be the change you want to see in the world

Ezra Levant was in top form in The Calgary Sun recently. Speaking of the so-called left’s approach to terrorism - which encourages a sophisticated understanding of the mileus that breed mass murderers like bin Laden and McVeigh in addition to a strong response to acts of terrorism - Levant says we are all ethno-centric, and that we don’t have an understanding of “Evil.”

Such a response does not understand the terrorists. To understand them is simple, if terrifying: Read their writing and listen to their speeches.

They want the world to be ruled by sharia law, where the only constitution is the Qu’ran. They want a theocracy, like Afghanistan was and Iran is, where infidels are killed, or kept in a state of submission, called dhimmitude.

Read Osama bin Laden’s speeches, not those of his lawyers and psychologists in the media. Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, bin Laden is plain about his intentions.

There was no half way, no compromise, no win-win possible with Hitler. The Jews didn’t do any one thing in particular to him — he hated their very existence.

The West didn’t do any one thing to bin Laden that caused his hate — other than to live freely and outside his authority.

Sixty-five years ago, Britain understood Hitler was evil, and responded with Spitfires, not psychologists.

Here’s hoping Britain today has the same clarity of thought.

Levant, ever the simplifier in his role as Bush’s bellicose Mad Canadian Cow in the conceptual china shop, just can’t allow more than one possibility to exist in the same space (his cranium) at the same time, so it has to be boiled (in oil, according to the Inquisitional Christian idea of Evil he alludes to) down to one thing: they are capital E Evil. Yes, the acts of the terrorist bombers are acts of evil, but I won’t give them the benefit of such great metaphysical status as the capital E.

People around the globe are continually committing evil acts. They do so out of mis-placed belief that what they are doing is somehow good, not evil. They think it is good to bomb people to pieces without ever seeing their faces (London, Iraq). They think it is good to torture people and kill them in service of some greater goal (Iraq, Iraq). They think it is good to exterminate an enemy as quickly and as ruthlessly as possible (Iraq, Darfur). They think it is good to commit mass murder to make a political or religious point (JonesTown, New York, Panama City, Oklahoma City, Tokyo Subway, Srebrenica, Tiananmen Square, etc. etc.). And they achive this thought that their actions are good through one method and one method alone: the monovisual blunderings of men like Levant who can’t see a syllogism because it has more than one part. It is this very simplicity itself. This sheer dichotomization of the world that allows for the emergence of a certitude that reaches a peak of arrogance where triggers get pulled, timers get set, and people with far less certainty - and therefore far more modesty - die. They always die at the hands of the certain… or their agents.

So, what is the problem with just assuming your enemy is Evil and going from there? Well, you can be certain that your certitude is viewed with exact same certitude on the other side.

There is a difference between the black and white wor(l)d of Levant and Bush and the world of those of us who try to make sense of seemingly senseless acts. The difference is we see an end to the mirror-like dichotomy that has fueled so much violence through the twentieth century, and it comes through the engagement of the large majority non-violent populations of all countries in a global programme of the general rasing up of humanity. This stands in stark contrast to the go-it-alone pseudo-coalition of oil-robbers currently waving the banner of democracy and freedom while they build bases and cling to their sputtering, crude-feuled dreams.

No Ezra, the vast, vast majority of people are NOT Evil or even evil. Muslims stand terrified of these fringe lunatics who they DO NOT consider Muslims yet cower before because they have guns and bombs and not afraid to use them. They cower and wait for the day when they can stand up to them. There is a mistaken belief that bin Laden (Levant’s Goldstein Face of ALL Muslims who hate us) has popular support among all Muslims simply because many Mulsims hate America. This is simply not the case. There are some Mulsims who support the extreme ideology of bin Laden. Most hate America for other reasons, but that throws a wrench into the whole simplicity thing.

Many thoughts on this. Little time.

My wife Lisa could have been right in the mix had she stayed to complete her PHD in London as planned. Her department offices at UCL were one block away from one of the sites. Her residence was close as well. She walked to school when she was there. The block on Woburn Place, where the bus was blown up, was on her route. When we were discussing her attending school there we spoke of the possibility of attacks. I distinctly remember saying “you can’t let terrorists win. You have to follow your dreams. The odds are very small.”

As a result I am angry at a large constellation of people/groups. I am angry with the perpetrators of this. The philosophy behind this type of act says that “only shocks to the system will work to change things. No one is innocent since we are all guilty of being willfully blind to the injustices we perperate by our very participation in a system of oppression”. No one is justified in being this certain about anything. There is no greater crime than mass murder in the service of belief or ideology. We’ve seen it all over the globe in recent decades. Egypt. Algeria. Vietnam. Munich Olympics. Northern Ireland. Yugoslavia. Rwanda. Darfur. New York. Madrid. Iraq. Now London. Sadly, not an exhaustive list.

Which leads me to the next group. I am mortified at the response of our so-called leaders to this growing threat. The dissimulation of the Bush regime will do nothing but breed this kind of terrorism. The utter and complete lack of honesty about why unknown tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by occupation forces and insugents alike will scar the face of humanity for generations. In light of this, is it any wonder why we now are quick to achieve outrage toward the perpetrators and empathy for the victims of the London bombings, but just as easily accelerate to full rage at the machine that stokes the fire?

Finally, watching the looped images on CNN, FOX, MSNBC I fall to complete dismay at the possibility of moving from an “information society” to a “knowledge society.” The concentration of mass media and repackaging of news as entertainment and spectacle is one of the great failings of our generation of leadership. The unhooking of news broadcast licensing in the US in particular from any sort of criteria of journalism seems a desperately bad mistake.

A sad day all around.

Unfortunately for the USian effort in Iraq, the allegations of limited abuse of Iraqi prisoners will soon grow to a larger allegation. That allegation will be brought by counsel for soldiers pictured in the infamous photos. This will let the cat out of the drowning bag, and the world will see the military culture of interrogation present in all USian attempts to win wars. Quite simple. Quite out of sight…until now. The picture is the thing. The medium is the message.

George Bush’s squandering of global sympathy for 9/11 came home to roost in the Madrid bombings. The horrid example of inhumanity that occurred on the trains there may have been prevented if America’s military and the world’s attention hadn’t been hijacked by the Bush junta in their war with Iraq. As the world protested and Iraqi civilians and US GIs died in the name of oil and vendetta, al Qaeda regrouped and pulled off another stunning example of mass murder in the name of religious zealotry and extremism. Thanks George. Your leadership is showing results.

Here is an enlightening account of the rise of the Office for Special Plans within the Pentagon. The OSP is a pet project of Cheney and Rumsfeld, and it ran the propaganda machine that pushed the WMD disinformation on the world. This is a detailed account of the conscious efforts made to mislead the world in support of a hidden agenda of hegemony. A very good article in interview format.