Anthony, we cannot rule out your theory that some Frenchman from the Future may have been behind the halt to the quixotic quest to find the “God particle” — even if you got the information from CNN. The scientist in the video you cited says $10 billion has been spent so far to find that particle, before the Large Hadron Collider up and (to use your quasi-scientific terminology) “went phfffff.”
My own theory is there may be an invisible soccer ball and an invisible ref, who may have called “time” on this particular game (although not the entire season).
The invisible soccer ball (although not necessarily the invisible ref) is the metaphor used by Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi in their 1993 book The God Particle, which sought to explain particle physics’ search for the ultimate explanation. They asked readers to imagine superintelligent visitors from another planet, able to see everything except black and white — and for whom zebras, NFL refs, and soccer balls are all invisible. They watch a soccer game and cannot understand it. People run back and forth and in circles, kicking the air every so often and falling down, and once in a while the person at one end or another of the field dives, the crowd cheers, and a point goes up on the board.
Totally inexplicable, completely meaningless — until one of them comes up with a theory: assume a ball. By positing a ball, all of a sudden everything works, the game makes sense, and it can be appreciated by the human mind — although another lesson may be that we should be respectful of what we don’t know, and may never know, even as we continue to seek it.
That ball is the equal possession of both religion and science: both posit a set of laws that govern the universe, even though the critical part of the game is invisible and not totally explicable. Both share a faith (since there is no actual proof) that the sun will come up tomorrow.
The book ends with a scene from an imagined movie. A scientist is standing on the beach at night, shouting at the universe that is the product of his mind: “It is I who provide you with reason, with purpose, with beauty. Of what use are you but for my consciousness and my constructions, which have revealed you?” At that point:
A fuzzy swirling light appears in the sky, and a beam of radiance illuminates our man-on-the-beach. To the solemn and climactic chords of the Bach B Minor Mass, or perhaps the piccolo solo of Stravinsky’s “Rites,” the light in the sky slowly configures itself into Her Face, smiling, but with an expression of infinite sweet sadness.
It is unfortunate that so many years, and so much money, have been spent chasing a particle that has now apparently hidden itself (if CNN and a scientist we can barely understand are correct). But perhaps we should have mixed, even contradictory, emotions about this. The proper response to this news may be a feeling of infinite sweet sadness.
The “elites” associated with Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and our other so-called best schools embrace a dishonest and utopian pacifism. Zbigniew Brzezinski and his buddies, needless to add, lie to themselves. They contend that they still believe in prudent military actions. This is utter nonsense. In their heart of hearts, violence supposedly only begets more violence. On top of that, anyone possessing dark skin is inherently a victim of white imperialism. They allegedly have a right to be upset with our policies. It is therefore best to concede to their demands, however absurd, to make them less angry at us. Brzezinski subconsciously is a self hating American.
If the West is banging on the door of the Iranians before they’ve gone nuke, they’ll be crawling and kowtowing before that very door once they have gone nuke.
The Iranians know that the economic “sweeteners,” “incentives,” they’re being offered now are NOTHING to those they’ll be offered once Europe falls under the shadow of their nukes.
We should have hammered the Iranians within weeks of 9/11.
But Powell and Rice, and Cheney too, he can’t be exempted from the indictment, were too busy trying to narrow the problem, instead of letting themselves see it all. And the problem wasn’t just the Taliban. Remember how State and CIA went about in a frenzy telling us all that “the Iranians hate the Taliban as much as anybody.” That was all nonsense. And now, years later, it’s an open secret that the Iranians are funding and supplying the Taliban resistance.
Just more of the usual from State and CIA.
The problem always extended way beyond Afghanistan, and way beyond Saddam too.
There are two major areas that we will need to deal with, before we’ll even come close to an end of this thing, this nightmare.
One is Tehran.
The other is the house of saud, and their control of “saudi” arabia.
As for the Iranians, we should have hammered them immediately. The war should have kicked off against them. Simultaneously to that, we should have told the IAF to make mince meat of Syria’s military. The entire nation was up for doing whatever it took to end muslim mayhem, and to decisively end it, once and for all. The President had carte blanche
But instead, all we got was “the long war” nonsense. “It’s going to take time,” “it’s going to last decades.”
It was almost as if our war effort were formulated with an eye to the Arabs, with an eye to Riyadh. The “long war” idea allowed the corrupting influences of the house of saud, and the petrokingdoms too, to come to the fore, and over time, wear down and erode whatever moral clarity existed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The more business you do with the Arabs, the less strategic clarity. And “the long war” was one that would see the money of the sauds still circulating inside the Beltway.
And if that money is circulating inside the Beltway, then there will be NO effective, war-winning war effort.
I fear we’ve committed a massive blunder by not already thoroughly hammering the Iranians, and militarily removing that satanic regime. I fear our chance came and went. Bush hadn’t the manhood and the historical depth to have seized it. And now there’s no way we’ll stop the Iranians going nuke, which will trigger, {as it already has…} an Arab nuclear proliferation nightmare. Which is a Tolkienesque nightmare upon a nightmare, a nightmare squared, … a nightmare cubed.
And now every time I go to New York City and Washington, D.C., I get the overwhelming feeling of being in a place on borrowed time.
How did it ever come to this? How did we ever let it come to this?
I’m reading a book on France in the 1930s, it’s called: “THE HOLLOW YEARS.” It’s written by Eugen Weber; the similarities to our own time make for uncomfortable reading.
There he goes again! Zbigniew Brzezinski has been wrong in his foreign policy analysis and advice so often over the years that he should be considered the gold standard for what NOT to do. Having helped Jimmy Carter blunder his way into helping create the reign of the mullahs in Iran in the first place, Mr. Brzezinski now seems ready to pave the way for fresh disasters there, of the glow-in-the-dark nuclear variety, with further ill-conceived analysis and policy suggestions.
For a little peek into his post-Carter administration thinking about how to handle Iran, check out this 2004 Council on Foreign Relations opus, Iran: Time for a New Approach, (available for download in PDF format). The “chairs” of the study were Mr. Brzezinski and Robert M. Gates, our current Secretary of Defense. Enormities of misjudgment based on wishful thinking that lurches over the border into delusion litter the text. Here’s just one example (page 14):
“….although Iran’s leadership is pursuing multiple avenues of influence and is exploiting Iraqi instability for its own political gain, Iran nevertheless could play a potentially significant role in promoting a stable, pluralistic government in Baghdad. It might be induced to be a constructive actor toward both Iraq and Afghanistan, but it retains the capacity
to create significant difficulties for these regimes if it is alienated from the new post-conflict governments in those two countries.” (Underlines are mine.)
Confused yet? Who wouldn’t be? It’s one thing to consider different solutions, it’s quite another to deny reality. But then, this unfortunate brand of therapeutic internationalism does not often overburden itself with such trivia. (e.g., Any of the quasi-psychoanalytic observations of Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA about Iran. v. The Financial Times) This CFR report is the progenitor of the Baker Iraq Study Group madness that we now find rampant in what passes for US foreign policy, an exercise that looks more and more like a variety of group dementia.
I join in your amazement that Mr. Brzezinski should propose China as a wise and impartial arbiter of Iran policy.
• You bet the Chinese are worried about the, “fallout (bravo!) of ‘a major U.S.-Iran collision’”. Iran is China’s biggest supplier of oil and gas. Any visitation of a US Air Force/US Marines “More Rubble, Less Trouble” campaign on Iran, even limited to its nuclear, military, and government sites, would mean big time fallout for the Chinese economy as their Iranian energy spigot would run dry, perhaps for some time. From this perspective, China’s ardent preference for “strategic patience” becomes crystal clear. It is merely economic expediency.
• China/Iran ties run deep in other areas as well, making for a business model not likely to be found at Wharton. In his Inside the Ring column in The Washington Times for 15 June 2007, “China Arming Terrorists”, Bill Gertz wrote,
“Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms. …………
“According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.
“The weapons were described as “late-model” arms that have not been seen in the field before and were not left over from Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.”
Strategic patience. Right. Is there such a thing as foreign policy malpractice insurance?
For Brzezinski to use North Korea as a model of success just shows how foolish he is. We paid off the North Koreans to shut down their nuclear programs which was in the first place a clear violation of the NPT. Kim Jong Il has time and again shown us that a regime of that sort cannot be trusted. So now we should use the same approach towards Iran?
You also made an important point. Diplomacy has a cost attached to it and that is time. We often forget that. North Korea has shown us how much harder it is to deal with them once they have the bomb.
Gordon
I suspect that, like Walter Mondale before him, Zbig is more concerned with his ‘hair style’ than about the realities of war and peace. (I do know that Mondale was reportedly seen frequently combing his in or near the oval office.)
It is fortunate that neither of these guys actually has any power today.
Bob
Bob h, while these guys are combing their hair, I’m pulling mine out just thinking about what they say.
Gordon
On a personal note, I (unlike you, I suspect) have very little left to pull, and these fellows were at least partly to blame !
Bob
So sorry, people, the NIE just spoiled the fun. We will have to wait to let off steem some other time. Anyway, these are the ones who said that Saddam had MDW, right? Maybe here they’re wrong again and we still have a chance to have a party before George W. goes home.
Froy:
The NIE report is WORTHLESS!
Explain to me why Iran refuses to allow the UN inspectors into the country. Until this happens, and Iran allows them to ‘go anywhere – anytime’ Iran is a major threat. End of story !!
Gordon, I am shameful to see you are still hanging around selling your China bashing junk here and there. For god’s sake, we shouldn’t have been bashing China anymore now a days, according to your expired 5 year prediction made in 2001 of The Coming Collapse of China. The China issue should have be solved for good altogether last year!
I think you owe United State an apology that you mis-led our guys in White House and Pentagon that made the stealthy rise of China a reality.
Jim, I said the Communist Party would no longer be ruling China in a decade, not five years.
Gordon: your “accurate” prediction of China collapse has earned you undisputable reputation, and your famous book of “The Coming Collapse of China” is now of high entertaining value. Unlike Jim, I enjoyed seeing you around. I think the Chinese leadership are grateful to you as well, beacuse your China-bashing has helped them a lot. The only victim: the American public who believed you. Keep your crystal ball polished and update us about the exact date of China Big-Bang. Bwahahaha…