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[ by Charles Cameron — Slovenian electronic-industrial group Laibach tackles pone of Bach’s late, greatest works ]
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Here’s Glenn Gould playing Contrapunctus XIV from Johann Sebastian Bach‘s Art of Fugue, complete with the hum that seems to generate itself from his immersion in the music:

And here by way of comparison and contrast, is the Laibach — “music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) art collective” — interpretation of that same piece:

For my money, Laibach does a far more interesting job of “electronicizing” Bach than Wendy Carlos ever did, all those many years ago.

For my money too, there’s the complete Laibach Art of Fugue on CD on its way to me courtesy of Amazon.

[ by Charles Cameron — spiraling costs — same pattern, different mechanism, closer to home ]
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Back in Serpent logic and related, I featured this spiral from Louisa Lombard:

Bokassa logic: "those caught misappropriating public funds were promoted on the grounds that higher salaries would help them pay it back."

— Louisa Lombard (@louisalombard) September 10, 2013

Ha, funny.

How’s this, in today’s opening salvo from Rosa Brooks at POLITICO Magazine?

“If you believe the mission truly requires 50,000 troops and $50 billion, but you know that the White House is going to automatically cut every number in half, you’ll come in asking for 100,000 troops and $100 billion,” says the aforementioned former White House official. “The military eventually starts playing the very game the White House has always suspected them of playing.”

Not for nothing does the phrase “spiraling out of control” garner 7,840,000 hits on Google.

Chinese Navy

[by Mark Safranski, a.k. a. “zen“]

The editors of the excellent War of the Rocks invited me to post a short rebuttal to the op-ed “How Not to Go to War With China”, by Scott Cheney-Peters, which appears in their “Hasty Ambush” section:

UNDERSTANDING CHINA: THE REAL KEY TO AVOIDING WAR

….A place to begin our efforts in avoiding war with China might be avoiding engagement in some of the same incorrect mirror-imaging assumptions we once made about the Soviet Union, not least of which was MAD.  As a doctrine, Soviet leaders never accepted MAD and the Red Army general staff ignored it in drafting war plans to fight and prevail in any nuclear war. While the Soviets had no choice but to tackle the logic of deterrence as we did, the operative Soviet assumptions were predicated on a different strategic calculus, a different force structure and above all, different policy goals from their American counterparts.  A dangerous gap between American assumptions of Soviet intentions and the reality of these intentions came to light when in 1983 the Reagan administrationdiscovered to their alarm that Soviet leaders had interpreted the NATO exercise Abel Archer 83 as preparations for a real, imminent nuclear first strike on the USSR and ordered Soviet nuclear forces on high alert.

The military-to-military confidence-building initiatives outlined by Cheney-Peters intended to construct “habits of cooperation” are not entirely useless. There is some value in ensuring that high-ranking American military officers have personal and limited operational familiarity with their Chinese counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), but as potential game-changers, they need to be taken with a grain of salt. Such a policy misses the essential strategic and political centers of gravity in the Sino-American relationship.  Namely that for the first time in 600 years, China is building a blue water Navy that will foster power projection as far away as the Indian ocean and Australia.  Secondly, this naval expansion, coupled with a new Chinese foreign policy, aggressively presses grandiose territorial demands on nearly all of its neighbors, including India and Japan.  These are fundamental conflicts with American interests that cannot be explained away or papered over by banquet toasts with visiting delegations of Chinese admirals. […]

Read the rest here.

Also read another WotR  China piece “99 Red Balloons: How War with China would Start” by Matthew Hipple

[ by Charles Cameron — in a story, in a nutshell, the very different world of al-Shabaab ]
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The third issue of of the pro-Shabaab magazine Gaidi Mtaani, issued a few months back, contained a long piece titled A Greater Scheme of Things, and in it I’d like to zero in on the extraordinary story which is the heart of the piece — and which offers us a fasacinating insight into jihad:

it was luminously evident, for me personally, in one memorable incident in Mogadishu’s frontline last year. Just after Dhuhur prayer, one particular day in March, the Mujahideen received news that the enemy was preparing to mount a large offensive in the Northern parts of the city – in an area that was then newly captured by the Mujahideen.

In no time, the news spread across the entire frontline and the Mujahideen geared up for a protracted battle. New defence posts were erected, the old ones were fortified, trenches were dug, reinforcements were called in, snipers were placed on rooftops and small groups of well-equipped fighters were strategically positioned to guard every street and every alley. Garrisoned in the makeshift base, a short distance behind the frontline, were dozens of young martyrdom seekers, each eager to engage the enemy once called. A flurry of activity engulfed the bullet-battered neighbourhood as sporadic gunfire resonated across the empty streets and a countless number of vehicle-mounted weapons, such as ZU-23 and B-10, Dhshk, Shilka, were all streaming in and out of the base to take their positions. Upon seeing the long line of military vehicles and artillery, one of the fighters erroneously remarked in amazement: ‘today we will defeat these African invaders.’ Materialistically, all possible preparations were made to defeat the encroaching enemy, but were they enough to achieve victory?

Just after Asr that day, the battle began in deadly earnest, with ear-splitting explosions and exchange of gunfire reverberating from all corners from the city. A salvo of mortars ripped through the fragile rooftops, grenades exploded with alarming ferocity, tanks bulldozed buildings and reduced them to rubble and a hail of bullets cracked into the shell-bestrewn streets. In the backdrop of such a frenzied atmosphere, the Mujahideen maintained remarkable inner tranquillity, for the believer’s heart is an island of santy in such a setting. They’ve put up a sturdy defence in all corners, necessary arrangements were made to outflank the enemy and the chants of Takbeer were gradually rising above the cruel cacophony of gunfire. But something strange was also happening: all the artillery brought by the Mujahideen failed to fire a single shot! The guns were cleaned, lubricated, loaded and reloaded, but they still recoiled without firing a round and with the bullet jammed in the barrel. The field commanders hopped from trench to trench, through tunnels, in order to analyse and resolve the situation, but all their efforts were in vain.

‘Today we will defeat these African invaders’ chimed in the memory of one of the commanders and that’s when they had realised that what was happening was in fact a punishment for a grave sin they had committed: trusting in the abilities of their weapons. The certitude with which the statement was expressed proved to be destructive and no sooner had the Mujahideen recognised the mistake and repented than the very same artillery, almost instantaneously, began firing again. The Mujahideen managed to repel the enemy, but those who’ve uttered the statements also learnt a great lesson: that fortifying the bastion of Eeman must take precedence over building a substantial military arsenal; for military arsenal can never bring victory without Eeman.

Such is the clear manifestation of Allah’s absolute control over all affairs that the Kuffar have failed to comprehend.

I’ll comment on this story in a follow-up post: for now, I’d just like to let this very revealing tale hang in the air for your consideration…

Your comments are most welcome.

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Source:

Gaidi Mtaani #3, safe copy available from Jihadology, pp. 12-15

[ by Charles Cameron — thoughts triggered by the Jeremy Scahill & Lawrence Wright documentaries ]
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I don’t really enjoy writing this, because I’m loath to suggest that sixteen year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was in fact a combatant, though it seems to me that he might have been. I was viewing documentaries the other night, though, and when Jeremy Scahill‘s Dirty Wars [upper panel, below], which deals with Abdulrahman, was followed directly by Lawrence Wright‘s My Trip to Al-Qaeda [lower panel, below], the age at which Ayman al-Zawahiri began his career as a radical stuck out like a sore thumb:

Here, then, is Wright’s commentary on the young al-Zawahiri:

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man behind Bin Laden, a doctor, product of a distinguished family, from an exclusive suburb of Cairo called Maadi, his father was a professor of pharmacology; his mother — the daughter of a diplomat… Ayman had started a cell to overthrow the Egyptian government in 1966. He was 15 years old.

How much agency do we believe fifteen and sixteen year olds have, anyway? Do we allow them to drink a beer?

If we are ever going to have a debate as to the moral high ground in matters of the extrajudicial killing of US citizens, it seems to me that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki rather than his father Anwar should be the test case we focus in on.

The truth is that young people, sometimes very young people, do on occasion play with fire. I don’t think that means we should “burn” them on suspicion, but I do think it’s part of the larger picture. And in this case, that means “drone warfare” and “targeted killings” aren’t the only relevant categories: we may need to factor the issue of “child soldiers” into our considerations as well.

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Here, to give the Awlaki family’s side of the story, is an ACLU video with Abdulrahman Awlaki’s grandfather:

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And how did I wind up here?

Well, as I said, I was watching documentaries… but the first thing that caught my eye, to be honest, was this shot from Dirty Wars [upper panel, below], which ineitably reminded me of the rosary-and-rear-view-mirror shot from Manhunt [lower panel]…

which I’d talked about in an earlier post, Manhunt: religion and the director’s eye.

I’m beginning to think no documentary about jihad and counterterrorism is complete without one…