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Meh. This is an easy one to figure out. The Muslims are acting all pissed off and crazy because they have to live in the hottest, most barren, shittiest part of the world. And as a bonus a cruel twist of fate put the idea in their heads that their shitty corner of the world is not only not shitty, but sacred. Sacred enough to kill for. For centuries. Over and over.
Yeah, I can see them being fundamentalist wackos after 1 or 2 thousand years of that place.
Gods, I hate agreeing with Friedman, but the man knows his M.E. politics. (From Beruit to Jerusalem is a fucking amazing book if you wanna get your head around factional conflicts and the balance of power, also see Kissinger's diplomacy). My ME vision is where the united states favors nations with good policy, and provides incentives for companies to buy from them instead of the next religio-facist regieme. Like buying oil imports from Kadafi since he cleaned up his act (yes i'm aware the man is a total nutjob, but he's made more progress than many.)
Think guided market incentives to invest in nations that reinvest in infrastructure (roads, schools) instead of palaces and high end hotels and disincentives to invest in places that invest in counter-american ends (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Syria). You know, old style/cold war statesmanship without the whole school of the americas part. Granted we do much of this already, but we tend to allow people to put money where they should, like again, Saudi Arabia, central American nacrogovernments and such.
I would argue that the Branch-Davidians were so far out of the mainstream that the only place they could practice their particular brand of kookiness was on an isolated plantation in Waco. It's important to note (I thought I did earlier) that they weren't political, and so that's obviously a HUGE difference b/w them and radical Islam.Quote:
Originally Posted by g0zen
But my point was that in lawful (read: regulated societies w/well-established, good rule-sets) societies, the ultra-radicals are ultra-marginalized. Every society will have its fuck-ups. But societies with solid, modern rule-sets, have radicals that are pretty much neutered. They can't start wars, they don't kill thousands (radical Islamist terrorism has certainly killed thousands), and they definitely don't hinder the lives of whole societies (certainly the Taliban did that! lol).
You bring up the Army of God (the ppl who advocate the killing of abortionists, right?). As awful and disgusting as they are, they not a political force (thank God). They are, like the Branch-Davidians, marginalized, forced to the Outer Rim, where they can pontificate from their wretched hive of scum and villainy. Even tho they'd like to be as effective as al Queda and wish they could have the bodycount of the Bali bombings, Madrid, etc., they never, ever could.
I don't need to, and here's why.Quote:
Originally Posted by g0zen
I'm not saying that radical Islam = Islam. And I'm not even saying that radical Islamists are a higher % of all Muslims than crazy Hindus are a higher % of all Hindus.
What I'm saying is that no one worries about crazy Hindus (and obviously there are some). Crazy Hindus haven't been: driving flaming cars into airports; planning to blow up a bunch of chicks at a nightclub; blowing up train stations; ethnically cleansing fellow Hindus that subscribe to a different interpretation of Hinduism on the scale that radical Islamists have been; practicing honor killings; etc.
Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism...all this stuff...these religions aren't being hijacked by the "hard-core zealotry".
The "hard-core zealotry" in Islam is fucking up other parts of the world and it's doing a pretty good job of fucking up the Islamic world, too (see: sharia). I can't wait until the hard-core zealots are gone and mainstream, moderate Islam can thrive and not have to constantly be ashamed of what is being done in the name of Islam.
One final note.
It would be easy to dismiss what I'm saying (that rule-sets are crucial) and write me off as someone who hates Islam, etc. But what I'm advocating applies not just to radical Islamists!
In Africa there is a child army led by some fucker that calls itself...well, I don't remember what they call themselves. But they are a fucked up bunch of kids that roams the countryside killing in the name of Christianity. Chopping off limbs, etc.
My point is that in places like Africa and the M.E., where proper rule-sets are not enforced, bad shit happens. In the M.E. the bad shit is being perpetrated by crazy Muslims (no surprise b/c that's the dominant religion there). In Africa it's lots of crazy ppl (Christians, Muslims, batshit warlords, you name it Africa has a crazy version of it).
The world is like a city. In the the US, Europe and Japan you've got the high-rise condos, downtown, a bustling port, and several professional sports teams. China, Korea, Taiwan, India, Brazil, and (yes) Russia are sort of like the middle class neighborhoods. Prosperous but not exactly filthy rich. Yet. Certainly they're better off than they once were!
And then Africa, the M.E., and parts of SE Asia are like the ghetto. They're all fucked up with all kinds of issues pertaining to education, substance abuse (oil), etc.
We're not going to solve the world's ghetto problem by throwing up a wall and pretending it doesn't exist. That shit will spill out of the ghetto (it already has) and onto our lawns unless we start looking at new ways to clean it up.
Ah, but ultimately the classes depend on each other, if everyone has the same, we've got an even distrobution of wealth. As the system exists, we depend on the dispairity of wealth to sustain America, if we started to pay fair market prices for things like oil and other raw resources we'd quickly just as soon move operations back to America to save on transport costs. The very heart of American captialism relies on hte fact there are desperate people out there willing to work for shit in the hopes they'll get ahead. If the standards of living and labor prices equalize like say, American and Europe roughly have, we've little reason to employ each other.
We employ indians because they work cheap. Indians employ SE asians and African refugees because they'll work cheaper. Africans pillage and rob from each other because there's no place else to go because no one will come to their countries. Equalizing the wealth of nations pretty much ends the current system of captialism.
You can argue it, but it's a very weak argument. The Branch-Davidians were not isolated because of societal pressures on them, it was because they had a deep desire to disconnect and disengage from society. The armed clash only happened when the govt. came to them, rather than because they attacked or sought to attack the United States.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Meach
A better example would be the LDS or Church of Scientology, we all know how loony their beliefs are from the mainstream ones, and that doesn't stop either of them from being political. Are they violent? Not really, but then no one has actively tried to attack or subvert them, so they don't feel any kind of threat real or perceived.
This is a ridiculous fiction. The Nazis started as an ultra-radical fringe group, Marxism spread across Europe through cadres of radicals, and yet not even the modernized institutions of Europe could keep these ideologies from totally upending the established order. What you're claiming is a kind of supreme naiveté, and is more than a little racist saying that just because these groups are small or that their views are extreme that they're essentially harmless in the intellectually superior Western Christian nations, it's wishful thinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Meach
These people live in the suburbs, not Mos Eisley. They look no different than anyone else, but they're terrorists. We don't think of them as such, why? Because they're White and Christian. They have quite a bit of political power, in fact it's pretty well-established that the power of the pro-life movement is propelled by extremists, from their formal White Rose Banquets to exhibitions across college campuses and in parks where sweet old ladies stand next to 15' poster boards of aborted fetuses and encourage the murder of doctors and their families.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Meach
Now, why don't they have the body count under their belt of Al Queda? Because they can't evoke the same kind of outrage from people, they can't convince other affluent White Christians that their religion is under attack by an outside force and that if they don't attack, their way of life is over. It's not that Islam is somehow more conducive to drawing in people to be murders. They just have a better advertising campaign because the West has such a terrible history in the ME. People like you and dakidski are so desperate to indict Islam, when in the end you're only falling into the trap of the jihadi. You let them turn it into a war of religions when it's really a war of fundamental ideas and the ability of cultures to co-exist. This isn't going to be Thunderdome, where radical Islam and the West enter, and only one leaves.
It really sickens me the kind of holier-than-thou imperialist attitude that it takes to say 'well once all the bad apples are dead the rest will see it our way'. Why does every Muslim have to carry the crimes of these lunatics on their shoulders? Do we lament about how we can't wait till all the gang bangers are dead and the 'moderate' African Americans can thrive? It's just rank condescension and does nothing to address the roots of the problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Meach
Yeah, but there's nothing saying that the guy on top has to stay precisely where he's at. He could move up, he could move down.
I've often thought, "Will the whole system come crashing down when Cote de Ivoire has the lifestyle of the US?" Aside from the environmental questions raised (plentiful!), I just go back to the point that there is nothing mandating that the US (or anyone else) stay at their relative position.
Don't hold me to this but I think that when the Ivory Coast has the cost of living of today's US, that world's equivalent of the US could be more than we've imagined ("Battlecruiser...operational").
One thing about capitalism is that (imo) it's never "done." It's not a zero-sum game. Sure, there will always be "winners" and "losers" but that kind of game can go on indefinitely (until, as Hans says in Die Hard, "there were no more worlds to conquer"). Today's winners can be tomorrow's super-winners (or super-losers). The pie is size XL today? Tomorrow it's size XXXXXL.
Anyways. Good point!
This kind of idealism is really counterproductive. When the US thinks it can paternally guide a nation to 'do the right thing' what we mean is 'do the right thing for us', which inevitably leads to the blowback against us that haunts us now. Terrorism and hatred of the United States didn't form in a vacuum. At this point, we're better off getting out of foreign countries and foreign engagements. Also, return the tariff system to protect American industry, globalization has done nothing for people. It's a scam to unite the wealthy across borders in happy mutual robbery of the rest of us.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarsKitten
I know you were writing this b/4 I posted the belowQuote:
Originally Posted by g0zen
I want to make it clear that I'm not eager to indict Islam (and I think the above shows that).Quote:
Originally Posted by The Meach
I absolutely do NOT want a war of religions. I want to live in a world where Islam and all the other religions (and non-religions!) of the world can live in peace. Freedom of religion baby!
I DO want to live in a world where the free exchange of ideas is not just permitted but cherished. Guys like Osama don't want to live in that kind of world. :(
I believe you! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by buttcheeks