Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Thais, be careful and stick to your ideals

CNN and other world media are reporting that Thailand has fallen to a military coup.

This is a sad day, anytime a functioning democracy is unplugged by armed thugs.  Yes, they claim rampant corruption in the government.  After all, they don't want to be compared to their thug neighbor, Burma.  (Screw the military fatheads there, by the way, I won't call it 'Myanmar' any more than I was inclined to do what Pol Pot said and call his country 'Kampuchea'.  We all know how <i>that</i> turned out.)  But they did the ultimate cowardly thing, and waited until the prime minister was out of the country.  This tyrant, Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, didn't even have the cojones to do it with his boss in the house.

What caught my eye in the article was something in the first paragraph of the Reuters report (which appears on Yahoo! News, where I saw this originally): "The Thai army took control of Bangkok on Tuesday without a shot being fired, dismissed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, revoked the constitution and promised a swift return to democracy after political reforms."

What's wrong here is "revoked the constitution".  This is a common misconception among tyrants and enemies of the people.  A democratic constitution cannot be "revoked", nor can it be "suspended".  Nor bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated.  The United States Constitution cannot be suspended.  Wanna know why?  Because if a mechanism existed to do so, every time an election, a decision, a judgment went against what someone wanted as the outcome, they would be looking for that button.  Saying a national constitution is "revoked" is akin to saying it didn't matter in the first place. 

Constitutions are not a "let's see if this works out" kind of thing in a democracy.  It is <i><b>everything</b></i>.  The Thai army thug claims "rampant corruption".  By whose measure?  From what the news article said, the duly elected leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, was re-elected twice.  When his government was questioned, he <i>volunteered</i> to have elections taken again.  A rational person would conclude that Mr. Thaksin has this democracy thing figured out to a fault (what American president would dare to call an early election just to show he really deserved to be there?) and that he figured on winning the election a third time.

The Thai opposition, though, claimed that "he had skewed neutral bodies such as the Election Commission in his favor and boycotted the poll. That rendered the election result invalid."  This statement also speaks volumes.  The Thai opposition party, the so-called "Party of Democratic Reform", is in charge with the army.  In a democracy, this is anathema.  So one must wonder what they meant by "neutral bodies".  Certainly not the military, apparently.  They also assumed that since elections have been coming out against them, the Election Commission must be biased in some fashion.  This is another misunderstanding: as the Democratic Party in America has had to come to grips with, you're not "correct" by default, and so losing elections does not mean everyone is out to keep you down.  So when Mr. Thaksin cheekily called a third election early (and he was either overly optimistic or kinda dense to do so, really) the opposition really didn't want to lose a third time.  The best way to make an election seem invalid is to not show up.  This is the third mistake in judgment by the opposition.  In America, elections are valid even if only 8 percent of registered voters show up.  We raise our own local taxes with such ridiculously low participation with alarming regularity.

Militaries in democracies are always dicey things.  Any military is, by definition, <i>not</i> a democracy by necessity.  Militaries have efficient chains of command, and we would like to think that advancement in the military is merit-based.  That's a dream, of course, but any country with sense and a conscience should try.  And who is selected to run the military should be someone who is sworn to uphold that country's constitution, and not take judgment into his own hands whenever he thinks the country isn't being run right.  Democracy does not exist because the military deigns to permit it, but because the people will it to be so.  The purpose of the military is to keep other countries out so the people can run this democracy stuff.

Anything that smells of mixture between military and civilian makes me nervous.  America set a horrible precedent when they named the former head of Military Intelligence the head of the CIA.  It was, in my mind and heart, an unforgivable mix, especially considering that this person did not resign their commission in the military.  When you look around the world, you see daily proof that this intermingling is a bad idea.  (It's also a really bad thing when two family members run both the military and the government, but that's a different story.)

A couple of paragraphs in the CNN article on this caught my eye as well, such as this little gem quoting a press release from the coup perpetrators:  "The armed forces commander and the national police commander have successfully taken over Bangkok and the surrounding area in order to maintain peace and order. There has been no struggle," the coup announcement said, according to The Associated Press. "We ask for the cooperation of the public and ask your pardon for the inconvenience."

<i>Pardon the inconvenience?!?</i>  "We're really sorry if our tanks screw up morning rush hour."  So this is apparently a <i>polite</i> coup!  Oh, well that's okay then.  If I'm a Thai citizen, what am I supposed to think of this?  As long as it doesn't get in my way, the forcible turnover of my duly elected government is just a minor annoyance.  Just keep the armored personnel carriers out of the McDonald's drive-thru....

And CNN makes this off-the-cuff observation:  "Sonthi, who is known to be close to Thailand's revered constitutional monarch, will serve as acting prime minister, army spokesman Col. Akarat Chitroj said, according to The AP. Sonthi is a Muslim in this Buddhist-dominated nation, AP reported."

Things that make you go "Hmmm".  (See my previous blog entry for relevance.)

So what happens now?  The response of the international community will be very interesting.  Will they roundly condemn this act of subversion, as they should?  Or will they use the fact that Mr. Thaksin is wealthy as a rationalization for his removal?  The United States government should pull out the stops, cutting off this rogue government and insisting that Mr. Thaksin be restored to office, and suspending diplomatic relations until they do so.  We tolerate this crap far too frequently.

America is a beacon of freedom and democracy.  It is exactly times like now that we should use our might to set a good example, and refuse to deal with countries that just don't get it.  If Thais get this democracy thing, they should call for Mr. Sonthi's execution as a traitor.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Violent religion threatens more violence over accusations of violence

It's times like this that I marvel at the sheer idiocy of people in the world.

Pope Benedict quoted a medieval writer who criticized Mohammed for spreading Islam "by the sword", and Moslems worldwide were outraged.

Of course they were. Muslims exist to be outraged. Outrage is their normal state of being. Mostly over not having what they want, which is for everyone to be Muslim. As a group, Muslims are pretty outrageable. Most Americans outgrow the typical Muslim response to criticism by the time they're 3 years old.

When Muslims were outraged over the (mostly factually accurate) cartoons of Mohammed that ran in several European newspapers, they did what Muslims do -- they got outraged. They got outraged enough to kill several hundred of their own people and then blame everyone else for it. What was really telling was when a few smartass Muslims decided to get back at us, and draw their own cartoons!! The shock! The horror! Ho hum. Excuse me, Mr. Ayn-Ghatta Klu, your cartoons were pitiful. They're nothing compared to the cartoons we draw about our own leaders. Heck not even anything compared to some of the cartoons that get drawn about Jesus Christ. And we almost never kill anyone in response.

I've figured out what's wrong with Muslims. The entirety of Islam, from Morocco to Indonesia, has an anger management problem. And the solution is simple: More pornography.

In America we understand this. Heck, Europeans downright embrace it. In Scandanavia, where the pacifism runs to the point of trying to be neutral in World War II, the age of consent in many places is a mere 13. Who the heck has time to be outraged when they can only type with one hand? Here, you notice that people have either their gun or their penis in their hand at any given time, but not both. Why? Well, it would look ridiculous to try holding and shooting both at the same time, not to mention a coordination problem. Most Americans own guns, this is true, but their first option in terms of actual deployment is usually the penis.

In the Muslim world, the most idiotically primitive of them cover their women from head to toe. They also are the most repressive, and the most violent when they don't get what they want. Cover up women less, and civilizations get more civilized. Heck, the most stable, prosperous Muslim countries are those that let women dress the same amount as men. I think the correlation is clear: Without porn, men can only get their jollies with guns.

Now, somewhere along the line a non-violent Muslim person (I'm sure there are at least several dozen in the world) will read this and be offended. Rings empty with me, buddy boy. Because I'll ask you the same thing I ask idiot fundie Christians in this country: Where's your voice? Where's your criticism of the nutbags getting all the press coverage? Silence equals endorsement. Ultimately most Christians will only believe something if everyone else around them believes it. If they're criticized, they'll run crying to their fellow fundie wingnuts for emotional support. But if their fundie wingnut friends are not there, they might -- just might -- think to themselves, "if I'm the only one thinking this sack-o-hammers shit, maybe I'm wrong after all". Then there will be just a little less violence in the world.

Richard Nixon, in explaining why people supported him with all visible evidence to the contrary -- as well as tin-foil beanie babies like Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed -- claim the existence of a "silent majority". Well, I would hypothesize that Islam has a "silent majority" as well, and it's high time that they set aside for a moment the observation that American and western Europe have been dicking with them for the last 500 years and think, "maybe we should clean up our own mess first". Muslims bitch about Israel because it's trendy, it's easy to get accepted by your fellow insane Muslim neighbors, but your real problem is your own religious leadership. If Islam is not a violent religion, then prove it. Do something about it.

What I propose is radical, because while I think that the vast majority of people don't really think much about religion at all, they should be horrified at what the people claiming to govern them have done to them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Sure, Sharia looks good in the short term, not unlike the War on Drugs and War on Terror here: eliminate crime, restore order, end chaos. It's easy. It requires no thought or self control. The problem is, once its proponents actually get into power, they tend to concentrate on their real agenda, which is shoving their religious views down their throats -- by the sword if necessary.

C'mon guys, when the Pope quoted it, the problem was not that he quoted it and you got your big spiritual wedgie. The problem was that 500 years later, most of the rest of the world nodded and said, "huh, yeah even back then violent Islam was an issue". Of course, violent Christianity was a problem for a good long while, but for the most part, they stopped it. You must have missed the memo on that. So for the record, let me say it: You can stop being violent now.

It's not like Americans aren't familiar with the phenomenon. Bill Clinton campaigned on the economy, and then the first words out of his mouth were "gays in the military" (WTF?) Convince people to let you into power by telling them what they want to hear, then when you're in charge, do what you want. George W. Bush told Bob Jones University inmates that he wanted to delist Wicca as a religion recognized by the Armed Forces, then utterly ignored it in office, choosing to concentrate on other things like ignoring all inconvenient foreign intelligence and practically inviting 9/11 to happen.

Iran got to experience this first hand. President Athingamabob ran on helping the poor, then once elected, shifted his attention to the important task of building nuclear bombs. I'm sure the Taliban looked pretty good in the aftermath of Soviet occupation, right up to the point before soccer fields stopped being used for soccer and started being used for beheadings of women impudent enough to show bare ankles. Somalia is right on the cusp of getting to learn this lesson the hard way. The Islamists there are pasting the warlords (who at least took care of their own gang members), and as soon as they unite the country, they'll get to the more important task of pasting the general population. Somaliland (the northern part) got a clue and self-organized -- and the Western leaders of the world had better get their heads out of their asses and recognize them as an independent country and stop worrying about the impact on the global mapping industry -- and hopefully will spare the fate of the south. The south will get the Taliban treatment. And guess what, Al Qaeda and every other sociopath will beat a path to Mogadishu and we'll have to invade them too. Sigh, will people never learn?

So Muslims of the world, if you really believe the shit being spewed by your muftis, then you get what you deserve. But do us a favor and keep it in your own country, and don't get all indignant when you threaten us and we come over and kick your asses. You're lucky the fringe elements in this country didn't push The Button after 9/11 and turn the entire Middle East into a plate glass parking lot. Violence begets violence, but if America isn't going to stop first, it's your obligation to be mature Men and Women and just say no to any violence in Islam, rather than throw yet another histrionic temper tantrum.

And anyone who threatens to kill me over this article, well, you prove my point.