Category: Musings

The power of love

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Jala ad-Din Rumi 1207 – 1273

One would suspect that readers of this Post title would have many different responses to the word ‘love’. Perhaps in this harsh, economically challenged world, it seems a little quaint to think about love in anything other than a romantic sense.

But, trust me, there’s nothing quaint or ‘away with the fairies’ about reminding us all of both the power of love and the urgent need to bring that power further up the scale of human consciousness. Let’s even try and aim for where dogs are. Dogs intuitively demonstrate unconditional love to those around them that they trust.

Before we look at the effects of love, let’s remind ourselves of some of the outcomes from the stress and trauma generated by present times. A news item from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published in July, 2009, said this:

Researchers at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Oxford University estimated that soaring stress brought on by job losses could prompt a 2.4% rise in suicide rates in people under-64 years of age, a 2.7% rise in heart attack deaths in men between 30 and 44 years, and a 2.4% rise in homicides rates, corresponding to thousands of deaths in European Union countries, such as the UK.

Will Hutton, in his outstanding book, Them and Us, writes on Page 9:

Nor is the impact just economic. The sudden flipping from the wild optimism of the boom to the personal gloom and self-doubt of recession and system-wide financial crisis is bad for health and well-being.

So it appears as if there’s no shortage of reasons why engaging the power of love offers infinite possibilities for us all.

The BBC recently reported on research that shows that people in love can lower their levels of pain.

Love hurts, at least according to many a romantic songwriter, but it may also help ease pain, US scientists suggest.

Brain scans suggest many of the areas normally involved in pain response are also activated by amorous thoughts.

Stanford University researchers gave 15 students mild doses of pain, while checking if they were distracted by gazing at photos of their beloved.

Later on it that BBC item, it reads thus:

Professor Paul Gilbert, a neuropsychologist from the University of Derby, said that the relationship between emotional states and the perception of pain was clear.

He said: “One example is a footballer who has suffered quite a painful injury, but who is able to continue playing because of his emotionally charged state.”

He added that while the effect noticed by the Stanford researchers might only be short-lived in the early stages of a love affair, it may well be replaced by something similar later in a relationship, with a sense of comfort and wellbeing generating the release of endorphins.

“It’s important to recognise that people who feel alone and depressed may have very low pain thresholds, whereas the reverse can be true for people who feel secure and cared for.

Prof Gilbert states on his web page that “After years of exploring the processes underpinning shame and its role in a variety of psychopathologies,

my current research is exploring the neurophysiology and therapeutic effectiveness of compassion focused therapy.” (My italics.)

The old adage that you can’t love another if you don’t love yourself is based on very high levels of awareness. So the starting point to gaining the power of love is self-awareness. Here’s something from MIND:

Good mental health isn’t something you have, but something you do. To be mentally healthy you must value and accept yourself. This means that:

You care about yourself and you care for yourself. You love yourself, not hate yourself. You look after your physical health – eat well, sleep well, exercise and enjoy yourself.

You see yourself as being a valuable person in your own right. You don’t have to earn the right to exist. You exist, so you have the right to exist.

You judge yourself on reasonable standards. You don’t set yourself impossible goals, such as ‘I have to be perfect in everything I do’, and then punish yourself when you don’t reach those goals.

Finally, back to romantic love. The most glorious feeling in the world.

Again expressed so beautifully by Rumi: “The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

Some things are timeless.

By Paul Handover

We are all together

A wonderful reminder of the power of community

Hopefully, by the time this Post is published (it’s being written on the 12th) the steel rescue chamber above the trapped Chilean miners will be in action, carefully and steadily bringing the men to the surface, one by one. The event will be mainstream news so Learning from Dogs will simply watch from the side.

(And to the huge joy of millions, we now all know the miners are safe! Jon)

But there was something that caught my eye from the BBC News website on the 12th. Here’s the extract:

Meanwhile, Alejandro Pino, a journalist who has been in daily contact with the miners and advising them on handling interviews, revealed that he had been helping them prepare a speech.

“I asked them to give me just one word and with that word I would show them how to create a speech,” he said.

“It was just a try, so I can repeat to you what happened because I was touched by it and they were touched by it too, not because I made the speech but because the word they chose to start with was extraordinary: it was ‘comradeship’.”

Comradeship!

It doesn’t take very long to realise that mining is one of those crafts that relies on comradeship.

Here’s a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “The greatness of a craft consists firstly in how it brings comradeship to men.”

From the word ‘comradeship’ it seems a small step to the word ‘community’ and all that is implied for the health and welfare of mankind.

Here’s a lovely reminder from William Morris in a paper on community by Mark K Smith published on the Infed website (for citation see end of post).

Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship’s sake ye do them. (A Dream of John Ball, Ch. 4; first published inThe Commonweal 1886/7)

Fellowship, community, comradeship – call it what you will, it will have to be the essence of mankind’s future.

By Jon Lavin

(Full citation is: Smith, M. K. (2001) ‘Community’ in the encyclopedia of informal education

http://www.infed.org/community/community.htm)

My old English Master

Often our lives move in mysterious ways

For some reason I have been thinking a lot recently about my school English Master, perhaps as a result of feature articles on the Dead Poets Society and the Oxford Boys.

With a slightly unusual name, and some knowledge of an area I might concentrate on, I checked the internet and, indeed, found an address and phone number which might tie up.

Bearing in mind I left school in 1968, and probably last saw him in 1970, I was apprehensive about him remembering me. I called the phone number.

A man answered, “Are you Mr Anthony Weeks-Pearson?” I asked. “Yes”, he said.

“My name is Robert Derham, I was a pupil at your old school during the 60s”, replied I.

“Oh”, he said, “I was thinking about you only yesterday!”

We then proceeded to have an hour-long conversation covering detailed facts from my happy school days. He was as sharp as a button, and had forgotten nothing!

I learnt so much more about him in that conversation and am looking forward to meeting him again next month. Isn’t that wonderful.

But there’s an even more interesting aspect to this event. That is, what is the nature of coincidences? This video throws some light on this.

By Bob Derham

Is it me…

…. or have we all gone stark, staring mad!

Sorry, in a bit of a rant mood just now.

I read widely many Blogs out there because it seems that this channel is one which is more likely to offer real, valid commentaries on what is going on at present with regard to the economic crisis, that is the crisis in the broader sense.

Here’s a recent piece from Baseline Scenario about the US Federal Reserve. Here’s how that piece ends:

Regulation remains largely ineffective (in fact, the industry has managed to demonize the word), the big banks are too important to fail, and interest rates are low across the yield curve. The Fed provides downside protection and there is no effective limit on the amount or nature of risks that the private financial sector can take. This is a recipe not for stagnation but rather for a metaboom in which we will receive warnings, including painful recessions – but consistently ignore them.

The 1920s opened with an 18-month recession, an eerie parallel to the 2007-9 experience. It ended with the Great Crash of 1929.

Then across the way we have a piece on The Daily Beast about Summers. I quote from the first two paragraphs with their permission (thanks guys.)

Washington is swirling with the usual rumors—the White House’s man was pushed! He jumped! But Summers is leaving because he made sure real reform was discussed—but not accomplished.

Thomas

The rumor that come November, when the mid-term elections are history, Lawrence Summers, administration’s quarterback on economic matters, will leave the White House, has been confirmed. The usual presumptions have been put in play: Summers is weary of the job; the president and his men and women feel the need for a new pair of hands under center; the man has done well; the man has done badly. There is no indication that, like Bush II’s ill-served first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, Summers is being canned for speaking truth to power. That is not the man’s style, not—let it be said—that there’s much evidence that the administration has better than a shaky grasp of the practical truths of American financial and economic life in the Age of Goldman Sachs.The bottom line is that we can expect the usual judgemental blahblahblah to grow in volume and marginality on the talk-show and Op-Ed circuit as the day calendared by the media for Summers’ leave-taking approaches.

Now go across to the article and read it in full. Read why Michael Thomas, the author and no stranger to Wall St., describes Summers as someone who “saw to it that the talk was talked, but the walk was never walked.”

And I’ll close by repeating a comment I made to the Baseline Scenario article:

I don’t have the knowledge to respond to Simon’s excellent Post in detail but his comments reinforce what feels like a constant throbbing in my mind – how can the citizens of so many countries have abdicated so much interest and concern in how they/we are governed. Wish I had even a clue as to the answer to that question.

Significant social unrest would be very scary – the ‘law’ of unintended consequences and all that – but there are times when I wonder if this, in the end, might be the only form of real progress for the hard-working, tax-paying majority.

End of rant! 😉

By Paul Handover

Power of peace

This week is a tough one for me with no internet access until the 18th. So I’m quickly offering items from elsewhere that have caught my eye.

Here’s another thoughtful, and powerful, reminder of the power of peace from Zen Habits.

‘The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.’~Thich Nhat Hanh

These days we have an abundance of luxuries, but I’ve found that excess actually decreases my enjoyment of life.

Sure, we can get massive amounts of rich foods, feasting to our heart’s content, stuffing ourselves in alarming displays of gluttony … but is that really enjoyable on a regular basis?

And yes, television can be fun, and so can ridiculously large parts of the Internet, but if it’s always on, if we’re always connected, doesn’t that lower the fun factor?

Excesses lead to all kinds of problems, but the biggest problem is that life is less enjoyable.

I’ve been finding that simplifying things means I can savor life more fully.

Savoring life starts with a mindset. It’s a mindset that believes that excess, that rushing, that busy-ness, that distractedness, isn’t ideal. It’s a mindset that tries instead to:

simplify

do & consume less

slow down

be mindful & present

savor things fully

It’s the little things that make life enjoyable: a walk with a loved one, a delicious book, a chilled plum, a newly blooming tree.

And by simplifying, we can savor life to the fullest.

Some ideas I’ve been considering lately:

1. Coffee: Instead of ordering a latte, mocha, cappuccino with whipped cream and cinnamon and shavings … simplify. Just get pure, good coffee (or espresso), brewed fresh with care and precision, with quality beans, freshly roasted. Make it yourself if you can. Drink it slowly, with little or nothing added, and enjoy it thoroughly.

2. Tea: I recently had tea with Jesse Jacobs, the owner of Samovar Tea Lounge, and he poured two different teas from tiny tea pots: Nishi Sencha 1st Flush and Bai Hao Oolong tea. It was fresh, hand-made tea from real leaves, not a tea bag, and it was simply delicious. Drink it slowly, with your eyes closed, fully appreciating the aroma … wonderful.

3. Workouts: I’ve been a fan of simpler workouts recently. While others might spend an hour to 90 minutes in the gym, going through a series of 10 different exercises, I just do 1-3 functional exercises, but with intensity. So I might do some sprint intervals, or a few rounds of pushups, pullups, and bodyweight squats. Or 400 meters of walking lunges. Let me tell you, that’s a simple but incredible workout. Another I like: five rounds 85-lb. squat thrusters (10 reps) alternated with pushups (10 reps). Today’s workout was three rounds of 15 burpees and 800-meter runs. No rest unless you need it. These are great workouts, but very simple, and very tough. I love them.

4. Sweets: I used to be a sugar addict. Now I still enjoy an occasional dessert, but in tiny portions, eaten very slowly. What I enjoy even more, though, is cold fruit. A chilled peach, some blueberries, a few strawberries, a plum: eat it one bite at a time, close your eyes with each bite, and enjoy to the fullest. So good.

5. Meals: While the trend these days is super-sized meals of greasy, fried things (more than two people need to eat actually), I have been enjoying smaller meals of simplicity. Just a few ingredients, fresh, whole, unprocessed, without chemicals or sauces. My meals usually include: a breakfast of steel-cut oats (cooked) with cinnamon, almonds, and berries; a lunch of yogurt, nuts, and fruit; a dinner of beans or tofu with quinoa and steamed veggies (or sauteed with garlic and olive oil). These simple meals are better because not only are they healthy, each ingredient can be tasted, its flavor fully enjoyed.

6. Reading: While the Internet is chock full of things to read, I’ve been enjoying the simplicity of a paper book, borrowed from the library or a friend (borrowing/sharing reduces natural resources consumed). When I read online, I read a single article at a time, using either the Readability or Clippable bookmarklet to remove distrations, and in full-screen mode in the Chrome browser (hit Cmd-Shift-F on the Mac version or F11 in Windows). It’s pure reading, no distractions, and lovely.

The power of now!

The lesson from dogs is so obvious but, in a sense, so out of reach to us.

The story published yesterday about the Japanese Akita dog, Hachikō, reverberated around my mind for some days afterwards. (It was written on the 27th.)

It wasn’t only about the incredible loyalty shown by the dog towards its master – refusing to accept that its master was never coming home, year after year. To be honest, humans also show great loyalty to their families and dear friends.

No, there was something else that I couldn’t put my finger on until this morning. It was a dog’s ability to make the best of every moment, to fully experience what is happening now. It’s not the first time I have reflected on this aspect of the dog.

We humans have a similar capability but our intellect, our capacity to reflect on the past and ponder (worry?) about the future frequently means that the value of the moment, the preciousness of now, is lost. I could go on about this – perhaps in another Post.

But I was reminded of when I published a short piece over a year ago, from an unknown author, that was a wonderful attempt to let us humans see into the mind of a dog. Here it is again.

A love song

Pharaoh

I am your dog and have something I would love to whisper in your ear. I know that you humans lead very busy lives. Some have to work, some have children to raise, some have to do this alone. It always seems like you are running here and there, often too fast, never noticing the truly grand things in life.

Look down at me now. While you sit at your computer. See the way my dark, brown eyes look at yours.

You smile at me. I see love in your eyes. What do you see in mine? Do you see a spirit? A soul inside who loves you as no other could in the world? A spirit that would forgive all trespasses of prior wrong doing for just a single moment of your time? That is all I ask. To slow down, if even for a few minutes, to be with me.

So many times you are saddened by others of my kind passing on. Sometimes we die young and oh so quickly, so suddenly that it wrenches your heart out of your throat. Sometimes, we age slowly before your eyes that you may not even seem to know until the very end, when we look at you with grizzled muzzles and cataract-clouded eyes. Still the love is always there even when we must take that last, long sleep dreaming of running free in a distant, open land.

I may not be here tomorrow. I may not be here next week. Someday you will shed the water from your eyes, that humans have when grief fills their souls, and you will mourn the loss of just ‘one more day’ with me. Because I love you so, this future sorrow even now touches my spirit and grieves me. I read you in so many ways that you cannot even start to contemplate.

We have now together. So come and sit next to me here on the floor and look deep into my eyes. What do you see? Do you see how if you look deeply at me we can talk, you and I, heart to heart. Come not to me as my owner but as a living soul. Stroke my fur and let us look deep into the other’s eyes and talk with our hearts.

I may tell you something about the fun of working the scents in the woods where you and I go. Or I may tell you something profound about myself or how we dogs see life in general. I know you decided to have me in your life because you wanted a soul to share things with. I know how much you have cared for me and always stood up for me even when others have been against me. I know how hard you have worked to help me be the teacher dog that I was born to be. That gift from you has been very precious to me. I know too that you have been through troubled times and I have been there to guard you, to protect you and to be there always for you. I am very different to you but here I am. I am a dog but just as alive as you.

I feel emotion. I feel physical senses. I can revel in the differences of our spirits and souls. I do not think of you as a dog on two feet; I know what you are. You are human, in all your quirkiness, and I love you still.

So, come and sit with me. Enter my world and let time slow down if only for a few minutes. Look deep into my eyes and whisper in my ears. Speak with your heart and I will know your true self. We may not have tomorrow but we do have now.

We may not have tomorrow, but we do have now! Cherish the moment.

By Paul Handover

V838 Monocerotis

Awesome! Plain and simply awesome.

From the Hubble website. Here’s the description of the image:

“Starry Night”, Vincent van Gogh‘s famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night sky. Although this image of the heavens came only from the artist’s restless imagination, a new picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the van Gogh work, complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometres of interstellar space.

This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004, is Hubble’s latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon).

The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago. V838 Mon is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy.

Credit:

NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

Here are my thoughts.

A single light-year is approximately 6 trillion miles, or 9,460,730,472,580.8 kms for the metric brigade! Thus 20,000 light-years is 120,000 trillion miles, or 120,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

It is beyond imagination – yet it is real!

It humbles one beyond measure that in this short lifetime on mine, science has reached out so far. And then one looks more closely to home and remains appalled that we have learnt so little about living in peace and with integrity on this funny third rock from the Sun.

The ultimate paradox!

By Paul Handover

House prices!

A spotlight on some tough truths

I have long subscribed to Baseline Scenario and the latest article from James Kwak is a great example of why.

On August 23rd James published a Post with the compelling title of, “Housing in Ten Words”. Here’s a flavour:

By James Kwak

“Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say.” That’s the title of a New York Times article by David Streitfeld. Here’s most of the lead:

“Many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg.

“The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts, did more than assure the owners a comfortable retirement. It powered the economy, paying for the education of children and grandchildren, keeping the cruise ships and golf courses full and the restaurants humming.

“More than likely, that era is gone for good.”

I’ve been telling my friends for a decade that housing is a bad investment. These are real housing prices over the past century, based on data collected by Robert Shiller:

Robert Schiller is, of course, the well-known Yale University professor who wrote the book, Irrational Exuberance. From Wikipedia:

Irrational Exuberance is a March 2000 book written by Yale University professor Robert Shiller, named after Alan Greenspan‘s “irrational exuberance” quote. Published at the height of the dot-com boom, it put forth several arguments demonstrating how the stock markets were overvalued at the time. Shiller was soon proven right when the Nasdaq peaked on the very month of the book’s publication, and the stock markets collapsed right after.

The second edition of Irrational Exuberance published in 2005 is updated to cover the housing bubble, especially in the United States. Shiller writes that the real estate bubble may soon burst, and he supports his claim by showing that median home prices are now six to nine times greater than median income in some areas of the country. He also shows that home prices, when adjusted for inflation, have produced very modest returns of less than 1%/year.

Shiller proved right again as witnessed by the fall of the housing bubble which was in part responsible for the Worldwide recession of 2008-2009.

Anyway, do read the full article from James on Baseline Scenario as it has plenty of messages that are still critically important for those trying to work out where it’s all still heading, economically.

For my money, I still think that slowly but steadily we are reverting to the old mean of home prices being about 2 to 2.5 times average annual salaries. With the added proviso that I think that it is more than likely that average salaries will slowly decline on both sides of the Atlantic over the next few years. Tough times indeed!

By Paul Handover

A chance to pause.

The beauty of wild deer.

Apologies for a ‘thin’ posting – here’s why.

Julie has gone on ahead, but returns to tell me that the sika deer are feeding in the reed beds ahead of us. (These are one of two types of deer found at Holton Lee.) She offers to stay with Genie while I go and photograph them, so that Genie won’t frighten them off. They see me, but continue feeding whilst remaining alert.

It really is a magical sight – I am quite converted from my original anxiety about deer leaping out in front of the car!

There is something extremely primeval about deer, which is probably not surprising as their bodies have provided everything from meat and clothing to fish hooks and sinews for many indigenous people, while still remaining wild. It is hard to see why anyone would hunt them simply for sport, though, and I fear that Walt Disney has spoilt me for enjoying venison – ancient, organic, sustainable, non-farmed food source or not, it would be like eating Bambi!

Taken from Ju’s Holton Lee blog.

By Paul Handover

Are today’s friends tomorrow’s enemies?

Sometimes looking down the other end of the telescope reveals more, much more!

Afghanistan_War — Afghanistan - where is it leading?

Now that coalition forces have just recently suffered their deadliest month yet in the conflict in Afghanistan, it now has become more crucial than ever to rethink the strategy of the United States and its allies in the region. Currently, the cornerstone of this strategy rests upon two key factors – winning over the local peoples of the region, and training local forces to carry the burden when, and if, coalition forces leave the region.

At least on the exterior, these goals in Afghanistan do make some sense. The only possible way to succeed via a continued military occupation of Afghanistan is to attain and bank on the support of the local peoples. Also, if western powers are ever to withdraw from the region, local forces will have to be able to maintain whatever structure these forces leave in their wake.

However, while this strategy is not completely outlandish and does show some merit on the part of military strategists in that they are leaning more towards localized models that entail comprehension of diverse local factors, the question still must be asked – is this strategy actually possible to carry out and have the sought-after effects in the region? Can the United States and its allies actually win over the peoples of Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and can these same powers possibly train forces that will remain peacekeepers in the years to come?

Despite the fact that I admire the intentions of the military’s current strategy in this region, I do not think that their plan is in fact possible. It seems to me that rather we are fighting an unwinnable war to win over a people that we do not and cannot understand, and that by funding the Afghani security forces of today, we are inevitably funding our enemy of tomorrow, just as our nation has mistakenly done so many times in the past in this very region.

I cannot foretell the future. Nor can anyone else. However, I can comment on what is likely to occur. And, in constructing such a model, two of the most important subjects to understand are history and praxeology, or human behavior.

An attempt by the United States to make Afghanistan a stable, western-friendly state is by no means a new happening. The date of the beginnings of our intervention in the region could be debated, but a decent starting point is the late 1970’s when President Carter put forth the Carter Doctrine, which stated that the United States would defend its interests in the Middle East.

This doctrine just barely preceded the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and it was this invasion that saw the beginnings of American forces, at this point being mostly CIA and other such agencies, which were attempting to hamper the Soviet forces by funding the Afghani resistance.

Now, there is no room here for a history of American involvement in Afghanistan. However, what must be noted is that during the 1980’s and 1990’s, a pattern developed in the Middle East – the United States would fund a group in the hope of combating some common enemy, and then in later years the group funded with American taxpayer money would inevitably end up turning against the United States.

A few prominent examples of this are Al Qaeda, who received $6 billion from the United States from 1989 to 1992, the Afghani Taliban, who was receiving US foreign aid up to the very minute American forces entered their country (and continues to receive US foreign aid through Pakistani backchannels) and Saddam Hussein, who received chemical weapons from the US during the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980’s, weapons he later used to kill American soldiers.

This, though briefly put, is the history, or the “what.” So now must come an examination of the “why,” or the element of praxeology. For obviously, our attempts to forge friendships in the region in the past have failed. Our friends have become our enemies, in fact our worst enemies.

There are several possible explanations for why this occurs. However, mine is quite simple – we do not understand these people, we do not understand this region, we do not understand Islamic culture, and, to be quite blunt, we never will. It is not a wrongdoing by the West to look at the Middle East through Western eyes. Rather, it is the only way that a westerner possibly can look at the Middle East.

On top of this extremely problematic misunderstanding of the Middle East by Western peoples then comes another layer of problems, these being the base problems of intervention in any context, amplified by the extreme foreignness and instability of the Middle East as a whole. The consequences of intervention in any scenario are so unpredictable, so many, and so far-reaching that no one can possibly intervene and successfully fulfil their objectives without in the process creating a dozen new problems. This is seen with the federal government intervening in states in their own country – how much greater then are the problems when intervening in a region like the Middle East?

All this now brings us back to the point on considering the future. As I mentioned previously, I cannot say what the future holds. However, I can make an educated guess. And, based on analyses of both history and human behavior, it is safe to say that by both indirectly and directly funding the training of a new military force in Afghanistan, we very likely are creating our enemy of tomorrow. For when these people that we are now training realize that the United States is not leaving, that they are not in fact a free state, that they have become a part of the American empire, and that if they want to live culturally independent of western influence they will have to forcibly remove Western elements within their borders, it seems extremely probable that they will do exactly that.

To say that we are creating a force that will do what we expect it to do in the future is a wish at best. The reality is that we do not and cannot understand what is truly a foreign mindset, and our best course of action would be to distance ourselves from what is and will be for many years of region of perpetual conflict.

By Elliot Engstrom

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