More on the theory of historical relativity

Just as it was difficult for a lot of people to accept the discovery that spacetime is curved, it is difficult for some people to accept the scientific report of my previous post. To assist in this regard, I will take questions.

Q: What about the legions of facts that substantiate al Qaeda’s culpability in the September 11 attacks? Haven’t numerous intelligence agencies inside and outside of the United States documented reams of evidence that all establish the conclusion that al Qaeda planned and organized the attacks beyond any reasonable doubt? Hasn’t Osama bin Laden himself on repeat occasion claimed responsibility for the attacks of that day? Are you telling me that these facts, too, can turn on or off depending on one’s position in spacetime?

A: Yes. That is the power–dare I say the majesty–of the theory. It traverses chains of factuality backwards into history as far as it needs to.

Q: According to that poll, 43% of Egyptians report that Israel was behind the September 11 attacks. Why on earth would Israel mastermind a plan to destroy American cities and murder thousands of Americans?  Doesn’t the United States supply Israel with billions of dollars in foreign aid, military technology, warm good will, etc?

A: The correct question is not “why on earth” but “where on earth”. 43% is very roughly half of Egypt. So in half of Egypt, let’s say north of Cairo, it may be a fact that the United States has been sending Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid, but south of Cairo, the United States has actually been sending them billions of forced subscriptions to magazines published by American Media, Inc.

Q: Did the Holocaust really happen?

A: Are you standing in or out of Tehran?

Q: Have we been able to map out the complete factuality patterns of any historical statements?

A: We have been able to determine that the statement “George W. Bush won the 2000 United States Presidential election” is a historical fact across most of the mainland, but is less likely to be a fact when you are in close proximity to either the east or west coast. The factuality pattern of this historical statement apparently has something to do with oceanic coastlines, although we are not sure why.

Q: I think you’re making all this up!

A: The factuality pattern of the statement “Den of Hydralisks made all this up” is as yet unknown.

Q: What practical applications of this science can we look forward to once we fully comprehend the laws governing it?

A: I’m planning on going some place where it is fact that I once ruled the entire world, personally. I’m curious to see how much damage I did.

Ahmadinejad speech excerpts

Catch all the good parts at IMAO.

“So glad to be here in Satan country with you today. Mrs. Ah, Ali K, and Nasrallah give their regards.”

So those Iranians think they can…

Behold. Islamist kids in Iran are making agitprop video games.

The “Rescue the Nuke Scientist” video game, designed by the Union of Students Islamic Association, was described by its creators as a response to a U.S.-based company’s “Assault on Iran” game, which depicts an American attack on an Iranian nuclear facility.

“This is our defense against the enemy’s cultural onslaught,” Mohammad Taqi Fakhrian, a leader of the student group, told reporters Monday.

To complete the game successfully, players have to enter Israel to rescue the nuclear scientists, kill U.S. and Israeli troops and seize their laptops containing secret information.

This is good news. Very good news indeed. A society hooked on video games is a society headed for collapse, as the Japanese, who infiltrated the West decades ago with this corrupting opium, understood all too well. Look at us now. Our kids are fat and undisciplined and they think emo is cool.

On the other hand, we are very very good at these video games. At least I know I am. (you should see how high I can get Mario to jump) It looks like Iranian kids won’t even have that to say for themselves:

“We tried to promote the idea of defense, sacrifice and martyrdom in this game,” Fakhrian said.

Martyrdom? As in don’t sweat it if you fail the mission? As in please try to concentrate less on objectives, tactics, winning, and other such Godless things, but instead concentrate on that lavish cloud waiting for you in Paradise with the 70 wives and 70 virgins sitting thereon? (As if virgins they truly will be. As if Mohammed, the last messenger and prophet, won’t already have had them all. Ha!)

Patton said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” You know what this means? It means Balloq’s staff is too long. It means

THEY’RE DIGGING IN THE WRONG PLACE.

Carry on, my Iranian friends, carry on. I will gladly welcome the contest between any US soldier and any Iranian soldier, joysticks in hand, on the field of digital battle.

H/T to Raw Feed

Pakistan or Iran?

Which do you suppose the pro-civilization side of the War on Terror should be more concerned about? On TCS Daily, Gregory Scoblete makes a compelling case that it should be Pakistan. Iran and North Korea have both benefited from exchange of WMD technology with Pakistan, Sunni extremism plays strong among the population, ties between al Qaeda are deep, and the remnants of AQ’s leadership are hiding within the country’s untamed borders. Realpolitik is of course the reason Pakistan is not ostensibly at the top of our list of problems to address; as long as Musharraf continues to be helpful, or to give the appearance of being helpful, it’s likely to stay that way, isn’t it?

Why reform doesn’t happen

Here’s a story about a Chinese couple filing a lawsuit in a US District Court against Yahoo for the company having provided information that Chinese authorities used to sentence the man to prison (for his writings online). I don’t see what can come from this other than a symbolic gesture. If imprisoning and torturing people for expression of ideas is the law in China, and if United States trade law honors Chinese law as I believe it does (somebody with more legal expertise than myself correct me if I am wrong here), then what case do they have?

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in his famous book The Case For Democracy argued that to encourage reform in oppressive states the West should make relations with those states dependent on the degree to which they honor basic human rights. In so doing we utilize one great advantage a free society enjoys over an oppressive one–it is invariably more prosperous. The reasoning is that the oppressive society needs the technology and assistance of the free society more than the free society needs anything the oppressive society has to offer.

Obviously the West lacks any will whatsoever to carry out Sharansky’s idea, as one can plainly see from looking at relations with China, or Saudi Arabia, or hell, Iran. Read this Opinion Journal piece on EU dealings with Iran and ask yourself what incentive the Ayatollahs have to ever change their ways.

Ahmadinejad in Pajamas!

You gotta say this much for those Ayatollahs. They’ve picked up on the propaganda potential of internet technology faster than your average theocratic thugs. Iranian president Ahmadinejad has his personal blog! Well now, that’s more than you can say for Mister Bush, isn’t it? It proves beyond dispute that one of the two leaders at least is in touch with his people. This definitely makes up for all the Iranian bloggers that government has been putting in jail (and probably torturing) for the views they express.

A comment section is provided on Ahmadinejad’s blog so that you, yes you, can welcome the great man to the blogosphere, tell him how much you admire his wisdom and courage and how eager you personally are to see the Zionist state obliterated at his trusted discretion. Kind of like how I imagine participating in a handshake event with Joseph Goebbels would have been like.

Here’s the message I submitted:

In terms of civil, political and religious rights, you head one of the least free countries in the entire world. Allah be praised when ruthless, twisted, toxically deranged Jew-hating excrement like Khamenei and yourself are out of power.

My first draft was less nice, but for the purpose of having it pass review and be displayed among the other comments I guess it doesn’t matter.

(Hat tip to Raw Feed)

Where Have We Seen This Before?

So the British hostages have been voluntarily released by Iran, and the West once again ends up looking like fluffernutters. Who else predicted this result?

Update: Ron Coleman makes the analysis.

Tehran Ain’t Afraid To Play Its Cards

The new Iranian hostage crisis that Britain now faces must be understood in the context of the cold war that Iran and the USA are currently engaged in as an attempt to isolate the Great Satan from its closest ally.

With Moqtada al-Sadr in hiding and with open season having been declared on Iranian agents in Iraq, the clerics have made a move to even the field by targeting the British, already in retreat from southern Iraq, apparently in the hopes of achieving the kind of embarrassing results for the West that the world witnessed three decades ago when American hostages were seized at the embassy in Tehran. It’s a strong move, and so far, as Wretchard at Belmont Club notes in his customary sharp analysis, the Ayatollahs have guessed correctly how the British would respond.

Inevitably, when I contemplate events like these, my thoughts return to the one great strategic advantage our enemies enjoy — they can almost always count on the West to prefer soft options to the point of inanity.

Some observers have contrasted the response of Britain to that of Israel in July 2006 when they launched the campaign in Lebanon, responding in part to the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. The kidnappings, of course, were not their only reason for entering the conflict; Hezbollah’s capacity to launch rocket attacks deep into Israel was a threat that could not be tolerated. But then, Iran can in time be expected to possess weapons of a far more destructive nature than anything it was able to give its client NGO last summer.

Israel is a nation that has every reason to be tired of war. Yet they can and will drop the boot down when they see it as their best possible move. I wonder, is the rest of the West capable of executing its best possible move when that move may mean escalating a conflict? Or have we lost the ability to even recognize when this may be the case?

Iranian Kurds Speak

Excerpt from Michael J Totten’s interview with Iranian Kurds during his most recent trip to Iraq:

MJT: Which regime was more oppressive to you?

Mohtadi: The Iranians.

MJT: Worse than Saddam?

Mohtadi: Yes, of course. To Iranian Kurds, yes.

MJT: Tell us something about this. Very few Americans, including me, know very much about what the Iranian government has done to the Kurds in Iran.

Mohtadi: That’s exactly our problem. So many people in the West and in the world know that Kurds had problems in Iraq, they have problems in Turkey. But very few people know that Kurds are under oppression in Iran, as well.

Something to think about as we contemplate policy towards Iran.

Our relationship with the Kurds in Iraq is and has every reason to continue being a working one. For all our blunders and betrayals, we came through for them in the end. Point in fact is that the prosperity the Kurds now enjoy in Iraq demonstrates what can be achieved when the West sticks to its guns; it was enforcement of the no-fly zones over the years between the wars which enabled them to build the successful modern state (a sovereign state all but in name) that they have today while the Shia inhabitants of Saddam’s playhouse were in bloody shackles.

What, I wonder, will be our policy regarding the Kurds in Iran? Can they look forward to a day of liberation with (if need be) borrowed muscle from the free world or is the game of liberation a game that we’ve all grown tired of? This is an example of the kind of question I would like to see put to presidential candidates at home when election time rolls around.

Thanks for playing, Kim-jong!

Hey fellow Americans, we now lead North Korea in worldwide notoriety according to a recent BBC popularity poll (woohoo, sucka!), but we’re gonna haveta push a bit harder if we want to beat Iran. Any ideas what we can do?