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**lineygoblue** · November 15, 2015, 01:12 PM

Not as long as they hold us by the short curlys in the oil trade.

Of course we could try and drill for our OWN oil, but that doesn't fly due to the fear of fracking, offshore drilling, .. and highly paid environmental activists.

**Da Geezer** · November 15, 2015, 01:21 PM

If you're referring to the Sensitive Urban Zones in France, you may want to check on that.

Hack: The most recent article I found, Breitbart, said (and I hope the video links come through_

"Just two weeks ago, the New Republic wrote: “The word banlieue (‘suburb’) now connotes a no-go zone of high-rise slums, drug-fueled crime, failing schools and poor, largely Muslim immigrants and their angry offspring.”

There is abundant evidence that there really are no-go zones, despite all the denial. See this video, and more: here is a video about how Muslims plotted to ambush Swedish police with firebombs. Another video shows riots that followed police trying to make an arrest in a Belgian Muslim suburb. Here is video of Muslim riots in Trappes, France. And here is a video showing the plight of the remaining French women in a Muslim-dominated area of France. Here is a video showing Muslim youths running amok in Paris. In Paris, Muslims firebombed a bus with fifty passengers inside, and Muslim riots are spiraling out of control in Sweden.

I was inarticulate when I said the "these are all Muslim ghettos" I don't mean that 100% of the population are Muslim.

But let me take the Sunni/Shia split a little further. As I understand it, the conflict revolves around who was the true successor to the Prophet. for 1,300 years, Muslim's have been butchering each other about this. The successors within Christianity were Paul and Peter. There was no butchering of followers of the other Apostle.

And this goes to the heart of the Big Lie that our President (who was raised Shia) has repeatedly told. Islam means "submission". Non-Muslims pay dhimmitude in virtually all Muslim dominated countries, or they are killed. No other world religion teaches as part of it's basic doctrine the physical killing of non-believers. Islam does.

The Crusades were part of a political Catholic Church waging war on Muslims. But I will accept the statement that there are extremists in all religions. They are the exception and not the rule, because the Holy Teachings of all other religions ban the killing of non-believers. The Koran clearly mandates the killing or the heavy taxing and then killing of non-believers. That is why the silence from the Muslim community is so deafening.

My favorite Charity is called Stephen's Children. It is based in Cairo, and run by a Coptic Christian named Mama Maggie. In Egypt, Muslims men are allowed to rape Copts. The offspring of these encounters are called, in Hebrew, "Monzers". Timothy in the Bible was a Monzer from central Turkey. Mama Maggie takes care of thousands of Coptic Monzers who live in the Cairo dumps. She pays heavy dhimmitude. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between Islam and other world religions, and only folks from Washington DC even think that. Of course, 92% of DC residents support Obama in the most recent poll, and that is indicative of how out of touch folks in DC really are.

I agree that the Saudis are our enemy, because of the Wahhabism it exports. The way, IMO, to take them down is to open the Oil export spigot, and drive the price of oil downward.

**hack** · November 15, 2015, 01:46 PM

Re the Saudis: they do not hold the leverage they used to. Despite plenty of opposition to fracking in the US, there is enough fracking going on that the US is now the top producer of oil and gas. No longer Russia or Saudi. IMO crude-oil exports from the US would not make a difference at all. In fact we've seen prices plummet regardless of that. And there is more and more and more oil coming to market in the coming years. And Saudi, as a result, is in deep, deep trouble. Budget deficit of 20% this year. If there were a time to reconsider that relationship, the time is right now. But, again, follow the money. Defense contracting.

Geezer, that falls far short of the suggestion that France has ceded territory within its borders. What you are repeating has no basis in fact. In some areas you have a very high standard for what you are willing to believe. Not in all areas, it appears. I would be very cautious with that story you picked up from Cairo. Why would the offspring of a Copt and an Egyptian come from central Turkey? There would have been no such Coptic identity at that time, and as far as I know the Copts were conceived as a separate identity in Egypt centuries and did not travel outside it.

From what I know of contemporary Cairo, well, nobody's ``allowed'' to rape anybody. Furthermore in one of the only heartening stories to come out of the Middle East in recent years, during the 2011 revolution, when Mubarak was sending out goons to stir up sectarian violence, Copts protected Muslims and their storefronts and homes during Friday prayers and vice-versa when the Copts went to church Sunday mornings. It was a great example of people cutting through the bullshit. Sad that it didn't last, as no doubt Copts have some serious grievances too about how they are treated. I'm sure some of what you repeated is based on fact -- I do know that poor Christian girls are certainly a preferred choice in the prostitution industry because they aren't Muslim -- but I'm also wondering how much of it is actual fact.

**entropy** · November 15, 2015, 04:04 PM

Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

First Draft of a Solution to Millennial Mess

http://j.school/post/133278424715/first-draft-of-a-solution-to-millennial-mess

The public – rightfully sometimes – criticizes journalists, columnists, writers, broadcasters and opinion-makers for identifying problems without offering solutions. In a properly functioning democracy, solutions are the domain of elected officials and community leaders, such as clergy and educators. Journalists best serve as observers and analyzers of the ideas and solutions offered by community representatives. Friday afternoon, I watched the movie “Spotlight,” which told the story of four Boston Globe journalists exposing widespread child molestation within the Catholic church. It was not a movie about the Globe telling the church how to fix itself. It was an inspiring story that speaks to the power of journalists giving the public the information it needs to heal/improve itself. In my view, we as an American society have a serious problem with our young people. We see it at the University of Missouri, where we have students convinced rude, distasteful behavior is the equivalent of institutional racism. We see it in the cyberworld, where vigilante bloggers operate like bullying street gangs. We see it in the general lack of respect young people have for elders. Young people are a reflection of the values older people instilled in them. We failed. Each new wave of parents since the 1960s has required less and less of its children. Every social problem we have today is a direct result of the tumultuous 1960s. The assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X took a toll on this country that we’ve yet to fully recognize and analyze. A hail of bullets wiped out the forefathers of post-segregation America within four years of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Imagine what would’ve happened to our country had George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and James Madison all been assassinated within four years of the end of the Revolutionary War. The assassinations of several important figures around the time of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including Martin Luther King Jr., broke our society’s will. The country would not have recovered from such a devastating intellectual and emotional blow. Assassins broke our will in the ‘60s. New, less-dynamic leaders emerged, some of whom were hostile to the changes imposed by the turbulent era. The Vietnam War and the leadership assassinations undermined the resolve of the American public to authentically support the follow-up steps required for the seeds planted in the Civil Rights Movement to bloom. In my opinion, Richard Nixon – our 37th president, elected four months after the final murder (Bobby Kennedy) – crippled post-segregation America with two moves: 1) the launch of the law-and-order and a war on drugs in 1971 (mass incarceration); 2) ending the military draft in 1973. In 1970, roughly 200,000 Americans were incarcerated and 3.5 million were active duty military. In 2010, roughly 1.6 million Americans were incarcerated and 1.4 million were active duty military. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” – JFK “Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend.” – MLK We don’t ask young people to ante up. They have no skin in the game. We take our freedom for granted and our expectations for what this country owes us grows with each episode of the Kardashians. I’m referring to my generation and every generation after. We’re soft and spoiled. We’re in total rebellion to the beliefs that inspired the founders of modern-day, post-segregation America. “Safe spaces.” Are you f—ing kidding me? My uncle served in Vietnam. My father ate $h*t at a factory job and then built his own little business in the ghetto. He carried a .38 wherever he went. We shared a one-bedroom apartment in the ‘hood my senior year of high school. When we deadbolted the front door it didn’t have a damn thing to do with keeping the police out (and it still doesn’t). My mother packed a .357 Magnum when we lived in the ‘hood, worked two unskilled jobs so we could move to a working-class suburb and carried our butts to church. My grandmother watched the KKK drag her daddy to a lynching tree and cried when he came back home severely beaten but alive because one of the Klansmen didn’t want to kill a fellow mason. Richard Nixon ended the military draft in the United States in the wake of the Vietnam War. Safe spaces? What about the men who gave their lives and limbs at Normandy? They were 18 and 21 and 23. Where were their “safe spaces” free of hurtful words? What about all the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom? My father, both uncles and brother all served in the military and wished I had. This Missouri, safe-space crap is embarrassing. Too many millennials have no real-world experience. They’re experiencing the world through Instagram, Facebook, Yik Yak, Snapchat and Twitter. They’re removed from reality. They put on their Beats by Dre and hear what they want to hear. Couple the disconnecting technological advancements with Nixon’s civil rights revenge and we’ve got the kind of mess that causes a handful of misguided Missouri students to analogize their “struggle” to what’s going on in Paris. Mass incarceration and the end of mandatory enrollment in the military draft have worked together to corrode the values of young people of all colors and economic levels. You don’t have to go to prison to be negatively influenced by the values set loose in a society that cages millions of human beings. The pampered, groupthink hipster gangsta cyberbullying via Twitter and snark websites has the same ethics as a Crip in Compton. Put the Cripster in a Chicago ghetto for a year and he’ll drop his laptop for an AK47. The military draft grabbed 18-year-old boys, provided them discipline, a bigger window to see their place in the world and gave them two to four years to figure out which direction to go in life. There’s a process to helping a child mature and become invested in a country’s ideals and values. A kid just out of high school, full of mischief and energy greatly benefits from service to his/her country. Israel knows this. The Royal families in England know this. Starting with me and my generation, we’ve turned too many kids loose in our society without requiring them to contribute to the freedoms defended and won by the Silent Generation (1920s to 1940s) and Baby Boomers (1940s to 1960s). The draft wasn’t perfect. The wealthy dodged it. We should’ve fixed the draft rather than ended it. Service in the military used to be an investment in our youth. Now we spend more money on the military with the overwhelming majority of the resources burned on equipment used in fruitless, trillion-dollar wars. You get what you pay for. We’re spending a boatload on prison inmates. We’re producing better criminals. Solutions: 1) reinstate the draft; 2) end mass incarceration. There are no quick-fixes to the problems that have taken root in America. Rep. Charles Rangel, a Korean War veteran, is one of the few politicians with the courage to argue for a reinstatement of conscription. The fact that the initiative can’t gain any political support is the first sign it’s the right thing to do. Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, sparked a political discussion focused on reforming our drug laws and incarceration policies. Last summer President Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. At a time our lawmakers are ready to address criminal justice reform, it just so happens Black Lives Matter puppets are defining reform victory as body cameras on police. You’re not “woke,” the popular buzzword of the BLM crowd. Twitter doesn’t wake you. It brainwashes you.

One the same vein as my comments about people being scared to be parents...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

**Dr. Strangelove** · November 15, 2015, 04:15 PM

It's one of the stated goals of ISIS that Muslims and Christians not co-exist anywhere in the world. They WANT Muslims to be persecuted or made to be permanent second-class citizens in the US or Europe so that they will return to the Middle East and become radicalized.

It's part of their strategy that the Syrian refugees be blamed for this and get attacked by right-wing Europeans.

**Hannibal** · November 15, 2015, 05:15 PM

The West is in self destruct mode. Historians who observe a few hundred years from now or however long it takes for a decent civilization to rise back out of the ashes will by mystified as to how we let it happen.

**Dr. Strangelove** · November 15, 2015, 06:18 PM

Originally posted by Hannibal View Post

The West is in self destruct mode. Historians who observe a few hundred years from now or however long it takes for a decent civilization to rise back out of the ashes will by mystified as to how we let it happen.

Right. Because life as it currently exists is so miserable as compared with 100 years ago.

**hack** · November 15, 2015, 06:35 PM

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/The-Tenth-Parallel-Dispatches-Christianity/dp/031256936X"]The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam: Eliza Griswold: 9780312569365: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41fpsRE37TL.@@AMEPARAM@@41fpsRE37TL[/ame]

Recommended reading. A better understanding of how Christianity and Islam are duking it out. As it happens, the frontlines are often enough on the tenth parallel, just north of the equator.

**Hannibal** · November 15, 2015, 07:03 PM

Originally posted by Dr. Strangelove View Post

Right. Because life as it currently exists is so miserable as compared with 100 years ago.

Champion of the Strawman Bowling League, ten years running!

**Dr. Strangelove** · November 15, 2015, 07:14 PM

Originally posted by Hannibal View Post

Champion of the Strawman Bowling League, ten years running!

Sure, boo hoo hoo, the greatness of Western Civilization is over. It was a nice 3,000 years while it lasted.

**Jeff Buchanan** · November 16, 2015, 09:03 AM

Thanks, Hack ....... I've read a review/Synopsis but need to read this book.

There is some very good analysis out there regarding this epic struggle and how it is playing out in the modern era, having been such for 3000 years.

It is disheartening to see the vast misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the battle lines drawn between the two sides.

I do believe that the degree of radical mobilization of Muslims by fundamentalists in the milieu of crumbling governments and infrastructure where millions of them live is an unprecedented threat to the West.

I'm still not sure how to meet it head on but clearly not understanding and identifying the threat at a strategic then tactical level is disconcerting. As painful as it is to watch the stories recounting the horror in Paris last Friday night, it is serving the purpose of galvanizing Western politicians and thinkers to discern ways to deal with this real and considerable threat besides dropping tons of explosives, retributively and symbolically at best, on Raka, Syria.

**Da Geezer** · November 16, 2015, 01:09 PM

Not in all areas, it appears. I would be very cautious with that story you picked up from Cairo. Why would the offspring of a Copt and an Egyptian come from central Turkey? There would have been no such Coptic identity at that time, and as far as I know the Copts were conceived as a separate identity in Egypt centuries and did not travel outside it.

Hack:

Sorry about the imprecise language. Monzer is a Hebrew word for a bastard resulting from the rape of a woman of one religion by a man of another religion. I should never have brought Timothy into it, but he is the most famous example of a monzer. Monzers were not allowed into the temple, and were not instructed by the Jewish rabbis. The key points I guess, are rape, child, banishment from the Mother's religion. You are quite right about the Copts being a Christian sect in Northeast Africa. But as for there being thousands of monzers, I'll trust several friends and my daughter who have spent weeks in Cairo and in the dumps of Cairo. These children are everywhere, most are the product of rape, some are the product of dhimmitude by their mothers, and almost all have been rejected by their mothers. I have met Mama Maggie several times (btw, she is a PhD in computer science from a rich family) and it is the only time in my life I have been in the presence of greatness.

Islam is about submission. So is rape. Both are about power. The Yazidi and Christian women who are being held as sex slaves by ISIL are nothing new in Islam. The same happened in Spain and in the Balkans when Islamicists tried to conquer Europe. My point is that there is no moral equivalence between Islam and other major world religions. Muslims segregate themselves where they are a minority, but when they reach 30-40% in an area they want Sharia law, Imams in charge, and power. My opinion only: to say Muslims are like the Nazis is an insult to the Nazis.

Thanks for the book suggestion. I think the issue of dhimmitude is an almost uncovered story in the American press. I've talked to those who pay it. And as our Supreme Court said in better times, "the power to tax is the power to destroy.

**Jeff Buchanan** · November 16, 2015, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by Da Geezer View Post

........My point is that there is no moral equivalence between Islam and other major world religions.

My opinion only: to say Muslims are like the Nazis is an insult to the Nazis.

As to your first point, at face, I think you will find general agreement. However, there will be those that will ask you to more fully define "Moral equivalence." I'm not asking you to define it for me. I get it ...... in the terms it is defined in Western cultures and it's predominant religions and this is where I come from.

I think one of the things vastly misunderstood by Westerners about Islam is what their morality actually is.

As to your second point, I'd label it unnecessarily inflammatory if it were not for its contextual precision.

**hack** · November 16, 2015, 01:48 PM

If you want to make the points you're making I think you can do it solely based on facts, and not have to rely on stories that sound very sketchy to people familiar with the region. It's completely unneccessary when the truth gives you an even better argument for the thing you wanted to be true in the first place. If anyone actually took the time to read about what sharia law actually contains, they would find just a massive trove of things to be outraged about. It's low-hanging fruit for Islamophobes and I'm amazed it hasn't been done. The truth is always stranger than fiction, but people apparently prefer instead to calibrate some low-grade bullshit to trigger base fears.

My point is that there is no moral equivalence between Islam and other major world religions. Muslims segregate themselves where they are a minority, but when they reach 30-40% in an area they want Sharia law, Imams in charge, and power.

Which is the same as any group existing within a plurality. For all the lip service people pay to concepts like liberty and individualism, in the end so many of them are happy with despotism as long as it's their group in charge. I think with religion what matters to me personally is not what you believe, because the more I look the more similarities I find, but whether you also believe it's your right to force it on me.

**hack** · November 16, 2015, 02:12 PM

Originally posted by Jeff Buchanan View Post

Thanks, Hack ....... I've read a review/Synopsis but need to read this book.

There is some very good analysis out there regarding this epic struggle and how it is playing out in the modern era, having been such for 3000 years.

It is disheartening to see the vast misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the battle lines drawn between the two sides.

I do believe that the degree of radical mobilization of Muslims by fundamentalists in the milieu of crumbling governments and infrastructure where millions of them live is an unprecedented threat to the West.

I'm still not sure how to meet it head on but clearly not understanding and identifying the threat at a strategic then tactical level is disconcerting. As painful as it is to watch the stories recounting the horror in Paris last Friday night, it is serving the purpose of galvanizing Western politicians and thinkers to discern ways to deal with this real and considerable threat besides dropping tons of explosives, retributively and symbolically at best, on Raka, Syria.

Agree wholeheartedly. As it happens Nicholas Nassim Taleb (some of you may know him as the investor who popularized the black-swan concept) wrote a facebook post about this the other day that got recycled into Politico. His position is essentially that, bottom line, go after Saudi as they're the ones funding the Wahhabis and the spread of this type of extremism. No need to dive into history or comparative analysis. Keeping your feet on the ground and your eyes on the prize means asking, first and before anything else, whether the US defense industry is ready to lose Saudi as a customer.

Here's the post, if anyone wants to read it:

The Saudi Wahhabis are the real foe

http://www.politico.eu/article/the-saudi-wahhabis-are-the-real-foe-islamic-terrorists-salafi-violence/

We must take our fight to the preachers and financiers of terror.

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