Bin Laden's Letter to America

There is controversy over this becoming popular with many of the young, who do not remember 9/11 and have been raised to believe in such narratives. As such, it is being pulled down in many places. 

I reject censorship and embrace freedom of speech and expression from first principles, so even though Osama bin Laden was an enemy of mine and I participated in the wars of revenge against him and his for 9/11, I will reprint the entire letter below the fold. Everyone who wishes to read it and understand his perspective should do so. It is far from the worst thing that enemies should understand each other: not only does it sometimes create the possibility of peace, it is also a necessary condition for successful war. As Sun Tzu said, to be successful in a thousand battles one must know one's self, and also one's enemy.

Separately I would note that his argument in section (3) -- as to why it is justified to attack American civilians and not just American military forces -- is a part that these young people should consider. With the exception of (3)(f), those arguments all apply to the people of Gaza, who have accepted Hamas as their leaders, allegedly elected them and certainly not attempted to overthrow them, and supported them with their tax revenue. If you are one who thinks that maybe 'Osama had a point,' well, that same argument applies to the civilians now caught in the war in Israel. If you think we need a ceasefire to protect those civilians, then you are in fact rejecting Osama's model of 'resistance,' or Jihad, or whatever you'd like to call it. He calls it both.

What follows past the break is his letter. 

Confidence in Government

So today I saw this chart, which claims that Americans' confidence in government is 'far below the global average.'

You can see at the bottom that the source is the Gallup World Poll. Obviously there are a lot more dots below the line than above it, which led me to wonder how the poll was weighted. I thought perhaps it was population, as maybe big countries in terms of population counted more but only represented one dot. China doubtless expresses massive confidence in government, because otherwise you lose social credit and can't get loans or a job, so that would undermine the idea that the poll is fair.

Here are the top countries expressing high confidence in government:

1) Tanzania (!)

2) Uzbekistan (!!!)

3) Singapore

4) Bangladesh (!)

5) Mail (!)

The one they chose to label was "Finland," but the top five are -- with the exception of Singapore -- dysfunctional hellholes. In the next ten you get real governments like Switzerland and Luxembourg, but also Kazakhstan and Mozambique (most famous cultural contribution: the 'Mozambique drill,' a triple-tap shooting pattern that involves putting one in the head and two in the chest "to be sure"). 

So maybe the fact that Americans express distrust in their government should ironically be confidence-boosting: at least we're still free to say that the government stinks on ice. It does, and more so every day. At least we're still free to talk about it. 

Tolkien and the Italian Right

Anybody who has watched a few spaghetti westerns knows that Italy's take on American stories is going to be wildly different from the American one -- recognizable, but still very different. Japanese takes on American westerns (often in the guise of samurai films) are also this way. 

Now, it turns out that the Italians also have their own take on J.R.R. Tolkien. (There's a paywall, so I'll quote enough to give you the idea.)

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni quoted an unlikely source: Faramir, son of Denethor, who battled the orc hordes at Osgiliath.

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharp edge, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for its glory,” Meloni, referencing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, told an April conference in London. “I only love that which I defend.”

Italy’s first female prime minister — and its most far right since World War II — has channeled Daenerys Targaryen from “Game of Thrones,” posing atop a smoke-spewing dragon at a 2018 comic convention in Rome. During last year’s election campaign, she briefly posted an image of herself next to an Iron Throne alongside the caption: “A mass invasion of foreigners? Not today.” Her far-right brethren from the Brothers of Italy party retreat each year to Atreyu, a summerfest named after the dragon-riding warrior in “The NeverEnding Story.”

Yet for Meloni and a horde of fantasy-loving politicians in Italy’s far right, nothing is more precious than the works of Tolkien, in whose writing they see themselves as a ragtag fellowship battling the Lidless Eye of the European left. Italy’s post-fascist far-right hosted “Hobbit Camps” for young conservatives as far back as the 1970s. In her autobiography, Meloni concedes to a lifelong adoration of Tolkien’s works, including dressing as the hobbit Samwise Gamgee with other politically aspirant youth.

Now, Meloni’s government has transformed her greatest literary passion into a massive new Tolkien exhibition at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. 

"Post-fascist," eh? So, progress, then?

I have to admit that I never considered identifying myself with Samwise Gamgee, but rather with Gandalf or -- obviously -- Beorn and his son Grimbeorn. I wouldn't think that someone whose takeaway from the story was that Sam was the real hero would be much of a threat to anyone -- rather, perhaps, that they were unusually clear-eyed observers of the book. 

The opposition is not amused.

“The problem is not Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, but the fact that this is being put through a political lens and used as a tool for revenge by right-wing culture,” said Matteo Orfini, a national lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party.

He added, “I mean, I loved the book too … when I was 15.”

That's the sort of claim to being too sophisticated for Tolkien that one often sees from people who would like to think of themselves as intellectuals, forgetting that he was himself a scholar of great depth, who wrote large parts of the Oxford English Dictionary as well as the best scholarly article ever penned on the Beowulf. 

It's somewhat akin to the take mocked in this parody video, in which a contemporary fantasy writer claims to be 'Rock 'N Roll" compared to Tolkien. The riposte the authors wrote for Tolkien is outstanding.

The Shepherd of the Hall

Proudly modeling his new collar.

A Reshuffling of Alliances

It's noteworthy that the present war in Israel is producing so much turmoil within nations that are not properly involved in the war at all. For example, in Russia:

Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a high-level meeting of security officials immediately following the recent anti-Israeli riots in Dagestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus....  Perhaps more notable is what appears to be a major purge of security officials in Dagestan itself and the beginning of major preventative measures among the youth in Russia to prevent any recurrence of such actions....

Moscow is clearly trying to present itself as being on the right side of condemning anti-Semitism.... In addition, these moves clearly reflect unease in the Kremlin. There is fear that the situation in the North Caucasus and other non-Russian regions is rapidly coming to a boil.... The anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli attacks in the North Caucasus could well be followed by attacks on ethnic Russians and Russia itself, especially as the war in Ukraine grinds on, a war in which North Caucasians and non-Russians have suffered large and disproportionate losses[.]

 Also in France.

On Sunday afternoon thousands of people heeded a call from the Speakers of the two houses of parliament to show their support for French "Republican" values and their rejection of antisemitism - this in the face of a steep rise in antisemitic actions since 7 October.... For decades French politics erected a bulwark against the far right, whose views - not least on Jews - were deemed "anti-Republican". The old National Front under Marine's father Jean-Marie Le Pen was seen as beyond the pale, and it was shunned.

The far left meanwhile - the Communists, the Trotskyists and the new formations like Mr Mélenchon's LFI - were certainly attacked for their views, but they were never excluded. They were part of the broad political family, in a way that the Le Pen franchise clearly wasn't.

A few years ago, for a far-left party not to have been part of a march against antisemitism would have been unthinkable. For a far-right party to have been there instead would have been unconscionable.

Also in the UK.

To appreciate the depths of the ideological cesspit that Britain’s cops have climbed into, consider this. This week, police in Northumbria interrogated a woman, a lesbian, under caution, for tweeting that ‘trans women are men’. ‘What did you mean by this?’, the Orwellian creeps asked the lady whose only speechcrime was to state biological facts every six-year-old knows. Meanwhile, in London, the Metropolitan Police ruled that ‘no offence’ was committed by an imam at the Greenwich Islamic Centre who, 13 days after Hamas’s 7 October pogrom, preached about ‘the usurper Jews’. ‘Curse the infidels’, he said. ‘Destroy their homes.’

So in 21st-century Britain the cops will come knocking if you say people with penises are men but they’ll leave you alone if you demean Jews. They’ll drag you to a station and grill you on your separation of the letters LGB from TQ – as those tyrants in Northumbria did – but shrug if you issue curses against Jewish people. The ideological capture of our police is complete. 

Also in America (although the US has deployed thousands of troops and thus may not be considered "uninvolved").

Sympathy for Israel tends to be far higher among conservative and older voters, who remember the Holocaust, at least from their parents’ telling, and usually embrace the Judeo-Christian tradition. Contrast their attitudes with those of younger people, who are notably ignorant about history. Little wonder perhaps that voters under 34 are far more likely to support Palestinians and even Hamas over Israel than older voters.

Remarkably, it’s under a Democratic president, not some imagined white nationalist right-winger, that Jewish people in America feel threatened in ways not seen since the 1930s. Jews are finding colleges and public space in places like New York uniquely hostile. In schools, ‘anti-white’ identity politics has now been extended to justify the murder of Jews.

I note the inversion between the last sentence and the Russian concern: "The anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli attacks in the North Caucasus could well be followed by attacks on ethnic Russians and Russia itself." In the famous poem, 'first they came for the Jews,'* and Russia is worried that Russians and Russia might be somewhere down the line. Here they came for "white" Americans and America first, and the Jews are down the line. 

Wild to see Le Pen's crew wising up to that and getting themselves ahead of the problem, at least if you know the history of antisemitism in France. 

UPDATE: Related.

"We need to start making people who support Israel actually afraid to go out in public," Chambers said in a Friday Instagram post. "We need to make all of white America afraid that everything they have stolen is going to be burned to the ground. That's what makes them listen."

* In the poem socialists and trade unions were before the Jews, which is perhaps more similar to the present case here: first it was the Confederate statues. I recall a certain orange-haired President warning that they'd come after Washington and Jefferson if you let that domino fall, and everyone laughed; but they did come after Washington and Jefferson, and later the whole thing. 

Fire College

The Hazardous Materials course I attended this last four days was part of a larger 'Fire College' being held. This was a pretty impressive event, what I saw of it in breaks between class sections. Lots of different departments from all over came out to practice everything from high-rise firefighting to flammable bulk liquid firefighting, to rescue things like rope rescue rappelling or dealing with bombs and booby traps. 

Saturday Night Western Swing

Seems right to start with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys

Leaving Tulsa, Some Asleep at the Wheel ...

Happy 248th Birthday Marine Corps

 A day for remembrance and celebration. 

 

Smoke on the Mountains

I took this shot exactly where I took the earlier sets showing autumn color. 

In the earlier set, you can see a morning shot with the usual "Smoky" mists that normally attend these mountains. The whole world is full of this smoke, for miles and miles in every direction, as wildfires burn all around us. Some of them are reported contained.

It's not a great weekend to send people out of the fire district, but several of us have long been scheduled for a big training thing this weekend. I'll be leaving at 0430 to attend that, and gone until Sunday night.

World on Fire

There are wildfires all over. There’s been so little rain that there’s a state burn ban, a county burn ban, and people are still out burning. Some idiot burning trash set off a huge fire that’s now burned a building in spite of many hours of firefighting efforts (in which I participated in an entirely minor and inconsequential way). The Smoky Mountains really are right now. 

This is the sort of thing that troubles my hopes for human freedom. We should not need a ban; it should be totally obvious that burning anything is irresponsible and stupid. All the same, people are out here starting fires. I’m not much for telling people what to do or how to live, but this kind of thing makes me wonder. 

Cooking Club Short Ribs

I made the beef short ribs according to Cowboy Kent Rollins recipe, which Grim recommended some posts ago. I had to use a slow cooker instead of a Dutch oven, and I went with an Argentinian Malbec instead of Merlot. Turned out well. It went for 5 hours on high, but could have used another hour, I think. It did in fact fall off the bone and tasted great, but at the thickest part was just a tad dry. Rollins suggests mashed potatoes as a side, and I second that. The thick broth makes a good gravy for it.

Saturday Night Electro-Swing

Apparently, 20-somethings are listening to a lot of this hybrid swing these days. Youngsters these days. (You'll have to imagine the eye roll there.)

The next would have been good for Halloween.

It's kinda catchy, though ...

Long Time Gone

Comments Policy

Since we have been getting so many anonymous comments lately, I thought I should repost the comments policy. It's very old: in 2015 it was nine, so it must now be a teenager. Anonymous comments are allowed, but must be signed with some kind of pseudonym that you'll stick by so that we can keep everybody straight. It's hard to carry on a conversation with three different "Anonymous" at once, not being sure which one said what or if they're all the same guy. 

Anyway, here it is.

Please be welcome, so long as you will adhere to this form.

I adopted [this policy] from the sadly-defunct Texas Mercury, a fringe publication but one whose bold assertion of well considered and unusual ideas I always enjoyed:

As we see it, modern society has all the important ideas of life exactly backwards: we are completely against the belief in sensitivity and tolerance in politics and raffish disregard in private life. The Texas Mercury is founded on the opposite principles- our idea is of tolerance and polite sensitivity in private life and ruthless truth in politics. Be nice to your neighbor. Be hell to his ideas.

Comments failing to uphold those principles run the risk of being deleted without warning. In the year and some months since I adopted that as the policy here, I've added one additional point: hit-and-run comments, as well as anonymous comments, will generally be deleted. If you're a regular here, and willing to stand up and fight for what you believe, you can say pretty much anything that isn't a personal attack on a fellow reader. If you're just wandering through, or unwilling to leave your name (even a false name you'll stand by will do, e.g., "Grim"), pass on. This is a hall, and regular readers are honored guests not to be troubled by cowards.

Fair enough? Well, fair or unfair, those are the rules.

The only thing that's been added since is that off-topic comments may be marked as SPAM, which will cause them to disappear from user's experience. I don't delete them, but I do sometimes so mark them because we've had some people over the years who proved it necessary. 

Try not to do anything that will make me add to this list. I liked it better when it was simpler.  

We’re at War

If you were wondering if things are moving behind the scenes this should tear it for you. 

United States Marine Corps Major Gen. Chris A. McPhillips reportedly announced Tuesday that the 248th Marine Corps Ball has been canceled by U.S. Central Command as a result of “unforeseen operational commitments.”

There are other matters you don’t know about if it’s gotten that far. Like it or not, saddle up.  

A Good Sharp Knife

The Orthosphere:

Rod Dreher has written another thumb-sucker about the evil that lurks in the hearts of all men, which is true enough but not particularly useful when another man, his lurking evil leaping into view, chases you down an alleyway with an axe in his hand.  Dreher naturally quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s lines about the “bridgehead of good” that remains within hearts “overwhelmed by evil,” and the “small corner of evil” that remains in “even in the best of all hearts.”   Which is, as I said, all true enough; but hardly helpful to a man encircled by a menacing mob.

What exactly does Dreher expect me to do with the reflection that the man who proposes to slay me is on other occasions kind to animals, a devoted son, a skilled musician, a fellow with whom I might gladly enjoy a beer?

Well, go have a beer with him, if you can. If you can't, here's some practical advice.

Even a pretty devoted man may reconsider in favor of the beer if he is aware of the keen knife on your belt. That's been my experience, anyway.

The Scourge of the Hour

...decade, century-so-far, etc...

President Biden ran for office to restore the soul of the nation. He is unequivocal: there is no place for hate in America against anyone. Period.

Today, he and Vice President Harris are announcing that their Administration will develop the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia in the United States. 

How is it possible that the U.S. is only now developing its first-ever strategy to its most favorite problem besides racism and climate change? I would have thought we'd be on the fifth or tenth edition by now.

I'll take the path of magnanimity on the subject of 'President Biden ran for office to restore the soul of the nation,' an entity which has no soul... I mean the nation, of course. Nations are theoretical entities, not ensouled beings, thank God. When people start thinking of nations as beings with things like souls and destinies, they do terrible things indeed. 

The Feast of All Saints

For further reflection, the Pope’s remarks on holiness. 

On the Occasion of Halloween

I want to speak on this occasion to a comment left by our friend Lars Walker in the Níðstöng Pole post below. Halloween seems like the right time to discuss it.

Lars Walker said...

Speaking purely as a saga reader, without any more credentials than a lifetime of interest in the subject, I have a theory that putting a head on an inanimate object (Viking ships would be an example) transformed them magically into magical creatures, which would be empowered by the magic of the runes. Thus the nidstang becomes a living witch-being, constantly cursing the object of the curse.

I grieve over the slide of the Icelanders, and other Europeans, into pre-Christian magic. They will suffer for this, not only in eternity, but in this life. I take no pleasure in saying it.

To the first point, I definitely think there is something to that. I wrote an essay years ago called The Smell of Death that also spoke to the power of the severed head, both to create the impression of a being and to destroy it: 

Today, among Americans, only hunters have encountered this directly. It comes in the time when you are cleaning a kill. You cut the head from the body, and hold it in your hand. Though you slew the beast yourself, though your own knife did the cutting, seeing the head disjoined from the body is the most disquieting experience it is easy to know.

Indeed, the hunter finds, it is as if the whole power of the animal were in the head. The body, with the head set aside, no longer really resembles an animal at all. It is plainly dinner, and a hide to use as a blanket in winter.

We do not react to the severed leg as we do a severed head: a drumstick is a delight to the eye; the haunch of a deer or a pig both looks and smells fine as it roasts on the fire. Or think of a fish, if you have ever had one served as they serve it in China: with the head still attached. It is a very different experience to eat such a one, than to eat a fillet.

This is why some hunters take the heads of their beasts, and place them as trophies upon the wall. It is why the ancient Gael took the head of his famous and noble foe, and tied it by its own braids to his chariot as a warning to others. It is why the more ancient Celt built temples to the severed head, with alcoves and emplacements specially constructed for displaying honored skulls.

It is why we have legends of Mimir, and Celtic tales of other severed heads that spoke wisdom to the wise. They conversed with us from the realm of death; they kept the power of great men.

The second of his points, though, is the one I wanted to discuss on Halloween, that day of Celtic rather than Icelandic carry-over of magic and surviving echoes of pre-Christian traditions (well, and Yule; but we'll get there in due time). 

For one thing, Icelandic magic has flourished throughout the Christian period: consider the Galdrabók. Scholars estimate it to be from around 1600, which is to say six centuries after Iceland was Christianized (by elective choice, rather than conquest or imposition from a ruling king). It retains the names of some pre-Christian beings, but also uses names that are explicitly from the Christian tradition. I wouldn't say that the thing that is wrong with it is that it isn't Christian enough; indeed, the beseeching of the aid of Satan in working one's will on the world is far more troubling than any reference to an elder god. 

Tonight I will perform Halloween celebrations in that most-American, and least-religious, way: I will be at the VFD distributing candy to children dressed up in costumes. There is exactly nothing of the religious aspect left there: we are neither burning fires to welcome the darkest time of the year, nor attending midnight Mass to celebrate the Feast of All Souls. Yet I don't think there's anything wrong with this at all; we are giving some joy to children in a way that lets their parents know that the gifts they are receiving will be safe and trustworthy. 

Theologically and metaphysically, I think of Matthew 18:18. The power to bind and loose is a kind of magic, too: a divine grant of it, an assent to support a working of the will that will hold in this world and the next. There is some debate about who precisely was granted this power. I think the Orthodox position is that it belongs to the Church by apostolic succession (leaving aside the practical dispute among the churches about which one is entitled to wield it). Yet I have heard even a Roman Catholic priest -- a Franciscan -- suggest that the power there belongs to any Christians acting in concert; the next verse seems to say that explicitly, although in such matters interpretation even of the apparently explicit is always contentious. 

Such a wide interpretation is defensible: perhaps, being commanded to love one another as ourselves and even our enemies as ourselves, we might all wish for a broad power to loose. Yet then there is also the question of what to bind, which would be similarly broadly granted on that interpretation. The Church's stronger position makes more practical sense: if there is an authority that alone has the power, then you won't get the problem of one group of nuns deciding to bind something and another one deciding to loose it. 

I think there are more pragmatic than theological problems with a broad notion of forgiveness. It is plausible to me that God would want Hell to be empty, and would not wish to see anyone suffer eternally. Here on earth, however, we seem to need some controls on human behavior: it would be helpful to enlist the church in that, many societies have thought; it would even be decent, as it would provide an alternate source of authority to counterbalance that of the state where the state grows overweening. Of course there is the problem that the church could merely choose to reinforce the overweening state: that was what Mussolini wanted, more or less. In such a case, a rebel tradition that preaches wild forgiveness would be welcome. 

I leave all of this as matter for reflection, and discussion if you like, on this All Hallows Eve. 

Grim’s Hall Cooking Club

Let’s try something different. Most of you probably have enough ground to dig a hole in. If not, you can substitute an oven. 

Let’s do this Friday, and compare notes. That’s plenty of time to shop and make preparations.