'Youths' in Paris continue to riot.
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Saturday, August 8, 2026 19:02
VIEWED: 6558
PAGE 4 of 6
Okay, once again, trying to be succinct, and probably failng is me. So, here goes:
Malbadlatin.
To some extent, sure I agree, and to some extent, this is a very very dangerous suggestion.
1. I obviously oppose bin laden, and am probably more serious about it than most of the people here.
2. To ask blind obedience to leaders, even way they may in fact be fronting for the enemy, is nothing short of treason. It's treason to the fundemental values of America, and it's treason to Americ itself. A former member of the Bush Cabinet has actually personally tried to convince me that Bush knocked down the towers. I don't know if I believe him, but he made a very compelling case. This is one of the many very serious charges to address. What if it were true? I'm a loyal republican, sure, but loyal to the party and its principles, not to a man who won the primary and ran on the party ticket, should it turn out that he cut a deal with Al Qaeda. I'm using this alarmist example to show why, even the right wing extremist that I am, questioning authority is a core American value. It is this value which prevents America from ever becoming Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. The Weimar Republic in Germany was built on the same basic principles of freedom that America was, but one that held more respect for authority, as your suggesting. This blind obediance didn't just create the monster, it was the monster.
3. I'm sorry if I read this wrong, but we must attack Bush, Blair and Clinton for whatever they have done wrong, and continue to do so, because still as of yet, their power to harm America far exceeds bin laden's. And because it is very American to do so.
4. Please, it's nothing personal, I blast everything :) Some people hate me for it. Don't waste the energy do that, but:
5. Islam is not the enemy! This is a christian and jewish idea. The enemy is islamic, yes, but most of islam has spent most of the time being our ally. Islamic Jihadist Terrorism is the enemy, specifically Al Qaeda. We will never destroy Al Qaeda, that's absurd, please, no one should ever try. No one has ever destroyed an enemy. At the moment the global influence of the holocaust survivors greatly exceeds that of the nazis. And I can't think of an enemy more destroyed than the german jews. The goal here is to defeat Al Qaeda, to force them to the table, and to drive them into what we consider to be the legitimate political arena. This will not end Islam, it will not end Islamic Fundementalism, and it will not end Al Qaeda. It will end terrorism, which is all we are after. Anyone who aiming to destroy Al Qaeda is a religious or ideological zealot, and a danger to our great nation.
I am, have been here, Al Qaeda's worst enemy, or close to it. Someone might claim to hate them more, but as a new yorker I know many people who lost family members on 9/11.
Please,
Consider reality.
Here's what we know.
1. Al Qaeda is huge.
2. They represent an ideological position shared be a very large number of people.
3. They, like everyone else seek to spread their influence.
4. They, like everyone else, wish to remain alive.
Since the more that we kill them, the stronger we make them, because those sympathizers join the cause, more sympathizer are born, and do you see where I'm going with this?
In a sane political arena, the weight of their ideology will fade, and they will kill no one. They will be so busy attempting to compromise with everyone else to secure their main most important points, stuff they really care about, that we will then have the power to force them to back down on things we consider human rights abuses, and to abandon terrorism.
How to get there is another issue, but if we are to succeed, then we must realize that this is the only goal which can actually be achieved. Any other goal would trap us into an eternal perpetual war. And no, I don't have an ulterior motive in saying this, I say it because I actually believe it.
Finally, and very importantly, we need to accomplish this without allow the terrorists to change w
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Quote:
I think there's a deeper reason than the college kid demographic. I think the internet itself, the so-called "information super-highway" is leftist by nature, because intellectual freedom is fundamentally anti-authoritarian. Silence only serves the status quo. Discourse fundamentally destablizes entrenched ideology. Where there is freedom of thought, there is liberality. There will never be a rightwing Woodward & Bernstein. "News is only what they don't want you to know, everything else is advertising."
Probably true, but I intend to bicker.
Okay, I hadn't read this post before posting my last on, but clearly I'm going to disagree a little here. Question Authority is an American value to me, and I'm a right wing nut. I think of personal freedom as being libertarian, and of libertarians as being basically conservative.
So clearly there will be.
More importantly, I have to support what everyone seems to be asking for here, which is that we treat authoritarianism as perpendicular to the left right axis. I generally personally just think of it as a left wing thing. If the lefties don't want it, then we can probably actually come to agreement that none of us want it.
But this doesn't explain why college kids would support random left wing issues, like, say, opposition to privatization of social security.
Anyway, opinions always welcome. I think there may be a number of things that feed into it.
So here's the probably true. Your suggestion is part of the picture, but to it I would add this:
While either political perspective may feed that question authority angle, the left tends to so seeds of suspicion towards industry, the right would throw seeds of suspicion towards big govt. programs and spending.
There is a very clearly an angle the right could take in a university setting to feed off of the natural anti-establishment teen rebellion thing. The left clearly is doing a better job of doing so. I don't think that makes them any more correct, but it does make them more successful.
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I tend to agree the media is left leaning but not as much as it used to. It seems to overly support Bush, but probably because Bush isn't very far right.
Also, and I hope this doesn't come out as anti-semitic because I don't intend that, but there is a strong zionist streak in the mainstream media, and so it is unlikely to oppose a president who strongly supports Israel.
Re: the French thing. I think the media doesn't really have a political point of view on it yet. No one has come up with a good political leverage viewpoint so it's been reduced to "random something happening in some other country" like the orange revolution in the ukraine, something of mild interest. Interest and spin will definitely pick up if the terrorists seize control of Paris office buildings.
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Intifadah Spreads to Brussels and Berlin
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/
Quote:
The Muslim insurgency did not stop at the French borders. Last night five cars were torched in Berlin.
In Brussels five cars were destroyed by fire last night. The cars were in Sint-Gillis, one of Brussels’ Muslim quarters. Sint-Gillis is the area surrounding Brussels’
Soon Islamic leaders from The Muslim Brotherhood will step forward to negotiate a peace deal. The peace deal will include demands for Islamic autonomy in the Muslim ghettos and the freedom to install sharia law and a millet system.
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It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If it plays out as you say, that will be bad.
While I support the right of anyone to set up their own society with their own rules as long they aren't hurting anyone else, ie. the amish, whathaveyou, this doesn't fit that. The sharia is definitely going to harm people. First of all, other non-fundementalist muslims, and secondly, anyone who winds up there. Since we know bin laden is a racial purist, because he's basically said so many times, any society of arab immigrants he sets up is probably going to have laws regarding thing like interracial marriages, or relationships, not to mention bans on homosexuality, etc. So ultimately picture some french person of white and jewish extraction has a gay relationship with an arab (yeah, there are gay muslims, I have a friend who is one) anyway, you just know nothing good would happen to the frenchman.
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CNN- US had a few clips of rioters shouting intifada type slogans, do the rioters really believe the slogans or are they just using them to scare the French mainstream population.
Will radical Islam be able to gain control of events in France and Europe? Time will tell.
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You know, I have no doubt that you guys are very intelligent, probably even smarter than I am. But you're so focused on BinLadin and Fundamentalist Islam that you're ignoring the base causes of the problem. You've got so many 'facts' that you are ignoring basic human behavior. The base cause of the problem is this:
Quote:
working-class suburbs, peopled primarily by North African and West African immigrants and their French-born children. Unemployment in the neighborhoods is double and sometimes triple the 10 percent national average, while incomes are about 40 percent lower.
This is why Islamic Fundamentalism gets a hold on these people; it's the engine that drives rioting. Happy people don't get pulled into hard-line Islam (same with Xtianity; look at where fundie Xtians are concentrated in America - Impoverished, scientifically and industrially deficient states), neither do thinkers. I can't think of the last scientist I heard offer to blow something up for Jesus, but I hear people in trailer parks talking glass lots 7 days a week.
I can't buy into the 'lets wipe Islam off the face of the map' argument. That won't solve anything but set someone else up to be the least poor and the most downtrodden, and it will happen again in a century. We have to fix the root issues of poverty and ignorance, and the Muslim world will fix itself.
------------------------------------------
He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.
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7%
I agree. I'm opposed to any kind of "war on islam." If the basis of your conflict is "destroy the enemy" you have no point for negotiation.
But...
And here's the but.
There is no solution for the socioeconomics of these people, as they are refugees in western europe. Western Europe by itself is an employment desert. It's almost a dysfunctional society. Having discussed this with a large number of western europeans, some of whom see this as a problem and some don't, I am somewhat aware of the nature of the situation. Western European society perpetuates itself on ownership. Because they own so many interests worldwide, and reap the benefits of those assets, they continue to be wealthy, taxed from those businesses then go into the coffers and drive the system. But objectively, there is fairly little in the way of western european native industry to support the overgrown social support system.
To add to this, the immigrant population is very weak on marketable skills, even if there were jobs to be filled. Lack of a strong competitive skill base coupled with the fact that the muslim immigrants own none of this "global ownership" society that keeps the nations of Western Europe running really puts them between a rock (not Iraq) and a hard place. It means that on balance, the muslims become part of the drain on the system which is feeding into its inevitable collapse, and everyone in western europe seems to see this, that it is headed for an inevitable collapse, economically, they become an anathema to the state.
It's really solutionless. It's not that the state could simply set up a welfare system to help them out of poverty, the states in question are on a collision course with bankrupcy as it is. I read recently that France and Germany will both be bankrupt by 2015, meaning they will no longer have enough revenue coming in to pay out the benefits that are already owed. With increasing immigrant populations who can't compete in the basically non-existant job market drawing in addition to an aging population, the tax base based on the world's highest taxes will no longer be able to support it, the end result does become inescapable.
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But the horse is already out of the barn. The French have ignored the social aspects of the cites' for 2 decades now. I can't change the fact that the people living in these - Clockwork Orange Dystopia ? are pissed off and want to burn and pillage.
I know it might appear that I dislike Muslims but the fact is I don't. I dislike radical Islam and the supression of free will that accompanies it.
I agree that i'm on the edge of information overload. I linked to alot of different sites because information can help each one of us arrive at better conclusions. I care more that everyone tries to be informed and less that they may agree with me. I'm just not going to bicker with people 3000k away from me.. theres no joy in it. 
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Malbadlatin
It wasn't anything person, it's just if you read a lot of blogs, which I assume you do, you run into something like this a lot:
"We're fighting a war against Islam"
which becomes a rallying cry for a really bad idea. It's like what's bouncing around in the arab press "America needs to get the jews out of govt." What do they mean Arlen Spector? Russ Feingold? Norm Coleman? No, of course they don't. They might mean Joe Lieberman :) Nah, just kidding, I wouldn't mind seeing Joementum out of govt. myself, but seriously. They mean the neocons, and I kind of agree, but they didn't say that, and it leads people in the wrong direction.
Myself, I don't dislike Islam. I don't dislike radical Islam. I don't dislike Wahabism. I really don't. Everyone has the right, within reason, to a religious preference, and though Wahabism is extreme in many ways, I don't see why it, like the Amish and Mennonites in this area where I live, couldn't go off into little communities by themselves and do their own thing. I think that if people want to leave those societies, and no one is letting them, that's a problem, and if people are being killed that's a problem, but as long as people are free to leave, and free to live, there is not problem with people doing their own thing.
Mr. Osama Bin Laden I do have a problem with. He says that he wants to live his own lifestyle without interference, but I think that he's lying. I think he says that because it's what his people want, but I think that as long as we DO interfere, he is a hero, he is de facto the son of God, and he likes that. Just a little too much. Also he is bent on destroying the jews and their way of life, and the Americans and their way of life. If he wanted to stop the spread of Israel, that would be a different thing, but that's not what he wants. The way of life in the city not far from here (maybe 200mi) is capitalism, and Mr. Bin Laden has interfered in that way of life and will do so again.
Particularly I think that Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda are specifically stirring up trouble. I think that there may be a couple other players, but we're dealing with a small group of people who has a large amount of influence over a musch large group of people, Mullahs and what not, who in turn have a large amount of influence on a truly gigantic group of people, radical muslims.
But left to themselves, I think the vast majority of radical muslims would wall themselves off and live away from everyone else, like the Mennonites.
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