What Roger said. And thanks to the many other voices of reason who reject knee-jerk bigotry.

In the face of the great shared grief, unleashed by the terrible events in Paris and as we confront the utterly depraved actions of their perpetrators, I find the trend of this thread to be amazingly unrelated to the real situation.

The challenge to each Western country's security, police and judicial services and structures is immediate, will need all their best and wisest efforts to handle and we should wish them every legal success. The real issues, however, are neither Norman's tired jeremiads against globalisation, nor the Pope's bizarre excursion into geometry, still less John's splenetic splutterings about Islam. The real issues are clearly why we have moved from the relatively stable world of two decades ago to this hellish mess and how we should attempt to change it for a better and more stable future.

If we are not to lose - or perhaps that should be re-gain or re-assert - the civilised, pluralist values of the world we had once prized, we cannot get to a better 'there' from here, by further abandoning decency (e.g. by attempting to stigmatise or spurn refugees from the wars we have done so much to create) and legality (e.g. by expanding, still further, policies of 'extra-judicial' killing) - still less by increasing the sum of human misery by more big-power mayhem and macho-bombing. That, it seems, is pretty clearly how we got to 'here'. The 'West' and its over-weaning 'powers' need to recognise their past follies and begin to make real efforts - a tithe of what we currently spend on increasing military 'endeavours' would make a stunning start - to invest in the peaceful reconstruction of the lands and peoples we have savaged. Some symbolic acts of contrition would also not go amiss; surrendering our own alleged war criminals - Blair, Bush and their cabinets for a sensible start - to international judicial process might register a credible stand for the peace and justice which we preach but do little to assert.

For all sorts of reasons, on which it may be comforting to dwell as sources of our personal powerlessness, none of this may be likely to happen any time soon - but it will surely never happen unless those of us still fortunate enough to have the freedom to advance such ideas, do so.

Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times offers a bit of helpful perspective:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/op...ar-itself.html

We're not very good at this, are we? Best go back to writing poems. What we need is Captain Kirk and world government.

Is that the royal we, John?

You and me and all of us here, Roger. Imagine a world run by artists. Nothing would ever work.

No, actually, he's not, and it's disingenuous to claim he is.

"His 2003 nomination by U.S. President George W. Bush to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace was protested by Islamists, Arab-American groups, and Democratic leaders, who cited his oft-stated belief that victory is the most effective way to terminate conflict.[2][3] The Bush administration sidestepped the opposition with a recess appointment."

"Through Campus Watch, Pipes encouraged students and faculty to submit information on "Middle East-related scholarship, lectures, classes, demonstrations, and other activities relevant to Campus Watch".[14] The project was accused of "McCarthyesque intimidation" of professors who criticized Israel when it published "dossiers" on eight professors it thought "hostile" to America. In protest, more than 100 academics demanded to be added to what some called a "blacklist"."

"According to The New York Times, Pipes has "enraged" many American Muslims by advocating that Muslims in government and military positions be given special attention as security risks and by opining that mosques are "breeding grounds for militants."[35] In a 2004 article in the New York Sun, Pipes endorsed a defense of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II"

"In The Nation, Brooklyn writer Kristine McNeil describes Pipes as an "anti-Arab propagandist" who has built a career out of "distortions... twist[ing] words, quot[ing] people out of context and stretch[ing] the truth to suit his purpose".[18] James Zogby argues that Pipes possesses an "obsessive hatred of all things Muslim", and that "Pipes is to Muslims what David Duke is to African-Americans".[40] Christopher Hitchens, a fellow supporter of the Iraq War and critic of political Islam, also criticized Pipes, arguing that Pipes pursued an intolerant agenda, and was one who "confuses scholarship with propaganda", and "pursues petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity"."

That's probably enough. One could go on and on, but there's already sufficient evidence to show this figure should not be viewed as an expert in anything, and certainly should not be cited in rational discourse.

Best,

Bill

Albert Camus from Neither Victims Nor Executioners

Modern nations are driven by powerful forces along the roads of power
and domination. I will not say that these forces should be furthered
or that they should be obstructed. They hardly need our help and, for
the moment, they laugh at attempts to hinder them. They will, then,
continue. But I will ask only this simple question: What if these
forces wind up in a dead end, what if that logic of history on which
so many now rely turns out to be a will o' the wisp? What if, despite
two or three world wars, despite the sacrifice of several generations
and a whole system of values, our grandchildren--supposing they survive-
find themselves no closer to a world society? It may well be that the
survivors of such an experience will be too weak to understand their
own sufferings. Since these forces are working themselves out and since
it is inevitable that they continue to do so,there is no reason why
some of us should not take on the job of keeping alive, through the
apocalyptic historical vista that stretches before us, a modest
thoughtfulness which, without pretending to solve everything, will
constantly be prepared to give some human meaning to everyday life.
The essential thing is that people should carefully weight the price
they must pay....

All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect
on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those
who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the
accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their
force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist,
it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five
continents throughout the coming years an endless strugle is going to
be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in
which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success
than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his
hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circum-
stances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be
to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful
than munitions.

I have been paging through the Frenchman's stuff today and found it amazingly relevant after 70 years. I flip back and forth from his words to the reports of the resistance in Rojava.

http://roarmag.org/2015/03/rojava-ku...ic-delegation/

I understand that my posts about Rojava must seem to be off topic but I believe these pockets of resistance at the heart of the mess to be the key to identifying new categories of ally and enemy that transcend old categories that are becoming more and more incomprehensible. John, if you read about these folks and their varying relations to Islam you will see the utter nonsense of your views.

Andrew, don't hold your breath.

Thanks for that, Andrew.

Nemo

That is a Camus book I haven't read. Thanks!

Hey Janice. There is a book of his writings from Combat that contains the whole essay. It is also online in several places. Have you read his writings on Algeria from Resistance, Rebellion, and Death? I love that stuff of his.
Arendt once wrote Karl Jasper's and Henri Blucher about Camus saying " I have met Camus. I think he is the best [one] in France."

Bill L.,
You've got to be kidding. Pipes has been publishing books and articles on Mid-Eastern matters since the 80's. He has published in the NY Times, the Atlantic, Harper's, the LA Times, and scores of other publications. He is a long-time pundit, just as I said. I didn't give Janice a Surgeon-General's warning about who hates him and who likes him, because she was entirely capable of evaluating the article for herself. I'm not endorsing everything he's written, which I haven't read and which has served political purposes, but he's as much a long-time pundit as others in the field you may like. Bill

Bio:
http://www.danielpipes.org/bios/

Hey Bill.
I worked pretty intensely organizing around the sanctions issues and human rights in Iraq during the late nineties and early two thousands. Everytime Pipes wrote about something closely involved with he distorted the facts and manipulated to push his own prescriptions without any noticeable sorrow for Arab lives lost. I think he's one of the Certain. Just sayin'.

No problem, Andrew. I just object to "long-time pundit" being labeled "disingenuous" when everything Bill and you say proves the truth of it. I'm not saying you should let him or François Hollande or Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Benjamin Netanyahu or Barack Obama con you into fighting another war there. In any case, this is highly contested territory. Some scholarship is funded by foreign sources, adding a cause for skepticism. There are incompatible traditions of interpretation. Temperament even enters into it. Some people like Karen Armstrong on the subject, for example. Bill

Imagine it funded by foreign sources! If it is funded by America, that's quite a different thing. Smug and self-satisfied, quite Obama-like.

And now we know the attacks were 'executed by the CIA'. Who says so? The Russians, of course they do. But also an American Professor called Doctor Paul Craig Roberts who writes for something called The Wall Street Journal. Now all is clear. It wasn't the poor old muslims at all. We must all take a Syrian family into our spare rooms

Don, I can't for the life of me imagine how you can interpret the question and the response to mean that people think Hollande has gone too far. I haven't found the original article, but as you present it, it can only mean that they think he hasn't done enough.

A president to be proud of.

https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/...19238/?fref=nf

Yes, indeed, Janice. An excellent speech.

Now let's hear from The-Man-Who-Would-Be-President. (You'll need to scroll down to get the video itself.) If this man is elected President, I'm emigrating to Syria.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rmed-guns.html

I think we can all agree, Brian, that Obama, wretched as he is, is a better President of the USA than Donald Trump would be.

Well, there it is in a nutshell.
(I do not refer to John's double-edged remark, despite the sequence here)

Nemo

Wretched, John? That's not at all how he strikes me. Are you perhaps confusing him with David Cameron?

From high upon his perch Nonsense Man kept close eye upon the discourse. Suddenly a thread appeared where ideas where being exchanged, positions examined. Nonsense Man donned his Supersuit and his Bozo Nose, jumped into his knee jerk mobile and rushed into action.
Go, Nonsense Man! Go!

But we can agree on one thing, John. Not only is Trump not fit to be president of anything at all, he isn't even fit to be let out on the street without a leash and a muzzle.

Brian's # 60.

Here is the video of Trump saying it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ed-to-tragedy/

Remember he tweeted that message also on Jan. 7. This time he learned his lesson and tweeted the usual "our thoughts and prayers...". But he couldn't restrain himself after the introductory "moment of silence".

He and these political persons are fueling the fire of hatred.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...tack/75857924/

Lots of cowards over there in the Greatest-Nation-The-World-Has-Ever-Seen. (Sorry, I couldn't resist that. My friends here are of course not included in that rude jibe.)

I can understand Trump not wanting to let potential terrorists into the country. After all, in view of the ludicrous ease with which guns can be bought and used to commit massacres, letting terrorists in would simply be taking jobs away from native Americans.

But Janice, that's the nub of it, is it not? One's friends never are, whomsoever one may be.

Perhaps if one should wish for a world with fewer cowards, ragheads, cheese-eating surrender-monkeys etc., one should work towards increasing one's circle of friends.


Editing back:Oh dear. I see from Janice's reply that I didn't make clear what I meant and since it was a naive and shallow observation anyway, I apologise for it.
.

Don't worry, Ann. I have a sufficiency of defrienders elsewhere. I need to have somewhere to hang out.

Scapegoating is a tried-and-true chicken sh#@ way to score political points. And all this over only 10,000 refugees, in a country as big as the United States. Pathetic.

How excellent would it be if America offered to take in a million or so - still just a drop in our bucket - and explained we were trying to make up somewhat for how wrong-headed we were when we denied entrance to Jews fleeing central Europe before WWII?

That's the sort of big dream I'd like to see dreamed.

Ed

Why are so many people simultaneously risk-averse about taking in refugees and/or immigrants, and at the same time so darn reflexively hawkish about sending troops to other countries? Doing the former is certainly no riskier than doing the latter, but the former is morally virtuous and the latter is morally suspect. One would hope that people would be risk-averse when it comes to their own moral standing: that they would be more worried about making the historically unforgivable decision of denying refuge to the persecuted, and less worried about exercising (virtuous) military self-restraint.

Pedro.

Pedro, I don't think people here are actually risk-averse to taking in refugees at all. I think it's just a pretext for not wanting more immigrants who are not white Christians. The same way Trump has his followers believing that most Mexican immigrants are drug lords and rapists, that crowd is ready to believe that refugees fleeing terrorism are themselves terrorists. It doesn't matter that we've had 750K refugees since 9/11 and none of them have turned out to be terrorists. Too many have turned out not to be evangelical Christians.

I think I see a solution. Americans want more refugees and Brits want less. Therefore... How many do you want? Our muslim population is five times yours so it's only fair.

Fair? What does fairness have to do with it? Are you more of a British citizen because you are Christian than you would be if you were Muslim? Perhaps the Muslims don't think it's fair that you're there, which would be a horrible thing for them to think but only on the same order as what you seem to be saying.

Roger, you can have all the moral high ground you want. When are you taking a Syrian family into your house?

Don't be silly, John . . . though it seems "silly" is your only form of argument. My last comment to you responded to your cavalier reference to your fellow British citizens as a burden that it is unfair for the likes of you to have to shoulder, a comment which makes it clear that you regard some of your fellow Muslim citizens as second class undesirables. For you to "refute" my observation by suggesting that I'm advocating the quartering of refugees in people's private homes is rather beyond the nonsensical blather even of Donald Trump. In all these discussions, it seems you never address arguments or give reasons or respond to what's been said, but you engage in glib evasions, often coming up with a new bit of unsupportable and silly nonsense to distract attention from your last bit after it's been conclusively refuted. Donald Trump, at least, seems to be doing this consciously, as a cynical political maneuver, but I fear that you are simply oblivious to the way you confuse glib rejoinders for actual discourse.

The Obama speech. Rank naivete or rank cynicism? Both?

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to escape the ravages of our CIA regime-change assets."

Lady Liberty has become a self-feeding oroborus. Her head's now parked squarely up her robes. I don't even think it's concerted deception anymore. The Noble Liars have simply lost their cheat sheets. The only thing beyond good and evil is more evil. Every seven-year-old learns that in Sunday School, but that's the white Christian in me talking. Some go on to become clever fools and digest Plato, Nietzsche and Leo Strauss. So, once they feel we're up to the task, they're going to call off global totalitarianism, collapse the panopticon and unleash an era of universal self-determination?? Is that really the party line?? Deep deep down, absolute power has a benign soft middle just dying to get out. Who but a bunch of poets would believe that?

But yes, regular Americans need to come to terms with their very busy covert side. A good place to start is the new book out by Salon founder David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard, on the (arguably psychopathic) Allen Dulles and his decades of international mischief. He's as close as you'll get to a Typhoid Mary for mayhem in the post-WW2 era. Who would guess from today's headlines, for example, that Iran was the second Muslim-majority nation (behind Turkey) to recognize the State of Israel? Unfortunately, Iran was disabused of Western goodwill in large part by Dulles' CIA's assassination of democratically-elected Mossadegh in '53. We suffer the effects of that crime even today.

Let's also not forget that the modern activated form of jihadism was invented by America, or certainly minted in our name, by one Polish refugee Zbigniew Brzezinski via the Afghan Mujahideen in 1979. This nihilistic abberant form of Islam needn't have been weaponized. Indeed it might have lain dormant forever as a vestige of a bygone barbarous age. But there was a Soviet Empire to defeat. The Saudis are compounding this error by bankrolling jihadists whose ultimate prize (after Damascus) is, let's face it, Mecca.

Evil seems to have a 'sorcerer's apprentice' complex. While it condescends to human direction for an early foothold, it ultimately detests being wielded and strives to become its own master. That would be global jihadism. The genie is out of the bottle. Humanity's about to learn you can't steer an abyss. Those who think they site astride it are victims of hubris. It'll just eat them last.

Now that France has inaugurated the EU mutual defense clause (rather than the Nato ditto) and is coordinating with Russia who has finally admitted yes, there was a bomb just as Mr. Obama said several days ago, and now that the US and Turkey are also working together, the script is being rewritten.

I can't help being reminded of how the blitzkrieg changed when Hitler opened a second front in WW II and blithely marched his troops off in the direction of Moscow. It didn't happen at once, but it happened, a bite too big to chew, that was the turning point. (Clarification. In re-reading this I see that it is not clear that I meant that ISIS has bit off more than it can chew by attacking Turkey, Russia and France in a short period of time.)

I am also reminded of all the photos of those young men frozen in the snow outside Stalingrad. They too were indoctrinated by a decade of membership in Hitler Youth. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/440930619743865225/

History does repeat itself. General Sherman said it: War is hell.
It will get worse, much worse, before it gets better. And many innocent people will die.

Cross-posted with the above rant.

The humane impulse toward this situation might pose to the thoughtful liberal the question of why the Syrian refugee crisis must be solved now (with which I concur), yet universal health care can be thrown under the bus again and again, and a candidate who vociferously backed the utter catastrophe of a war that played a crucial role in setting these events in motion (Hillary Clinton) still has a f#%king political career. Questions of "multiculturalism" versus assimilation also remain relevant--until recently, I lived near the Hasidic part of Williamsburg, where such questions are posed rather concretely and with a non-Muslim population.

However, John's blustery response to Rogerbob is the worst kind of demagoguery. I'm unlikely to take a Syrian into my house for the same reason as I'm unlikely to provide insurance for the uninsured. I, as a private citizen in a country with incredible income inequality, am not particularly well-equipped to do so, even compared to as self-evidently unjust a government as the American state. Private voluntarism is not the solution to a social problem.