Jesus, even when I see the word "orgies" in print I literally HEAR Danny DeVito saying it in that creepy voice from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
the funny part is that anti-multiculturalists are using the same reasoning as people who are given a choice between a million dollars and being paraplegic, and choose the million dollars each time.
they're operating from the viewpoint that a million dollars is always preferable to being handicapped- but if being handicapped is objectively bad, then why aren't more paraplegics killing themselves? Why isn't the suicide rate in the 90th percentile?
The answer of course is that from the outside things look worse because we just see the bad stuff- which of course can't be ignored, much like in how multiculturalism can't simply ignore bad aspects of other cultures- but it is possible to live a happy life with it.
Ethnocentrists think that their present status quo is infinitely preferable to change, or they create a standard in their head that they see as having been sundered by the present. This guy was a jesusfreak so the "Adam and Eve/Fall from Paradise" narrative that republicans use to describe contemporary America is probably what he subscribed to- the idea that Europe was this rich center of culture before the immigrants came and ruined it, taking Eden with them.
In other words, Muslims are going through the same process of cultural assimilation that hispanic immigrants do in the US- sometimes they adhere to their patrial roots but more often they become "americanized" and it only takes a generation, or even a couple decades, to turn a mexican immigrant into a quasi-conservative Yankees fan.
Or something like that, it's been a while since I read about the state of US immigration.
Charles Stross berated a commenter on one of his blog posts for insinuating that Europe would have to accept sharia law if they wanted to be tolerant of immigrants, pointing out that the "Europe is soon to be overrun by muslim fundies" is an unrealistic interpretation of demographic data, low birthrate notwithstanding. There aren't enough muslims of the extremist variety to do to Europe what Evangelicals are doing to the US.
Of course that doesn't stop paranoid conservatives like Michael Scheuer from declaring Europe "lost" in the war on terror.
I feel like the entire argument in this comments section about left and right wing terrorists is stemming from a huge desire to not be painted as "that side that breeds terrorists". Everyone's bantering about whose body count is bigger or whether both sides are equally murderous and it feels like an extension of Goldberg's arguing, when he tried to lay the blame for all of recent history's worst tragedies on the political left and attempted to exonerate the right for all wrong doing. It's like that, except both sides are doing it, forgetting that left and right are just perspectives and that the ideas the are associated with either term can end up switching sides at any time. American liberals are similar to European conservatives and vice versa if I remember right.
When Mao and Stalin and Kim took power they were left-authoritarian because they demanded a centralized power structure dedicated to changing the status quo- "revolutionary china, guarding the revolution etc".
When Hitler and Mussolini and various south american dictators took power, they were right-authoritarian because they demanded a centralized power structure devoted to maintaining the status quo.
Dont ever forget that the difference between left and right is the type of ideas they endorse, and that they can switch sides at any time- and that if you get angry enough about them you can be driven to violence regardless of the stereotypes associated with each spectrum label.
on second thought I cant remember if Saudis are blowing up crap in Yemen but I know theyre involved there in some capacity and so if anything went down in Yemen they'd be mighty pissed
to be fair Saudi Arabia would just laugh if we threatened to attack their troops in Bahrain. They know we want their oil and they have a shit ton of fancy equipment we sold to them so there's no way that wouldn't be a huge, huge blunder. They'd flip us the bird and keep on rolling towards the 5th fleet base. Same thing with Yemen, if we threatened to hit Saudi troops rolling in there they'd just fuck with everything coming out of the Red Sea. So yeah it is pragmatic, with all the attendant implications of cold logic, but I understand your frustration.
Ok, so from what I've read, Qaddafi kept the eastern region of Libya poor, right? And that's where the oil fields are, right? Am I right in postulating that the reason he did this was to keep the oil rich side of the country from building up a sizable amount of wealth using that oil, thus creating a potentially difficult to control power base centered around the oil fields? Kind of like a huge empire having a hard time controlling distant provinces sometimes when they grow wealthy, and the empire can't project enough power to check their growth?
Little by little I hear people saying that the seeds of these revolutions were planted in the Iraq Invasion which I think is a pretty grotesque notion. I wonder what these people will say if/when some of these revolutions produce corrupt military dictatorships.
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Jesus, even when I see the word "orgies" in print I literally HEAR Danny DeVito saying it in that creepy voice from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
well I wouldn't exactly call it a sitzkrieg but there hasn't been any major developments, so...
how well does the india/pakistan nuclear sitzkrieg fit as an analogy to the future of iran and israel?
the funny part is that anti-multiculturalists are using the same reasoning as people who are given a choice between a million dollars and being paraplegic, and choose the million dollars each time.
they're operating from the viewpoint that a million dollars is always preferable to being handicapped- but if being handicapped is objectively bad, then why aren't more paraplegics killing themselves? Why isn't the suicide rate in the 90th percentile?
The answer of course is that from the outside things look worse because we just see the bad stuff- which of course can't be ignored, much like in how multiculturalism can't simply ignore bad aspects of other cultures- but it is possible to live a happy life with it.
Ethnocentrists think that their present status quo is infinitely preferable to change, or they create a standard in their head that they see as having been sundered by the present. This guy was a jesusfreak so the "Adam and Eve/Fall from Paradise" narrative that republicans use to describe contemporary America is probably what he subscribed to- the idea that Europe was this rich center of culture before the immigrants came and ruined it, taking Eden with them.
In other words, Muslims are going through the same process of cultural assimilation that hispanic immigrants do in the US- sometimes they adhere to their patrial roots but more often they become "americanized" and it only takes a generation, or even a couple decades, to turn a mexican immigrant into a quasi-conservative Yankees fan.
Or something like that, it's been a while since I read about the state of US immigration.
Charles Stross berated a commenter on one of his blog posts for insinuating that Europe would have to accept sharia law if they wanted to be tolerant of immigrants, pointing out that the "Europe is soon to be overrun by muslim fundies" is an unrealistic interpretation of demographic data, low birthrate notwithstanding. There aren't enough muslims of the extremist variety to do to Europe what Evangelicals are doing to the US.
Of course that doesn't stop paranoid conservatives like Michael Scheuer from declaring Europe "lost" in the war on terror.
I feel like the entire argument in this comments section about left and right wing terrorists is stemming from a huge desire to not be painted as "that side that breeds terrorists". Everyone's bantering about whose body count is bigger or whether both sides are equally murderous and it feels like an extension of Goldberg's arguing, when he tried to lay the blame for all of recent history's worst tragedies on the political left and attempted to exonerate the right for all wrong doing. It's like that, except both sides are doing it, forgetting that left and right are just perspectives and that the ideas the are associated with either term can end up switching sides at any time. American liberals are similar to European conservatives and vice versa if I remember right.
When Mao and Stalin and Kim took power they were left-authoritarian because they demanded a centralized power structure dedicated to changing the status quo- "revolutionary china, guarding the revolution etc".
When Hitler and Mussolini and various south american dictators took power, they were right-authoritarian because they demanded a centralized power structure devoted to maintaining the status quo.
Dont ever forget that the difference between left and right is the type of ideas they endorse, and that they can switch sides at any time- and that if you get angry enough about them you can be driven to violence regardless of the stereotypes associated with each spectrum label.
on second thought I cant remember if Saudis are blowing up crap in Yemen but I know theyre involved there in some capacity and so if anything went down in Yemen they'd be mighty pissed
to be fair Saudi Arabia would just laugh if we threatened to attack their troops in Bahrain. They know we want their oil and they have a shit ton of fancy equipment we sold to them so there's no way that wouldn't be a huge, huge blunder. They'd flip us the bird and keep on rolling towards the 5th fleet base. Same thing with Yemen, if we threatened to hit Saudi troops rolling in there they'd just fuck with everything coming out of the Red Sea. So yeah it is pragmatic, with all the attendant implications of cold logic, but I understand your frustration.
Ok, so from what I've read, Qaddafi kept the eastern region of Libya poor, right? And that's where the oil fields are, right? Am I right in postulating that the reason he did this was to keep the oil rich side of the country from building up a sizable amount of wealth using that oil, thus creating a potentially difficult to control power base centered around the oil fields? Kind of like a huge empire having a hard time controlling distant provinces sometimes when they grow wealthy, and the empire can't project enough power to check their growth?
Little by little I hear people saying that the seeds of these revolutions were planted in the Iraq Invasion which I think is a pretty grotesque notion. I wonder what these people will say if/when some of these revolutions produce corrupt military dictatorships.
Hahaha, BATTLESHIPS? We don't even have battleships in service! The ones still around are friggin museums!
Heh, morons.