time underwent wholesale and violent religious revolutions? What, for lack of a better turn of phrase, was in the wind? Big, and new> meta-questions such as this one pepper his book.

Regardless, if you are in New York City and have a chance to see the exhibit please do. I would love to hear more.

On The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:25:04 -0800

Every year on this date I am reminded of how lucky I was to meet Cpl. Ed Neidemier. It was my junior year at the University of Houston. I'd been assigned a project by my American Military History professor to interview an American veteran. Many people found veterans of the Second World War, Vietnam, Korea and one or two from Desert Storm. I'd always had a fascination for World War One, and wanted to meet an American veteran of that conflict. So, an early fall day, a day not unlike today, when the air had a nip of cold in it and only a wisp of high cirrus clouds I drove from Houston to Dallas to meet Cpl. Ed. He was in his early nineties at the time but his eyes were still a crystal blue and while his hands were soft with the years his handshake was firm.

Sadly, I lost my notes from the interview several years ago. But I still remember much. He was a supply clerk. He drove a horse drawn wagon from a supply depot to the front lines, which were moving up when he arrived in France. He spoke of the sounds of artillery in the night, "like Zeus' own thunderstorm," he called it. He spoke of the time when he stole a pair of boots for an African-American soldier who's shoes had deteriorated 'in the muck of mud and rotting flesh.' He spoke of how afraid he was before the war, being a German farm boy from Iowa--who's first language was German--and how he enlisted as a 17 year old. A year before he was legally allowed to. He spoke of how moved and saddened he was when he shipped out of New York City, looking out at the Statue of Liberty wondering if he would ever see home again.

He spoke of the days after the Armistice Day when he 'puttered around the trenches' and traded a German soldier a few dollars for his Mauser. He showed me the gun. As I held it in my hands I wondered how many men it had killed. He told me what it was like to return home in or around 1919-1920. The parades, the euphoria, the joy. But through it all, he always said, "it was the greatest time of my life. Both bad and good. Horrible and awesome."

I believe there is only a handful of World War One veterans left in the world, and the few that are left are French. All the American soldiers of World War One have died. So have the British soldiers. I don't know about the Germans or the Russians or any of the other nations which fought in the war. The war fades, the hundredth anniversary of its beginning is right around the corner. Memories fade.

But my image of Cpl. Ed doesn't. Perhaps some small part of the cataclysm, or suicide of Western Civilization, as it has often been called, remains within me. Cpl. Ed's blue eyes certainly do.

Recruited by MI5: The name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:43:41 -0700

Tom Kington | Rome | October 13

The Guardian - Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hidden Gobi Desert relics found

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:43:29 -0700

Sainshand, Mongolia | August 1

BBC - Rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, have been unearthed in the Gobi Desert.

The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed.

The relics include statues, art work, manuscripts and personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master.

The leader of the search team, Michael Eisenriegler, described it as an "adventure of a lifetime".

A total of 64 crates of treasures were buried in the desert by a monk named Tudev, in an attempt to save them from the ransacking of the Mongolian and Soviet armies.

'What's exciting is that writing has become a weapon'

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:54:36 -0700

Since winning the Booker prize in 1997, Arundhati Roy has put fiction on hold to become a global dissenter against repression, economic 'progress' - and dams. Tim Adams discovers the roots of her political passion

The Observer, By Tim Adams, July 12

Arundhati Roy has two voices. The first, dramatically personal and playful, was the one in which she wrote her extraordinary debut novel, The God of Small Things, a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in rural Kerala. The second voice is flatter and angrier, more urban and distrustful of the quirks of the individual. She describes it as "writing from the heart of the crowd". It is this voice that she has used exclusively in the 12 years since her novel was published, in four collections of non-fiction - the latest of which, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, was published last week.

Roy, now 47, describes the difference between the two voices as the difference between "dancing and walking". It is a long while since Roy's writing has danced. She says she pedestrianised her imagination not out of choice, not at all, but because there seemed nothing else to do. "If I could," she says, "I would love to spend all my time writing fiction. With the non-fiction I wrote one book that I wanted to write and three more that I didn't."

This compulsion - towards reporting and polemic - Roy blames in part on the success of The God of Small Things. She wrote her novel for four and a half years entirely in secret; even her husband, the film-maker Pradip Krishen, did not know of its existence until it was finished. And she wrote it for herself. She had written a couple of film scripts before that and had come to despise the collaborative creative process. The book was an exercise in downshifting. She imagined when it was published that it would sell "maybe 500 copies in Delhi." In fact, it sold 6m copies worldwide and won her the Booker Prize.

"The prize," she says now, "was actually responsible in many ways for my political activism. I won this thing and I was suddenly the darling of the new emerging Indian middle class - they needed a princess. They had the wrong woman. I had this light shining on me at the time, and I knew that I had the stage to say something about what was happening in my country. What is exciting about what I have done since is that writing has become a weapon, some kind of ammunition."

Silk Road Connections

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:36:14 -0700

Back in May of 2007, then in November of 2007 and finally in December of 2007 I asked if any readers knew anything about the great An Lu-shan rebellion that nearly brought down the T'ang Dynasty of 8th century China. I've continued to follow the academic literature on the subject. There are now two new books discussing the subject, one at length and another that makes some riveting connections between An Lu-shan's rebellion and other events occurring all over the Eurasian landmass at the time.

The first book is Lewis' China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (History of Imperial China). This is the second Lewis book I've read and while it is boring and dry, the information is exceptional. It also represents the first general survey of the T'ang Dynasty in English in over a hundred years. That alone merits reading, for the T'ang Dynasty was China's most important dynasty, after the Han.

But Beckwith's book Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, while uber-scholarly--it simply has too many fascinating endnotes and footnotes that break up the narrative--that I'm learning a great deal from. If you are interested in the Silk Road and have a pretty good working knowledge of some of the basic texts (email me if you want a list, be warned: it's a long one) this is a book you will want to read.

But let's get back to An Lu-shan. Beckwith makes a compelling connection about the An Lu-shan rebellion and several others that occurred in the 8th century: that of the Iconoclasts and Iconodules in Constantinople; a rebellion in the Tibetan Empire; a rebellion in the Turk Empire in Central Asia at the time; the Abbasid Revolution in the Arab world; the Carolingian Revolution and finally that of An Lu-shan himself. Each occurred within a fifty year period of each other. It's a hugely fascinating connection to make. Revolutions and rebellions like this occurring virtually simultaneously just don't happen without some kind of common catalyst. As Beckwith writes, "this is something that deserves further study."

He's right. For too long systems theorists--poli sci historians, that is--have tried to tie together things like this, but are always looking in the wrong places. Beckwith might be on to something.

Holocaust: The Ignored Reality

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:32:15 -0700

NYRB, By Timothy Snyder, July 16

Though Europe thrives, its writers and politicians are preoccupied with death. The mass killings of European civilians during the 1930s and 1940s are the reference of today's confused discussions of memory, and the touchstone of whatever common ethics Europeans may share. The bureaucracies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union turned individual lives into mass death, particular humans into quotas of those to be killed. The Soviets hid their mass shootings in dark woods and falsified the records of regions in which they had starved people to death; the Germans had slave laborers dig up the bodies of their Jewish victims and burn them on giant grates. Historians must, as best we can, cast light into these shadows and account for these people. This we have not done. Auschwitz, generally taken to be an adequate or even a final symbol of the evil of mass killing, is in fact only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come.

The very reasons that we know something about Auschwitz warp our understanding of the Holocaust: we know about Auschwitz because there were survivors, and there were survivors because Auschwitz was a labor camp as well as a death factory. These survivors were largely West European Jews, because Auschwitz is where West European Jews were usually sent. After World War II, West European Jewish survivors were free to write and publish as they liked, whereas East European Jewish survivors, if caught behind the iron curtain, could not. In the West, memoirs of the Holocaust could (although very slowly) enter into historical writing and public consciousness.

[...]

If there is a general political lesson of the history of mass killing, it is the need to be wary of what might be called privileged development: attempts by states to realize a form of economic expansion that designates victims, that motivates prosperity by mortality. The possibility cannot be excluded that the murder of one group can benefit another, or at least can be seen to do so. That is a version of politics that Europe has in fact witnessed and may witness again. The only sufficient answer is an ethical commitment to the individual, such that the individual counts in life rather than in death, and schemes of this sort become unthinkable.

The Europe of today is remarkable precisely in its unity of prosperity with social justice and human rights. Probably more than any other part of the world, it is immune, at least for the time being, to such heartlessly instrumental pursuits of economic growth. Yet memory has made some odd departures from history, at a time when history is needed more than ever. The recent European past may resemble the near future of the rest of the world. This is one more reason for getting the reckonings right.

War and Hate

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:24:27 -0700

"Look What You Made Me Do"

Caesar, Hitler, Nixon - War, Racism, Hatred - Alcohol, Mysogyny, Conformity

Seamless trinities...
One needn't ever drink a drop of alcohol to serve in it's churches...
Just as one needn't ever hit women to perpetuate ever worse to them...
Or as one needn't necessarily exit conventional reality to reject the convention.

Seamless subjects. Addiction: money, ego, power, sex, drugs, food, adrenalin, violence, drugs, fear, hatred, guns, vanity, games, the very creative imperative itself -addiction alone makes an endless daisy chain of seamlessly related subjects. They continue on through Blame and Guilt, and Control. Subjects of enthrallment, helpless captivity. It's a necessary convenience to limit the moment's topic. In such isolation, the seamlessness of the chain is not a foregone understanding though, not at all, quite the opposite. It is not a given understanding that to talk of one is to talk of 'them' all... As it should be; that isn't necessarily true, or false.

The Caesarean spirit roars on, as if Hitler won his war, right on through to our contemporary consequences of Nixon's Southern Strategy.
I come from a very patriarchal family myself, save for my beloved renegade father. As he grew in the early 20th century, our family's patriarchs died off, leaving the matriarchs to only revere them, and their power's fortunes. My father, quite naturally then, married a rather bohemian French woman, who may or may not have remained that way if not for her early death. I inherited her gifts. I inherited her challenges, and his. I inherited their questions and their not so pat answers. Mostly I inherited their freedom upon this island, Mother Earth. I was raised to not be an Ugly American. I was raised to hold Life as my own, a blank canvas to make of it as I will. Here now is the big But:
The Millenia old Dominator Culture.

Better writers than I, actual competent writers to be frank, have well covered the whole and the parts as well since man's fall from grace, with certainly as many interpretations. It is not, however, my fault I am doing this. You made me do it. Whom are you going to believe? Me, or your own lying eyes? I hate you!

Look What You Made Me Do!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misogyny

Marcus Tullius Cicero reports that Greek philosophers considered misogyny to be caused by gynophobia, a fear of women.[1] In the late 20th century, feminist theorists proposed misogyny as both a cause and result of patriarchal social structures.[2]

The volumes implied! Daunting. Fortunately for me, it's my dear Lisa's birthday. As best an excuse as any to 'turn left at the laundrymat'.
I close with this alone for now to ponder, a black Commander-in-Chief of such forces that allow, encourage even, rampant racism within, from top to bottom, to necessarily fill their ranks -or more? War and Hatred go together like Peace and Love.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4177/gi_skinhead/

"This is not an ideological preference for white supremacists," Kennard says. "The military just can't meet their troop needs, so their standards have had to drop. That won't change until the war scales down."

***

U.S. is recruiting misfits for army
Felons, racists, gang members fill in the ranks
Nick Turse
Sunday, October 1, 2006

After falling short of its goals last year, military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, and a spate of recent press reports touting the military's achievement of its woman- and manpower goals.

But the armed forces have met with success only through a fundamental transformation, and not the transformation of the military -- that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" that Rumsfeld is always talking about either.

While the secretary of defense's longstanding goal of transforming the planet's most powerful military into its highest-tech, most agile, most futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post's David VonDrehle, "melted away," the very makeup of the armed forces has been mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq. This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles on the new recruitment landscape in America.

Last year, despite NASCAR, professional bull-riding and Arena Football sponsorships, popular video games that doubled as recruiting tools, TV commercials dripping with seductive scenes of military glory, a "joint marketing communications and market research and studies" program designed to attract, among others, dropouts and those with criminal records for military service, and at least $16,000 in promotional costs for each soldier it managed to sign up, the U.S. military failed to meet its recruiting goals.

This year, those methods have been pumped up and taken over the top in several critical areas that make the old Army ad tagline, "Be All You Can Be," into material for late-night TV punch lines of the future.

In 2004, the Pentagon published a "Moral Waiver Study," whose seemingly benign goal was "to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." That turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records.

In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was "a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that included "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats." From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.

In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the Army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of "recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records." In fact, as the military's own data indicated, "the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001."

One beneficiary of the Army's new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been "a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder."

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Iraq veteran: US military full of racist skinheads-from the top down (NATION)

"I Hate Arabs More Than Anybody": Desperate Army Recruits Neo-Nazis

By Matt Kennard, Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Posted June 17, 2009.

Why the U.S. military is ignoring its own regulations and permitting white supremacists to join.

On a muggy Florida evening in 2008, I meet Iraq War veteran Forrest Fogarty in the Winghouse, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of Tampa, his favorite hangout. He told me on the phone I would recognize him by his skinhead. Sure enough, when I spot a white guy at a table by the door with a shaved head, white tank top and bulging muscles, I know it can only be him.

Over a plate of chicken wings, he tells me about his path into the white-power movement. "I was 14 when I decided I wanted to be a Nazi," he says. At his first high school, near Los Angeles, he was bullied by black and Latino kids. That's when he first heard Skrewdriver, a band he calls "the godfather of the white power movement." "I became obsessed," he says. He had an image from one of Skrewdriver's album covers -- a Viking carrying a staff, an icon among white nationalists -- tattooed on his left forearm. Soon after he had a Celtic cross, an Irish symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, emblazoned on his stomach.

At 15, Fogarty moved with his dad to Tampa, where he started picking fights with groups of black kids at his new high school. "On the first day, this bunch of niggers, they thought I was a racist, so they asked, 'Are you in the KKK?'" he tells me. "I said, 'Yeah,' and it was on." Soon enough, he was expelled.

For the next six years, Fogarty flitted from landscaping job to construction job, neither of which he'd ever wanted to do. "I was just drinking and fighting," he says. He started his own Nazi rock group, Attack, and made friends in the National Alliance, at the time the biggest neo-Nazi group in the country. It has called for a "a long-term eugenics program involving at least the entire populations of Europe and America."

But the military ran in Fogarty's family. His grandfather had served during World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and his dad had been a Marine in Vietnam. At 22, Fogarty resolved to follow in their footsteps. "I wanted to serve my country," he says.

Army regulations prohibit soldiers from participating in racist groups, and recruiters are instructed to keep an eye out for suspicious tattoos. Before signing on the dotted line, enlistees are required to explain any tattoos. At a Tampa recruitment office, though, Fogarty sailed right through the signup process. "They just told me to write an explanation of each tattoo, and I made up some stuff, and that was that," he says. Soon he was posted to Fort Stewart in Georgia, where he became part of the 3rd Infantry Division.

Fogarty's ex-girlfriend, intent on destroying his new military career, sent a dossier of photographs to Fort Stewart. The photos showed Fogarty attending white supremacist rallies and performing with his band, Attack. "They hauled me before some sort of committee and showed me the pictures," Fogarty says. "I just denied them and said my girlfriend was a spiteful bitch." He adds: "They knew what I was about. But they let it go because I'm a great soldier."

In 2003, Fogarty was sent to Iraq. For two years he served in the military police, escorting officers, including generals, around the hostile country. He says he was granted top-secret clearance and access to battle plans. Fogarty speaks with regret that he "never had any kill counts." But he says his time in Iraq increased his racist resolve.

"I hate Arabs more than anybody, for the simple fact I've served over there and seen how they live," he tells me. "They're just a backward people. Them and the Jews are just disgusting people as far as I'm concerned. Their customs, everything to do with the Middle East, is just repugnant to me."

Because of his tattoos and his racist comments, most of his buddies and his commanding officers were aware of his Nazism. "They all knew in my unit," he says. "They would always kid around and say, 'Hey, you're that skinhead!'" But no one sounded an alarm to higher-ups. "I would volunteer for all the hardest missions, and they were like, 'Let Fogarty go.' They didn't want to get rid of me."

Fogarty left the Army in 2005 with an honorable discharge. He says he was asked to reenlist. He declined. He was sick of the system.

Since the launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has struggled to recruit and reenlist troops. As the conflicts have dragged on, the military has loosened regulations, issuing "moral waivers" in many cases, allowing even those with criminal records to join up. Veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder have been ordered back to the Middle East for second and third tours of duty.

The lax regulations have also opened the military's doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members -- with drastic consequences. Some neo-Nazis have been charged with crimes inside the military, and others have been linked to recruitment efforts for the white right. A recent Department of Homeland Security report, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," stated: "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today." Many white supremacists join the Army to secure training for, as they see it, a future domestic race war. Others claim to be shooting Iraqis not to pursue the military's strategic goals but because killing "hajjis" is their duty as white militants.

Soldiers' associations with extremist groups, and their racist actions, contravene a host of military statutes instituted in the past three decades. But during the "war on terror," U.S. armed forces have turned a blind eye on their own regulations. A 2005 Department of Defense report states, "Effectively, the military has a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy pertaining to extremism. If individuals can perform satisfactorily, without making their extremist opinions overt they are likely to be able to complete their contracts."

Carter F. Smith is a former military investigator who worked with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command from 2004 to 2006, when he helped to root out gang violence in troops. "When you need more soldiers, you lower the standards, whether you say so or not," he says. "The increase in gangs and extremists is an indicator of this." Military investigators may be concerned about white supremacists, he says. "But they have a war to fight, and they don't have incentive to slow down."

Tom Metzger is the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and current leader of the White Aryan Resistance. He tells me the military has never been more tolerant of racial extremists. "Now they are letting everybody in," he says.

The presence of white supremacists in the military first triggered concern in 1976. At Camp Pendleton in California, a group of black Marines attacked white Marines they mistakenly believed to be in the KKK. The resulting investigation uncovered a KKK chapter at the base and led to the jailing or transfer of 16 Klansmen. Reports of Klan activity among soldiers and Marines surfaced again in the 1980s, spurring President Reagan's Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, to condemn military participation in white supremacist organizations.

Then, in 1995, a black couple was murdered by two neo-Nazi paratroopers around Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The murder investigation turned up evidence that 22 soldiers at Fort Bragg were known to be extremists. That year, language was added to a Department of Defense directive, explicitly prohibiting participation in "organizations that espouse supremacist causes" or "advocate the use of force or violence."

Today a complete ban on membership in racist organizations appears to have been lifted -- though the proliferation of white supremacists in the military is difficult to gauge. The military does not track them as a discrete category, coupling them with gang members. But one indication of the scope comes from the FBI.

Following an investigation of white supremacist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: "Military experience -- ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces -- is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement." In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Most of them were associated with the National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement, which promote anti-Semitism and the overthrow of the U.S. government, and assorted skinhead groups.

Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don't include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans -- they "may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialized training in weapons, tactics, and organizational skills to benefit the extremist movement."

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Skinhead nation
A potpourri of violence-prone racists, anti-Semites and disaffected youth

by Gil Zohar

From Montreal to Moscow, the media is full of alarming stories of skinheads – heavily tattooed shaved-head youth, bedecked in Nazi symbols - attacking Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, homosexuals and homeless people, whom they perceive as racial enemies.
In August two Israelis were hospitalized after being beaten by a group of skinheads at a rock concert in Belgrade, Serbia. "They were chanting 'Auschwitz, Auschwitz' and 'Go to Germany' as they attacked us," Jarly Avram – one of those assaulted - was reported as saying. No arrests were made.
Similarly that month the Quebec Human Rights Commission awarded $50,000 in damages to a black man who was beaten and stabbed by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Evans Marseille was drinking in an east-end Montreal bar in June 2002 when a group of men started taunting him with Nazi salutes. When he went outside to use the phone, they followed and attacked him.
But it is from Russia with hate that the news of neo-Nazi youth is perhaps most alarming. According to a recent report by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, "The skinhead movement is growing [in the former Soviet Union]. It now numbers up to 50,000 people and is spreading from major regional centres into small towns and villages."
That is an enormous increase from the skinheads' first appearance in Russia around 1992, when a handful of young punks in Moscow and St. Petersburg started copying European neo-Nazis. One expert says Russia is now home to half of the world's skinheads.
Just how serious a problem are the so-called skinheads?
"Though relatively small in numbers, neo-Nazi skinheads who have adopted white supremacy pose a threat that should not be underestimated," says Bernie Farber, CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress, and an expert on hate groups and white supremacy. "Lacking a moral centre with only hate as a guide, they have been known to act out their animus against vulnerable minorities using violence and intimidation."
The amorphous international skinhead movement - youths who shave their heads, gather at rock concerts and sports events, and sometimes participate in white-supremacist and anti-immigrant activities – developed in the late 1960s Britain out of the MOD (Modernist) movement. The founders were mostly working class youth but came from all economical backgrounds.
Skinhead symbols began innocently as emblematic of working-class pride. Since many youth worked in factories, their shaved heads prevented their hair from getting caught in machinery. Similarly steel-toed boots were worn to protect their feet.
The skinhead hair style quickly became a badge of distinction in contrast to the more bourgeois, long-haired hippie culture popular at the time. Skinhead culture exploded in 1969 to the extent that even the rock band Slade temporarily adopted the look. The subculture gained wider notice as a consequence of graphically violent and sexually explicit novels by Richard Allen, notably Skinhead and Skinhead Escapes.
Postwar Britain received waves of immigrants from Jamaica and Pakistan. The West Indians used to work on the docks with some of the skinheads, and the two groups used to go around "Paki-bashing", i.e. assaulting South Asian immigrants.
In addition to retaining many mod influences, early skinheads were greatly interested in Jamaican Rude Boy style and culture, especially reggae and ska music. But the evolving movement soon created its own musical _expression, called "oi", which was characterized by racist lyrics and calls for violence. The British National Party, a neo-Nazi group, started to back the bands and exploiting them to recruit new members. This is when the skinhead phenomena became a hate group, defined by its own war cry, "RAHOWA" – an acronym for Racial Holy War.
But not all skinheads are racist. In an attempt to counter this negative stereotype, some skinheads formed anti-racist organizations. Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) started in the USA in 1987, and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) began in 1988. In 1988 two SHARPs dragged two female racist skinheads from out of a 7-11 store and beat them with a hammer.
Typically skinheads dress in jeans, Fred Perrys, Ben Shermans, Doc Martin boots, and bomber jackets. Some observers of their scene interpret the colour of their shoe laces and suspenders as having significance: red represents blood that has been shed for the white race; white stands for white power; black for "fresh cut"; and blue for "straight edge".
Should Canadians be concerned about the evolving skinhead culture, and attempts by members to infiltrate the country's armed forces?
"Whenever and wherever racists can gain prominence we should be concerned. This is especially true for their attempts to infiltrate the armed forces. We expect our armed forces to be tolerant and accepting. It is our singular mode of civil protection. The thought of neo-Nazi skinheads trying to gain access to the Canadian military should send chills down our spine," says Farber.

A Skinhead lexicon

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Burning Issue
posted by Mustang Bobby | Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A so-called "Christian" group in Wisconsin has some hot plans for a book in a local library.

    Francesca Lia Block, an award-winning author of young-adult books (the "Weetzie Bat" series among them), has known for a while now that one of her novels, "Baby Be-Bop" is at the center of a controversy in West Bend, Wis.

    A few days ago, she found out that it might be burned at the stake. "Baby Be-Bop" is on a list of titles that a local group calling itself the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries objects to seeing in the public library. In February, the group asked the library's board to remove a page of recommended titles about gay and lesbian issues for young people (including "Baby Be-Bop") from the library's Web site. Then they demanded that the books be moved from the youth section of the library and placed with the adult collection, "to protect children from accessing them without their parents' knowledge and supervision."

    [...]

    Now an outfit called the Christian Civil Liberties Union has gotten in on the act, suing the library for, according to the West Bend Daily News, "damaging" the "mental and emotional well-being" of several individuals by displaying "Baby Be-Bop" in the library. Since attempts to label the novel as "pornographic" have failed, the (somewhat shadowy) CCLU hopes to brand it as hate speech, in part because it contains the word "nigger." The complainants, described as "elderly" by the newspaper, claim that Block's novel is "explicitly vulgar, racial [sic] and anti-Christian." They want the library's copy not only removed but publicly burned.

    "Baby Be-Bop," a title from the Weetzie Bat series that describes the youth of Weetzie's best friend, Dirk, is, in Block's words, "a very sweet, simple, coming-of-age story about a young man's discovery that he's gay." Dirk is beaten by gay bashers but steadfastly clings to the possibility of finding love. Block finds the disingenuous charges of racism particularly distressing. "Obviously I use those words, including 'faggot,' which is also in the book, to expose racism and homophobia, not promote it," she said. "It's a tiny little book," she added, "but they want to burn it like a witch."

I wouldn't question the CCLU in the area of "hate speech;" they seem to be experts in that field. more

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Is Fox So Crazy That It's Even Alienating Some Conservatives?
By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America. Posted June 17, 2009.

The hate-filled rhetoric spewed by Fox pundits like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly is even alarming some of the people who work there.

It must have been an awkward elevator ride for Shep Smith over at Fox News headquarters last Friday, heading up to the 12th-floor studio where his Fox Report program originates. I'm just imagining the nasty looks he must have gotten from co-workers -- if any of them even agreed to ride between floors with him -- on the day that liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman praised Smith in print. Krugman actually referenced him by name as somebody inside Fox News who refused to go along with the "big hate": the right wing's anti-Obama rhetoric -- almost bloodlust -- that now dominates conservative discourse.

Talk about putting a target on the back of a Fox News anchor. A shout-out from the hated Times op-ed page? Things only got worse for Smith over the weekend when the Times' Frank Rich also singled out the Fox News anchor for praise. I mean, c'mon. Were Krugman and Rich trying to get the guy fired?!

In fact, even before being name-dropped by Times liberals, right-wing bloggers had already teed off on Smith ("Shep sucks"; "Shepard Smith has got to go") for having the nerve to call out the "crazies" on the fringe who were targeting President Obama and feeding off conspiratorial hate.

The truth, of course, is that Smith's job isn't in danger. He's considered an untouchable (ratings) golden boy within Fox News who has the backing of his boss, Roger Ailes. (Not to mention a gargantuan $7 million salary.)

Yet by pushing back on the air against the same right-wing hatred that others at Fox News now regularly foment, I wonder if Smith feels increasingly uncomfortable or alienated within Fox News. If he feels like a stranger within the cable news channel he's been with since its inception, as it now rushes headlong into the GOP fever swamps and does it with Glenn Beck, and his conspiratorial ranting, as the new face and voice of Fox News.

I'm starting to wonder if Fox News is big enough for Shep Smith and Glenn Beck.

For the past decade, Fox News brass offered up the same predictable retort that the channel did news during the day and opinion after 8 p.m., and hey, there's nothing wrong with that. (Even if all the opinion ran in one direction.) But now it's opinion in the morning with Fox & Friends, it's opinion in the late afternoon with Glenn Beck at 5 p.m., and opinion 24/7 with Fox Nation online, which mines the territory of everything right of the Drudge Report.

Smith for years has publicly defended Ailes' credo of "fair and balanced," but it's hard to see how the anchor believes it anymore, as he watches the channel he works for actively rile up the right-wing crazies. If Smith watches any of the other 22 hours of Fox News programming that air each day when he's not in front of the camera, he certainly understands that his employer probably represents the most dangerous voice today when it comes to whipping up irrational hostility toward the new president.

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'As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.' -dylan

'So I guess this is where I tell you what I learned - my conclusion, right? Well, my conclusion is: Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it. Derek says it's always good to end a paper with a quote. He says someone else has already said it best. So if you can't top it, steal from them and go out strong. So I picked a guy I thought you'd like. 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.' -Daniel Vinyard

The Truth Rundown

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:59:46 -0700

The St. Petersburg Times has a three part series on the Church of Scientology.

Mark C. "Marty" Rathbun left the Church of Scientology staff in late 2004, ending a 27-year career that saw him rise to be a top lieutenant to Miscavige in the organization. For the past four years, he has lived a low-profile life in Texas. Some speculated he had died.

In February, Rathbun posted an Internet message announcing he was available to counsel other disaffected Scientologists.

"Having dug myself out of the dark pit where many who leave the church land," he wrote, "I began lending a hand to others similarly situated."

Contacted by the St. Petersburg Times, Rathbun agreed to tell the story of his years in Scientology and what led to his leaving. The Times interviewed him at his home in Texas, and he came to Clearwater to revisit some of the scenes he described.

The print articles are:

Scientology: The Truth Rundown
Death in slow motion
Scientology: Ecclesiastical justice

1998 Interview of David Miscavige: The Man Behind Scientology

a once in a lifetime singularity...

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:40:23 -0700

...will absolutely take place july 8 at 4:05.06...

Testudo!

Tue, 05 May 2009 03:22:30 -0700

"They can't all be carrying arrows, can they?" So go the apocryphal words of Roman general and triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus in 53BC at the Battle of Carrhae as he pointed at the large camel train with the Parthian army (Frank Holt, my Roman Republic history professor at the University of Houston told me this story back in 1991.) Crassus' son had just died fighting a detachment of Parthians a few miles south of Carrhae, the modern Harran. Crassus ordered them to form a large square, hold their shields aloft, better to guard against the Parthian arrows. They were surrounded.

Parthian cavalry ran circles around the Romans all day long. Sometimes the Romans would sally forth to attack the Parthians only to have them retreat. And then the Parthians would return: arrows falling, falling, falling, all day long. The entire camel train of the Parthians given over to arrows supporting a force of 1,000 heavy cavalry and 9,000 of the Parthian's traditional light cavalry. Crassus had horrible luck. They were all carrying arrows. And it was the light cavalry which did him down.

More after the jump.

I sat atop the old citadel and surveyed the countryside. I could well imagine the thirst demoralizing the Roman soldiers. Today was a nice day, about 75*F, a strong breeze came out of the West and clouds punctuated the skies. Even though it rained yesterday I could feel the dry air desiccating my hands and the dust left a fine film on my teeth. I'd already downed two liters of water and I'd only been out in the day for two hours. Crassus was a fool for not bivouacing his troops at the River Balissus just south of here. Then again, he was a wealthy plutocrat and not a born general like Pompey and Caesar. The testudo formation certainly didn't lend itself to ventilation. And the battle happened in mid-summer. I cannot imagine the withering heat the Romans endured. And so they died on the field of battle. Arguably the worst loss the Romans had suffered since Cannae.

There isn't anything at all left from the Roman era. Massive city walls surround Harran, still. And the Raqqa Gate is a sight to behold. The Ummayad Mosque sits just below the ancient citadel, the oldest mosque in Turkey, it dates to the mid 700s.

I can see that camel train out there in the plain. Hundreds of camels, swarms of Parhtian horseman kicking up the thin, orange dust. And I can only imagine the horror of the Roman troops. To die in such a place? So far from home? What was Crassus thinking?

More On Linguistics

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:24:53 -0700

A funny thing always happens when I post on linguistics. First, I should confess to having a very rudimentary basis in linguistics. So I am always surprised when people PM me, or email me or even comment in such posts and I wanted to pass on this very interesting PM and website:

Actually the Japanese and the Turks were very friendly neighbors prior to their separate migrations. They share a number of cultural traits, similar toilets, and fold away futon beds, for example. Japanese are always very welcome in Turkey due to this ancient connection. Given your interest in languages, you might like to wrap your mind around this concept. The Japanese have always had trouble with our Latin and Greek derived vocabulary, which shares an agglutinated morpheme structure with their mother tongue. For some reason, though their language scholars noticed years ago that they could transliterate Latin and Greek directly into Kanji compounds, they never wrote more than a few. I happened to notice it, too, and set about transliterating thousands of words for the purpose of instruction. The strange thing is that while my students had no problem with it, the Japanese "linguists" the PhD types, tell me it is difficult for them, so they don't believe students can do it.

I replied, after requesting permission to post the PM:

Yeah, I'm always surprised, and I mean always, by the people who jump out and comment on some of my more 'off the wall' posts. Funny story, for some reason, a whole bunch of Marco Polo fanatics invaded the site (and many have stayed) because of some minor posts I wrote on the problems with his route and some anecdotes from his story that aren't in the typical 'Polo Canon,' as it were. And I am always surprised when I do a linguistics post and people respond. As you are no doubt aware, linguistics is one of the more abstruse, recondite sciences.

Strange, in the best sense of the word, people are attracted to this site. I like that.

A Note On The Turkish Language Family

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:52:13 -0700

About a week ago there was a brief discussion about Turkish grammatical usage, which was followed by a briefer discussion about the origins of Turkish. During the extensive research I did for my book one of the most compelling stories was that of the great Turkish migration from an area around the Orkhon Valley in modern-day Mongolia to Anatolia. During the course of my research a mapping out of the Turkish language family helped put the migration into perspective. I'm one of those who believe that Turkish shares a common ancestor with the Altaic languages. A few examples are in order. Korean is an Altaic language (so is Japanese, but they hate being lumped in with the Koreans and vice-versa). Korean shares an agglutinative nature like that in Turkish, but as I recall, vowel harmony is not much of a component. I think the agglutination of Korean is the hardest single hurdle for a ~~Westerner~~ Native English speaker to overcome in learning the language. (It's really quite bizarre for our minds to understand the concept.) The alphabet is a cinch. Once learned you can never, ever, under any circumstances mispronounce or misspell a word, unlike English spelling! Cough? Doughnut? Ha!

Indulge me a short personal observation: I really dig the vowel harmony. There is this wonderful introductory intonation in Turkish when a conversation begins that is lovely to the ears. It isn't sing-song. And I haven't thought out the right analogy or metaphor yet. Regardless, I can't believe I missed this in 2007, but then again, I was a mess.

More after the jump.

Turkish also shares the subject-object-verb (SOV) word order common in Altaic languages. The verb comes at the end of the sentence. And the verb function is more about aspect than it is about tense. Is an action ongoing or completed, opposed to the designation of a specific time an action occurred as in English is much more important. (Russian is also a language of aspect, so aspect is not limited to non-Indo-European languages.) This creates problems in translation, even with really good English speakers and knowing there is a continuum of action being 'idealized' in the speakers head helps me understand what they are trying to convey. Odd, I know. But still this is what I do.

More important would be defining a word and the concept behind it; to put a face to the name, in a sense. The word in Turkish meaning "I don't have," is "yok." And it is a word you hear frequently.

It's like a simple declarative verb form in English, or so I've been led to believe and if the person who translated the literal meaning of the word is correct then that meaning is, "it doesn't exist." This is very, very similar in concept to the Korean "op-soyo," which means the exact same thing, "it doesn't exist," but is used colloquially to mean, "I don't or we don't have it." Similar concepts, expressed in similar verb forms across continents. Rather interesting no?

Okay, I know this is all a tad intellectual, but the linguistic structure and functions of languages--all languages--fascinate me. I mean, some of the structures in Arabic are amazing and share antecedents with sub-Saharan African languages. And Chinese? A language with many words that don't even have vowels! How can that not be worth a post or two?

Mostly, however, how a non-English brain contextualizes, processes and redistributes ideas, in my opinion, is a endlessly amazing topic, a rich vein of ore to mine over and over the course of one's life. And even though I don't have the discipline to sit down and learn another language learning how it functions is an important aid in learning more about the people I am visiting.

I wanted to add one last comment. The Turkish family language tree is divided into six groups: Oghuz, Kypchak, Uighur, Siberian, Oghur and Khalaj. Oghuz and Uighur are probably the two most common, widely spoken. Oghuz includes Modern Turkish, Azeri and Turkmen and all three are relatively mutually intelligible. Uighur includes Uzbek and Uighur. I was mistaken about Kyrgyz. It's from the Kypchak group. Kyrgyz sounds much more guttural, more Mongolian, in my opinion, which is a bizarre sounding language, like two cats, full of fur-balls, spitting at each other whilst trying to mate. I've tried pronouncing words in Mongolian and when I do it's laughable.

If you are interested in more, Wikipedia is an indispensable resource for this kind of major dorkage.

Effective Writing

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:57:28 -0700

I picked up a copy of Lord John Julius Norwich's "Byzantium, the Decline and Fall" yesterday. I read the first volume many years ago in hardcover got sidetracked, missed the middle volume and only picked up the abridged "A Short History of Byzantium" a few years later so as to complete the story. (I have also read Gibbon's magesterial "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" but you don't expect me to carry around all six volumes of that do you, especially now that I need to get new clothes?) So, I was reading a passage about the siege of Durrazzo by the Normans in October 1081. And I stumbled across this wonderful anecdote about Robert Guiscard's wife, who led the right wing during the siege and when the battle threatened to become a rout in favor of the Byzantine relievers, shamed the Norman men back into the fight:

Sichelgaita needs some explanation. She was cast in a Wagnerian mould: in her we come face to face with the closest approximation in history to a Valkyrie. A woman of immense build and herculean physical strength, she hardly ever left her husband's side--least of all in battle, one of her favorite occupations. At such moments, charging magnificently into the fray, her long blond hair streaming out from beneath her helmet, deafening friend and foe alike with huge shouts of encouragement or imprecation she must have looked--even if she did not altogether sound--worthy to take her place among the daughters of Wotan: beside Waltraute, or Grimgerda, or even Brunhilde herself.

If you've ever seen a Wagnerian opera the picture Norwich paints is just spot on. I can only imagine what the Byzantine troops at Durazzo thought of her?

An Interesting Coincidence

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:13:42 -0700

Yesterday I looked at a map of Marco Polo's travels. Ever one to be fascinated by what the great Venetian accomplished (although what Ibn Battuta did was even greater in my opinion), I noted something I'd never before taken into account. Marco Polo's forward journey is etched into my memory like the day of my first kiss. (Really, I am that much of a history geek!) Jerusalem, Baghdad, Persia, across the Karakorum, down the Tarim Basin and across a great swathe of China to Xanadu, just north of Beijing? I know the route by heart; have read the first third of his book repeatedly. (I've read the whole thing, once, but have referred to the first third multiple times.) The only part of his return journey that interested me was the question of theft that occurred in Trebizond--today's Trabzon on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. Polo doesn't mention the theft in his book, only in his will. Curious, yes? I do wonder what exactly was stolen and why? However, it's not tangential to my main point.

What I noticed yesterday was that my journey from Singapore to Chennai through the Straits of Malacca and a journey into Sumatra, then down the East Coast of India and up the West across the Arabian Sea to Muscat is almost an identical match to Marco's return journey. Would that I could head across to Hormuz, up through Persia with one of the Great Khan's solid gold passports to deliver a Mongol Princess to the Persian Khan! Alas, Iran is off limits for budgetary reasons. And what with my exhaustion really bearing down on me and with the possibility of a flat in Istanbul I've decided to fly out on Tuesday. Yeah, yeah, I know. Short visit to Oman and all that. And what about Yemen? Simply put: I don't have it in me to either enjoy Yemen or do it right. But fret not: I'll return in October or November when it is cooler. In the interim I'll hopefully cajole and convince my father to join me. He's been rather diffident about the suggestions I've made so far, but I've a feeling dangling the 'Galapagos of the Arabian Sea,' i.e. the isle of Socotra and the Dragon Blood Trees, out there like the proverbial carrot might well do the trick!

But more to the point: it's been summer for me for over a year now. I'm sick of heat. I'm sick of dust. I'm sick of sand. I need cool weather, besides it's Spring in Istanbul and I need a vacation. What could be better than that?