"I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot ‘em in the head myself!" - Anti-Muslim rhetoric ramps up..

[CptBork]

Guaranteed cause-effect relationships like that don't exist in politics or economics, so I'm more disturbed by the party dedicated to asking and answering such pointless fantastical questions "yes".

I would naturally expect that sort of reasoning to be used as an excuse for answering "no". "Why should I give up half of my purchasing power when I don't even know for sure if it'll accomplish anything? That'll just make us poor while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and everyone else gets rich, and then they'll come take all our stuff!"

Yes, it's a seemingly good enough excuse to avoid any form of economic self-sacrifice and pass the buck onto others to solve the world's problems, but then again as J.P. Morgan once said, "A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason." I'm merely speculating on voter attitudes and real reasons, trying to get others to consider a viewpoint they might not have thought about before.

Which is more important- cutting off funds to terrorists and corrupt tyrants, or cheap memory cards made by disenfranchised migrant labourers whose wages couldn't buy a bottle of spit? Let's ask some of the lucky shoppers below.

If political action requires the same quality of evidence and demonstrable cause-and-effect as quantum electrodynamics, then you might as well give up on having elections altogether.

 

[CptBork]

What was the quote from the news room from the bitching monologue " we used to aspire to intelligence not belittle it"

One thing that really pisses me off more than anything else is how Western politics often seems to label intellectuals as all being detached from society, and how the intellectuals allow their opponents to get away with it. Career politicians are in fact the ones most detached from society and the ones destroying politics, because by definition they never really participate economically in society other than to govern it from afar, while their practical skills and understanding of objective reality range from lacking to completely non-existent.

How could a guy like Donald Trump be getting all this attention as he runs for president, along with a conga line of halfwits running as his competition, but there's never any consideration for a Steve Jobs or Sergei Brin or even Bill Gates as presidential material, even though these 3 are/were all richer than Trump?

 

[Russ_Watters]

Yes, it's a seemingly good enough excuse to avoid any form of economic self-sacrifice and pass the buck onto others to solve the world's problems...

If that were what it was, sure, but you won't find such convenient selective two-faced-ness from me. In another thread just this morning, I was praising the repeal of our protectionist oil export ban (an you'll never guess who posted in support of the ban...).

Of course, the other fatal flaw of your question is that it lacks a description of the actual action, which, again, appeals to the party susceptible to fantasy ("Hope"). The actual action may have merit, but you'd never get me to say "yes" to something unless you tell me what it is.

...disenfranchised migrant labourers...

In order to be disenfranchised, one must first be franchised.

I'll save my rebuttal of the poverty/exploitation hoax/fantasy for another thread where it is more relevant.

 

[Tiassa]

Market Analysis

​

How could a guy like Donald Trump be getting all this attention as he runs for president, along with a conga line of halfwits running as his competition, but there's never any consideration for a Steve Jobs or Sergei Brin or even Bill Gates as presidential material, even though these 3 are/were all richer than Trump?

Well, despite one being dead, we might point out that as businessmen all were very successful; unlike Mr. Trump's company bankruptcies, Apple's biggest financial challenges came after they kicked out their CEO in favor of more traditional business methods. When they called Mr. Jobs back to save the company, he did everything to make certain his next successors couldn't make the same mistakes.

Mr. Brin is Russian-born, and cannot serve as President of the United States.

Mr. Gates, however, represents a reflection that can be applied to all three: They're smart enough to not run for president.

What does running for president get anyone? Slandered and libeled and abused, on the best of days. Perpetually sued if you're a Democrat. Speaking fees for personal profit and fundraising clout seem to be the benefits an actual president gets from the job.

Mr. Gates is smart enough to not want that.

Look at the businesspeople who do: Ross Perot? Donald Trump? And look at what Carly Fiorina has to do this year; not only does she have to pitch to men that she is the perfect counterpoint for a female Democrat, she must also do so by victimizing women.

And think of how fast Gates' candidacy would crash. First question at the first debate: Mr. Gates, of all the accomplishments you might tout, one question remains: How do you properly justify and apologize for Microsoft Windows?

Next question: Mr. Gates, how can you claim to be able to get out in front of American challenges when you were perpetually trying to catch up to security deficiencies in your software?

And the next: If you wish to bring Microsoft wisdom to the whole nation, how is that not a threat?

It's kind of a problem.

(No, really, if Mr. Brin could run for president, the first question he would face is, "So ... what ever happened to 'Don't be evil'?")

Notice that Trump and Fiorina alike are the sort of businesspeople whose reputations don't mingle with the market as much. As far as I can tell, it took until this morning for someone to make the obvious point about Fiorina, and Kurt Sampsel↱ did so in passing:

When Carly Fiorina wasn't bragging about how innovative Hewlett-Packard is (leading many in the audience to wonder if she was talking about the same Hewlett-Packard that we know – that company that made your grandmom's beige desktop computer), she retreated to her credentials, and, as she's done before, she seemed to be reading from her driver's license and resume. She's a woman, she explained, which means she certainly won't have to deal with conflict or disagreement when it comes to deploying our military might. And on top of that, she ran a company, which means that she … you know … can run things.

(Boldface accent added)​

And this is just the surface. Americans fume about corporate culture all the time, but a large portion of those complaints will evaporate, or decide to blame someone else, when a businessperson decides to run for president on the merits of their business record.

I think of Herman Cain. It's one thing to say he's a successful businessman, but the problem with that success is that anyone who knew about it already knew how awful the product was. Seriously, the first question he should have faced: How can you stand in front of the American people and cite your business acumen? The only real answer would have been to argue that he was successful because enough Americans bought it to keep the chain in business.

Imagine Brian Niccol running for president. Why wouldn't we ask him, straight out of the gate, how he justifies the excrement Taco Bell calls food?

We ought not wonder why so many of the successful businesspeople who run for office are so bad at it.
____________________

Notes:

Sampsel, Kurt. "Donald Trump’s hilarious admission: I don’t really know how the Internet works". Salon. 16 December 2015. Salon.com. 16 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1NTzTEJ

 

[CptBork]

If that were what it was, sure, but you won't find such convenient selective two-faced-ness from me. In another thread just this morning, I was praising the repeal of our protectionist oil export ban (an you'll never guess who posted in support of the ban...).

I'm not advocating for protectionism personally, just an end to all trade between democracies and dictatorships, or at least those dictatorships not hurrying to seek human rights improvements.

Of course, the other fatal flaw of your question is that it lacks a description of the actual action, which, again, appeals to the party susceptible to fantasy ("Hope"). The actual action may have merit, but you'd never get me to say "yes" to something unless you tell me what it is.

What hope does your viewpoint offer? More of the same? Maybe if you ask often and nicely enough, then Putin, Xi and the rest will eventually come around to our way of doing things? Maybe we'll have really awesome lasers to shoot down the nukes, when we finally decide we can't let China and Russia continue gobbling up territory and pursue a military response?

What I advocate is simple enough. Heavy US tariffs or a total ban on imports and exports to and from dictatorships, as well as any and all nations who allow themselves to serve as intermediaries. That means policies such as an end to trade with China and all other slave economies, along with an end to trade with any nation that refuses to go along with such a ban, and all the nations which trade with those nations, all the way up and down the line. It means ending trade with Germany and all of its trade partners unless they start weaning themselves off of Russian oil, gas and all other economic exchanges. It means no more Saudi oil exchanged for weapons and cash to finance Wahabbis and keep the population repressed.

And what if, heavens forbid, a resultantly weakened Saudi Arabia were to be occupied by Iran and its partners in tyranny while the US stands aside? Great, let them assume the costs of that occupation on top of all the other costs they would be made to pay as part of a meaningful economic cutoff; the occupiers would simply collapse all that much sooner, and a meaningful incentive would be delivered to Saudi Arabia and all other dictatorships to seek human rights reforms before such a scenario were to play itself out.

Oh yes, there would be an enormous amount of economic chaos and lots of corporate psychopath narcicists jumping from office windows, but the alternative simply gives nuclear-armed dictatorships more time to enrich themselves and prepare for WW3 with ever more courage to approach the brink... I figure - and it might simply be one of those silly wishful fantasies of mine - that economic cutoffs would be far cheaper than WW3, at least for the poorest 99.9%.

In order to be disenfranchised, one must first be franchised.

One should wonder then why there was the whole stink about slavery in the US back in the day- was it worth fighting a civil war over?

I'll save my rebuttal of the poverty/exploitation hoax/fantasy for another thread where it is more relevant.

Ok, let's go sit down at Red Lobster and debate it over shrimp packed by Thai slaves at gunpoint.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-seafood-slavery-20151214-story.html

 

[Bells]

And on and on it goes..

Terrorism from foreign sources has not risen dramatically in recent years, despite San Bernardino. But the fact is that acts of hate and domestic terrorism against Muslims have been increasing.

A new FBI report says hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise.
As Republican officials wring their hands about letting Muslim refugees in the country, hate crimes against Muslims in this country are actually on the rise in the U.S.

...

Hate crimes in all other categories went down; attacks on Muslims bucked the trend.

The agency’s annual report on hate crime statistics indicates that the total number of reported hate-crime incidents in 2014 is lower than in 2013, decreasing from 5,928 to 5,479

Of the 1,092 reported hate crimes related to anti-religious sentiment, 16.3 percent were anti-Muslim—a total of 154 incidents and 184 victims. In 2013, there were 135 reported anti-Muslim incidents with 167 victims.

The Southern Poverty Law Center suggested the uptick in crimes targeted at Muslims because of their faith will likely continue in 2015.

[Source]
​

Some of the attacks in the last few weeks:

That prediction for 2015 seems to be proving true as we look back just over the last couple of weeks:

• Police arrest Minnesota man suspected of firebombing Muslim-owned restaurant
• KKK recruiting drive jumps on anti-Islam bandwagon: Send Muslims ‘back where they came from’
• Trump supporter looks forward to ‘Christian supremacist’ society where Muslims will be put to death
• California man who threatened Muslim woman at knifepoint to be charged with hate crime
• Ohio seventh-grader threatened to use dad’s gun to shoot Muslim boy he called ‘son of ISIS’
• Georgia school says teacher had no ‘ill intent’ asking Muslim student if she had a bomb in her backpack.
• Muslim woman shot at and another nearly run off the road in Tampa after leaving mosques
• ’Muslim motherf*cker’: NY man launches glass-smashing attack on cafe staffers
• Washington DC man sends client ‘Death to Muslims’ threat — then tries to intimidate journalist
• Texans begin nightly smashing windows of Muslim family only six weeks after they move in
• Muslim store owner in tears after he’s beaten by New York man on mission to ‘kill Muslims’
• Enraged woman attacks Muslims praying in California park: ‘Allah is Satan and you are all murderers’
• Family claims Muslim teen died after he was beaten and shoved off roof near Seattle Central College

Each of those are links that you can click on.. They recount stories such as:

Right-wing extremist video-blogger Theodore Shoebat has taken a break from calling for the execution of LGBT people to call for the execution of Muslims.

According to RightWingWatch.com, Shoebat uploaded a new video over the weekend in which he pledged his support to Donald Trump and said that he hopes a Trump presidency will lead to a “Christian supremacist” society where devout Muslims will be put to death.

In Shoebat’s vision of America, “there’s no free reign [sic] for homosexuals, there’s no liberation for perversity and debaseness [sic] and just downright weird mutant psychos walking around with clipped liberal dyke hair and men dressing up as women and all that sick, psycho stuff. People who flaunt the Koran in a Christian society would be arrested, at times put to death, depending on the disposition of the person, if they can be rehabilitated, if they can be conformed.”

He was responding to a Muslim New York judge’s decision to be sworn in on the Koran rather than a Christian Bible.

“To me, this judge, as far as I am concerned, in a Christian society, she’s worthy of being arrested and executed,” Shoebat said, “for going against the body, for really trying to attempt to subvert the order of society” by using a text that is “absolutely demonic and absolutely heretical.”

“We need a Christian supremacist society or else these things are going to continue to happen,” Shoebat has said. “God willing, if Donald Trump wins, and I think he will win, he will put a cap on things like this.”​

Certainly, Shoebat is a raving lunatic, the same as his father really.

Nor surprisingly, Shoebat has endorsed Trump. Birds of those feather's certainly stick together.

As the list of links above show, they range to families being terrorised by having their windows broken at night and firebombs and death threats made towards Mosques and Muslim businesses, to being threatened with knives, being driven off the road, being shot at, being murdered, all because of their faith. And they do not just target Muslims. Anyone who these people believe may be Muslim are being targeted.

[Part I]

 

[Bells]

Part II

What is interesting, however, is this:

At this week’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas and in the courts of America, it seems like when we talk about “terrorism” we only appear to bring the subject up when the perpetrators are Muslim and/or brown-skinned.

Since September 11, there were nine foreign-inspired “Jihadist” terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that killed 45 Americans, while 18 domestic-inspired far right terrorism attacks killed 48 people. We consider and debate all sorts of measures to change surveillance and immigration procedures while ignoring due process and the Constitution for foreign and Muslim threats because of the 14 people killed in San Bernardino last week. But we do absolutely nothing in response to the nine people killed in Charleston by Dylann Roof, or the six people killed at a Sikh temple in 2012, or the three killed in Colorado at Planned Parenthood last month, or the three killed in Las Vegas in 2014 including two police officers and one “good guy with a gun” in Walmart, or the three people killed at a Kansas Jewish center in 2014, or the four people killed in a multi-state spree by white supremacists in 2012, or the four people killed by the FEAR Militia in 2011.

But then in those 18 deadly domestic terrorist attacks, nearly all of the “violent killers” involved were white. So I guess it just doesn’t count then, does it?

[...]

“In the last 13 years, there’s been five times as many right-wing attacks in this country as Muslim attacks. Not a single question about it,” host Cenk Uygur said. He pointed out that while Republicans have been critical of Democratic candidates for not saying the phrase “radical Islam,” the GOP refuses to say “right wing terrorism.”

The panel, which included John Iadarola, Ben Mankiewicz, and Jimmy Dore also brought up mass shootings.

“If we’re having a debate about terror, can we also bring up the terrorism watch list and why they can buy weapons [on] the terrorism watch list?” Uygur said. “How do you not get a single question on that? …The mass shootings are right around the corner, in your neighborhood. That’s what’s making you less safe.”

Dore said it’s easier to scare voters when the perpetrators don’t look like them.

“It’s easier to scare people of the ‘other,’ someone who doesn’t look like you, especially if they’re darker,” he said. [emphasis added]
​

 

[Bowser]

Being a multi-racial religion, there doesn't seem to be any incentive for people to judge because of race. No, I think it has more to do with the violence that Islam generates. We see it's benefits by looking at it's place of origin. Really, is there any wonder why people wouldn't want to open our doors? I see no reason to rush out the red carpet. There's an obvious divide between our two cultures, one that may never be bridged.

There are 8 million Muslims in the U.S. (not all are brown). There are 245,532,000 whites in the U.S. When grabbing numbers on violence, it might be wise to compare those to the overall population of the people in question.

 

[CptBork]

Being a multi-racial religion, there doesn't seem to be any incentive for people to judge because of race. No, I think it has more to do with the violence that Islam generates. We see it's benefits by looking at it's place of origin. Really, is there any wonder why people wouldn't want to open our doors? I see no reason to rush out the red carpet. There's an obvious divide between our two cultures, one that may never be bridged.

There are 8 million Muslims in the U.S. (not all are brown). There are 245,532,000 whites in the U.S. When grabbing numbers on violence, it might be wise to compare those to the overall population of the people in question.

And? What's the per capita crime rate for American Muslims? Seems to me that a far bigger concern should be the lack of human rights enforcement in several of America's Muslim trade partners, i.e. Egypt and Pakistan, where blasphemy is still officially punishable by death. If the West stopped financing and trading with the dictators who maintain ultraconservative regimes in the Middle East and breed terror, it would also help to prevent such extremism from being exported abroad, and the genuine "moderates" would be able to step forth into the limelight.

 

[Bells]

Being a multi-racial religion, there doesn't seem to be any incentive for people to judge because of race. No, I think it has more to do with the violence that Islam generates. We see it's benefits by looking at it's place of origin. Really, is there any wonder why people wouldn't want to open our doors? I see no reason to rush out the red carpet. There's an obvious divide between our two cultures, one that may never be bridged.

There are 8 million Muslims in the U.S. (not all are brown). There are 245,532,000 whites in the U.S. When grabbing numbers on violence, it might be wise to compare those to the overall population of the people in question.

The far right in the US generates more violence and kills more people than Islamic terrorism in the US. Are you sure you want to claim that Islam generates more violence in the US, for example?

I think shutting out refugees fleeing for their lives, because they are Muslim, will generate more radicalisation and it plays more into the hands of radical terrorists who are trying to convince fleeing Muslims to join their cause.

And I certainly think mistreating and abusing American Muslims because they are Muslims and tarring them with the same broad brush and treating them like terrorists because of their religious beliefs will push them to radicalisation.

Look more closely, though, and you’ll see they don’t attack in the West very often. Of the 125 attacks committed by Islamists that I studied, 77—62 percent—of them were committed in predominantly Muslim countries, and their victims were overwhelmingly other Muslims. Another 40 attacks took place in just three countries—Israel, India, and the Philippines. Only four of the 125 attacks happened in the Western Hemisphere or Europe. They were ghastly and dramatic, just as they were intended to be. But they were, and still are, rare.

That means the risk of an American being killed by any act of terrorism in a given yearis roughly one in 3.5 million, and the chances are that the act of terrorism won’t be committed by an Islamist. These facts are all the more remarkable given how easy it is to be a terrorist. The attacks on Charlie Hebdo were well-planned, but any cretin acting alone can throw a homemade bomb into a crowded café—or walk into a classroom and open fire. Three million Muslims live in the United States, and odds of an American being crushed to death by their own furniture or television exceed those of being killed by an Islamist.

[...]

What about violent crime? Here Muslims are way behind the rest of us—and in a good way. Homicide rates in Muslim-majority countries average about two murders per annum per 100,000 people. In non-Muslim countries, the average rate is about 8 per 100,000. Murder rates fluctuate from year to year, but they are consistently low in Muslim societies. The homicide rate in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, is 1 per 100,000—one-fifth the rate of the world’s largest Christian country, the United States. Christian countries live with murder rates that are unknown in the Muslim world. Brazilians and Mexicans are used to murder rates in the 15-25 range; the rate in Venezuela tops 50. Turks, Egyptians, Iranians, and Malaysians live with rates in the 2-4 range. In a good year, Christian South Africa lives with a murder rate of around 30. In a bad year, the rate in Muslim Senegal is one-tenth of that. Anyone who is skeptical of these numbers is invited to walk through minaret-dotted Dakar and steeple-studded Johannesburg at night and compare their experiences in the two cities. For that matter, have a stroll after dark in the low-income areas of Istanbul or Ankara. Then do so in Philadelphia or Oakland.

Differences this big call for an explanation. We can rule out several possibilities. One is that Muslims live under more authoritarian political regimes where the bad guys have more to fear from the authorities. In fact, the data show that authoritarian regimes do no better at controlling violent crime than democracies do. Even if Muslims generally live under harsher political regimes, they are not less prone to crime for that reason.

Sacred texts don’t explain anything either. The Quran staunchly prohibits murder. But the Bible and the foundational texts of every other major religion do as well.

But one possible explanation arises from the data: Greater socioeconomic inequality is correlated with higher homicide rates, and Muslim societies have comparatively low levels of inequality. The regions with the most murder, Latin America and southern Africa, also have the highest values on the so-called Gini score, the statistic that economists and political scientists use to measure class inequality. High economic inequalities (which is what a high Gini score indicates) and high murder rates go together. Statistical analysis shows that countries with proportionately larger Muslim populations have lower Gini scores and lower murder rates.

We don’t yet know why Muslims have lower murder rates and lower economic inequalities, but we do know that they enjoy both. We also suspect that lower inequalities make for less social tension and less homicide.

Are Muslims violent? These days, global terrorism is mainly Islamist. Even though the vast majority of Muslims oppose terrorism, it’s true their religion has a terrorism problem. Nothing is gained by denying it. But Islamists rarely strike targets in the West, and when it comes to mass political violence, Muslims do better, but only a tiny bit better, than others. They do far better at avoiding murder.

As I get out of my car near home in Oakland tonight, I will miss the relative safety of the teeming slum I once lived near in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city. And while there are quite a few Muslims in my neighborhood in Oakland, I can’t say I’ll be on edge worrying about a terrorist attack. In fact, the guys in Muslim skullcaps and the women in hijabs I might run into tonight at the Arab-run convenience store down the street will be last folks I’ll fear.

[Source]​

Far right anti-Government supporters generate far more violence in the US than Muslims do.

To put it into more perspective:

Despite public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, the number of violent plots by such individuals has remainedvery low. Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.

In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.

Other data sets, using different definitions of political violence, tell comparable stories. The Global Terrorism Database maintained by theStart Center at the University of Maryland includes 65 attacks in the United States associated with right-wing ideologies and 24 by Muslim extremists since 9/11. The International Security Program at the New America Foundation identifies 39 fatalities from “non-jihadist” homegrown extremists and 26 fatalities from “jihadist” extremists.

Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.

Public debates on terrorism focus intensely on Muslims. But this focus does not square with the low number of plots in the United States by Muslims, and it does a disservice to a minority group that suffers from increasingly hostile public opinion. As state and local police agencies remind us, right-wing, anti-government extremism is the leading source of ideological violence in America.​

So your point is kind of ridiculous. You are more likely to be killed by a far right gun owning neighbour than you are by a Muslim refugee.

Perhaps we should focus on the source of the violence stemming from the far right? They kill more people and endanger the public more than a Syrian refugee would.

 

[Bowser]

But where Islamic ideology has hold, the violence is far worse. That's what people fear. Is it honest to give all Muslims the label of extremist? No. Yet there is a problem on their side of the farm, one that needs to be resolved.

Race, in my opinion, has nothing to do with the issue. We are a diverse nation, culturally and racially.

 

[Bowser]

And? What's the per capita crime rate for American Muslims? Seems to me that a far bigger concern should be the lack of human rights enforcement in several of America's Muslim trade partners, i.e. Egypt and Pakistan, where blasphemy is still officially punishable by death. If the West stopped financing and trading with the dictators who maintain ultraconservative regimes in the Middle East and breed terror, it would also help to prevent such extremism from being exported abroad, and the genuine "moderates" would be able to step forth into the limelight.

Maybe... The sad fact seems to be that dictatorship and theocracy work in those regions. That's not me giving it legitimacy, but just seems to be the case. I honestly thought our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan would help usher democracy into the region. Perhaps I was naive. Our recent actions seem to have done more to destabilize than improve the situation.

 

[CptBork]

Maybe... The sad fact seems to be that dictatorship and theocracy work in those regions. That's not me giving it legitimacy, but just seems to be the case. I honestly thought our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan would help usher democracy into the region. Perhaps I was naive. Our recent actions seem to have done more to destabilize than improve the situation.

It seems to me that nearly any dictatorship anywhere in the world works when it enjoys strong trade relations with the US or one of its other trade partners. You put money in Pakistan's right hand and they hand it to the Taliban with their left, so how did you expect anything to be accomplished in Afghanistan? How could the Iraq occupation have ever succeeded, with or without a friendly local population, while a continuous stream of military supplies and militants poured in back and forth from Iran and Syria nearly unhindered, and freedom of action against hostile population centres was highly restricted compared to the way America once handled Tokyo and Dresden? Today, the US and western countries in general neither fight to win- if you're not willing to watch thousands or even millions of the enemy's children burn to death, if that's what it takes to win, then whatever you're fighting for isn't worth the cost- nor do they bother to cut off the trade partners who finance the people they're fighting against.

In my eyes the whole Afghan war was, in reality, Bush's warning shot to Pakistan to stop funding and enabling terrorists, with the hopes of avoiding a direct confrontation and nuclear exchange somewhere down the road. Pakistan's unelected President Musharraf has since claimed that Bush had to threaten him with Pakistan's destruction before he agreed to cooperate on the Taliban and Al Qaeda issue; in my view, the fact that the conversation even reached that point after the events of 9/11, says even more about Pakistan's people and government than it does about the US and Bush.

 

[Tiassa]

In my eyes the whole Afghan war was, in reality, Bush's warning shot to Pakistan to stop funding and enabling terrorists ....

I suppose it's possible. But we probably shouldn't have been funding the Taliban ourselves; and hindsight suggests funding their startup venture might have been a really bad idea, too.

Quite honestly, it didn't seem at the time we had any intention of going after the Taliban in Afghanistan or anywhere else until Al Qaeda hit the U.S. directly.

No, really, 2001? The U.S. gave the Taliban two hundred million dollars earlier in the year.

 

[CptBork]

I suppose it's possible. But we probably shouldn't have been funding the Taliban ourselves; and hindsight suggests funding their startup venture might have been a really bad idea, too.

Quite honestly, it didn't seem at the time we had any intention of going after the Taliban in Afghanistan or anywhere else until Al Qaeda hit the U.S. directly.

No, really, 2001? The U.S. gave the Taliban two hundred million dollars earlier in the year.

I'm not very knowledgeable about the specifics, but I do know a bit about past dealings between Karzai, the Taliban, Bush and the Unocal pipeline company prior to 9/11. To me, it's just another example of why it doesn't pay to seek shortcuts and deal with dictatorships, nor does it pay off in the long term to be propping up one dictatorship even simply to counter-balance another dictatorship propped up by someone else. No dictatorship or theocracy on the planet today has been able to get by without profitable dealings either directly with the United States, or with another trade partner who only has money and goods to trade for the dictator's produce because they're enriched by the U.S. in the first place. I say it's time for Americans who are serious about achieving global peace and prosperity to use that linchpin in a way it's never been used since WW2, and clip every last branch connecting their economy to tyrants and sworn enemies.

 

[Bowser]

I say it's time for Americans who are serious about achieving global peace and prosperity to use that linchpin in a way it's never been used since WW2, and clip every last branch connecting their economy to tyrants and sworn enemies.

Interesting. That sounds too simple to actually resolve what I assume to be a very complex issue. If we were to isolate those economies would it create a vacuum and further destabilize an already tenuous situation?

 

[billvon]

I say it's time for Americans who are serious about achieving global peace and prosperity to use that linchpin in a way it's never been used since WW2, and clip every last branch connecting their economy to tyrants and sworn enemies.

So stop buying oil? Stop buying lithium to make batteries for electric cars? Stop selling grain to most of the rest of the world? I don't think that would be good for our economy - nor would it advance the cause of peace. Starving people and forcing them into poverty generally doesn't result in peace.

 

[CptBork]

Interesting. That sounds too simple to actually resolve what I assume to be a very complex issue. If we were to isolate those economies would it create a vacuum and further destabilize an already tenuous situation?

Who would fill the vacuum, if not more economies equally reliant on trade with the US and its other partners? Dictators fighting amongst themselves would only increase the costs for all involved and hasten their mutual downfalls, once disconnected from all economic lifelines to the West. Letting countries like Saudi Arabia hold you hostage under the vague threat that Iran could take control of the region is what's been getting Americans into so many ruinous stalemates.

 

[CptBork]

So stop buying oil?

Yes, learn to walk more and live without Dunkin' Donuts drivethroughs. Move to a real city that wasn't planned by rednecks in pickup trucks, if need be. I'm sure you'll find a way to survive; I hear there's this huge, relatively cheap supply of oil to America's north, but some bumbling high-level bureaucrat found it more expedient to pander to aging hipsters partially concerned about the environment while avoiding any fights with domestic and foreign producers who pollute even more.

Stop buying lithium to make batteries for electric cars?

Find a democratic supply for lithium, or else seek alternative technologies. Your life doesn't depend on abundant supplies of lithium.

Stop selling grain to most of the rest of the world?

Yes. Let those who starve hold their unelected governments accountable for failing to provide what was promised. Most of the grain only ends up in the hands of the dictators and their friends anyhow- ordinary impoverished folks can't afford to buy American products, and truckloads of free foreign food assistance already go to waste rather than being permitted to reach their intended recipients.

I don't think that would be good for our economy - nor would it advance the cause of peace. Starving people and forcing them into poverty generally doesn't result in peace.

You're right, let's just stick with the status quo where no one is poor and no one starves, and nuclear wars indirectly financed by American trade will only hurt people on the other side of the planet.

 

[billvon]

Yes. Let those who starve hold their unelected governments accountable for failing to provide what was promised.

With that sort of blow to the economy, a lot of the people starving would be here.

You're right, let's just stick with the status quo where no one is poor and no one starves, and nuclear wars indirectly financed by American trade will only hurt people on the other side of the planet.

I never suggested "sticking with the status quo." Perhaps you were answering someone else?