Holy crap, academia. We were blessed today by the presence of Dr. Heather Smith of the University of Northern British Columbia. She gave a talk - to a full Peachman Hall - on "Canada, the US and Climate Change: A Perspective from the Northern Neighbour." She was delightful - funny, informative, and thought provoking. She took our questions well, and although the northwest passage isn't her expertise, she answered our questions damned well. Her lectures very much reminded me of Dr Nincic's - real lectures with real information and not the droning snoozefests i've become accustomed to during her sabbatical. Definitely gave me a moral boost!

We're a small university, so we dont get much by way of speakers or guest lecturers, and we definitely dont generate much interest - nobody wants to speak here and fewer people attend guest lectures, but this one turned out fabulously.

In other news, I actually read the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus email (i get the digest and i usually skip through it) this afternoon and imagine my surprise to read the following:

FATWA IN TRIBAL PAKISTAN DECLARES TALIBAN “OUT OF ISLAM”

A new fatwa (religious ruling) issued in the Pashtun Darra Adam Khel region of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province declares the Taliban to be “out of Islam” as a result of their violence, failure to follow Islamic teachings and takfiri ideology (the latter referring to the Salafist-jihadi practice of declaring fellow Muslims “infidels” if they oppose jihadist dogma). According to the fatwa’s author, Mufti Zainul Abidin, “The Taleban leaders consider themselves and their directives as superior to true Islamic principles and directives as ordained by Almighty Allah” (The Nation [Islamabad], March 23). The Mufti invites other members of the ulama (scholars of Shari’a law) to denounce the “inhuman and immoral” acts of the Taliban.

The fatwa singled out the pronouncements of Mufti Khalid Shah, a Taliban religious leader of dubious credentials who has attacked established Islamic scholars in a series of Taliban-issued CDs. Khalid Shah issued a statement in December 2006 urging attacks on local NGOs “promoting the agenda of the Jews and Christians” (Dawn [Karachi], December 23, 2006). This was followed by an Urdu language fatwa pasted at night on the walls of Darra Adam Khel declaring a jihad against the Pakistan government (Daily Times [Lahore], May 3, 2007). Darra Adam Khel is notorious for its thriving arms bazaar and was the scene of heavy fighting between Taliban militants and the Pakistan military earlier this year (see Terrorism Focus, February 13).

Islamic scholars in the region have been reluctant to oppose the Taliban publicly since the still unsolved assassination of Maulana Hassan Jan in 2007 after he declared the practice of suicide-bombing “un-Islamic” (The News [Karachi], September 16, 2007; PakTribune, September 15, 2007).

Something to nosh on over dinner, you guys. Take a think on it.

Bhutto, Pakistan, and what the problem is

On the Road: Pakistan
- Peter Bergen, CNN Terrorism Analyst

We are at JFK airport on the way to Pakistan to report on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto who I first met in 1989 when she was Prime Minister. I was then a young associate producer for ABC News 20/20 and we interviewed her for a story on the legal status of women in Pakistan. She was beautiful and intelligent and had the air of someone who is rarely contradicted.

I met her again a decade later in 1999, first for tea at the Four Seasons hotel in Washington and then at the suburban house of one of her supporters in New Jersey. Then she was very much out in the political wilderness; two years into a self-imposed exile and bedeviled by corruption charges. Many felt her political career was over. I had the sense that official Washington was treating her as something of a pariah.

One story she told me then is relevant to what happened today in Pakistan: She said that a young Saudi militant named Osama bin Laden had bribed some politicians to vote against her in a no-confidence vote in Pakistan's Parliament in 1989. Al Qaeda has long despised the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country.

And then I met Bhutto for the final time at a dinner at the Mayflower hotel in Washington a couple of weeks before she returned to Pakistan in October of this year. She was in great spirits, enormously charming and dominated the conversation because of her intellect and infectious brio. I spoke with Asif, her husband, who agreed with me when I suggested that the imminent return to Pakistan of his wife was a moment of great triumph for her and her family. Asif agreed but he also warned, "You know there are also dangers in returning. We have agreed that I will remain out the country in case anything goes wrong." Today something went terribly wrong.

As we are about to get on our flight I can't help but think that we will arrive in a Pakistan made terribly somber by this tragedy, for this is Pakistan's Kennedy assassination.

My buddy Rick had this to say, and I couldn't agree more.

Americans have this overwhelming tendency to cling to ignorance, as if they believe it's somehow safer. So many still believe that Osama bin Laden, radical Islam, and terrorism in general swooped out of the sky one day in 2001 and attacked America because they hate our freedoms.

On a world scale, these machinations have been in place for many years. It baffles me how so many Americans can continue wearing blinders. Reductionism, willful ignorance, and a national arrogance rivaled only by that of Manifest Destiny are certainly not helping us to be productive players on the world stage. We attack the symptoms, but not the cause, refuse to hold any accountability for the actions we take that will surely someday result in catastrophic blowback, and profess total amnesia when forced to pay the piper his due at the cost of thousands of lives, whether they be in collapsing buildings, exploding trains, or tragic assassinations.

And to suggest that all if this is not part of a wider issue that is older than many believe - certainly older than I am - is dementia.

He's got a damn good point. Americans have an alarming tendency to ignore world events - if it isn't directly and obviously affecting them, they simply don't give a shit. I spent yesterday morning glued to every damn news source I could think of, and a friend of mine, when I told her what was going on, asked why I cared. Excuse me? Not only is this my job and, if i'm frank, something I actually care about and am passionate about, but this is a major world event with serious serious implications for not only Pakistan and US-Pakistani relations, but for US Foreign Policy and I don't think i'm venturing too far out of my own gate when I remember that we are fighting a so-called war against terrorism, and this may just have an impact on it.

"What do you care?" she asked me, "you don't live in Pakistan. So what?"

This is the problem people. This is the problem.

Political Science Math for Dummies 101

(posted with permission and giggles from the author, a friend and shipmate, Surikata Kumi)

So if we take our dependent variable: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's grinning does indeed enrich uranium thus providing cheap nuclear fuel for Iran, his enriching process therefor is dependent on how much he can grin. On a scale of -3 to 5, starting at 2.
+
Independent variable 1: Saddam mysteriously resurrecting and bringing about the end of high insurence rates, creating a negative effect on Ahmadinejad's ability to grin. -3
+
ID 2: Kim Jong Il discovering his love of folk dancing and decides to open up trade to the U.S. prevents Ahmadinejad from enjoying a hookah, thus impacting his grinning ability. -1
+
ID 3: Israel suddenly falls into the sea due to unrelated Godzilla attack in Nigeria. Ahmadinejad's grin increases. +4
+
ID 4: UN limits the ability for Persians to grin, Iran ignores this and receives sanctions, Ahmadinejad doesn't care, grin uneffected. 0
=
Ahmadinejad indeed grins, of which his grin is dependent on his mood, to enrich uranium at the cost of nothing and complete nonsense. Now divide by 0 and return next week when it all no longer matters and has to be rewritten.


There, now you have it.

Taking a break from putting together a presentation for Ethics (the one i was talking about in my last post), writing an essay for my Spanish class, and flipping over getting into the CalState Research competition to bring you this, courtesy of the infamous Mobius.