The newly emergent triumvirate of Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia forms one side of the divide, with Islamist extremist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which are supported by Turkey and Qatar.
The United States used to be the acknowledged super power with control over the region. The U.S. has open relations with all the players, but its dithering, especially with respect to the three-year civil war in Syria which has claimed nearly 200,000 lives, has led others in the region to take more decisive roles.
#7
So can we critique them, now? Because it seems like they're doing a pretty poor job.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/26/2014 14:02 Comments ||
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#8
Obama admin slams “outside interference” in Libyan chaos by Egypt, UAE attacks on Islamists.
Since Obumbles wasn't informed of the attacks he has to denounce them. Bugwit.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/26/2014 15:29 Comments ||
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#9
"Obama admin slams “outside interference” in Libyan chaos"
So he slams himself?
Get in line, @sshole.
Posted by: Barbara ||
08/26/2014 16:17 Comments ||
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h/t Gates of Vienna
I am writing this article to help interested persons make head or tail of the ongoing shambles that is the situation in Ukraine and to give some (hopefully accurate) information about the main players in the situation. One of the things that has driven me to contacting the team to offer to write this article has been the disgraceful, shallow, ill-informed coverage in much of the UK Press. The coverage on the two main TV News providers, BBC and ITN has been pathetic and has been propagandising an EU version of events (I will give some examples of this in the article).
Most of the print media has been nearly as bad. In fairness, during the past few weeks, since mid-February, the Daily Mail has started to take the situation seriously and provided much more accurate coverage, particularly in some of the op-eds. The best TV news coverage has been from Al-Jazeera (AJ). I suppose AJ is giving unbiased coverage for the simple reason that as an Islamic-funded broadcaster they have no particular brief for any of the parties in the region. There is also a channel for non-EU-tainted coverage on Russia Today (RT). RT is as you would expect: pro-Russian, putting the official 'Moscow spin' on all its reporting. It is also on occasions hilariously technically incompetent and some of its presenters speak very strongly accented English (some of the other staff are, however, Western European).
The first thing to get straight about the situation is the claim that the document that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign was a 'EU Trade Pact' (or similar names). This was in fact an innocuous and misleading wrapper put around a preliminary agreement for Ukraine to begin accession procedures with the EU, a process that can take decades (for example, Turkey!). Why was this misleading name used?
In the discussion that follows please note the difference between 'Europe' and the 'EU'. Some reporters use the two names interchangeably. They are not the same. Europe is a geographical entity, a continent, consisting of over 40 countries. The EU is a group of 28 countries within Europe that have decided democratically (!) to form a supranational bloc. Reasons for the use of the misleading name for the rejected treaty are numerous and include:
The big news in Europe is the dissolution of the French government as various left-wing government factions try to blame each other for the abysmal condition of their economy. 'French economy going nowhere: now on track for nine straight months of zero growth', writes the Telegraph. The problem, says Hollande's critics, is that he isn't socialist enough. "Two senior left-wing French cabinet ministers have broken ranks with the President, François Hollande, and demanded that Paris abandon the 'forced march' of public-spending cuts in Europe." They warned that unless France did something drastic, like spend more government money, things would fall apart. "The French government recognised on Thursday that its economy had 'broken down' after new data showed there had been zero growth so far this year. In more bad news for the eurozone new figures also revealed the German economy has contracted." And it wasn't just France. EU Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi said that compared to America, Europe was a disaster zone.
There were warnings of Green Suicide by a few lonely voices. "The U.S. shale-gas boom is placing 30 million jobs at risk in Europe as companies with greater reliance on energy contend with higher fuel prices than their American counterparts, the International Energy Agency said." Two birds with one stone?
#3
“the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military... is inflicting on the population of Gaza.”
What exactly does 'disproportionate' mean? Does it refer to the fact that that Israelis are better at killing people than HamAss is? The fact that Israel, as a modern industrial nation, has better tools and resources at its disposal than HamAss, which is basically firing mortars and glorified bottle rockets? The fact that civilian deaths in Gaza are collateral damage from pin-point attacks on military targets rather than the goal as in rocket attacks on Israeli cities?
Perhaps people would love the Juice more if they switched from precision-guided munitions to general purpose ballistic missiles and used a Tit-For-Tat strategy where a missile attack against an Israeli population center would get a missile attack against the population of Gaza in return.
Investigative sources in California say that radical Hamas supporters are planning to go on a rampage in the city of Los Angeles, killing anyone who is a U.S. citizen.
LAPD officials fear the death toll could be as high as 9.
Vapid tut-tuttery from what sounds like a major dork. [CNN] When most people look at ISIS, they see the incarnation of evil. Among its many horrific acts, the Islamic holy warrior group beheaded American journalist James Foley and posted the video this week in retaliation for U.S. Arclight airstrikes in Iraq. The Pope typically protests violence, but he implied that he supports the use of military force to combat ISIS. Even al Qaeda says ISIS is too violent. Across the political spectrum, public officials and pundits have characterized them as "savages," a "cancer" and the "face of evil."
The problem with that question is that the answer is as easy as it is useless. Yes, ISIS is evil and must be stopped. Saying so over and over again could very well make it harder to stop them.
There is only one good reason to denounce a group as evil -- because you plan to injure them, and calling them evil makes it psychologically easier to do so. "Evil" is the most powerful word we have to prepare ourselves to kill other people comfortably.
The flip side is that "evil" is also a word that stops us from thinking. Once you've decided that it's evil what is there to think about? From there you start thinking about how to exterminate them.
There is no point in trying to understand evil because it is, in the most typical phrasing, "inhuman," "senseless" or "beyond comprehension." It is a fool's quest to analyze the local realities and strategic imperatives of unthinking savages. There is something almost offensive about trying to understand such evil. "Tut tut. And tut, my good man!"
National Review's Jonah Goldberg tried to shame those who are trying to think seriously about ISIS. In a recent tweet, he mocked the attempt to understand ISIS in its social and political context, suggesting that we should focus instead on one fact: "They're evil. They do obviously evil things for evil ends."
The fact is, there are few things more dangerous now than allowing ourselves to think that way. Yeah, buddy. There are few things more dangerous than allowing ourselves to think.
To resist ISIS and, perhaps more importantly, the larger social forces it represents, the U.S. will need more than a collective psychological readiness to injure, and more than bombs. "We'll need money, lotsa money, in the form of grants to emminent scholars like... well... like me."
The Wall Street Journal editorialized that this evil ideology will only be stopped when "enough of its fanatics have been killed." But if we've learned anything as a nation since our "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq, it is this: While invasions and bombing can be effective in the short term, they are not durable solutions to terror-based violence. The "shock and awe" campaign ejected Sammy in under two weeks. The follow-up war wasn't against Sammy and his Baathists, it was against Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. They called themselves "al-Qaeda in Iraq," not The Saddam Hussein Revenge Squad. Violence solved the Sammy problem. Violence also solved the AQI problem. Maliki letting them grow back was third in a series of problems.
Even if U.S. military force could effectively destroy ISIS, there will be similar groups waiting in the wings. If we are to have any hope of preventing the spread of bad boy ideologies, we must do more than bomb the believers. We must understand them. We must be willing to continue thinking. Go ahead, bub. Explain them.
How is ISIS able to achieve the support it needs? A base of financing from the Gulf States, with additional revenues from narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, probably prostitution and gambling, and kidnapping for ransom. The moral support comes from salafist holy men whom we're not bothering to suppress because we don't take religion as seriously as they do.
What drives people into its ranks? Holy men, Groupthink, and sheer stupidity. The average jihadi is something like 22 years old. Substitute "orators" for "holy men" and it's no different from the Nazis or the Fascists or the Directorate of Public Safety.
What social pressures and needs, what political and regional vacuums, make it possible for a group like this to thrive? We can choose to answer these questions in two ways.
We can say they are evil people doing evil things for evil ends. Or we can do the hard work of understanding the context that made them, so that we can create a context that unmakes them. The context is a culture that's antithetical to the West. There was a slogan going around Bangladesh a year or two ago: "Sy no to democracy." It came with a yellow flag bearing the same koranic nonsense that's inscribed on the black Islamic State flag. Can we kill them now?
We can analyze the ways its violent tactics are effective for its purposes given the local power dynamics, so that we can also better understand its weak spots. And we can ask how it is that normal men -- men who were not born evil -- get turned into monsters, so that we can work to change the structures that produce hard boyz over the long term instead of locking ourselves into an endlessly repeated, short-term policy of "killing fanatics" until they are gone. They're locked into an endlessly repeated, short-term policy of "killing infidels." While we're holding symposia and filling out applications for grants they'll continue "killing infidels." At some point, while all us good-hearted folk are gathered around a round table trying to decide some way to exonerate Islam from what Islamists do there will be a big kaboom and we'll all be dead and our granddaughters will wear burkas and our grandsons will strut around waving AK-47s and scimitars and such and wearing bomb vests. So what will the symposia and the grants and the round tables accomplish? My guess is squat.
Trying to understand something isn't the same as trying to justify or excuse it. That's a basic mistake, and a costly one. "Oh, costly. Very costly. Tut."
As Jane Harman, president of the Woodrow International Center for Scholars, Ohfergawdsake.
recently wrote: "We can't counter radical narratives if we don't understand the motives of the radicalized." Sure we can. When their life's blood has trickled into the gutters they'll be countered.
Nonetheless, trying to understand evil is an offense. That may be one of the two or three most stupid statements I've ever read.
It is an offense to everything we hold dear, because understanding -- that is, true and effective understanding -- must bring us close to the other, must help us see the world through their eyes.
That is a painful, offensive process, and that is exactly what we must do. Then why'd you write all that blather, bub?
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
James Dawes is an English literature professor at a small Minnesota college, who managed to talk his employer into funding a human rights program.
#2
"We can say they are evil people doing evil things for evil ends. Or we can do the hard work of understanding the context that made them, so that we can create a context that unmakes them."
Ok, Mr Dawes, here's an unmaking context with a proven record of success against theocratic fascism:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity force them to observe minimal standards of basic decency as defined by Western Civilization."
#5
Are they not doing what is set out in the Koran?
The problem to me is religious intolerance in muslim majority countries like Gulf/Pakistan/Iran etc.
Posted by: Paul D ||
08/26/2014 6:59 Comments ||
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#6
My experience with people like the author, I live near Boston and they are thick on the ground here, is that these folks are cowards at heart, know that they are cowards, and use this type of "reasoning" to justify their cowardice.
#9
Methinks James Dawes would be vewy, vewy quiet, were ISIS in charge of his small college in Minnesota.
And he'd have a beard...
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2014 13:02 Comments ||
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#10
I think if you had a global poll. Is buring children alive evil (yes) or (no) it would be pretty lopsided.
Only those communists who refuse to judge anything, or overthink the question to rationalize their own abortion thoughts would even consider answering no. That is more or less how you define evil, willfully slaying innocents.
[DAWN] On July 25, exactly a month before the secretaries were planning to meet in Islamabad, India and Pakistain traded doubts, shall we say, over the delay in two politically sensitive terror trials ' the Mumbai nightmare trial that New Delhi wants to be hastened, and the Samjhauta Express bombing, which Pakistain believes has taken too long at the trial stage. The perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage are linked by India to elements in the Pakistain army. The suspects in the Samjhauta outrage are likewise considered close to the new ruling establishment in Delhi. Itas become a 'who-blinks-first' kind of situation.
A day after the Mumbai versus Samjhauta spat, India's defence minister shifted the focus to the heated up Line of Control in Kashmire, saying the cross-border firing would figure in the foreign secretariesa talks. However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Military Observers Group in India and Pakistain claimed the same day, to New Delhi's chagrin, they were there precisely to keep a close watch on the alleged infringements.
What Mr Modi told his army commanders in Kashmire ' that Pakistain was too weak to wage war so it was fomenting terrorism against India ' was also part of the pattern of moving away from the May 27 bonhomie.
It wasn't as if India was single-handedly fomenting doubts about the peace talks. Pakistain though distracted by its domestic political turbulence, or perhaps because of it, had been keeping pace.
Mr Modi made his combative comments on Aug 12, making the diplomatic corps comb for similar hints albeit in vain in his Independence Day speech three days later. However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... Pakistainas envoy in Delhi had flaunted unusually candid postures about Kashmire too ' about it being at the root of bilateral disputes with India. Such comments are rare if the two sides are heading for talks that would but of course include the Kashmire dispute.
In any case, does Pakistain have a view on Article 370? Or does it see it as an Indian ploy to divert the focus from the main issue of Kashmireas future? Or does it in fact feel comfortable with the Kashmire issue hanging fire so as to conserve its greater energies to confront an issue more palpably urgent than Kashmire ' the division of spoils in Afghanistan?
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] HOW should we view the goings-on in Islamabad? Low comedy and high farce? A national disgrace? A serious breakdown of governance? A critical opportunity? The start of a real transition towards better governance and more genuine democracy? Or preparing the ground for another decade of open or de facto military rule? Some analysts suggest all these views are valid to one degree or another, except that it is not clear what the outcome will be.
Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... is seen by many as a three-time elected prime minister who must be allowed to complete his tenure if democracy in Pakistain is not to be derailed yet again. His record of governance may be patchy. But he has only completed 15 months of a five-year mandate. Moreover, governance is always a learning process and democracy is always a work in progress. As Bill Clinton
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[SultanKnish] ...It's been a while since Westerners lived in a society in which human life was truly worthless, in which no one trusted anyone else and it was easier to kill than not to kill.
Outside of a few urban centers in the Middle East where the elites start the revolutions that end up stringing them from the gallows, life is cheap and worthless. Men kill their wives and daughters over petty suspicions. Clans murder each other in vicious brawls. Wedding celebrations begin with firing guns into the air and end with bodies on the ground.
Everything is worth more than people. A camel has value. A pickup truck has value. A smartphone has value. All these things are hard to make.
People are easy to make.
...Killing is the easiest solution to most problems. Men kill over honor. Women kill themselves out of desperation. Children grow up torturing animals.
Clerics settle religious questions with murder. It's just easier that way.
Theological debates are complicated and impossible to settle, but fly the black flags, seize a village, kill the men and force the women to convert to the true faith of the machine gun and the sword and the debate is over.
ISIS is how Islam has been settling questions of theology since the 7th century. Why stop now just because you can order takeout from your smartphone? Westerners are innately fascinated by new technology. For the Middle East, technology is a tool for settling medieval disputes. Twitter is just a way of showing off your latest crop of severed heads. The pickup truck substitutes for a camel.
...The question isn't why should they kill, it's why should they stop? The peace proposals never get anywhere. If you reward violence with concessions, there's no reason for it to ever stop. And if you don't, what else is there to do?
When life is worthless, everyone has a gun and a grudge, it's easier to kill than not to kill. You can see that phenomenon as readily in Chicago as in Iraq. Why not shoot the guy next door because he owes you money, because your daughter looked at him twice, because he's on your turf or because he's a Kurd.
[DAWN] IF there were any doubts that the self-styled Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, has become a transnational terrorism threat, its rapid gobbling up of territory in Iraq and its latest 'conquest' ' the Tabqa military airport in Syria's Raqqah governorate ' should put uncertainties to rest.
Syrian activists say the bully boyz recently took the military facility from government forces after a tough fight. After seizing the key Iraqi town of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... and large swathes of territory in that country as well as in Syria, the capture of the airport is another 'feather' in the IS cap.
Yet if the bully boyz are not countered, they will threaten the stability of regional states as well as the security of the West. But geopolitics seems to have trumped better sense; while the US and some European states have come to the aid of Iraq's government and the autonomous Kurds in the north of that country in their battle to contain IS, the Syrian regime has received no such help.
In fact, Washington, as well as many European capitals along with most Arab states, has been more interested in engineering regime change in Damascus.
However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... in the 'mission' to ensure Bashir al-Assad's defeat, a variety of dubious armed opposition groups ' including some linked to Al Qaeda ' have been supported, mainly because of Mr Assad's tilt towards Iran and his alliance with Hezbollah. Yet this policy has proved disastrous.
Today, the UN says over 191,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict while the turbans who were directly or indirectly supported have aided the rise of the Islamic State. America and its allies must decide who poses a bigger threat to regional peace: Mr Assad or IS? While foreign military intervention is unadvisable, regional countries as well as the West must change tack and cut off support to turbans in Syria ' and Bashir al-Assad should be urged to reach a negotiated settlement with the moderate opposition.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2014 00:00 ||
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BLUF
[PJ Media] Brown was walking down the middle of the street under the influence of marijuana and so he was lucky that he was not hit by a car. He struck an officer -- no one denies that -- which in itself is another felony. He was not shot in the back as the community insisted and still dreams. All that suggests many of the eyewitnesses fabricated stories, the media misled the public, and the race industry likewise serially lied. We are back to the doctored videos, altered transcripts, and fabricated vocabulary of the treatment accorded George Zimmerman or the mythologies at Duke or of the O.J. trial.
It was a hard call whether Missouri Gov. Nixon or Attorney General Eric Holder proved the greater disgrace in their efforts to prejudge the case. The latter of "cowards" and "my people" infamy almost immediately talked up his racial fides among African-Americans while all but damning the police, while the former proved our version of a hapless Ray Nagin, in his jabbering about prosecuting Officer Wilson without an indictment. Gov. Nixon or Holder, too close to call.
#3
“Please, do not commit 50% of the violent crime in America at rates four times your demographic, and, please, stop shooting nearly 7,000 fellow African-Americans a year, to ensure that there is less likelihood to encounter the police"
Another shooting, more riots -- and again, the US is torn apart on racial lines. Rob Crilly reports from Ferguson.
They came to demand justice as the sun set over the Missouri suburb of Ferguson. Dawn and Chuck were white, like many of the other marchers parading up and down the town's main strip, past looted, burnt-out shops and dozens of police officers.
What set them apart was their banner. "Justice for police officer Darren Wilson," it read. They had come to demand justice not for Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager, but for the white cop who shot him dead. They barely escaped.
Within minutes of their arrival, a crowd had formed, shouting abuse. They were gone in seconds, bundled away to safety by police. "What is the police doing," one woman screamed. "They aren't arresting them. They're helping them. Protecting their own."
The brief episode on Wednesday night was a stark reminder of America's trouble with race. Brown's death two weeks ago has led to demonstrations by day and riots at night. It has highlighted the gulf between a community on the edge of St Louis and the men and women who police it.
Across the country, it has polarised opinion between those who see a nation where white cops kill black men, and those who have donated 100,000 to a fund for Officer Wilson, or lit their porches blue to show support for the police.
More than 50 years after Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and with an African-American president well into his second term, the violence demonstrates just how sensitive the issue remains.
Markese Mull, who described himself as a friend of Brown, believes the killing was about one thing. "It's about race, much as we don't want it to be," he said, standing near the memorial of flowers, candles and balloons where the teenager died. "It is about a figure patrolling an area that he just didn't understand." as i understand it the man had thieved a shop and was running away. Death is too high a price to pay for theft - but because everyone in the US potentially owns a gun, the coppers would be more likely to shoot first ask later
Witnesses differ on exactly what happened at midday on Saturday August 9. CCTV footage shows Brown and his friend in the Ferguson Market and Liquor Store. Brown grabs a box of cheap cigars. A member of staff tries to prevent him leaving, but is shoved into a display of crisps. so he is a no good individual from the start
The fatal confrontation came minutes later as the pair walked down Canfield Drive. Officer Wilson ordered them out of the street on to the pavement so his car could pass. so walking in the middle of traffic ... Could be he was on drugs? That isn't normal
A struggle followed. The police say Brown tried to grab the officer's handgun. hearsay at this stage
A shot went off inside the car. that is serious.... Must be he was on drugs
One witness said Wilson was enraged when Brown slipped his grasp. He gave chase and opened fire. version 2
In contrast, Josie, a friend of the police officer, described how the 6ft 4in teenager punched Wilson in the face. As Brown fled, she said, Wilson ordered him to freeze, whereupon the 18-year-old turned and "bum-rushed" him, running full-speed into him and forcing him to shoot six times in self-defence. All the later accounts cast doubt on the original story that Brown died trying to surrender, arms in the air. hope someone photographed in the minutes after so if his face was punched there is a contemporaneous record
Whatever the sequence, the outcome is clear: 10 days of tear gas and rubber bullets. this is where everyone goes crazy as black people believe the system is rigged against them, from here the facts of the case don't actually matter any more. This is grudge settling. This wouldn't happen if people had faith in their police.
Now this is a problem. The police probably are targeting that community - and that is because the crime rates are probably higher. They have to do their jobs. people may have an urban sub-culture that glorifies violence and breaking the law - which in turn is encouraged by them feeling that is a rebellion against a power system they aren't a part of.
What to do? Geez it a big issue, i don't rightly know.
#3
Ferguson, Missouri is a media amplified micro-example of a larger phenomena. Policemen and judicial systems are not the problem. The problem is white policemen and white judicial systems. A Native American reservation style of law enforcement and justice [our people - our system] is the eventual goal, but we're still talking micro.
Macro examples can be found in Zimbabwe and South Africa, where so-called 'white flight' and the resulting tribal law enforcement and governance have resulted in entire cities, communities, and entire countries revert to tribalism, lawlessness, and anarchy, what I like to refer to as soft genocide.
No amount of cultural awareness, Affirmative Action (AA), Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), or flat denial by progressives can alter cultural differences and demographic shifts. As in the case of the Jew, people eventually move elsewhere and start over, simply to survive.
The irony here is, blame for failed pluralistic societies is oftentimes placed upon those who have left, not those who are now in charge who actually ran the others off. It would be somewhat comical, if it were not so tragic....and fok'n obvious.
#6
Now watch the youth. This is a green light to attack also for them. 10-14 year old youths will be very active and at all hours. They will destroy their own neighborhoods. They will attack anyone. When you have anything- you got to spread it around brother.
American black people are being lied to and the lies destroy them. They are being lied to by corrupt people like Attorney General Eric Holder and Al Sharpton Jr. and Jesse Jackson and the leftists in our news media. They are being told that their poverty is due to prejudice and that the police are targeting them out of bigotry. They are being told that the dreadful existence of slum life grew out of slavery and is being perpetuated by hatred.
None of this is true. Poor black people are poor because they have no family structure and get little education. Police target them because so many more young black men are criminal thugs than young men of other colors. Women clutch their purses when a black man gets on an elevator not because they’re racist but because the statistics and the facts they have seen with their own eyes have taught them that that’s the wise thing to do. People aren’t suspicious of young black men in hoodies because people are ignorant or bigoted. They’re suspicious because reason and experience tell them that young black men in hoodies are threatening.
O. J. Simpson wasn’t innocent. Tawana Brawley wasn’t raped and neither was Crystal Mangum. George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense. There is always racism everywhere, but America may be the least racist country on earth. For black people to think otherwise is to believe lies created to keep a narrative in place. The narrative gives the people who create it power and an appearance of virtue — Holder, Sharpton, Jackson, the news media and the rest. As for poor black people, the narrative keeps them poor and angry and helpless and so destroys their lives.
#9
I don't seem to recall this kind of behavior tolerated among the community during segregation (a vile institution that should never come back). Of course, at that time, upper and middle class were forced to live among the lower class. The extensive amount of anti-social behavior wasn't tolerated. While the Left talks about white flight, they blind themselves to the effects of upper and middle class black flight from the very same areas. Instead they substituted government as the adult supervision in these areas forgetting the need for someone who lives there rather than a commuter who had to work among them was needed. Someone, who like the older segregated community, wouldn't accept excuses for anti-social behaviors rather then rationalize it away to avoid having to do something about it till it got too ugly and destructive to avoid.
They were lied to by feminists when they were told fathers were unnecessary.
They were lied to when they were told there were jobs Americans won't do only to find unskilled jobs priced out of their hands.
They were lied to by unions who felt that whatever company had to meet their demands and found the companies moving to other states.
They were lied to when they were told that governmetn assistance is a right and not a safety net that you should hope to never have to use.
They were lied by their own culture when they were told that education wasn't essential in success.
Holder and Companies lies are horrific because they are trying to redirect blame for this massive failure on those that have been trying to stop it all along.
#13
as i understand it the man had thieved a shop and was running away. Death is too high a price to pay for theft - but because everyone in the US potentially owns a gun, the coppers would be more likely to shoot first ask later
The cop shot for the same reason as a woman shoots an unarmed man charging at her - the 100 lb difference means Brown could have killed with his bare hands, much as an adult can easily kill the average 7-year-old using merely his fists.
#14
good luck with your upgrades, delightful Trailing Wife!
Besoeker: very interesting. Yes indeed this is the heart of the problem. Multiculturalism doesn't work unless there is one clearly defined dominant culture that is too strong to challenge. Once smaller cultures get strong enough to challenge, they do - which is why Islamism the political dogma must be banned from the West, weeded out root and branch. Only reformation style moderate Muslims should stay - who accept the separation of mosque and state and whose religion is only a private matter for the home.
But these riots looked different to me, i mean black people have lived in the US for hundred of years so they are not new immigrants with a different culture and language.
I looked at this situation as racial conflict within one culture. having said that it is clear they have evolved a separate sub-culture on racial lines with its own speech patterns etc.
yes they have been lied to that their lot in life is all the result of racism and slavery.... this is hundreds of years on, and they're not victims any more.
Lack of education: big problem. Culture that encourages you to disrespect education and not make the most of it: bigger problem.
I have black friends from poor third world countries whose parents used to study hand-me-down charity books under street lights as they had no electricity and couldn't afford candles.
They were successful and their children are well-adjusted people living in Australia: captains of merchant ships, chefs, teachers.
That generation's children are now studying accountancy and law.
these kids in the USA would have had some shot at learning to read and write at least in primary school
that is more than my friend's parents
so what do you do? short of sending in the military?
Maybe that is what should happen
I also note there is something in the individualism of the US that lends itself to looting and rioting - which may not necessarily be a bad thing (though of course looting and rioting is). It is a willingness to defy authority
Japan: in the worst of the tsunami or any other disaster, the people will not loot anything
if you leave your wallet on a train they will give it back.
a strong civic culture - society first, self second.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[CNN] When most people look at ISIS, they see the incarnation of evil. Among its many horrific acts, the Islamic
