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Muslims vs america [national burn the quaran day] cancelled by the pastor]

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Posts

  • PotatoNinjaPotatoNinja Fake Gamer Goat Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Enlightened and reasonable cultures have existed in the past there, and they can again.

    True, but I think the leverage won't be in place until the Middle East is broken and bankrupt. As long as they have such a large share in the petroleum trade, things aren't going to change.

    Enlightened and reasonable cultures very rarely rise from the ashes of broken and bankrupt regimes. They generally come about slowly and painfully as they emerge from tyrannous regimes that accidentally form a middle class.

    PotatoNinja on
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  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    The european and more recently american attitude toward the middle east has been that we will go there and take what we want because we have the power to do so. To the extent that modernized, secular culture existed there it generally opposed these efforts, and so massive expense was undertaken to dismantle it, and replace it with more pliant and inevitably more repressive arrangements.

    The indian example is interesting precisely because they have this same history, but considerably longer ago. Since "the west" gave up on rule/exploitation of india, it has been able to modernize it's government and economy at a relatively rapid pace.
    Youtube some of the more popular serial killers. A lot of them have a very subdued and quiet demeanor. It's really odd when they start talking about how they did it. You'd think a change in tone would accompany recounting the good times one had gutting people.

    it's a sad indictment of our political culture that we apparently refuse to take a commentator seriously unless they are loud enough

    Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Enlightened and reasonable cultures have existed in the past there, and they can again.

    True, but I think the leverage won't be in place until the Middle East is broken and bankrupt. As long as they have such a large share in the petroleum trade, things aren't going to change.

    Enlightened and reasonable cultures very rarely rise from the ashes of broken and bankrupt regimes. They generally come about slowly and painfully as they emerge from tyrannous regimes that accidentally form a middle class.

    I think there's a point when a population is too poor and oppressed to make a legitimate stand against tyranny. I think Iran is at that point now.

    Atomika on
  • PotatoNinjaPotatoNinja Fake Gamer Goat Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Enlightened and reasonable cultures have existed in the past there, and they can again.

    True, but I think the leverage won't be in place until the Middle East is broken and bankrupt. As long as they have such a large share in the petroleum trade, things aren't going to change.

    Enlightened and reasonable cultures very rarely rise from the ashes of broken and bankrupt regimes. They generally come about slowly and painfully as they emerge from tyrannous regimes that accidentally form a middle class.

    I think there's a point when a population is too poor and oppressed to make a legitimate stand against tyranny. I think Iran is at that point now.

    There are all sorts of reasons why a population might not be able to stand against their own government, its a complicated issue and you have plenty of moving parts. Generally governments that are both ineffective and unpopular have difficulty maintaining control, in Iran you see a very divided nation where the current regime still has a good amount of support, so I don't think you can simply say "Iran is too poor and oppressed to make a legitimate stand" because there's still a very large part of Iran that thinks "making a stand" is voting for Looney Tunes.

    More generally speaking, you really can't "break" or "punish" or "burn" a culture or nation in order to "force it" to improve. If a nation is in a shitty position and becomes poorer or loses a major conflict or has some other disaster fall upon it, "Democracy now blooms" is a very unlikely end result.

    For a good example of a kind of weird, complicated "evolution" of a country, look at what China is going through right now. You can see obvious political changes, both now and ones coming in the future, as different kinds of modernization and changing standards of living play out.

    Not to totally derail the thread, I just take issue with "I think the leverage won't be in place until the Middle East is broken and bankrupt." I do agree that petroleum dollars and politics make reform in the Middle East more problematic than in other locales. We may just be talking past each other.

    PotatoNinja on
    Two goats enter, one car leaves
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Not to totally derail the thread, I just take issue with "I think the leverage won't be in place until the Middle East is broken and bankrupt." I do agree that petroleum dollars and politics make reform in the Middle East more problematic than in other locales. We may just be talking past each other.

    Nah, we're on the same page.

    My point is that once the political leverage of oil money is taken away, a country won't tolerate backwardsness and poverty when they see all their neighbors doing well for themselves. It's like looking over the fence next door:
    "Oh, look, honey, Iraq just bought a new Lexus. Isn't that nice? Why can't we get a Lexus? Is it because of the Jews again? The Jews? Are the Jews why? Well, Fatima next door told me that she went to Iraq for the weekend and they hate Jews just as much as we do, so I don't buy it."

    India had a pretty oppressive caste culture, but that's dropping away as wages are stabilizing. I imagine the same will happen when there's no tangible benefit in continuing to prop up the Ayatollahs.

    Every culture has to choose to cling to their traditions or modernize; choosing adherence over progress usually means that culture is doomed to poverty and stagnation.

    Atomika on
  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Not to totally derail the thread, I just take issue with "I think the leverage won't be in place until the Middle East is broken and bankrupt." I do agree that petroleum dollars and politics make reform in the Middle East more problematic than in other locales. We may just be talking past each other.

    Nah, we're on the same page.

    My point is that once the political leverage of oil money is taken away, a country won't tolerate backwardsness and poverty when they see all their neighbors doing well for themselves. It's like looking over the fence next door:
    "Oh, look, honey, Iraq just bought a new Lexus. Isn't that nice? Why can't we get a Lexus? Is it because of the Jews again? The Jews? Are the Jews why? Well, Fatima next door told me that she went to Iraq for the weekend and they hate Jews just as much as we do, so I don't buy it."

    India had a pretty oppressive caste culture, but that's dropping away as wages are stabilizing. I imagine the same will happen when there's no tangible benefit in continuing to prop up the Ayatollahs.

    Every culture has to choose to cling to their traditions or modernize; choosing adherence over progress usually means that culture is doomed to poverty and stagnation.

    Thats being pretty hopeful. History is full of countries that went the other way. Extremists and fanatics do quite nicely in destitute countries.

    Styrofoam Sammich on
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  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Extremists and fanatics do quite nicely in destitute countries.

    . . . and are generally happy with poverty and stagnation.


    And like I said, without some kind of motivating factor, once the Middle East has nothing to offer the West, we'll go back to ignoring them.

    If anything, it's in the Middle East's interest to establish strong ties with the West so when that day comes that they're out of oil we have some reason to care that they're not swallowed up by the desert.

    Atomika on
  • enc0reenc0re Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Makes you wonder what Saudi Arabia or the UAE would be like without oil revenues.

    enc0re on
  • RchanenRchanen Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    enc0re wrote: »
    Makes you wonder what Saudi Arabia or the UAE would be like without oil revenues.

    Sooner or later, we'll find out.

    Rchanen on
  • Loren MichaelLoren Michael Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    re: Thomas Friedman:

    In addition to all the dumb shit that he says, this is just funny:

    http://www.nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html

    I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about—in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.

    Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:

    The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”

    First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense?


    ...

    Even better was this gem from one of Friedman’s latest columns: “The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?” There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the “title” of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple personality disorder? Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third he’s a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel? Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: “It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews? Why? Because his editor’s been drinking rubbing alcohol!” OK, so maybe all of this is unfair.There are a lot of people out there who think Friedman has not been treated fairly by critics like me, that focusing on his literary struggles is a snobbish, below-the-belt tactic—a cheap shot that belies the strength of his overall “arguments.” Who cares, these people say, if Friedman’s book The World is Flat should probably have been titled Theif he had wanted the book’s title to match its “point” about living in an age of increased global interconnectedness? And who cares if it doesn’t quite make sense when Friedman says that Iraq is like a “vase we broke in order to get rid of the rancid water inside?”Who cares that you can just pour water out of a vase, that only a fucking lunatic breaks a perfectly good vase just to empty it of water? You’re missing the point, folks say, and the point is all in Friedman’s highly nuanced ideas about world politics and the economy—if you could just get past his well-meaning attempts to explain himself, you’d see that, and maybe you’d even learn something.

    Loren Michael on
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  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    enc0re wrote: »
    Makes you wonder what Saudi Arabia or the UAE would be like without oil revenues.

    Afghanistan?

    Shadowen on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Couscous wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    I've found that referring to them as "the middle east" is probably the most offensive thing most Americans have done to them directly.

    I'm gonna go with re-electing the guy who invaded Iraq and generally pissed all over them. But ok.

    Plus most of the shit we did in the Cold War.

    I mean I guess if they want to be stereotypical assfucks, I can do the same thing to them. Herp derp they're all terrorists and some other adjective that has to do with a bathroom. See? Same nonsense. This gets us nowhere other than "Hey you shits, you're just getting angry about something stupid, why don't you stop that?"

    A) I can't control who the electoral college votes in, they don't even have to vote by majority if they think we're wrong.
    B) I had no control over the cold war, or what the leadership did.
    C) Dumbshits, they'd fit right in with Texas then. It's like a match made in Heaven. No pun intended.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Herp derp they're all terrorists and some other adjective that has to do with a bathroom. See? Same nonsense.

    A) I can't control who the electoral college votes in, they don't even have to vote by majority if they think we're wrong.
    B) I had no control over the cold war, or what the leadership did.
    Our shit was done by the government. The acts of terrorism weren't. The electoral college always goes with the majority of votes at this point. The cold war ended only fairly recently. We are still funding dictators. Egypt receives a lot of US money.

    Couscous on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    I'd be happy if we stopped that shit. I'm sure the rest of us would to.

    It's still retarded. Just because our retardedness is centralized doesn't make it any less... I don't know.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • DeebaserDeebaser on my way to work in a suit and a tie Ahhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Wierd. I walked over by Park51/Cordoba House/The (two blocks away from) Ground Zero (community center with a small) Mosque and the street is closed to traffic and there are barricades in front with an NYPD officer standing outside.

    Was there a bomb threat or something?

    Deebaser on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Probably a violent few rioters or something.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • SurikoSuriko AustraliaRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100924/ts_alt_afp/uspoliticsreligioneducationislam_20100924225425
    CHICAGO (AFP) – The Texas board of education voted Friday to to reject any textbooks which paint Islam in too favorable of a light, vowing to curtail what it sees as a "pro-Islam/anti-Christian" bias in school books.

    Suriko on
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Suriko wrote: »
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100924/ts_alt_afp/uspoliticsreligioneducationislam_20100924225425
    CHICAGO (AFP) – The Texas board of education voted Friday to to reject any textbooks which paint Islam in too favorable of a light,

    Good!
    . . . vowing to curtail what it sees as a "pro-Islam/anti-Christian" bias in school books.

    Ah, not so good.

    Atomika on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Truly, Texans have been promoting Islam and denigrating Christianity too long!

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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