17 and 18. Scarlet Surf at Makaha and Hang Dead Hawaiian Style by Patrick Morgan

I will quote what my good friend Mt. Benson had to say, "[n]eedless to say, you get more groovy babe-ballin', ass-kickin' surfer action once again with Bill Cartwright, agent for the secret undercover organization: Operation Hang Ten!" Both Excellent surfing action books.

Coup d'Etat

Coup
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Wow! It's been a long time since we had a good old cold war/third world style coup d'etat. The PM was in New York so the army, allied with the King, came in and overthrew him, took control of the television and radio stations and we're off to the races!

16. Globalized Islam by Oliver Roy

As with many books written in English by Frenchmen this is written in exceedingly complicated English to the point that many sentences deserved a second read.

The main thesis of the author is that Moslems living in Western Europe feel deterritorialized and their paradoxical way of Westernizing Islam is by reaching back to an imaginary super pure form of Islam that has never existed.  Consequently these Western Moslems are becoming even more extreme than their counterparts living in countries with a Moslem majority.

Similarly, Moslems living in the Middle East have become disenchanted with the ossification of Islam in the hands of the ruling elite and are reacting by also reaching back to a similar super pure form of Islam.

I am not educated enough on this subject to be able to tell you that his arguments are sound but they do sound reasonable.

Roy also makes another interesting point.  He explains that Western intellectuals often search for an explanation for the current world in Islam itself and suggest that it is an extreme religion which has always put violence on a pedestal.  He argues that this kind of thinking is wrong.  Instead he posits that the ruling elite of the Middle Eastern countries have taken command of Islam and have prevented it from growing with the times as other Western religions have grown.  He says that Islam has become an instrument of the Middle East elite and is not something that controls the elite.

I firmly believe in this part of his argument.

Shameless!

WASHINGTON -- President Bush acknowledged the existence of previously secret CIA prisons around the world and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects -- including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks -- have been transferred from the system to Guantanamo Bay for trials.
Mr. Bush said the "small number" of detainees that have been kept in CIA custody include people responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in addition to the 2001 attacks.
"The most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists themselves," Mr. Bush said in a White House speech with families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks making up part of the audience. "It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held in secret, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts."

Bush and his cronies are taking liberal democracy turning it upside down and inside out all for the advancment of their own marginal and extreme ideologies.  Absolutely reprehensible.

15. The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst

This is the first book that I have read by Furst who, annoyingly, refers to himself as the "pre-eminent historical spy novelist of our time." I don't think so. Notwithstanding his ego, the book is an excellent if short read. It is the story of a group of Italian political resistors living in Paris in 1938 and 1939 as Mussolini strengthened his power in Italy and became ever more closely allied with Nazi Germany. The resistors main business is publishing an underground liberal paper in Italy until the Italian secret service starts killing members of their editorial committee. The resistors are naive in the world of spy craft and almost accidentally get involved in it.

It is a well written book, good summer reading.

Is Rumsfeld such an Idiot?

I preface all of my remarks with a disclaimer that I have never been a fan of Rummy. I find his support for the war in Iraq, going into Iraq without a long term plan, thinking that he is a movie star more than the Secretary of Defense and his general neo-conservativeness quite abhorrent. But I read an op/ed piece that he wrote for the LA Times today and I wholeheartedly agree with this part of his assessment:

"The enemy we face today is different from the enemies we have faced in the past, but its goal is similar: to impose its fanatical ideology of hatred on the rest of the world."

I disagree with how he proposes to deal with "the enemy" but I don't disagree that we face this enemy and we must deal with it. Interestingly, he never actually defines this enemy other than to call it terrorism, maybe he is afraid of offending Arab Americans or our Saudi allies. So, in case anyone is unsure, the enemy he refers to is fundamentalist Islam spread from the Middle East to South East Asia.

14. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon

This book is one of Simenon's psychological thrillers unrelated to his world famous Maigret detective stories. It is an amazing book both in its writing and in its story. Frank is an eighteen year old son of a prostitute coming of age in an unknown country in occupied Europe. He is morally bankrupt - murdering people without forethought or regret, inflicting emotional pain on women when they are desperately in love with him and emotionally torturing anyone who comes in contact with his life.

WARNING SPOILERS BELOW

The first half of the book relates Frank's exploits: the night he kills an army officer just for his pistol, the multiple times he screws the prostitutes in his mother's whore house and leaves them longing for some emotional output from him, the night he arranges for Sissy, his young virgin girlfriend, to be raped by Kromer and the night he kills the woman who brought him up as a child when his mother was absent just to steal a watch collection that she had.

All of this eventually catches up with him and one of the sections of the occupation authorities arrests him, and the second half of the book relates the story of his slow psychological breakdown and decay as he is held and tortured in a school converted to a prison.

This is a thoroughly 'entertaining' and well written book. I highly recommend that you read it.

"We Are Hizbullah"

"We Are Hizbullah"
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Let me point some things out about these placards. First, how big is the woman in the forefront's mouth, amazing. Second, there's a placard that says, "support a caliphate." Which means that one should support a Pan-Islamic/Pan-Arab regime focussed on Sunni Islam to take over the Middle East. This is something that this is really deserving of our support. Third, we have the previously mentioned "We are all Hizbullah" poster shamelessly using injured innocents to promote an agenda that is very far removed from peace. These people make me sick.

13. The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr

The Shia Revival
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Nasr's main argument is that intertwined with the general anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism of the Arabs and Iranians is a deep seated rivalry between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

For background, after the death of the Moslem prophet Mohammad two sects of Islam began to take shape: the Sunnis and the Shi'as. The main difference between the two is that the Sunnis believe that after Mohammad Islam should be governed by caretaker Caliphs who do nothing more than insure that Koran is implemented throughout Islamic life; while the Shi'as believe that after Mohamad's death his sons and relatives took over the administration and execution of Islam and that they continued to interpret Islam as it applied to the world. Most Shi'as believe that after Mohamad there were twelve Imams (prophets or relatives of Mohamad) who presided over their religon and they believe that the twelfth Imam disappeared before he died and will reappear in the future when Mohamad is about to return to earth. Sunnis believe in the Caliphate structure and believe that there were a number of important Caliphs after Mohamads death. The concept of Caliphs has been somewhat subordinated in today's world.

The bitterness between the two sects began immediatly after Mohamad's death but became more fierce in about 700 CE when the Shi'a Imam Hussein was on his way to what is now Saudi Arabia to claim the Caliphate but was ambushed by an army of Sunnis who killed him in Karbala in what is now Iraq.

Since then there has been a bitter divide between Sunnis and Shi'as.

Nasr believes that there is a great divide between Sunnis and Shi'as that explains much of the dynamic of current Middle East affairs. He argues that after the revolution in Iran when Khomeini was trying to export his Islamic republic to Saudi Arabia, the Arabs countered Khomeini's Shi'a ideology by promoting fundamental Sunni ideology instead. So, Saudi Arabia financed the nuclear bomb in Sunni Pakistan, supported the Taliban in formerly Sunni Afghanestan, supported (or simply did not criticize) Sunni led Iraq and tried to isolate Shi'a led Syria. The Saudi Arabian strategy led to somewhat out of control fundamentalist regimes throughout the Middle East and the current 'civil war' in Iraq.

In the mean time, Nasr argues, Iran, which is the largest Shi'a nation in the world, understood that it had lost the battle with the Saudis and focused its energies internally. Nasr claims that today Iran is ascendant, it is culturally the most vibrant country of the Middle East, it is politically the most democratic and it is intellectually the most advanced. Furthermore, Iran is now surrounded by Shi'a dominated Iraq which is being assailed by a Sunni onslaught and Shi'a dominated Afghanestan which is finding its way in the world. Nasr argues that the real battle in the middle east will be between the Sunnis and the Shi'as as they fight for influence over Iraq and Afghanestan and, to a lesser extent, Syria and Lebanon. He almost suggests that the anti-western rhetoric and actions of the Islamic fundamentalists is a by product of the greater Sunni-Shi'a war.

I personally don't believe in this great divide theory for a variety of reasons. First, the author provides little in support of his argument. He conceeds at the beginning of the book that it is a book of "big ideas" written for a mass audience so he will not be providing much support for his ideas which is okay, except that if he really wants me to buy into his arguments then I need the support. Second, there are a number of cases where his theory breaks down in real life. For example, based on his theory, Sunni Hamas should not be working with Shi'a Hezbollah - but they work very closely with each other.

This is an interesting and educational book and provides a different perspective of what is going on and even though I don't agree with all of the author's arguments, I recommend that you read it.

The French Committment

The Financial Times reported the following:

France has said it will command the UN force, but on Thursday announced it would send just 200 engineers immediately to help with the deployment of Lebanese army forces in southern Lebanon.

They have also said that they might provide naval support.

Nice.

Israel, Lebanon and the Idiot Bush

When the latest war between Israel and Lebanon began I said (and I have witnesses) that America should pursue one of two strategies: either they should come down hard on the Israeli's immediatly after the conflict began and make them stop or they should let Israeli move forward unchecked and allow them to destroy Hezballah.

Bush and the idiot Rice did neither. Instead they let the conflict go on for a few weeks, Israel did not emerge as the victor and it did not manage to destroy Hezballah. The result of this policy is that the one thing that was going well in the Middle East, Lebanon, is now a disaster on a similar scale as Iraq.

By virtue of the fact that Israel did not achive its objectives, Hezballah has emerged victorious and is now the effective ruler of southern Lebanon and Lebanon is no longer a real country. This is reinforced by the deal that the Lebanese government has struck with Hezballah "allowing" them to keep their weapons so long as they don't show them off to the world. Hezballah's victory has undermined the legitimacy and power of the elected moderate and largely secular Lebanese government. Finally, the investigation into Rafik Harriri's assasination has all but ended in failure.

Bush's policy results in a loss for Israel, a victory for Hezballah and, most importantly, a victory for Hezballah's backer, Iran.

Seperately, I want to draw your attention to a couple of funny or ironic things that I saw during this conflict.

First, when I was looking over the pictures of the anti-war protests in London, I saw a bunch of pasty yellow toothed English people carrying sings that read, "we are Hezbollah." What does that mean? We are a bunch of people who launch missiles with the sole aim of killing Israeli civilians? We are a bunch of people who use innocent Lebanese villagers as human shields to launch these missiles? We are a bunch of people who receive arms and money from Iran? I am sick and tired of the panzys who don't understand the gravity of what is going on in the Middle East.

Second, after the war ended and after the French had committed to the UN peacekeeping force that will be going into Southern Lebanon, the French leadership come out and state that they will not provide any soldiers until Hezballah has been disarmed. Who is supposed to disarm them - the good for nothing Lebanese military or perhaps some mysterious alien force? This French request is so disingenuous that I cannot find words to describe it.

12. The Chinese Bell Murders by Robert Van Gulik

Bell Murders
Originally uploaded by buzby.

A highly entertaining detective story. Written in the 1920s by a Dutch diplomat living in China but set in an unknown period in ancient China, this, and other stories in the series, follow Judge Dee as he solves crimes in the town of Poo-Yang. Judge Dee is the head of the local tribunal and seems to also serve as the head detective of the local police force. The Judge and his four loyal servants solve the Half Moon Street rape-murder, the case of the dishonest buddhist temple and the long running dispute between the Lin and Liang families. I highly recomend that you read this.

Landis

This morning Landis' "B" sample test results confirmed that there was a lot of testosterone in his system after his amazing ride on Stage 17 of this year's Tour.

While it is possible that one of the four excuses that Landis and his handlers have given over the past week is reasonable, I doubt it.

When this news first broke a lot of experts and reporters questioned why Landis would have taken testosterone because, in an endurance sport like the Tour de France, testosterone doesn't do you a lot of good.

What these people missed, however, is that after breaking on the final climb of Stage 16 and losing minutes to his chief rivals, Landis was desperate to do something.  He was dehydrated, suffering from a sore hip and he didn't have a lot of energy.  He needed the kind of pick me up that a healthy dose of testosterone would give an athelete.

My theory is that, out of desperation, Landis took a bunch of testosterone and it worked better than he expected.  He came out for Stage 17 and he crushed his competitors.  At the beginning of the stage he was over 8 minutes behind the leader, at the end of the stage he was just 30 seconds behind the leader.  In two days, Landis lost the race and won it back.

My other theory is that someone either working on Landis staff (like a cook or something) or one of the technicians at the French drug testing lab spiked his food or his sample with testosterone.

11. Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

This is the second Loen book that I have read and once again I found it to be a light and enjoyable mystery. The story revolves around her ususal protagonist, Commissario Guido Bruneti of the Venice Police, as he finds his way around the mystery and pulls a surprising resolution out of the bag.

There were some annoying elements about the book: the tenderness that this hard boiled detective feels for his wife, the hurt that he feels because his teenage son is behaving as teenagers should and the repeated references to how hard it is to be a lesbian in Italy (two of the characters in the book are lesbians). But they were not annoying enough to overwhelm the quality of the book.

10. Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick

Solar Lottery
Originally uploaded by buzby.

I thought that I was reading this on Mount Benson's recomendation but as it turns out he's never heard of it. As with other PKD books this was an excellent story which begins with the protagonist getting fired from his job. In the 23rd century the world works on pure chance and is run by machines called the Bottles. Most people have P-Cards which are the same as lottery tickets so that when the Bottles twitch and call a person's P-Card then he becomes the leader of the world. The leader is know as the Quizmaster and even he is not immune from the twitches of the Bottles.

The story follows a guy called Bentley as he leaves his job, moves to the capital of the inter-planetary system and gets a job with the Quizmaster. Excellent book, as I said, well worth the read.

9. Glorious Revolution by Edward Vallance

Glorious Revolution
Originally uploaded by buzby.

This one was tough to get through.

Historians and Britains make much of the country's so called "Glorious Revolution" when comparing it to the revolutions of their European counterparts. They say that the revolution was peculiar in its lack of blood shed and in its failure to overthrow the establishment regime - not that it was trying to do so.

James II was a Catholic king who succeeded his brother in the midst of a lot of anti-Catholic hysteria. At first he cooled his heals and didn't do anything to upset the Anglicans but slowly he began to ask parliament to pass religious toleration bills, he appointed Catholics into the army and as his advisors and stacked the committees that picked the candidates to run in each riding with Catholics. These measures gripped the country in fear that the French would invade England or the King would somehow pledge allegiance to the Vatican. So, a bunch of noblemen went to William of Orange, the King of Holland who was married to James' daughter, and asked him to invade Britain, which he successfully did. Thus began the rein of William and Mary.

This was an interesting book I would recommend it but you need to be in the right frame of mind to read it.

Economic Nationalism Part II

There has been yet another case of economic nationalism recently in Europe.  Last week the New York Stock Exchange, which is now a publicly traded company, made an offer for a stock exchange in Europe called Euronext.  The bid was accepted by the board of Euronext who agreed that it was superior to the bid that they had received from Deutsche Bourse (the German stock exchange).  Within days of the board's announcement leaders in France and Italy came out and said that they prefer an all European merger for social reasons.

What a crock.

I would agree that there might be social reaons to prefer one deal over another when, say, some strategic asset of one country is being acquired by a foreign country.  But there cannot be any social reasons to prefer one or the other stock exchange merger.

In fact, the only social reason is that Chirac continues to show the long tradition of French insecurity over its place in the world:  they think they're a super power but really they're not even close and they are constantly trying to show that they are.  And Prodi, the newly elected Italian PM, wants to distance himself from Belusconi's trans-atlantic ties.

In stark contrast, the NASDAQ exchange has purchased 26% of the London Stock Exchange and is on its way to acquiring the whole thing.  There is not even muted protest in Britain over this tie up.

If I were President I would announce to the world that until the continental Eruopeans open their markets to American capital then they cannot expect to have open access to American markets.  Unfortunately, Bush even falls short in this conservative idealogical stronghold.  He can't fight wars, he lies and he can't run the economy.  Why do people vote for him?

The Reprehensibles Part X - Was I Dreaming?

I was listening to CNN this morning as I was shaving and I heard a new story about congressional aides who had accepted travel worth about $30 million from various private lobby groups.  These aides had accepted 200 trips to Paris, 150 trips to Hawaii and 140 trips to Italy, all of which are places that are highly deserving of a congressional aides attention.

I have searched Google, CNN, USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo! and I can't find any mention of the story.  I know I wasn't dreaming.

The tenth edition of my prize goes to all of these aides.

The Reprehensibles Part IX

Joe Thiesman is the winner of this installment of the increasingly prestigous award for lambasting Ricky Williams all because he smoked pot. Honestly, how many skeletons do you think that Joe Thiesman has hiding in his closet?

"I don't ever want to be mentioned in the same breath as Ricky Williams as a football player. He's a disgrace to the game. The man doesn't deserve to play football. He should go on with his life and treat his drug addictions or go do whatever he wants to do. He's been suspended from the National Football League on multiple occasions. Doesn't anybody have any class anywhere? For gosh sakes, let the kid go do what he wants to do. He doesn't want to play football," Theismann, who is part of ESPN's Monday Night Football announcing crew, said.

I also like the usage of the phrase, "For gosh sakes."

Sports Post Trifecta

I am pleased to relay to you that Ricky Williams, of Miami Dolphins fame, has signed with the Canadian Footbal League's Toronto Argonauts.  In Canada not only do we have an unlegislated but practical decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana we also take in any player who has been suspended for marijuana use as our own!