ShrinkWrapped

Gaza, the Quintessential Post-Modern State

[Update at end]

A perfect Post-Modern state would be a state that exists in multiple realities.  In one reality, it would be a struggling, potentially viable state struggling under the  burden of oppression.  Such a state would feature plucky but out-gunned Resistance fighters fighting for freedom.  When its overpowering oppressor reacted with Nazi-like indiscriminate disproportion to attacks, the state would be devastated but its people would persevere.  The freedom fighters would be toasted as heroes to much of the world for their fortitude and refusal to submit. 

During and after the most recent incursion by Israel into Gaza, this was precisely the image that was projected by the international media; this is the Gaza seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world.  It is the Gaza seen by most inhabitants of the MSM universe.  Richard Landes linked to an article describing what happened when a confirmed believer in "Gaza" was confronted with the non-Post-Modern brick and mortar (and sand) Gaza inhabited by actual people, rather than actors in a Post-Modern morality play:

Puzzled in Gaza

I'm a poet, an English Jew and a frequent visitor to Israel. Deeply disturbed by the reports of wanton slaughter and destruction during Operation Cast Lead, I felt I had to see for myself. I flew to Tel Aviv and on Wednesday, January 28, using my press card to cross the Erez checkpoint, I walked across the border into Gaza where I was met by my guide, a Palestinian journalist. He asked if I wanted to meet with Hamas officials. I explained that I'd come to bear witness to the damage and civilian suffering, not to talk politics.

What I saw was that there had been precision attacks made on all of Hamas' infrastructure. Does UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticize the surgical destruction of the explosives cache in the Imad Akhel Mosque, of the National Forces compound, of the Shi Jaya police station, of the Ministry of Prisoners? The Gazans I met weren't mourning the police state. Neither were they radicalized. As Hamas blackshirts menaced the street corners, I witnessed how passersby ignored them.

THERE WERE empty beds at Shifa Hospital and a threatening atmosphere. Hamas is reduced to wielding its unchallengeable authority from extensive air raid shelters which, together with the hospital, were built by Israel 30 years ago. Terrorized Gazans used doublespeak when they told me most of the alleged 5,500 wounded were being treated in Egypt and Jordan. They want it known that the figure is a lie, and showed me that the wounded weren't in Gaza. No evidence exists of their presence in foreign hospitals, or of how they might have gotten there.

Read the whole thing.

In reality, Gaza is a proto-state ruled by a gang of thugs whose animating philosophy consists of overt anti-Semitic genocide based on their reading of the Koran.  Consider which description is closer to the reality on the ground in Gaza.  Then consider that when even the Saudis understand that supporting Hamas in Gaza is effectively supporting an Iranian incursion against the West and the Sunni world, the Western (including American) approach to Hamastan is not only intellectually bankrupt and psychologically deluded, but also profoundly self-defeating: 

Grow Your Own

As our political and economic fortunes continue to trend down hill it is always a good tonic to consider some of the more promising developments that are occurring.  For example, the breakthroughs in stem cell research and organ building proceed apace:

Scientists' stem cell breakthrough ends ethical dilemma

Experts in Britain and Canada find way to make stem cells without destroying embryos

Scientists have found a way to make an almost limitless supply of stem cells that could safely be used in patients while avoiding the ethical dilemma of destroying embryos.

...

Because the cells can be made from a patient's own skin, they carry the same DNA and so could be used without a risk of being rejected by the immune system.

Scientists showed they could make stem cells from adult cells more than a year ago, but the cells could never be used in patients because the procedure involved injecting viruses that could cause cancer. Overcoming the problem has been a major stumbling block in efforts to make stem cells fulfil their promise of transforming the future of medicine.

Now, scientists at the universities of Edinburgh and Toronto have found a way to achieve the same feat without using viruses, making so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell therapies a realistic prospect for the first time.

...

In two papers published in the journal Nature, Keisuke Kaji in Edinburgh and Andras Nagy in Toronto, describe how they reprogrammed cells using a safer technique called electroporation. This allowed the scientists to do away with viruses and ferry genes into the cells through pores. Once the genes had done their job, the scientists removed them, leaving the cells healthy and intact.

We are still a ways off from being able ot reliably produce large numbers of (adult derived pluripotent) stem cells but the progress is impressive.  And, the story gets even better:

A Post-Modern World: Part II

On Friday, I discussed Barack Obama's tentative relationship with the truth which I believe is in part based on his unconscious adoption of the Post-Modern belief that reality is constructed by the powerful in order to oppress the weak.  Obama ("I won") is now the powerful and believes he is constructing reality in order to help the weak.  Unfortunately, his post-modernism poses an even greater threat to national security than it does to the economy.

Obama's adviser: Solve Arab-Israeli conflict, end global jihad

... President Obama named Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and Brooking Institution scholar, to head up a review team for overhauling U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Via the Christian Science Monitor, a big part of Riedel's grand strategy for winning in Afghanistan is, um, securing a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel:

Ultimately, the solution in Afghanistan may involve solving the age-old conflict between the Arab states and Israel, says administration adviser Riedel in a book published by the Brookings Institution, a foreign-policy think tank, last year. Al Qaeda, and the Taliban to some extent, continue to be motivated by the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Riedel argues. If that conflict is resolved, Al Qaeda may go away.

"If Palestinians choose to make peace with Israel, the most fundamental point of Al Qaeda's narrative becomes irrelevant," Riedel writes. "In other words, making peace between Israelis and Arabs is not only wise policy in its own right, but also an extremely useful strategy for pulling the rug out from under Al Qaeda."

Please read the entire post to gain a full appreciation of how bizarre this thinking is; worse still, for those who believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the center of the universe, their proposals for peace in the Middle East simply discount reality.  In a post discussing our new Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, who takes a nuanced view of the cause of 9/11 (please read the whole post) Jeffrey Goldberg addresses the fiction that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the core of the Middle East's pathologies: