Janice, I suspect that Norman actually intended to refer not to the PTT, but to the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which does indeed sound like a very nasty piece of work.

Here is an extract from the information accompanying the Avaaz petition that I signed:

The TPP will shape lives across the world from North America to Chile to New Zealand, but most of the text was written in secret by negotiators and corporations, without public input. When Wikileaks revealed a portion, we got a sampling of how bad it is:

• If a nation bans a toxic chemical, or labels genetically modified foods, or tightens environmental regulations, TPP empowers companies to sue governments in secret global tribunals, run by corporate arbitrators. If the government loses, taxpayers could be forced to pay companies billions of dollars for lost profits.
• Under TPP, pharmaceutical giants could extend their monopolies so far that cheap life-saving drugs for cancer and AIDS patients could be prevented.
• The deal could criminalise those who sound the alarm on corporate illegal activity through a computer system.

Those are just a small part of the agreement. We have no idea what corporate lobbyists wrote into the bulk of the treaty because governments have refused to release the text to the public.

*************************************************

Did you get the GM bit? Monsanto could sue governments that allow the labelling of consumer products to state that they contain genetically-modified ingredients.

Here is the address of the petition if you're interested.

I believe the text has now been published. I haven't read it, but I understand that among other things, it contains no reference to the problems of global warming; instead, it increases the carte blanche given to the ravagers and despoilers.

You can certainly find a lot more information about the TPP on the Internet.

Well, that makes more sense. But it does underscore that deciphering his messages is a difficult task. Even with the letters put in the right order, I don't see what that has to do with the topic of this thread. That said, I am certainly anti-Big-Pharma and regard Monsanto as a public enemy.

Thank you, Brian.

I would like to comment Bill C's post #109 about the "three kinds of refugees".
Who is a bona fide asylum seeker?

It is not simple to sort refugees into categories. Though presently there is a heartbreaking stream coming mostly from Syria, educated middle class people who know what fate they will suffer if ISIS gains total control, there are also those who come from other war zones, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen. Particularly young men and boys from Afghanistan, who in many cases are traveling onward from temporary resettlement in Iraq are fleeing from forced conscription into Iraq's army. The Swedish radio recently had an interview with a boy in his mid-teens whose father, unable to read, in the course of applying for a prolongation of the permit for the family to stay in Iraq had put his mark on a document binding him and the boy to fight for the Iraqi army. If they were killed, the family would be allowed to stay permanently. When the father learned what he had "agreed" to, the family sent the boy off to Sweden. One of the many, many children who have made the hazardous journey alone and who may never see their family again.

And what about all these young men in their twenties who do not want to fight for ISIS and therefore flee. They are the most suspect group these days and are being turned away because the limited resources of housing are being prioritized to children without dependents and families with children. So countless will be subject to deportation. And if granted asylum they are no longer guaranteed a roof over their head. Where will they go? It is winter now, and snow will soon be everywhere.

When is a refugee not a refugee? When he is classified as an economic refugee. Some make it all the way to Europe from Nigeria and these (mostly men) are among the first to be deported because they are labeled "economic refugees". http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/nigerian...essure/8663426 That despite the fact that Boko Haram has displaced thousands of Nigerians. At least 74,000 Nigerians have fled to northern Cameroon, 18,000 to south-west Chad and at least 100,000 in Niger.

I am currently reading "Drone Theory" by Grégoire Chamayou, who is a research scholar in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. I was particularly struck by this paragraph and I want to share it to a wider audience:

You don't have to be particularly smart to realize how this applies to the refugee problem of today.

It is worth remembering that they flee to the West because they are West-friendly.

In conclusion, for those interested, here is an overview of Sweden's 25 largest immigrant population as it was last year. (This is prior to this year's huge influx.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden

Curiously, (and I'm not hinting at any hidden meaning by mentioning this), there is an almost equal number of foreign-born residents in the Swedish population from the USA (19,569) as from the Russian Federation (19,028).

Janice,

Thank you for that quote from "Drone Theory".

I’ve long thought there is something in the West’s (and specifically, in America’s) methods of combat in the Middle East, something having to do with disparity in power and recklessness in its use, that creates a hydra of our ‘enemy’, engendering multiple heads for every one that we cut off.

(This leaves aside the question of why we have been cutting off heads in the Middle East for most of my adult life -- a question that I, as an American, find impossible to answer without feelings of impotence, shame and disgust.)

Well Janice...

I take responsibility for sending you down the PTT rabbit hole. As Brian pointed out I was referring to the TPP and transposed the acronym. I spent 15 years in the telecommunications industry and will spare you a toe-to-toe debate on tariffs and deregulation. So my apologies for opening up a false trail and your tireless research as a result.

You insist on characterizing Inside Russia as a propaganda site when it originate perhaps 20% of its own content, and performs little more than a 'Drudge-like' wire editor function for the rest. The quality of the content is uneven, granted, but broadly gathered. Caveat emptor is the rule for any entity that troubles itself to deliver news to your doorstep. Media assets are not valued at billions of dollars for their agnostic aspirations. Media influences. Go back and read your Adorno and Marcuse. No, I'm only kidding because you will crack the books. You're a marvel of fastidiousness. Or to paraphrase Adorno, it is not simply that mass media has the potential to deceive, but that it deceives as a matter of course.

A very brief word on conspiracy. When the owners of 50% of America's weath, all 400 of them, can comfortably be seated within a small auditorium, society has permitted the requisite scale to exist for conspiracies to be hatched, or can we at least say the alignment of interests is so compelling that potential for abuse looms large? These people share similar tax strategies, estate planning, security concerns, schooling. So in a number of 'benign' social contexts they have every reason to talk amongst themselves and further leverage their interests; this without even broaching nefarious world domination plans. Undue wealth concentration is an accident waiting to happen if it hasn't happened already.

I am a late-arriving Christian which means I am an eschatologist. History is purposeful, directed and ends rather cinematically. You might say the Judeo-Christian God is the ultimate eschatologist. There are secular eschatoligies too, Workers' Paradises and the like. So we may yet share something in common besides our good looks.

I wondered Janice if Bill Carpenter's attempt (#39) fairly captured your 'first principle':

"a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best. As people are now, they will be at each other's throats without a higher power to keep them in line. The democracy at several removes of the EC seems to answer for now, with its ability to guide national governments."

Regarding eschatology in general, since Norman mentioned it, and I think it's relevant:

ISIS is interested in eschatology, too. Very interested. They wish to hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Mahdi, who will, according to them, unite to battle the Antichrist and rid the world of evil.

I completely lose patience with millennialism, which promises an easy way out for all earthly problems. (And sometimes delivers--I can't argue that the millennialist group that committed mass suicide one neighborhood over from mine didn't escape this world of woe, in their version of the Rapture.)

No need to bother saving the environment or paying off the debts we've racked up for future generations to deal with, if the world is going to end soon anyway. Don't bother working for peace and justice, either. It's so much easier to just confidently slap a bumper sticker on one's gas-guzzling SUV--"WARNING: IN CASE OF RAPTURE, THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED"--and then piously sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Or "Jesus, Take the Wheel," if you prefer.

As my own Church approaches the eschatology-rich season of Advent, I wish more of my fellow believers would focus less on this or that frightening sign that the end of the world is near, and instead focus on Jesus's description of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25:31-46--in which how we have treated other people is presented as of paramount importance.

(The "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me" bit particularly jumps out at me these days. What good is it to ace the end-time prophecies and flunk that? Maybe the Son of Man arrives on the clouds in glory only after he arrives as a little Syrian girl in a barely-seaworthy vessel.)

Of course media influences. And it mostly influences those whose critical thinking abilities are impaired. Others laugh at its intended influence as people once laughed at Tokyo Rose, Lord Ha-ha, Ezra Pound.

I will say it again: Russia Insider (not Inside Russia, at least try to get the name straight) is a propaganda site and so is its sister medium Russia Today. It is not hard to find claims that this is so for instance http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhim...king-the-news/ . But if you chose to doubt it, just look at the content of the site. The "broadly gathered" content is in fact carefully selected. This isn't a new media trick. One should be equally dubious when accessing content from say, Fox News, StandWithUs, The Christian Post, Catholic Encyclopedia, Portside, Dabiq, etc.

Afterthought, added in: I include Portside because it has a clear agenda just as the others do. I most often agree with the Portside articles, but not always, and I try to remember that it, like the others, has a bias.

That said, there are news sources which, on the whole, uphold the idea of democracy, free press, honest information. Do not trust any of them blindly, but be aware that some are more reliable that others.

Reading the rest of your post, Norman, I am still confused about your message. Do you believe that I believe that wealth concentration is a good thing, and so is a "Worker's Paradise"? Liberate yourself from befuddlement and apply your powers of reason why American anti-trust legislation is no longer enforced to put big business in its place; the place intended by a democratic nation which relies on taxes to ensure education, health care, infrastructures, good housing, good roads and good policemen.

To the question of Super-PACs and election integrity.

To combat the ridiculous ranting of demagogues who have taken over a once respectable, albeit conservative, party.

To the question of why so many Americans adore politicians who never, who never, uttered a sentence that wasn't gobbledygook. Donald Trump and Sarah Palin come to mind but they are only the avant-garde of foggyism and demagoguery.

To the ridiculous claim of American exceptionalism.

To the ridiculous idea of a Second Coming accompanied by cinematic selective rapture.. Oh, wait a minute. Uh...

Dabiq, incidentally, is named for a mythological site relevant to jihadist apocalypse. I mention this in conjunction with Julie's informative post above. May I add that there have been many thought-provoking replies in this debate. I may not agree with every part of every one, but from Nigel's rebuttal and Susan's reflections on Rome and onward, there have been many contributions that I've read with interest.

Exactly Julie. I detest the prevailing Christian neurosis of waiting for the clouds to part, which is usually accompanied with obsessive divination. Being a Christian day-to-day is so much harder than perching on a hill waiting for God(ot). That's rather sterile and life-evading.

Now that we've re-righted the acronym, the TPP has everything to do with eroding national sovereignty. Maybe your sources differ on that appraisal, Janice. Sourcng is iffy as so few are allowed to read it. One can always hope the peoples' best interests are front-and-center and that the unprecedented secrecy isn't hiding an anti-democratic intent. But yes, this could be a precedent for future transnational agreements.

Don't feel obliged to commit to a definition on my behalf, nor certainly my interpretation of Bill Carpenter's attempt, but he alludes to this as possibly being one of your 'first principles':

"It seems that a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best."

Whomever the proponents of this might be, it reads to me like a whopper of an until. How do we prove our deservingness after self-determination has been relinquished to this transnational order? What precedents are there of bloodless reverse-devolutions of power at the first signs of popular maturation? The problem of course is that the vanguard never self-dissolves --without coaxing. And given the perfecting of surveillance technology, dissolution seems even less likely in the years ahead. If globalism truly succeeds at becoming global, where will the exogenous counterforce march from should things veer dystopian?

You say, "it seems to be ingrained in the psyche of the human being to seek a Great Controller to deal with contingencies he cannot control." Indeed it does. The Soviet Union had its own go at it in the atheistic guise of democratic centralism. This may be the brand of democracy you have in mind when you say:

"yes, I do believe that the nation-state has passed its heyday. The current global response to the Paris attack seems to confirm that. Breaking down larger states into smaller ones based on religion or ethnicity with no overarching political deterrents (i.e. the EU) will make the individual state more vulnerable..."

I guess it's fair to say you're no fan of localism. That's okay. Not everyone comes away inspired by the stateless Kurds' experiments with grassroots self-governance. To me, democracy is the lack of overarching politcal deterrents. I mean, what about the vulnerability of the people to an overarching transnational entity? I find you oddly silent on this point. I don't know if the on-line Britannica is on your sanctioned reading list, but I'll venture it. There are other sources for definitions:

http://www.britannica.com/topic/democratic-centralism

"Democratic centralism purported to combine two opposing forms of party leadership: democracy, which allows for free and open discussion, and central control, which ensures party unity and discipline... Unrestrained discussion, [Lenin] insisted, would produce intraparty disagreements and factions and prevent the party from acting effectively."

There's nothing wrong with being a democratic centralist, though I can't resolve what strikes me as its glaring internal contradiction. It's a recognized form of governance with an historical track-record. Maybe the kinks the Soviets experienced have been ironed out.

I'm a gay man living in Turkey -- a secular state but predominantly Muslim, and never felt happier or safer. At home in England I was thrown out of home at 16 for being gay, homeless for several years, I suffered regular beatings, was stabbed and hung and left to die, my dog killed and mutilated (parts of his body still stuffed in my coat pockets by our attackers when I left the hospital), when I got a home was victimized and my property vandalized. Me and my partner of 25 years have never suffered as much as a bad word since we moved here, 11 years ago -- and the (muslim) community and (muslim) friends are the most genuine and supportive of people I have ever known.

Norman, the first criterion for critical thinking is to go to the first source to verify the veracity when a second, third, etc. source or hearsay claims that X has said Y, or believes Z, or supports A, or is a fan of B. Do not believe it until you hear it emerging from the horse's mouth.

The first guideline for rebuttal is to be aware of the straw man trick. Straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent.

Sorry.

Thanks for sharing that Steve. I am sorry about your dog-person. That sort of hatred must destroy the soul of the perpetrator.. It is cheering to hear you have found a place on the earth among muslims that is free from that sickness. Salut.

It keeps coming back to how kindness given and kindness returned are such devastating answers to cruelty and fear. It's the story's end we've longed for, ever since we were kids: that we lived happily ever after, or at least tried our best, and so did our friends, and our friends' friends, and so on and so on, which of necessity includes everyone in the world. "We must love one another or die," Auden wrote.

Ed

Do you know if your country has ratified all or parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? And if it has not, how does that affect your safety?

Added in. The "you" here is a general "you", i.e. anyone reading. Not pointing a finger at any one country. My point is that many think their government has backed human rights but it might well have refused to ratify the article that allows girls to go to school, that prohibits torture, that ensures its citizens the right to criticize their leaders.


https://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/resear...n-index.html#S

A statement by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

WASHINGTON, DC—Acutely aware of the consequences to Jews who were unable to flee Nazism, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum looks with concern upon the current refugee crisis. While recognizing that security concerns must be fully addressed, we should not turn our backs on the thousands of legitimate refugees.

The Museum calls on public figures and citizens to avoid condemning today’s refugees as a group. It is important to remember that many are fleeing because they have been targeted by the Assad regime and ISIS for persecution and in some cases elimination on the basis of their identity.

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

http://www.ushmm.org/information/pre...yrian-refugees

Yes, Martin.

And the calls to refuse all immigration into the US strike me as sadly ironic, or worse, given what I suspect is the preponderant role the US has played in causing the crisis.

The American-flavored paradox of muscular Christianity flexes its large, ugly biceps once again -- much to the chagrin of many, many Christians, I would guess.

Ed, I hope your guess is right. I recall the frisson of horror that followed GWB's announcing a "Crusade" as a response to the Twin Towers attack.

Ed,
As the pop classic says: "... put a little love in your heart./ And the world / will be a better place..."

I'm afraid too many people in high places take American exceptionalism to mean immunity from common sense, natural law, and karmic consequences. It's supposed to go the other way, with our government by the consent of a moral majority (a republic not an empire) enabling us to curb the appetites of the mighty.

The most nuanced article that I’ve seen on the topic of what’s particular about contemporary Islamist terrorism.

Thoughts?

Andrew, thanks for this.

I don't think there is one single reason these young people--some poor and unemployed, others highly educated and with good jobs--become terrorists. Rather I think each one has put together an individual complex of reasons.

Almost everyone, no matter their origins, religion, nation, wishes to feel personal pride for one's self and that which defines one's own group: race, religion, country, goals. I think it cannot be denied that there is something in the human psyche (perched right alongside that longing for a Great Controller) that considers it a noble cause to right the perceived wrongs and insults to one's self and one's tribe.

That is why there are feuds, vendettas, clan wars, Protestants killing Catholics, Shiites killing Sunnis, Serbs killing Bosnians, Jews killing Palestines, Rwandas killing Hutus--and vice versa. As Bush and countless others have said, "You are for us or against us." (Another example of regrettable rhetoric.)

When vengeance is enacted by OUR side it is perceived as good, anyone's "our side". When it is enacted by the "Other", our enemy (again, anyone's perceived enemy) it is terrorism and barbaric and beyond the range of understanding.

Who is not moved by the Christmas truce of 1914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

Everyone Sang

By Siegfried Sassoon
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.


If only they would have stopped right there and not returned to senseless slaughter. How different our world might have been. Imagine if Harry Truman has just filmed an atomic explosion and sent it to the Japanese, instead of sending the bomb itself. Yes, I am speculating, but there is always more than one path of action in the beginning.

I am in NO WAY condoning terrorist actions but if you approach it psychologically, if you look at the situation through the eyes of these (mostly) men, you might understand more about the fertile ground in which radicalization can occur.

The terrorists perceive the west as having declared themselves to be enemies of Islam and their way of life. I remember how appalled I was to hear the post 9/11 Bush rhetoric when he used the word "crusade". Millions of westernized Muslims and other in their own countries who had nothing to do with bringing down the World Trade Center heard this word as Christians hear the word "jihad".

And then the choice of singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Y9NGXxdAg . That sent a bellicose message to everyone watching who was the "Other". Consider the message in the words of that song. In England, it was also sung by the archbishop of Canterbury and those gathered in the church in a (as we westerners saw it) manifestation of solidarity with the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmpo0csiIMs

I know it isn't easy when the nation is in shock, but in the immediate aftermath (IMO) the opportunity to gather the support of a shocked world was wasted. What the moment called for was to establish a strong coalition between the two faiths, all faiths. Instead there was the invasion of Afghanistan, where the soviets had already been for ten years, and before them the British had fought, and the United States took on the role of vengeful aggressor with all the enemy-making potential that implies.

The drones, so these young terrorists might reason, also kill innocent "soft targets". and they see no difference between blowing up someone standing right in front of them or blowing up someone who doesn't even know they are in the crosshairs an ocean away. Dead is dead. They might even find it more honorable and braver to put their life on the line than to kill from a safe distance.

Which brings me to a thought I've been turning over in my mind. Because the suicide bomber kills himself along with his victims, there is never anyone who might repent in the agonizing throes of PTDS. The jihadist contingency sees only martyrdom, there is never any survivor who is overcome with remorse when he realizes what he has done against innocent people. It is the defectors from a cult who open doubt in the minds of the other members.

It isn't so difficult, I think, to find in any given group "idealists" who are susceptible to brainwashing and willing to offer their lives. This isn't a new weapon. The Japanese kamikaze pilots considered it a death of honor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

Consider the early Christian martyrs depicted in countless horrific art museums throughout Europe and elsewhere. Eyeballs and severed breasts held out on a tray, flayings, drawn and quarterings. And then when that religion got the upper hand, it did the same to others: burning at the stake, the iron maiden, disembowelment. Nowhere is there any high moral ground available for the claiming.

Consider this scene in Saving Private Ryan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY61XmDJ-1w

That clip doesn't include the close-up of the soldier kissing the crucifix he wore, but even as he was reciting the twenty-first psalm and killing people he knew he was on a suicide mission.

No, it isn't difficult to understand the process of radicalization of young men, but a country's leaders and top advisors as well as the ordinary citizens should exercise forethought.

ISIS wants us to turn against the Muslims who live peacefully among us. We must love one another or die. We must.

Them's me thoughts.

PS. I have corrected some typos and clarified some foggy sentences and added some afterthought.

Here, Janis: Judy Garland singing the Hymn I.m. JFK. IT must be Nov. 23 where you are. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Xz7WV_qJs

I cringe at the phrase at the beginning of the article (three posts back) which suggests that Islamist terrorists are uniquely evil or sadistic. This is obviously false, since the Ku Klux Klan or the Albigensian crusaders of the twelfth century, to name two, are/were easily as brutal and sadistic. But I found much of the article insightful.

The author argues, persuasively I feel, that it is not going to help either Muslims or non-Muslims to say: “The terrorists aren’t real Muslims.” On the contrary, Wahhabism/Salafism is considered by its adherents as hyper-Islam. And there is no reason that we can’t consider what it is in modern Islamic politics and culture that makes that ideology so appealing to so many, without turning on the Muslims who are our neighbors and co-citizens. Just as criticizing the corrupt power structures of the medieval Church wasn’t tantamount to trashing good and ordinary Christians.

As the Atlantic article Bill Lantry linked to at the start of this thread says, it’s an avoidance of what ISIL is about simply to say, “That’s not Islam.” Of course it’s not enlightened Islam which facilitates spiritual realization, any more than the Albigensian Crusade in the twelfth century was real Christianity. And yet the people who undertook that crusade were Christians, in their own view. A sickness within Christendom itself—ultimately the corruption of the papacy—made it possible for those crusades to happen. The fact that most Christians at that time were ordinary people with more or less devout, honest lives didn’t mean there wasn’t a systemic problem. There was: and plenty of people spoke up about it. Eventually, this would lead to the Reformation. Maybe the papacy for modern Islam is Saudi Arabia.

Right-wing Islamophobia in the U.S. lately has been sickening, but it won’t do either to gloss over the fact that the violent extremism which threatens us most these days, and Muslims most of all, is Islamic violent extremism. It doesn’t hurt anyone to question where that’s coming from. And to bring up George W. Bush’s “crusade” statement and other parallels is to revert to generalities. The Ku Klux Klan took root in a context, not only in some generalized “Us-Other” reality. Criticizing American triumphalism is a good thing to do, but the only thing we really learn by noting the universal theme of human stupidity and lust for power is that it’s universal. Then each instance of it has to be dealt with in its own specific terms.

And I think the article, despite its extravagant opening, has something worthwhile to say along these lines.

Andrew, I thought the article was nuanced and accessible. Thank you for linking to it and on a selfish level I want to especially thank you for introducing me to the author of the article, Kenan Malik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_...eaning_of_Race Any friend of the Enlightenment is a friend of mine. I did not know about his writing and am looking forward to reading more.

I fully concur with him and with you on this: that it is not going to help either Muslims or non-Muslims to say: “The terrorists aren’t real Muslims.”

Yet daily, I see and hear demands in print and in the public and social media that the individual Muslims and their collectives do exactly that. And I hear, also on a daily basis, Muslim voices explaining over and over that Islam is not Jihadism.

I agree with you also that Jihadism is a very real threat and that Wahhabism feeds it by exporting radical imams to peaceful congregations in Western (and other) countries. And Saudi Arabia leaders in turn protect and support it in the hope that they will be left alone, though any fool can see that they are a potential target and they will be toppled when the time is ripe. I also believe that the west has turned an equally blind eye to Saudi beheadings, stoning and double-dealing because of the oil.

Looking further afield, ridding the world of its dependency on oil is not only good for the climate. So the sooner we rid ourselves of dependency on fossil fuel, the better, and fracking be damned.

I don't want to go off-track into climate change for that deserves a thread of its own, but as an aside, it would help to start curbing the wasteful Western life-style. It doesn't make sense that on a hot day, the air conditioning is so high in restaurants and shops that you freeze without a sweater—and then swelter back to an air-conditioned car and home. Or that the city dumps and landfills are gorged with broken plastic items that no one ever needed anyway.

Despite the loud noises made by the Tea Partyers and their likes, it was the ideas of the Enlightenment that influenced the Constitution of the new United States, a society based upon reason rather than faith and religious doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and observation. The idea of a separation of powers in a government was also a thought-child of the Enlightenment.

So thanks again for the article, well worth reading and reflecting upon.

PS. Another topic that veers off this one yet is related is that poverty and system collapse is a logical outcome of wealth concentration.

I have been hearing a lot of ballyhoo in the media lately (thanks to the World Bank and others) that fewer people are living in poverty now than in recent years. To which I say, yeah, right! The poorest ones have all died off through starvation or war.

The idea of a separation of powers in a government was also a thought-child of the Enlightenment.

It's true that this is when it came to fruition, Janice, but actually the idea was argued forcefully four centuries earlier by one Dante Alighieri. The work in which he argued it, Monarchia, was publicly burned in Bologna a couple years after his death and was banned by the Church until the nineteenth century.

I had the same reaction as you did to the discovery of that author. He's impressive.

Thanks again, Andrew. I have so many knowledge gaps that it is pitiful. I had not read that book but I will.

I will modify my earlier statement to say that one of the principles expounded by the Enlightenment was the separation of powers.

I'll try to find a modern copy of De Monarchia. That shouldn't be too hard. Thanks again.

I have so many knowledge gaps that it is pitiful.

Don't we all! I only brought up the earlier precedent as an example of how separation of church and state, one of the best ideas ever, doesn't necessarily require a secular worldview (which obviously Dante didn't have). This could be important for the future of contemporary theocracies.

In the main, Janice, I do agree with what you well said in Post number 142. The following did occur to me though where I thought I might add to or differ from your disquisition. If I differ in some finer points, I only mention them because I agreed with everything else.

The terrorists perceive the west as having declared themselves to be enemies of Islam and their way of life.

Nothing is more certain but that terrorists perceive the West to be an enemy of Islam and their way of life, yes; far less, however, is it certain that they perceive the West to have “declared” themselves such, as though any deceleration soever could be pointed to which states an intention by the West to annihilate their way of life and their particular religion. Could it not be the case that rather than perceiving any formal deceleration, they assume, without any particular referent that enacts it, an inherit struggle is somehow innate, and that the West of necessity must ever work against their way of life and Islam?

I remember how appalled I was to hear the post 9/11 Bush rhetoric when he used the word "crusade". Millions of westernized Muslims and other in their own countries who had nothing to do with bringing down the World Trade Center heard this word as Christians hear the word "jihad".

Nothing makes me cringe so much as that which has issued from the faux cowboy and real blockhead who had the unfortunate distinction of being an ex president of the United States. That be as it may, his use of “crusade”, inexcusable indeed, is not proportional in its extent of influence to the use of "Jihad", so frequent in the mouths of radicalized Islamists; I mean both words are wrongheaded and bad but this does not imply that of necessity who said the one had an equal influence in the state of current affairs as who said the other. The same kind of folly no doubt is at play but with the difference of proportion. Consider, do you really think that word said by W. Bush in a speech once, "crusade", evidences an equivalent contingent of Westerns whose mission it is to kill, as the word jihad does when said by radical Islamists? When the radical Islamist say it, in many instances indeed, they urge killing of Western citizens like you and me literally and not as a rhetorical flourish (but which is a rhetorical blemish in actuality). I will be so bold as to venture one may be more extremely pernicious than the other as far as proportion, though they both exhibit the same kind of mistaken judgement.

And then the choice of singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Y9NGXxdAg . That sent a bellicose message to everyone watching who was the "Other". Consider the message in the words of that song. In England, it was also sung by the archbishop of Canterbury and those gathered in the church in a (as we westerners saw it) manifestation of solidarity with the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmpo0csiIMs

Did the choice of song at that particular ceremony in Washington really prove so influential to those who have taken up the cause of terrorism and killing Western citizens by all means? Did any specific saying, song or deed really ever consist of what tipped an Islamic terrorist over the edge to killing Western citizens for jihad. The real essential causes must surely be deeper than any such particular occurrence one could point to like this. Nothing said or sung at any speech or ceremony is at all an essential constituent of that fuel which drives men and women to blow themselves up or become radical Islamists. That said, these particulars you mention are grossly unaccountable and wrongheaded themselves; and are in every way to be condemned as contrary to resolution and peace.
Best,
Erik

The Kenin Malik/Guardian article is drenched in the language of humanity's shared condition, nihilism:

'unravelled imperialist traditions' , 'declining progressive social movements', 'loss of faith in universalist values', 'inchoate rage', 'eroded political ideals', 'Islamism filling the void', bottomless 'western cynicism', 'misguided military interventions that succeed only 'destroy[ing] civil society'.

It's as though we've gathered around the rim of the same abyss in a labored effort to pretend there are two sides in order to retain some semblance of meaning and purpose. Each is the designated scapegoat of the other. However there's no existential weight to the purported distinctions. It's mutually assured annihilation under the flimsiest of banners.

The nature of online discussions has that limitation you give it, an ad lib conversation without seeing each others faces is an apt characterization. As for the personal illustrations you relate, they are quite interesting so I thank you for sharing. I consider the personal element of our relation to symbols no less valid or worth mention than other aspects I might add.
Best,
Erik