WIRING OF THE BRAIN

Particularly since my wife died, I have been reading quite a bit about how the brain works and how you can change it.  But even in the case of Noah who has had one side of his brain removed, who is a good example of this, in which actions and thought usually done by the right brain are now done by the left (or is it vice versa, no matter).  In my wife's case, I think she could have recovered from her first stroke except something happened to destroy her will to fight her condition which makes it very hard when all the initiative had to come from someone else.  She really had to want to get better, but couldn't manage it.

But it occurs to me that one reason we don't understand Muslims, especially conservative Muslims, is that their brains are wired differently from ours and some may even believe in martyrs getting 72"virgins" ( apparently wives actually in heaven).*  Do female martyrs get 72 virginal men (husbands)?

And it is the same in the U.S. where the religious right is able to maintain all sorts of screwy ideas like raped women don't get pregnant and are obsessed with controlling women's bodies almost as much as Muslims.  And conservative Republicans really believe that all poor people are lazy, the government is coming to get their guns, and reducing taxes and getting rid of regulations will always improve the economy.    No showing of the facts will dissuade them as their brains are wired to believe this sort of thing. (Though personal income taxes were greatly reduced as were regulations under George W. Bush, we had economic disaster..  Both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton raised taxes a lot and we had the best economic climate of my long lifetime.)

We are also witnessing in this country a significant part of the government that is quite willing to go against the will of the people, even their own constituencies, on issue after issue: on background checks for gun purchases, on the minimum wage, and on a track to citizenship for long-term illegal immigrants, just to name a few,

It is even true on a national basis.   For some reason as a nation, our brains are wired to root for the mob (presumably the underdog).  We have done this with Egypt, with Libya (even giving air cover to the mob), with the Ukraine.  We actually also did this with the Taliban against the Russians.  When we don't like the mob, we will enter into nation building as we did with Iraq and are doing with Afghanistan.  And we have learned, or I hope we have, that the road to democracy is extremely difficult for people who have no history of democracy or suffered under a long-time dictatorship.  I wonder how you could have a real democracy in Iraq when 80% of the people are of one religion (Shiite) and 20% of another (Sunni) who hate each other.  Even in the U.S., a lot of people believe that a Muslim, say, cannot be president though there is nothing in the constitution that says that presidents must be Christians.

As I have said in a recent post to my blog, I think eventually we will look on Guantanamo Bay as a dark period in American history: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/06/guantonimo-

and-franz-kafka.html.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houri

WHY WE ARE CAREFUL IN SYRIA

There are numerous examples now of the difficulty in conversion of nations that have long been under dictatorships to any sort of democracy.  Certainly Egypt is a good example where they have elections and then in maybe six months have the winning party overthrown by the mob.  Certainly a part of the problem is in the poor economics of these countries, including Egypt.  Recall that the original mob overthrow of a dictator had American sympathies (West friendly Hosni Mubarabk), but is the country really better off?

We did even more in backing the mob to overthrow Qaddafi in Libya, after we had promised not to try to overthrow him if he gave up nuclear weapons, which he did.  We did not put "boots on the ground" in Libya, so far as I know, except for "trainers," but we did give the mob air cover as well as training and other war materiel.  The problems of Libya are much more than the Benghazi incident,* much loved by some American politicians.

This increased engagement has come at a continuing cost. When the US and other allies intervened in 2011 to aid in the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, for instance, it helped set off a chain reaction that led to a security vacuum destabilizing that country as well as neighboring Mali. The latter saw its elected government overthrown by a US-trained officer. The former never recovered and has tottered toward failed-state status ever since. Local militias have been carving out fiefdoms, while killing untold numbers of Libyans—as well, of course, as US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in a September 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the “cradle” of the Libyan revolution, whose forces the US had aided with training, materiel and military might.**

Another case where we have supported the mob against the government is, of course, the Ukraine where there have been two revolutions within 10 yrs, ousting legitimately elected leaders.  The Ukraine might have done better if they had broken into two counties like Czechoslovakia did as voting patterns in the Ukraine elections are quite clear.  But as in Egypt, a large part of the problem is in the poor economics of the Ukraine.

Thus I think we have been wise in Syria not to precipitously support the revolutionary parties (note plural) against the dictatorial government.   Should they overthrow Assad, then the real civil war would start between the islamists and the secularists.  As the islamists have more fervor, it is supposed that they would win resulting in another Iran type government, though the Iran government may be slowly evolving into a more democratic government representative of the people.

* In response to trying to prevent more diplomatic attacks, we have finally, quietly, developed rapid response teams in the military to counter extremist and al Qaeda attacks on our diplomatic posts:
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/05/african-war-on-terror.html
** http://www.thenation.com/article/179883/how-benghazi-birthed-new-normal-africa?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20%28NEW%29%2020140515&newsletter=email_nation_tuesday

EGYPT: THE STRUGGLES TO COME

So the dictator of Egypt has been overthrown. Dictators have to be sure that the military is on his side, which didn't happen. As difficult as that was, the most difficult part is yet to come. Did the military want to take over and used the demonstrations as an excuse? For the time being, the military is in charge, but will the military turn the country to democracy after a suitable period ? After all, Mubarak originally said he would only stay for two terms, but he got to like it and overstayed his welcome. But the difficult road to democracy is just one of the questions.

A really big question is the matter of food. It appears that Egypt overall imports more than half of the food consumed. The only crop in which Egypt is self sufficient is rice, but wheat is the main staple for Egyptians and they import most of it. At one time they were self sufficient in agriculture, but rapid overpopulation has destroyed that. (http://countrystudies.us/egypt/84.htm). It will not be easy to become self sufficient again because rain-watered land is non-existent in Egypt with the "wettest" areas averaging only 2-in./yr of precipitation. Thus agriculture must be concentrated near the Nile or, in some case, near artisan aquifers. It is considered possible to increase the amount of reclaimed agricultural land and perhaps decrease the need for so much imported foods. About a third of the Egyptian workforce is devoted to agriculture.

Egypt recently has become an oil importing country; however, they have plenty of natural gas, some of which they are exporting and are trying to build up their natural gas industry. If there was peace in the Middle East, Egypt could do much more exporting by pipeline, but that is not the case and is unlikely to be the case in the foreseeable future.

A major part of the Egyptian economy revolves around cotton, including making cloth and finished goods, like clothing. This field has been hurt by the global recession.

Tourism is another major industry in Egypt and has been a major employer too. I suspect, however, that tourism will be hurt, perhaps severely, until a stable and friendly government is in place which may take a lot of time.

All in all, the future looks grim to me; however, if you read the writeup in Wikipedia, you could get the idea that things were pretty well under control with plans for improvements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Egypt though the official unemployment is said to be around 11%. We were told during the demonstrations, however, that the unemployment of younger workers is about 25% which was one cause of the revolution so we shall see.