NASA Chief: Next Frontier Better Relations … NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (left) said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world. Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel. – Fox News
Dominant Social Theme: It is most important to appeal to the Muslim Community worldwide.
Free-market Analysis: For many people, the idea that NASA's mission is now essentially diplomatic rather than technological is, well … weird. NASA is supposed to put astronauts in space and it would seem that the funding, infrastructure and professional talent that NASA has acquired is best focused on such missions. But nonetheless, the Obama administration has decided that NASA is the perfect vehicle to improve relations with Muslims.
Unlike some others, we are not in the least surprised by Obama's instructions to NASA. While Obama on the surface does not seem especially preoccupied with Muslims and Muslim society, we are convinced that it is indeed a preoccupation not only of the Obama administration but of the larger Anglo-American power elite that stands behind his administration and other political regimes in Britain and Europe as well.
If there were a fear-based meme to tease out of these various machinations, and now this sudden emphasis on cordiality, it would be that "Radical Muslims have been enemies of the West, but the West bears no grudges and seeks to engage Muslims worldwide as much as possible in a friendly environment."
Here's some more form the article:
"When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.
The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo — in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part.
"It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations)," he said. He held up the International Space Station as a model, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese.
Again, this is not surprising to us. From our point of view the Anglo-American elite is absolutely obsessed with the Muslim world. We believe that presidents and prime ministers benefit greatly from the unspoken backing of this power elite and that one of Barack Obama's presidential qualifications from a power-elite standpoint was his Muslim background.
But why would the Western powers-that-be want to reach out to Muslims when American, British and NATO forces have been pounding away at countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly a decade now? We are on record that the elite is actually pursuing a two-track strategy here, which is aimed at reconfiguring Muslim society into a more Western image around the world.
We have written about this in several articles, postulating that the Arab Emirates have served as a kind of laboratory for the West – small countries that are allied with the West and have allowed their cultures to be permeated by Western values. There are extremely wealthy Arab businessmen in these countries that have developed methodologies of banking, investing and speculating that have Western characteristics but observe, on the surface anyway, Muslim religious and cultural traditions.
The Arab Emirates, in a sense, are the "anvil," we have written, on which a more forward-looking Arab/Western culture is being forged. But there is a hammer, too. As much as Western financial institutions have been active in the Arab Emirates, so Western military power has been active in other places in the Middle East. This is the "hammer." The younger generations of Muslims are supposed to look to Dubai for inspiration as to how the gap can be bridged between Muslim and Western cultures. At the same time, the Muslim population can see clearly that those who expect to resist Western influences will be dealt with harshly – as those in Iraq and Afghanistan (maybe Iran) are learning.
Within this context then we are not surprised at the Obama administration's determination to send a signal to Muslims that the American administration holds them and their culture in the highest regard. The unspoken vocabulary is one of technology and cordiality. The idea is that the Muslim world is to be brought up to the level of the Western world as soon as possible from a financial, political and technological standpoint.
Of course we find this whole plan of attack to be somewhat disturbing. That's because we do not believe that the current failing form of Western regulatory democracy ought to be exported anywhere, let alone to the Muslim world. But the Western power elite is determined to co-opt the Muslim and bring 1.3 billion Muslims under the Western roof. To do this, the elite has thrown open the doors in Europe to Muslim immigrants and generally pursued a policy of mingling East and West whenever and wherever possible. Seen from this standpoint, Obama's outreach is part and parcel of a much larger plan being implemented by the Anglo-American elite. The success or failure of such plans will have a significant impact not only on the West but on Muslim societies worldwide.
