Norman, you probably mean well, but you don't make sense. You seem to write down only every third or fourth political cliché in your thought process. That makes it hard to follow your reasoning. For me anyway. Maybe it is crystal clear to others.

But takig Syrians into their houses is precise;y what many god people have offered to do. Putting it all o the state seems rather mean-minded. In other words I suggest, in a totally non-blustery way, some left-leaning people are hypocritical. It is their besetting sin. For me, my family comes first, my friends come next and other people a long way down the list. That may be horrid but it is not hypocritical.

Muslims have plenty of countries to live in where their religion is all there is. And many of these countries have plenty of space and plenty of money.

Whatevs, dudebro.

First off, the number of exclusively Muslim countries is roughly equal to the number of entirely Christian countries. Secondly, the charge of hypocrisy is a classically spurious one, being a variation of, "If you don't like capitalism, why do you buy food and socks and magazines and whatthef**keverelse at stores?" It's tedious, with the answers being kind of obvious if one thinks about it for not very long at all.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

But John, is everyone who is not in your family or your circle of friends a Muslim? I imagine there are a few white Christians who are not in your family and you are not friends with, so I'm wondering why you think it's "fair" for them to stay but you want the Muslims to leave?

Come on Janice, you're more than capable of backfilling the cliches I leave out.

Everything we call "evil" or "monstrous" or "inhuman" relates in some way to a lack of empathy.

As someone who has struggled with empathy my entire life (and who has also closely observed a number of criminally-inclined, empathy-deficient relatives), I'm fascinated by the limits of empathy among supposedly normal people.

It seems normal to condemn the lack of empathy that allows terrorists to commit mass murder. And yet--sometimes in the same breath as condemning the terrorists' lack of empathy--apparently upstanding and patriotic citizens are exhorting each other to turn off their empathy for entire classes of human beings, because these undesirables are insufficiently like "us", and somehow deserve their fate of almost certain death if denied aid.

Aren't the victims just as dead due to a lack of empathy, whether they are gunned down or bombed or left to drown or die of exposure or starvation?

What does seem clear is that failures to empathize are not "inhuman" or "monstrous." Such failures seem all too characteristically human.

Normal, even.

I don't know how anyone else feels about it, but I feel sad and frustrated.

I wonder if there will be a similar graphic posted seventy years from now on behalf of yet another group of refugees as we look back at our shamefully unwelcoming attitude toward Syrians.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CT9OHVGXAAA-u72.jpg:large

I am reminded of Mrs Jellaby (I expect I have spelled that wrong) in 'Bleak House'.

And I am reminded of Ebeneezer Scrooge, before the ghosts came.

You might perhaps look at the work of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Roger. She puts it all so much better than I can. And that goes for anybody.

Have you heard of her? Be honest.

John, now I understand. You are getting your information from Faux News.The president DID NOT SAY "if we call it a war on radical Islam we are going to alienate the rest of the Muslim world", as Megan Kelly claims. Note also the misleading caption "President Obama says you can't equate events in Paris with religion of Islam". He DID NOT SAY THIS.

Listen to the video and note carefully he DID say. (Those kinds of stereotypes are counterproductive. ... They will lead, I think, to greater recruitment in the terrorist organizations over time, if it becomes defined over time as a Muslim problem as opposed to a terrorist problem.)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...yre_doing.html

Anyone who is invited in by Fox News needs to be looked at more closely.

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/04/ayaa...ful_worldview/

And who, you may ask, is Rula Jebreal who appears on what Fox sneeringly calls the liberal media"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rula_Jebreal

Yes, I have heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (honestly) and I've tried to inform myself about her previously. Please note that she is speaking of radical Islam and I again make the point that most people of Muslim faith are not radicalized.

John, you are an excellent poet, you are in fact the Ben Carson of poetry operations, but you do not exercise similar critical thinking when you speak of matters political.

I like some of AHA. But I agree with this critique of her. John, it is hard to take you seriously when you never seem to actually engage with responses to your one sentence manifestos. Read this article and tell me what you disagree with.



http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/ayaa...eds_pa rtner/

I'm always honest, John. Yes, I've heard of her. She has appeared on the Jon Stewart show, among other places. She is certainly a controversial figure, a hero to some but apparently also a liar who pretended to be a refugee in order to be accepted first in the Netherlands and then in America. At any rate, as a refugee from a Muslim country, even if she didn't lie, her story lends support to the pro-refugee point of view.

But as far as her entire anti-Islam argument, I'm afraid that we won't get very far if you simply abdicate your end of the conversation and refer me to the the full body of work of an author you agree with, without even telling me what it is she said that you agree with and what points of hers you find persuasive and why. I could, of course, refer you to other authors who agree with me, but I thought the purpose of this thread was to have a discussion. If you're not prepared to make your own points, then I don't see why you are bothering to pretend to participate in a discussion.

Roger, you want to win, not know the truth. In America she may be all you say. Over here in Europe (which you may know little about) she is a heroine. She is, of course, under sentence of death, and one day she will be killed. She won't be the first. You no doubt remember the gay leader of a party in Holland. But America is far away and none of you are in danger. Yet.

A rather presumptuous comment, John. If I only wanted to win, I would not be arguing with a wall. And if you were a repository for the truth, I would expect a verbal and articulate fellow such as yourself to be able to explain his points with actual facts and arguments, an approach that you have yet even to attempt in this thread.

Though you've singled me out, just about everyone else on the thread seems to agree with my point of view. I suppose they all want to win as well and don't care about the truth as revealed to you alone.

Oh don't be silly, Roger. If you are too lazy to follow where I suggest, then here is something for you.

The Economist wrote: "Unfortunately, very few Muslims will accept Ms Hirsi Ali’s full-blown argument, which insists that Islam must change in at least five important ways. A moderate Muslim might be open to discussion of four of her suggestions if the question were framed sensitively. Muslims, she says, must stop prioritising the afterlife over this life; they must “shackle sharia” and respect secular law; they must abandon the idea of telling others, including non-Muslims, how to behave, dress or drink; and they must abandon holy war. However, her biggest proposal is a show-stopper: she wants her old co-religionists to “ensure that Muhammad and the Koran are open to interpretation and criticism”

She is married to Niall Ferguson. He is not a nobody. With these two on my side how can I lose? Except that it is not about losing or winning.

Your rudeness suggests your arguments are threadbare.

Crossposted with John.

But you are not asking whether we admire her courage or not.

We do.

Or whether we wish her to be kept safe.

We do.

Or whether she has an amazing story.

She does.

You asking whether her take on Islam as interpreted through your soundbites is fair, truthful, and workable as an examination of millions of individuals spread across a spectrum of an evolving religion (if if slow in that department).

Her take, as you parrot it, is not fair, truthful, or workable.

Did you ever think you heard me say that I approved of radical Islam? For yes, of course I agree that it would be great if radical Islamists would change in the ways you've just described. Where we differ, though, is that I do not believe that Hirsi is alone in the Muslim world, and I believe there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who respect secular law and live peaceably with non-Muslims and never have a violent thought or impulse toward anyone. And the refugees are the victims of the radical Islamists, not the individuals who should be demonized. There are doubtless some Christians who still feel that adultery should be a capital offense, but it would be ridiculous to say that this is a general characteristic of Christianity. Don't judge any group by its worst elements. That's the argument I'd most like to "win."

Hello, I live in Europe.

I remember now why I know Ayaan Hirsi Ali's name and face. It was because of the killing of Theo van Gogh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Wrhivp7eQ

She was much interviewed in Swedish media conjunction with her film. I think she has been used in that Fox News reportage and in other neocon interviews. On the other hand she has (IMO) tended to become increasingly less nuanced and sometimes isn't intellectually honest.

Basically what she says can be said about other two religions in their fundamentalist form.

Women should submit to the will of their husbands.
Polygamy is acceptable
Women should marry their rapists
Adultery is punishable by death.

http://mic.com/articles/121596/bible...age#.WC6QNWSFv

Islam will become more secular in time, just like the Christian and Jewish religions have become.

I don't know enough about the so-called scandals to comment them.

But America is far away and none of you are in danger. Yet.

Really? ISIL just threatened Washington, John. What makes you think the U.S. isn’t in danger?

I live in Europe too, btw. And I agree with Roger.

Thank you, Janice. Other religions used to be like Islam five hundred years ago. It seems a long time to wait, don't you think. Meanwhile Islam is a present danger.

Isil threatens everybody. At the present time the risk in the USA is much smaller than it is here.In England now most people agree with me. Polls have been done. So I'll manage with being unpopular with a few American liberals. In Europe in general the picture is the same.

I must say the spectacle of women and gay people busily sawing off the branch on which they are sitting on is curious. Would any of you go and live in a country controlled by muslims? Which one would you choose?

You are welcome, John.

I would not like to live in any theocracy and would be happiest to see all superstition consigned to the city dump. No matter what the name of the god worshiped, it seems to be ingrained in the psyche of the human being to seek a Great Controller to deal with contingencies he cannot control. Which is just about everything in the human lifespan: earthquakes, deadly disease, winning the lottery.

To this end, mankind has sought to placate the gods. Sometimes, in our more peaceful eras, by building Gothic churches and writing cantatas. In fiercer times by sacrificing weaker creatures, children, war captives and slaves. Always this violence: make Baal happy by sacrificing the firstborn, feed Huitzilopochtli by daily ripping out the hearts of some sacrificial victim, ensure good crops by hanging a ritual number of male animals and humans in honor of Woden, ad nauseam. Agamemnon killed Iphigenia so his ships could sail to Troy. Jephthah sacrifices his daughter as a thank-you present for having defeated his enemy. Abraham hears voices and is ready to kill his son Isaac, until another voice rises in his psychotic fog to call off the assassination.

Oh, but we have come beyond that, you say. But modern Christian churches are full of crosses showing the barbaric sight of another son tortured and killed by the will of his father.

Is it surprising that in our day young men full of testosterone and superstition seek a short-cut to everlasting life by annihilating people who do not believe in their god.

Of course ISIS is a threat. There have always been threats, sometimes called Crusaders, Jacobins, Bosnian Serbs, Buddhist Brigade, Boko Haram, Nazis, Brit HaKanaim, Army of God (a Christian terrorist anti-abortion organization), Rote Armee Fraktion or whatever. The list is long.

But the majority of people whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or nonbeliever just want to live a good life. Celebrate their children's birthdays, go out to have burgers and ice cream or merguez and baklawa.

Enough with the Muslim-bashing.

Thank you, Janice. I am dumb. When I worked in London our book-keeper was a pakistani muslim called George Ansari. A very nice man. And one of my younger daughter's good friends is a muslim woman, though it has to be said she doesn't practise it at all. Oh, and there's a chap down the street who lent me a very good book. We disagree about politics but agree about good books.

I am more than fed up with John's presumption that he can 'speak' for public opinion in this country (I'm writing this in Yorkshire, John) let alone Europe. What polls? It is certainly not the case in Scotland - nor does it seem to be the case in England outside of the strange atmosphere apparently inhaled in one small part of Kent.

Religions as a whole have a baleful record - yet they include now, as always, many millions of peaceful sensible people, whose adherence to their 'creed' is only nominally 'observant' but largely parked alongside decent and humane standards of civilised life; they also include the tiny minorities of the deranged, who plead the cover of supposedly divine sanction for their own proclivities to extremes of inhumane and uncivilised behaviour. While we are about it, let's remember the allegedly God-inspired decision-making which allowed Bush and Blair to unleash the illegal mayhem in whose hellish aftermath we are all now living. As to your 'arguments', they smack of the same delusional quality. Since when was marriage to a right-wing historian a guarantor of the wisdom of any controversialist's views?

Since this is a thread among poets (or would-be rhymers), let's reflect on Auden's lines,
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."

Are we really fated to be led into yet another blood-soaked repetition of brutal and failed policies, which destroy our own once cherished values as much as huge numbers of entirely innocent people? One thing is certain. If we wrap ourselves in cloaks of 'religious' rationale - in praise of 'ours' or in disparagement of 'theirs' - the only outcome will be policies which produce more and more death.

The nymph Thetis has commissioned Hephaestos to make a replacement shield for her son Achilles, whose own armour was borrowed and lost, along with his life, by his "gentler self", Patroclus.


The Shield of Achilles
W. H. Auden

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

.

Of course America is in danger from terrorists. I was in the World Trade Center exactly twenty-four hours before the attack, and my meeting could just as easily have been scheduled for the next day. I don't really need a lecture by John about what it feels like to live in a place that is a likely target for terrorism. America is the prize, and you don't even have to bring your own gun to claim it. You can buy one almost anywhere with the greatest of ease, no background check required most of the time.

It seems that developed European countries are facing three quite distinct classes of arrivals: enemy jihadist soldiers; Syrian refugees; and economic migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The policies, and rhetoric, regarding each should be kept distinct. This seems elementary, but you can see people confusing them at every turn, possibly under the influence of shock. Keeping out enemy soldiers is a very high priority, since every one of them that lax policies (or even strict policies) let in could cause untold harm. The presence of the first group makes admitting the second group more difficult -- very slow and painstaking -- but not impossible. The third group makes keeping out the first group and letting in the second group even more difficult. It appears that European countries need very strict border controls now and need to turn back all but bona fide asylum seekers until further notice.

We now have the largest Somali population outside of Somalia, thanks to receiving refugees from civil war starting in the 1990s. We are even supplying Somali soldiers for ongoing conflicts in the region. Their presence in such numbers here is a source of low-level controversy, and serves as an example of the absence of democratic decision-making in what you would think is a fundamental aspect of social and political life, the demographic character of the community. Our democratically elected governor, however, has a solution for those who question his policies: "if they don't like it they can move to another state." I think that puts us in a good position to understand something of what is going on in Europe and England.

Swedish photographer series: Where Syrian Children Sleep. Varsågod.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lynzybilling...eep#.qqDWdXK9n

"[Somalian refugees'] presence in such numbers here is a source of low-level controversy, and serves as an example of the absence of democratic decision-making in what you would think is a fundamental aspect of social and political life, the demographic character of the community"

I think you're hammering around self-determinism. If you've been following this thread, this is far from a given.

"sovereignty is an absolute illusion that has to be put behind us. The days of hiding behind borders and fences are long gone."
--Peter Sutherland, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.as...6#.Vk0cSnarTIU

Community is a crutch. Coherent social fabric is a resistance point towards perfect malleability. As for people satisfied with life as it is in their present communities, they are hiding behind overtaken illusions. No doubt they're rubes, unsophisticates or, worse, white Christians to be disabused of their provincial backwardisms and barbaric crucifixes. This has troubling shades of Bolshevik resettlement programs under the 'humanitariain' banner of refugee beneficence. Millions of people are being shifted to and fro with the indigenous and largely unconsulted populations being told to accept the new realities. Only cold hearts and xenophobes would dare offer resistance.

The globe is the only community. So says the globalist. I'm not even weighing in on the possible long term benefits of a humanity buffed of its sharp tribal edges. I'm simply pointing out there is a muscular agenda working diligently behind the crisis. I'm further troubled by who is leading the parade. Have they been properly vetted by Plato?

Someone was asking why the world was so much less chaotic some decades ago.

To me, it seems obvious that it was because the United States and many other countries were "making the world safe for democracy" by propping up dictators.

Dictatorships are nice and stable. They keep their people under control, or at least more concerned with local grievances than international ones; and to deal with that country, your own government only has to keep one person happy. Easy-appeasy.

Unfortunately, when a foreign power decides that the dictator isn't really working out for them anymore, and they want to get rid of that dictator, they piss everyone off. The dictator's former internal supporters are obviously unhappy, but so are the many people who remember that the fickle foreign power that is helping them out now was long responsible for keeping their enemy in power, and thus cannot be trusted. (And if the removal of that dictator was clearly not what the foreign power wanted, so much the worse for warm and fuzzy feelings from the new regime.)

Also dictators, by definition, habitually eliminate serious threats to their leadership, both institutional and individual; when they are themselves removed, the resulting power vacuum tends to get filled with numerous lesser talents squabbling for power. Often violently. (And, in the absence of strong democratic institutions, often with the aid of whatever other tools of power are convenient, such as religion.)

Putin thinks that the way to solve Syria's problems is to return to that nice, stable dictatorship model of yesteryear. Put Bashar al-Assad back in charge, and everything will be hunky dory, so far as Putin is concerned. It might not be so great for the people of Syria--particularly the ones who tried to get rid of al-Assad in the first place--but hey, it'll be more tolerable for non-Syrians, and that's what counts. Give al-Assad the tools to destroy those who hate both him and us, and we can all go back to not caring what happens in Syria.

At least until al-Assad's dictatorship ends, and all hell breaks loose again.

I'm more mistrustful of the long-term efficacy of the "propping up a dictator" model than Putin is. But then Putin seems to think that a nice, stable, macho, powerful dictatorship is a great idea for Russia, too.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Well said, Julie. Very well said. Democracy is by its nature a bit messy, hence the toning-down and reining-in of democracy in the US. People theoretically love "freedom"—as long as it's theirs or that of like-minded people—and "democracy," as long as it doesn't create "messy situations" where those "others" among us pop up front and center. People more practically want to just go through their lives unthreatened and surviving with some kind of diversion and a cap on pain or risk. The conflict between theory and practice is that gray area where minimal gray matter is used, where politicians master the art of appearing to solve the problem by waving the magic wand of rhetoric.

Meanwhile the earth is undergoing monumental changes. The Quran, with its many passages warning people to take care of the earth and not to "corrupt the earth," goes unheeded by those who claim to believe in it. The Quran's most frequently used phrase (well, one of them) is "will you not use your minds?" Wahhabism, which in various forms passes for "mainstream" Islam, requires adherents to obey their strictures without thinking. Among those are such things as stoning to death—NOT a punishment for anything in the Quran...not even mentioned—and beheadings—also NOT Quranic but on the contrary there's a strict command "do not be excessive in killing" which in our world means beheading (in days before guns, I suppose it would be more of a necessary evil in wartime, wars being a matter of defense...and I'll spare you more but the violations are many. The only way they "honor" the Quran is by putting it on the highest shelf, or having competitions for melodic readings. The meanings? The know-nothings win.

Dear John,
When you say "Islam is behind this," you treat Islam as an individual, like, say, corporations. Halliburton killed him. Hang Halliburton from the highest tree. Etcetera. It doesn't take 500 years to effect change in the Muslim world. It doesn't take invading Iraq for example...unless one believes freedom can be imposed by force without even the slightest preparation. I'm SURE you don't think that! The Egyptian revolution of 2011 was started by "young liberals" who were mostly Muslim not just in name but in practice. They invented a symbol highly popular in that revolution combining the cross and the crescent in one unit. Christians guarded Muslims in Tahrir square when they prayed and Muslims guarded Christians in various situations. When Mubarak was first ousted there was peace in the streets and people cleaned the streets and patrolled them for each other to protect against ex-govt thugs. They loathed the idea of the brotherhood taking over, but cooperated with the latter thinking it was vital to achieving democracy. When you equate, under one umbrella called "Islam", those young Muslims with ISIS et al, you are doing a great disservice to the efforts of a great many Muslims to achieve mutual cooperation and peace between people. Is there NO way to be both safe and just????? I think there's no true safety in injustice.

Btw, when Osama bin laden declared prior to 9/11 in a televised interview that he would spare no women or children or families, he was making an open declaration of enmity against Islam, an open rejection of Islam. In the name of Islam. He committed prohibited acts and it is the Muslim world that has suffered most overall. By far. Look at Egypt now. We've got "our man" who is doing nothing but stealing the resources of the country, the money of his people from banks and also exacts half of any money wired to people from outside, not to mention kidnapping, torturing, raping, murdering, and simply detaining and slowly killing those very liberals who started the revolution, along with countless others such as many doctors, medical students, anyone with or trying to get an education (they were behind it!), young women and men, as well as anyone who speaks out against him or his regime or dares to protest. Many many have disappeared. The atrocities are unimaginable. He has no regard for human life (I refer to Sisi). Or property. Life inside Egypt is now hell. Is he Muslim? Hardly. But that name is used and abused by all sorts of people. Or maybe we could arrest all the employees of Halliburton? The US governors should be ashamed of themselves. The most effective foil against terror recruitment is widespread knowledge that this is not Islam. But by making it "onward Christian soldiers" vs the "evil East"... It feeds into the propaganda of the ignorant.

In any case, so many excellent comments on this thread. And your response to Janice, John, suits me fine. I just had to say a little bit more...

I don't know. Was it? For us, the 60's was Vietnam. But there were also other proxy wars all over the place, mixed up with independence wars at the end of colonialism. In France, there was murderous unrest over Algeria: http://rebellyon.info/Le-massacre-du...e-1961-a-Paris

In the 70's, we still had Vietnam for almost half the decade. The cold war was still going on. Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yom Kippur, Angola, Iran. In France, Action Directe carried out 50 separate attacks.

In the 80's, it was Salvador, Beirut, riots in India killed tens of thousands. Iran-Irag killed hundreds of thousands, an entire generation of young men. Airliners were getting blown out of the sky: Air India, Lockerbie, Sakhalin. The Falklands, Angola, Tiananmen. In Europe, it was the time of the Brigades Rouges: there were guards with submachineguns on street corners everywhere I went. Fascism was on the rise: the English department where I taught suffered arson attacks, the building where I lived was bombed. Twice.

Things got worse in the 90's: Somalia, Rwanda. Congo, Chechnya, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Kuwait and the Gulf war. Oklahoma City, WTC. In France, there were nearly a dozen bombings of the Paris Metro.

We forget. Even though we lived through those times, we still forget. Yes, the dictator of Iran who we supported locked the doors of a crowded theater, and burned it down. Yes, dictators used the attack jets we and the Russians sold them to bomb their own citizens. But in spite of our policies, dictators are not all that good at preserving stability. Suharto ruled for 30 years, but he ruled over corruption, chaos, and blood.

But most of the things listed above weren't the direct result of dictators. Something much larger goes on. I'm not a historian, so I won't hazard a guess on exactly what it is. But it never seems to go away. Hence Trotsky's famous quote: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Yours, in peace,

Bill

Thanks for your thoughts, Norm. It seems the French have a much more developed popular antiglobalist discourse than we do. Naturally, because we imagine we have benefited from globalism, but that is debatable. Examples: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3WQ6BbZT664. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2Z3zgcOj4


Sorry, Don, I'm not tracking you. Is it that we are submitted to elite tyranny in the area of demographic manipulation, and also in gun control? Because the Supreme Court has placed some limits on state and local gun control legislation? I don't see the parallel, because local governments have had zero control over refugee and immigrant settlement, while there is a wide range of gun control regimes. Our state legislature passed a successful concealed carry statute, and city law enforcement is very active in collecting illegal firearms. So I don't see the same democratic deficit in the two areas. In immigration, there is quite a lack of political competition because the biggest donors, symbolically the Chamber of Commerce and SEIU, agree on bringing in as much cheap labor as possible. There is definitely a democratic deficit, though, where a community would like to legislate firearms out of existence and a distant federal court says no way.

You might enjoy John Taylor's New Views of the Constitution, which I learned about from Schlesinger's informative Age of Jackson. Taylor points out that Hamilton and Madison actually failed to get their monarchizing and centralizing schemes adopted by the Constitutional Convention, but nonetheless made themselves the foremost interpreters of the Constitution they didn't want, wrenching it towards their party at every opportunity. Puts quite a different spin on the term "Federalist." Under his theory, I don't think a federal court could nullify a state gun control law.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Norman, about your post #86: Come on Janice, you're more than capable of backfilling the cliches I leave out.

I am trying to understand your several posts, Norman. But they remain for the most part impenetrable. They seem to be a collection of hints, insinuations, straw man arguments and political buzzwords harvested from obscure propagandist sites and articles. I think I discern a stew of half-articulated warnings about both capitalism and socialism. In context or out of it, individual sentences such as these quoted below remain unintelligible. At least to me and it may be that your powers of persuasion are less than your enthusiasm, or that you collect your Internet gleanings in bushels of half-thought, or that I am lacking mental ovens that will bake the bread. Perhaps you can assist me? (In cases below where I have not provided traceable references, the source can be found simply by googling the text.)

All right, let's try to understand that.

Homologation (the granting of approval by an official authority), in essence, is a prelude to the panopticon (Jeremy Bentham proposed the panopticon as a circular building with an observation tower in the centre of an open space surrounded by an outer wall. This wall would contain cells for occupants. This design would increase security by facilitating more effective surveillance) where every individual is equidistant from the observation platform; an indeterminate flatland ruled by God-knows-who from above. This is borderless, global totalitarianism presided over in essence by multinational corporations and financial institutions of which the PTT is but one of its early ‘enticements’.

The syntax is flawed but I think your premise is that a prerequisite for global surveillance of the citizenry by multinational companies is that an established authority gives its approval and (by implication) the EU is that central authority. I don't know the abbreviation of PTT except as Post, Telephone, Telegraph, and I think that is indeed the tree you are barking up though I don't see any possum in its branches.

The EU deregulated the national PTTs to increase competition and to standardize telecommunications. That action has had its flaws as witnessed by the ongoing scandal of one of the Swedish companies bribing in Uzbekistan and elsewhere http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0ML2VL20140324 and other easily found sources. Is that what you are intending to say with that extract above? It has also, through recent regulation, led to the lowering of excessive mobile phone tariffs throughout Europe. There are examples of both good and bad consequences, but I think we are less controlled by big business than in the US because we do not elect politicians through bottomless super-PACs. :)

It seems to me, Norman, that you are conflating the Pan-European organization with the EU. They have quite different roots and goals.

You may be unduly influenced by lengthy dwelling on the Russian propaganda site you touted in your post # 15 http://russia-insider.com/en/politic...empire/ri10025 , the (as I told your earlier) Russia-backed propaganda site.
Firstly, the Norwegian massacre was very close to home. Not only in geographic terms, but in emotional terms. Like nearly everyone else in Sweden, I am personally acquainted with someone who was directly touched by it. I am somewhat dubious about your expertise in the matter.

Secondly, yes, I wrote "so-called" because Breivik refers to himself as both Christian and white .

His final diagnosis was not paranoid schizophrenic.

That conclusion was upheld and he is now in prison.

This perhaps is as good a place as any to define the word Eurabia and consider where it comes from. Personally I do not think it is worthy of being introduced into any respectable debate (which this one may or may not be) unless it is defined and dissected rather than being injected as a clever buzzword.
This post is already too lengthy so I won't give any more examples. Norman, I hope this will give you an idea of why I find your posts to incline more toward obtuse rants than meaningful contribution to an important discussion.

Putting Faces To The Massacre
 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

If you have seen the video of that big-mouthed, small-brained Donald Trump ranting about guns http://theslot.jezebel.com/trump-on-...uld-1742976283
you might be interested in the EU response to guns after the Paris attacks. (Scroll down for the video.)

It isn't to make it easier to get them, it is to make it considerably harder. Not to loosen up the gun laws, but to impose further restrictions.

The EU gun policy is right here:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release...15-6111_en.htm