Via Drudge: “FLAGS RIPPED DOWN FROM US EMBASSY IN CAIRO”
Related – “So a mob of Islamists supporting al-Qaeda storm @USEmbassyCairo over a VIDEO… and our Embassy defends the mob with lame excuses? WTF??”
88 Replies to “It’s Probably Nothing”
justthinkin – wow, you make a lot of assumptions.
The use of reason, logic and the Constitution, which I support, outlaw the practices that you also reject. So, apart from name-calling, which is juvenile, what’s your point?
Kindly show how I am ‘perverting’ the Constitution and how I have ‘no idea’ of its meaning. Words are easy to slip off the typewriter. Provide some evidence.
You don’t seem to understand the meaning of tribalism. It doesn’t refer to a particular ethnic group (tribe). It defines a particular economic and political mode, which is two-class, based around kin ties, and with no middle class. Nothing to do with ethnicity.
I am saying that the tribal mode (political and economic) is no longer feasible in the ME, due to the population size. These nations must move into a civic mode, which inserts a middle class, removes governance by kin ties, and sets up a civil governance.
And I stand by my prediction. The population size in the ME is too large for a two-class tribal economic and political mode; they must move into a three class civic mode. This means that they must reject Islamism (kindly note the ‘ism’) which supports only tribalism, that two-class mode with no free middle class.
Kindly provide some evidence for yet another of your name-calling (that I’m a self-loathing female).
And why do you reject the use of reason and the use of such analytic areas as economics and demographics and population size? What do you think should be used to analyze a society?
ET, please grant the Muslims the right to their own mindset that has no tradition of western values extant within the very narrow confines of Islamic thought. It took the hubris sickened west a couple of thousand years to muddle to our present state of “freedom” and expectation of fairness in the law. The Muslims are a millennium off in the opposite direction and are in no position to chose to “build a middle class and chose democracy”. The few who might are already dead or in hiding and have zero influence or power. Strength through ignorance has been the state of Islam since the beginning of it.
ET: I would suggest that Islam is as much a political movement as it is a religion – it’s all based on power and control.
What bothers you the most, the education or the intelligence and analysis? I don’t always agree with ET, but her posts make you seem a babbling simpleton, full of cliches and little else.
Posted by: wyatt ironbridge at September 11, 2012 7:15 PM
There is neither.She can babble,because my grandfathers,yours and probably hers,fought so that she could babble.Try saying what she says in Saudi!PHD’s are a dime a dozen on the net and in so called colleges/universities.You want cliches,go back to her “tribal”,”middle class” etc yammerings.She screwed up,made a mistake in calling the Arab Spring good.We all make mistakes,but most of us admit them.Some do not.
ET….please tell me one thing besides genocide,paedophilia,subression of women,making a woman’s word only worth 1/4 of a man’s,hanging gays,murdering Jews,saying Jews kill kids for their blood for matzoo balls,openly,on the world news,beheading people,using mentally retarded kids to blow themselves up,etc,the Islamists have given to this planet? And no,algebra does not count,as it wasn’t Islamists who came up with it.
How many middle-class Muslims are there in Europe and North America who adhere to the code of violence?
Ideologies matter, not always class.
Just saying….
blackbird, it took the West about 400 years, from about 1200 to 1600 to move from a feudal (tribal) economic and political mode to a civic mode. These were very violent years as the old order fought to retain its power. What is different in the ME in this era, and which will enable them to move faster, is that this civic mode is not new; the West already has it; and the electronic technologies permit information transference very rapidly.
Nemo 2, absolutely, I’ve always said that Islam is less a religion, taking most of its axioms from Judaism, and primarily a political and societal and economic mode. The thing is, its political and economic mode is now dysfunctional in a population in the multimillions and in an industrial global economy. They can’t feed their populations now, even within their statist oil-based economies and the informational input from the rest of the world can’t be shut out in this electronic age.
justthinkin – how do you conclude that I support the ideology of Islam, much less Islamism? Where’s your evidence for that? Please provide it and stop with the vicious and almost hysterical name-calling.
I’ve said repeatedly, that Islam is a 7th century ideology, emerging within a specific economic mode of pastoral nomadism, and entirely unsuited to a modern economic and societal mode of life. Can you point to any comment of mine that supports the Islamic, much less Islamist, ideology?
I’ve said repeatedly that it rejects reason, individualism, science, democracy. I’m quite aware of its non-contributions to science, logic, and am quite aware that it didn’t provide us with algebra or the use of zero etc.
So, what’s your data base that you use to rant, almost hysterically, against me? Show me where I’ve said that I support an ideology that rejects reason, logic, science, objective reality. Show me.
All that I’m saying, and I stand by my analysis, is that a population that has grown beyond the carrying capacity of a tribal economic and political mode MUST change and move into a civic mode that permits a free middle class, ie, that permits free thinking, the use of reason, individual innovation etc.
And that this must happen in the ME, which means that Islamism, the fundamentalist ideology, cannot triumph in that area. It can try, it’s certainly trying, but utopian ideologies cannot trump reality.
Obama a word of advice . Make that 3 words. Jimmy Carter syndrome. One embassy taken over once a century is enough.
ET here is something for you to ponder as you assess why the tribes keep replacing one authoritarian with another. It is not (only) about the development of a middle class. And I wonder just how big a population must be to support a middle class. There are many countries with a realively small population that have a middle class (think the Scandanavian countries). Why have they gone to the side of democracy? There must be something more at work than population size.
Here is a quote from wiki that can explain why your otherwise reasoned arguments seem to be closed minded on the subject of what is wrong in the ME. After describing the social and economic factors of tribalism you refer to as one form of tribalism the article provides, “Another concept to which the word tribalism frequently refers is the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group.”
It is evident (and my personal experience validates this) that there is a strong cultural and ethnic identity that unifies the Muslims tribes in the ME. As long as those cultural and ethnic identities continue the ME will continue to be ruled by despots.
Many of those who want individual rights have left and are bringing those who have similar views along behind them.
osumashi, gosh, there are a lot of middle class Muslims in America who reject jihadism and Islamism.
I can think of Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and others..whose names I forget who come on FOX regularly. I know of others in the US, in the financial fields and in various disciplines in universities.
What I am talking about is something different. It’s about the economy. Again, a multimillion size population can’t be supported within a one-industry economy. Period. This economy, eg oil, is owned by the state, which distributes the wealth from the sales. Great. But not enough.
They have to develop an economic mode to produce more wealth. That’s the private sector small businesses, which will create products for sale on the home and export markets. The only way to do this, in the ME nations…you can only franchise MacDonald’s so often..is to encourage individual entrepreneurship and innovation. This focus on free will individualism is the basis of the middle class. It’s not found in Islam, but, you can’t eat the Koran; you have to produce food or the money to buy food.
So, the economic mode must enable a middle class, and that will change the whole societal infrastructure. Islamism, which is a utopian socialist anti-individual ideology, has no economic solutions. It can try to exist but it can’t last outside the seminar or prayer room.
And as an aside…just what kind a freckin marine are they hiring now that would not should the head of off a person who was scaling a wall and invading American territory?
They are emboldened.
Brace for impact.
ET, economics alone do not determine individual or even societal acts. The handful of moderates don’t explain the wealthy Sept. 11th hijackers, the Toronto 18 or the Fort Hood shooter. Perhaps a middle-class in Egypt might do some good but then again there was a middle-class in Iran in 1978. Not so much in 1979.
All of this {let’s just patiently wait a few centuries for Islam to catch up} rhetoric is mind numbing.
Especially when it is we how are losing our cultures, borders, and freedoms incrementally each day.
{Islam has no choice but to become a Democratic, Middle Class, Capitalist wonderland based on demographics}? Then why are we losing ours?
The most common reason cited by those that are taking our freedoms away is because of Muslim extremists! Of course we then go and create as many as we can with a few predator drones and import them wholesale into our communities thereafter.
The mind wobbles.
And that this must happen in the ME, which means that Islamism, the fundamentalist ideology, cannot triumph in that area. It can try, it’s certainly trying, but utopian ideologies cannot trump reality.
Hummmm.You said the same thing must happen from the Arab Spring.And ask Ken(kulak) how utopian ideologies trump reality in the old USSR.Problem is,ideologies can,and do,trump reality if the sheeple let it happen.The reality is,not one of the scum who scaled those walls would be alive,if the Zero was not in command.You have fallen for a zero who will take your rights,and your families,and you will gladly let them.You talk of my words,but what else do you have?
And ET,I do not mean to rat on you.I would probably gladly have you by my side,fighting for what we belive is right.Problem is,I’ve been there,done that,and sometimes one must use right of force,to right what is wrong.I am proud of it,and as the saying goes,I have,and will fight to protect your right to say what you belive.THAT is what makes me,and several others here,different from others.We are no better,or worse,then others.The differnce is,I will let you have the right to say what you wish,and will in no way subjugate you.Myself and others will treat all as equals,and your word is equal to mine.But,in Islam,my word is worth everything,and yours is nothing,nor never will be.See the difference?
God bless “Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and others..” for being voices in the vast wilderness. They are a small courageous minority.
I don’t think they want to give us the 400 years for them to make the transition.
Osumashi, Iran in 1978 had no empowered middle class. It had an elite, surrounding the Shah, enriched by oil, ruling by military power over a population who were for the most part impoverished but who were working in factories, as the shah increased the industrialization of the nation. It was this working class, deprived of political power, that toppled him.
BUT, rather than empowering, politically, this sector, and thus making it a middle class, a vacuum of power was rapidly filled by the utopian rhetorical ideologists, the Islamists.
The fundamentalists in the West are empowered because they are removed from reality; many of them are supported by welfare, by government grants and jobs. They can readily, just like Layton’s NDP followers, move into the heady realm of utopian ideology. What the West must do is reject multiculturalism.
Knight 99, no, I’ve never said that Islam must catch up. It isn’t Islam that must catch up. It’s the societies in the ME which follow Islam AND which are trapped within a tribal socioeconomic mode.
They must switch from an economic and political mode that is two-class and no-growth, to one that enables a robust growth class, the middle class. It isn’t ‘Islam that must become capitalist and middle class’ , but the populations living in the ME. Don’t merge the two. Islam as an ideology is, like all ideologies, the last phase of the infrastructure…which always rests in the economic mode.
Other than that, I do appreciate the intelligent discussion and debate, but deplore name calling. That is what the left does, and we see evidence of that in the Globe, Star and elsewhere. Let us not degenerate to their level.
I’m confused, ET- how does class magically erase ideology?
Let’s assume Egypt gets a middle-class. How did it evolve- through sound economic policies or by abandoning Islam? Do you need one or both? Even so, it doesn’t explain the “radicalised” upper classes one sees in Europe and North America.
We, the west, the US, is fostering the creation of a MONSTER, led by unfathomable stupidity.
rroe, yes, tribalism is based around ethnic or kinship identification, but this doesn’t preclude a middle class developing. And, by the way, there are many intra-Muslim and Arab subgroups. They aren’t one homogeneous whole.
There are also ‘ethnic’ so to speak enclaves in, for example, Europe, where in Italy or France or Germany or the UK, you’ll get cities and towns based around identity and kin groups. That doesn’t preclude a middle class economy.
The Scandinavian nations are part of the Western European market economy, all operating within a common economic mode of industrialism, of democracy, and with a market trade economy. This requires a middle class.
Justthinkin – First, are you actually saying that I support Obama? Are you saying that, with you comment that I have ‘fallen for a zero’? What are you talking about..what ‘zero’ am I supporting? I’m not supporting Islam, or Islamism or Obama. So, what are you talking about?
I don’t say that the ‘Arab Spring’ results are immediate. When a dictator is toppled, other groups will rush in and try to fill the power vacuum. That’s what happened in Iran in 1979. But I’m saying that it can’t last because a statist single resource economy can’t support that size of a population. You need a mixed economy and that comes only from private small businesses…which requires a middle class.
Utopian ideologies didn’t triumph in the Soviet Union. It collapsed. Iran was on the verge of collapsing two years ago during the demonstrations and Obama turned his back on them. Iran is now more influential in the region, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and trying to take power in Syria. The ones who fear Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, are being held back from doing anything by the dithering of Obama. Iran isn’t about Islamism; Iran is all about its own imperial power.
So, there are two key problems in the ME – the need to move out of a two-class no-growth economy, which is being held back by Islamism, and the imperialist ambitions of Iran. Our own PM, Harper, is a major international leader, who clearly sees the problem – and he’s being vilified by the left in both Canada and the US, for his stance.
Just for ET
To measure the reaction of the educated Egyptian-Muslim middle-class to 9/11, the Free Egyptians [in 2004] conducted opinion polls on a sample thereof on 9/11 and during the ensuing days when an atmosphere of euphoria and rejoicing took control of and overwhelmed the Muslim street. Release of results at an earlier date was not possible for security reasons. Part of the findings is outlined below.Of those interviewed,- 91% said they supported and rejoiced the attacks of 9/11.- 89% said America deserved to be attacked because it is an infidel country that supports the Jews.- 83% said 9/11 inspired so much zeal in them that they themselves were willing to volunteer as suicide bombers to carry out attacks against targets in America or Israel.- 94% said that 9/11 attackers died as shaheed ( martyrs.)
– 87% said that 9/11 marked the beginning of the end for America.
– 88% said that they supported more attacks on America.
I rest my case.
ET >
“It isn’t Islam that must catch up. It’s the societies in the ME which follow Islam………. Don’t merge the two”
Ha ha, yea I know I made that clear distinction for you on the last thread, but nice throw anyway. The longer pointless argument is understanding what Islam is to the average moderate Muslim in the ME, I know I’ve lived with them, many of them, working, eating, sleeping, partying, *drinking (yup) and much talking.
Whatever, this is flogging another dead horse on the subject.
I will certainly give you one credit, to be sure you will get your wish and we will continue to simultaneously bomb Islamic/ Arabic cultures hopefully into wonderful Middle Class economies and import them and their baggage wholesale into our own.
There’s nothing like sharing is there, and we will most definitely get our share in years and decades to come.
God bless “Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah …
Of the four persons listed by Tarek Fatah as Inspirational People, Vladimir Lenin is one of them. http://www.facebook.com/tarekfatah
One wonders if those who have been criticizing the Tories for closing the embassy in Tehran paused for even a second after seeing this story from Cairo? Tenth of a second? Milli-second ?!?
oldfart, sorry, but I’d need the link, to see the sample population, its size and makeup and the questions. I never accept a survey result without the data. As I told my students, when I taught them survey construction, it’s super simple to set up a fraudulent survey.
Knight 99, well, we’d probably agree that the US response to the Egyptian intruders into the US embassy was a disgrace. The US embassy has apologized for ‘allowing a film to be made that insults Muslims’. They ought to have instead stood up for free speech in America, and tasered any and all who climbed over the US embassy walls.
But that’s Obama’s legacy.
And, Obama is now backtracking on the claim that he can’t meet with Netanyahu because he’s busy campaigning. At first, the Obama gang was publicly saying that they can’t meet because of scheduling, but that Netanyahu would meet with Clinton and others. NOW, obama is claiming that Netanyahu never asked to meet with him! As usual, Obama blames the other person.
Oh how I wish that Ronald Reagan was still President.There would never have been an attack on the Embassy in Cairo because retribution would have been swift and decisive.Obama is not fit to carry Reagans brief case.The radical Islamists recognize fear and incompetence when they see it,they know that Obama is an empty suit,just watch what they get away with if he gets re-elected.
Oh how I wish that Ronald Reagan was still President.There would never have been an attack on the Embassy in Cairo because retribution would have been swift and decisive.Obama is not fit to carry Reagans brief case.The radical Islamists recognize fear and incompetence when they see it,they know that Obama is an empty suit,just watch what they get away with if he gets re-elected.
ET Yawn. Your smug sneers do not impress, they remind me, horrors of Trudeau’s elite bureaucrats – smooth sophisticated suave Quebecophony separatists and their Canadian quislings from Tranna. I likewise require proof of your wild and ludicrous assertions – re democracy, middle class, etc.
oldfart, what ‘smug sneers’? Kindly explain.
Now, you can check out the history books on the rise of the middle class in the 15th century, on populations and demographics, and on the changing ideology that moved this middle class into political power.
I’d suggest reading a few books on history by Fernand Braudel, eg, The Wheels of Commerce. Also, JD Bernal on the development of scientific knowledge and societal organization. You could read John Locke on civic government, Adam Smith on economics, and various authors who write about the civic society and the middle class market economy. OK?
Then, you’ll have to provide some evidence for your conclusion that my opinions are ‘wild and ludicrous’. You know, speech is fine in the seminar room, but outside of it, one has to be accountable. So, provide some evidence.
Now, let’s have the link for that survey. The questions seem, ah, ‘loaded’ and I would never allow any student to set up such a question. Surely even you, who reject the sophism of such as Trudeau, the separatists and so on, can see that those are not objective and impartial questions. Hmmm? You don’t see this? Ah well.
Those Islamists in Cairo had better behave themselves.
Or we’ll drop tons of leaflettes with Pelosi’s face on’em.Serve ’em right…..
Et Your right China has a huge middle class if you ignore the billion peasants.
Sounder, most of us here know that the current POTUS does not have the gonads that the US General McAuliffe had during the the battle in Bastogne in December 1944, when he told the Germans “Nuts” when asked to surrender.
US ambassador to Libya has been murdered by the “activists”.
Just figured it out.ET is living in the past.All her examples are from pre-1979.The killing of the American Ambassador and his fellow workers happened because we did not create a middle class in the 13th century to help the cult of death.If we had done that,then they would no longer stone women to death for being raped,women would be allowed to work and go to school,and horrors of horrors,be allowed to walk down the street in jeans and a t-shirt,without having to worry about some psycho nutcake raping her.Those damn Crusaders just had everything wrong.If only they hadn’t tried to defend women,but instead raped and kept them tied to the kitchen,then the diaper wearing ragheads would have been happy,gone into business,and had a middle class of harems,with a side business of killing Jews,while trying to develop a rocket to the moon(Nasa’s orders from Huessin Obama).But then what does a redneck like me from AB know?
Although I’m not a big fan of isolationism regardless of circumstances, I would suggest that the United States, and any other civilized nation for that matter, simply cut all diplomatic ties with countries such as Egypt or Libya. Close embassies, cut off foreign aid and refuse to get involved in any conflicts other than those having a direct effect on us. If certain citizens of the offending nations insist on carrying on like ungrateful savages then so be it. However they can carry on in isolation.
I’m also not a pacifist by any means, however isn’t this far better than a military approach where a few hundred innocents are killed, the guilty neanderthals probably escape unscathed and the remainder of the population just gets more pissed off at the west?
@ biffjr
Re: Isolationism.
agree with good part of that, but it would mean abandoning Israel which is our friend. Friends don’t abandon friends. Although I doubt if Obama would feel that way.
justthinkin – wow, you make a lot of assumptions.
The use of reason, logic and the Constitution, which I support, outlaw the practices that you also reject. So, apart from name-calling, which is juvenile, what’s your point?
Kindly show how I am ‘perverting’ the Constitution and how I have ‘no idea’ of its meaning. Words are easy to slip off the typewriter. Provide some evidence.
You don’t seem to understand the meaning of tribalism. It doesn’t refer to a particular ethnic group (tribe). It defines a particular economic and political mode, which is two-class, based around kin ties, and with no middle class. Nothing to do with ethnicity.
I am saying that the tribal mode (political and economic) is no longer feasible in the ME, due to the population size. These nations must move into a civic mode, which inserts a middle class, removes governance by kin ties, and sets up a civil governance.
And I stand by my prediction. The population size in the ME is too large for a two-class tribal economic and political mode; they must move into a three class civic mode. This means that they must reject Islamism (kindly note the ‘ism’) which supports only tribalism, that two-class mode with no free middle class.
Kindly provide some evidence for yet another of your name-calling (that I’m a self-loathing female).
And why do you reject the use of reason and the use of such analytic areas as economics and demographics and population size? What do you think should be used to analyze a society?
ET, please grant the Muslims the right to their own mindset that has no tradition of western values extant within the very narrow confines of Islamic thought. It took the hubris sickened west a couple of thousand years to muddle to our present state of “freedom” and expectation of fairness in the law. The Muslims are a millennium off in the opposite direction and are in no position to chose to “build a middle class and chose democracy”. The few who might are already dead or in hiding and have zero influence or power. Strength through ignorance has been the state of Islam since the beginning of it.
ET: I would suggest that Islam is as much a political movement as it is a religion – it’s all based on power and control.
What bothers you the most, the education or the intelligence and analysis? I don’t always agree with ET, but her posts make you seem a babbling simpleton, full of cliches and little else.
Posted by: wyatt ironbridge at September 11, 2012 7:15 PM
There is neither.She can babble,because my grandfathers,yours and probably hers,fought so that she could babble.Try saying what she says in Saudi!PHD’s are a dime a dozen on the net and in so called colleges/universities.You want cliches,go back to her “tribal”,”middle class” etc yammerings.She screwed up,made a mistake in calling the Arab Spring good.We all make mistakes,but most of us admit them.Some do not.
ET….please tell me one thing besides genocide,paedophilia,subression of women,making a woman’s word only worth 1/4 of a man’s,hanging gays,murdering Jews,saying Jews kill kids for their blood for matzoo balls,openly,on the world news,beheading people,using mentally retarded kids to blow themselves up,etc,the Islamists have given to this planet? And no,algebra does not count,as it wasn’t Islamists who came up with it.
How many middle-class Muslims are there in Europe and North America who adhere to the code of violence?
Ideologies matter, not always class.
Just saying….
blackbird, it took the West about 400 years, from about 1200 to 1600 to move from a feudal (tribal) economic and political mode to a civic mode. These were very violent years as the old order fought to retain its power. What is different in the ME in this era, and which will enable them to move faster, is that this civic mode is not new; the West already has it; and the electronic technologies permit information transference very rapidly.
Nemo 2, absolutely, I’ve always said that Islam is less a religion, taking most of its axioms from Judaism, and primarily a political and societal and economic mode. The thing is, its political and economic mode is now dysfunctional in a population in the multimillions and in an industrial global economy. They can’t feed their populations now, even within their statist oil-based economies and the informational input from the rest of the world can’t be shut out in this electronic age.
justthinkin – how do you conclude that I support the ideology of Islam, much less Islamism? Where’s your evidence for that? Please provide it and stop with the vicious and almost hysterical name-calling.
I’ve said repeatedly, that Islam is a 7th century ideology, emerging within a specific economic mode of pastoral nomadism, and entirely unsuited to a modern economic and societal mode of life. Can you point to any comment of mine that supports the Islamic, much less Islamist, ideology?
I’ve said repeatedly that it rejects reason, individualism, science, democracy. I’m quite aware of its non-contributions to science, logic, and am quite aware that it didn’t provide us with algebra or the use of zero etc.
So, what’s your data base that you use to rant, almost hysterically, against me? Show me where I’ve said that I support an ideology that rejects reason, logic, science, objective reality. Show me.
All that I’m saying, and I stand by my analysis, is that a population that has grown beyond the carrying capacity of a tribal economic and political mode MUST change and move into a civic mode that permits a free middle class, ie, that permits free thinking, the use of reason, individual innovation etc.
And that this must happen in the ME, which means that Islamism, the fundamentalist ideology, cannot triumph in that area. It can try, it’s certainly trying, but utopian ideologies cannot trump reality.
Obama a word of advice . Make that 3 words. Jimmy Carter syndrome. One embassy taken over once a century is enough.
ET here is something for you to ponder as you assess why the tribes keep replacing one authoritarian with another. It is not (only) about the development of a middle class. And I wonder just how big a population must be to support a middle class. There are many countries with a realively small population that have a middle class (think the Scandanavian countries). Why have they gone to the side of democracy? There must be something more at work than population size.
Here is a quote from wiki that can explain why your otherwise reasoned arguments seem to be closed minded on the subject of what is wrong in the ME. After describing the social and economic factors of tribalism you refer to as one form of tribalism the article provides, “Another concept to which the word tribalism frequently refers is the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group.”
It is evident (and my personal experience validates this) that there is a strong cultural and ethnic identity that unifies the Muslims tribes in the ME. As long as those cultural and ethnic identities continue the ME will continue to be ruled by despots.
Many of those who want individual rights have left and are bringing those who have similar views along behind them.
osumashi, gosh, there are a lot of middle class Muslims in America who reject jihadism and Islamism.
I can think of Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and others..whose names I forget who come on FOX regularly. I know of others in the US, in the financial fields and in various disciplines in universities.
What I am talking about is something different. It’s about the economy. Again, a multimillion size population can’t be supported within a one-industry economy. Period. This economy, eg oil, is owned by the state, which distributes the wealth from the sales. Great. But not enough.
They have to develop an economic mode to produce more wealth. That’s the private sector small businesses, which will create products for sale on the home and export markets. The only way to do this, in the ME nations…you can only franchise MacDonald’s so often..is to encourage individual entrepreneurship and innovation. This focus on free will individualism is the basis of the middle class. It’s not found in Islam, but, you can’t eat the Koran; you have to produce food or the money to buy food.
So, the economic mode must enable a middle class, and that will change the whole societal infrastructure. Islamism, which is a utopian socialist anti-individual ideology, has no economic solutions. It can try to exist but it can’t last outside the seminar or prayer room.
And as an aside…just what kind a freckin marine are they hiring now that would not should the head of off a person who was scaling a wall and invading American territory?
They are emboldened.
Brace for impact.
ET, economics alone do not determine individual or even societal acts. The handful of moderates don’t explain the wealthy Sept. 11th hijackers, the Toronto 18 or the Fort Hood shooter. Perhaps a middle-class in Egypt might do some good but then again there was a middle-class in Iran in 1978. Not so much in 1979.
All of this {let’s just patiently wait a few centuries for Islam to catch up} rhetoric is mind numbing.
Especially when it is we how are losing our cultures, borders, and freedoms incrementally each day.
{Islam has no choice but to become a Democratic, Middle Class, Capitalist wonderland based on demographics}? Then why are we losing ours?
The most common reason cited by those that are taking our freedoms away is because of Muslim extremists! Of course we then go and create as many as we can with a few predator drones and import them wholesale into our communities thereafter.
The mind wobbles.
And that this must happen in the ME, which means that Islamism, the fundamentalist ideology, cannot triumph in that area. It can try, it’s certainly trying, but utopian ideologies cannot trump reality.
Hummmm.You said the same thing must happen from the Arab Spring.And ask Ken(kulak) how utopian ideologies trump reality in the old USSR.Problem is,ideologies can,and do,trump reality if the sheeple let it happen.The reality is,not one of the scum who scaled those walls would be alive,if the Zero was not in command.You have fallen for a zero who will take your rights,and your families,and you will gladly let them.You talk of my words,but what else do you have?
And ET,I do not mean to rat on you.I would probably gladly have you by my side,fighting for what we belive is right.Problem is,I’ve been there,done that,and sometimes one must use right of force,to right what is wrong.I am proud of it,and as the saying goes,I have,and will fight to protect your right to say what you belive.THAT is what makes me,and several others here,different from others.We are no better,or worse,then others.The differnce is,I will let you have the right to say what you wish,and will in no way subjugate you.Myself and others will treat all as equals,and your word is equal to mine.But,in Islam,my word is worth everything,and yours is nothing,nor never will be.See the difference?
God bless “Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and others..” for being voices in the vast wilderness. They are a small courageous minority.
I don’t think they want to give us the 400 years for them to make the transition.
Osumashi, Iran in 1978 had no empowered middle class. It had an elite, surrounding the Shah, enriched by oil, ruling by military power over a population who were for the most part impoverished but who were working in factories, as the shah increased the industrialization of the nation. It was this working class, deprived of political power, that toppled him.
BUT, rather than empowering, politically, this sector, and thus making it a middle class, a vacuum of power was rapidly filled by the utopian rhetorical ideologists, the Islamists.
The fundamentalists in the West are empowered because they are removed from reality; many of them are supported by welfare, by government grants and jobs. They can readily, just like Layton’s NDP followers, move into the heady realm of utopian ideology. What the West must do is reject multiculturalism.
Knight 99, no, I’ve never said that Islam must catch up. It isn’t Islam that must catch up. It’s the societies in the ME which follow Islam AND which are trapped within a tribal socioeconomic mode.
They must switch from an economic and political mode that is two-class and no-growth, to one that enables a robust growth class, the middle class. It isn’t ‘Islam that must become capitalist and middle class’ , but the populations living in the ME. Don’t merge the two. Islam as an ideology is, like all ideologies, the last phase of the infrastructure…which always rests in the economic mode.
Other than that, I do appreciate the intelligent discussion and debate, but deplore name calling. That is what the left does, and we see evidence of that in the Globe, Star and elsewhere. Let us not degenerate to their level.
I’m confused, ET- how does class magically erase ideology?
Let’s assume Egypt gets a middle-class. How did it evolve- through sound economic policies or by abandoning Islam? Do you need one or both? Even so, it doesn’t explain the “radicalised” upper classes one sees in Europe and North America.
We, the west, the US, is fostering the creation of a MONSTER, led by unfathomable stupidity.
rroe, yes, tribalism is based around ethnic or kinship identification, but this doesn’t preclude a middle class developing. And, by the way, there are many intra-Muslim and Arab subgroups. They aren’t one homogeneous whole.
There are also ‘ethnic’ so to speak enclaves in, for example, Europe, where in Italy or France or Germany or the UK, you’ll get cities and towns based around identity and kin groups. That doesn’t preclude a middle class economy.
The Scandinavian nations are part of the Western European market economy, all operating within a common economic mode of industrialism, of democracy, and with a market trade economy. This requires a middle class.
Justthinkin – First, are you actually saying that I support Obama? Are you saying that, with you comment that I have ‘fallen for a zero’? What are you talking about..what ‘zero’ am I supporting? I’m not supporting Islam, or Islamism or Obama. So, what are you talking about?
I don’t say that the ‘Arab Spring’ results are immediate. When a dictator is toppled, other groups will rush in and try to fill the power vacuum. That’s what happened in Iran in 1979. But I’m saying that it can’t last because a statist single resource economy can’t support that size of a population. You need a mixed economy and that comes only from private small businesses…which requires a middle class.
Utopian ideologies didn’t triumph in the Soviet Union. It collapsed. Iran was on the verge of collapsing two years ago during the demonstrations and Obama turned his back on them. Iran is now more influential in the region, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and trying to take power in Syria. The ones who fear Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, are being held back from doing anything by the dithering of Obama. Iran isn’t about Islamism; Iran is all about its own imperial power.
So, there are two key problems in the ME – the need to move out of a two-class no-growth economy, which is being held back by Islamism, and the imperialist ambitions of Iran. Our own PM, Harper, is a major international leader, who clearly sees the problem – and he’s being vilified by the left in both Canada and the US, for his stance.
Just for ET
To measure the reaction of the educated Egyptian-Muslim middle-class to 9/11, the Free Egyptians [in 2004] conducted opinion polls on a sample thereof on 9/11 and during the ensuing days when an atmosphere of euphoria and rejoicing took control of and overwhelmed the Muslim street. Release of results at an earlier date was not possible for security reasons. Part of the findings is outlined below.Of those interviewed,- 91% said they supported and rejoiced the attacks of 9/11.- 89% said America deserved to be attacked because it is an infidel country that supports the Jews.- 83% said 9/11 inspired so much zeal in them that they themselves were willing to volunteer as suicide bombers to carry out attacks against targets in America or Israel.- 94% said that 9/11 attackers died as shaheed ( martyrs.)
– 87% said that 9/11 marked the beginning of the end for America.
– 88% said that they supported more attacks on America.
I rest my case.
ET >
“It isn’t Islam that must catch up. It’s the societies in the ME which follow Islam………. Don’t merge the two”
Ha ha, yea I know I made that clear distinction for you on the last thread, but nice throw anyway. The longer pointless argument is understanding what Islam is to the average moderate Muslim in the ME, I know I’ve lived with them, many of them, working, eating, sleeping, partying, *drinking (yup) and much talking.
Whatever, this is flogging another dead horse on the subject.
I will certainly give you one credit, to be sure you will get your wish and we will continue to simultaneously bomb Islamic/ Arabic cultures hopefully into wonderful Middle Class economies and import them and their baggage wholesale into our own.
There’s nothing like sharing is there, and we will most definitely get our share in years and decades to come.
God bless “Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah …
Of the four persons listed by Tarek Fatah as Inspirational People, Vladimir Lenin is one of them.
http://www.facebook.com/tarekfatah
One wonders if those who have been criticizing the Tories for closing the embassy in Tehran paused for even a second after seeing this story from Cairo? Tenth of a second? Milli-second ?!?
oldfart, sorry, but I’d need the link, to see the sample population, its size and makeup and the questions. I never accept a survey result without the data. As I told my students, when I taught them survey construction, it’s super simple to set up a fraudulent survey.
Knight 99, well, we’d probably agree that the US response to the Egyptian intruders into the US embassy was a disgrace. The US embassy has apologized for ‘allowing a film to be made that insults Muslims’. They ought to have instead stood up for free speech in America, and tasered any and all who climbed over the US embassy walls.
But that’s Obama’s legacy.
And, Obama is now backtracking on the claim that he can’t meet with Netanyahu because he’s busy campaigning. At first, the Obama gang was publicly saying that they can’t meet because of scheduling, but that Netanyahu would meet with Clinton and others. NOW, obama is claiming that Netanyahu never asked to meet with him! As usual, Obama blames the other person.
Oh how I wish that Ronald Reagan was still President.There would never have been an attack on the Embassy in Cairo because retribution would have been swift and decisive.Obama is not fit to carry Reagans brief case.The radical Islamists recognize fear and incompetence when they see it,they know that Obama is an empty suit,just watch what they get away with if he gets re-elected.
Oh how I wish that Ronald Reagan was still President.There would never have been an attack on the Embassy in Cairo because retribution would have been swift and decisive.Obama is not fit to carry Reagans brief case.The radical Islamists recognize fear and incompetence when they see it,they know that Obama is an empty suit,just watch what they get away with if he gets re-elected.
Charles Krauthammer’s message: “go to hell”.
Right on.
http://nation.foxnews.com/cairo-embassy-attack/2012/09/11/krauthammer-egyptian-mobgo-hell
ET Yawn. Your smug sneers do not impress, they remind me, horrors of Trudeau’s elite bureaucrats – smooth sophisticated suave Quebecophony separatists and their Canadian quislings from Tranna. I likewise require proof of your wild and ludicrous assertions – re democracy, middle class, etc.
@ ET
In case old fart can’t find the link, here it is.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Opinion-Polls.htm
oldfart, what ‘smug sneers’? Kindly explain.
Now, you can check out the history books on the rise of the middle class in the 15th century, on populations and demographics, and on the changing ideology that moved this middle class into political power.
I’d suggest reading a few books on history by Fernand Braudel, eg, The Wheels of Commerce. Also, JD Bernal on the development of scientific knowledge and societal organization. You could read John Locke on civic government, Adam Smith on economics, and various authors who write about the civic society and the middle class market economy. OK?
Then, you’ll have to provide some evidence for your conclusion that my opinions are ‘wild and ludicrous’. You know, speech is fine in the seminar room, but outside of it, one has to be accountable. So, provide some evidence.
Now, let’s have the link for that survey. The questions seem, ah, ‘loaded’ and I would never allow any student to set up such a question. Surely even you, who reject the sophism of such as Trudeau, the separatists and so on, can see that those are not objective and impartial questions. Hmmm? You don’t see this? Ah well.
Those Islamists in Cairo had better behave themselves.
Or we’ll drop tons of leaflettes with Pelosi’s face on’em.Serve ’em right…..
Et Your right China has a huge middle class if you ignore the billion peasants.
Sounder, most of us here know that the current POTUS does not have the gonads that the US General McAuliffe had during the the battle in Bastogne in December 1944, when he told the Germans “Nuts” when asked to surrender.
US ambassador to Libya has been murdered by the “activists”.
Just figured it out.ET is living in the past.All her examples are from pre-1979.The killing of the American Ambassador and his fellow workers happened because we did not create a middle class in the 13th century to help the cult of death.If we had done that,then they would no longer stone women to death for being raped,women would be allowed to work and go to school,and horrors of horrors,be allowed to walk down the street in jeans and a t-shirt,without having to worry about some psycho nutcake raping her.Those damn Crusaders just had everything wrong.If only they hadn’t tried to defend women,but instead raped and kept them tied to the kitchen,then the diaper wearing ragheads would have been happy,gone into business,and had a middle class of harems,with a side business of killing Jews,while trying to develop a rocket to the moon(Nasa’s orders from Huessin Obama).But then what does a redneck like me from AB know?
Although I’m not a big fan of isolationism regardless of circumstances, I would suggest that the United States, and any other civilized nation for that matter, simply cut all diplomatic ties with countries such as Egypt or Libya. Close embassies, cut off foreign aid and refuse to get involved in any conflicts other than those having a direct effect on us. If certain citizens of the offending nations insist on carrying on like ungrateful savages then so be it. However they can carry on in isolation.
I’m also not a pacifist by any means, however isn’t this far better than a military approach where a few hundred innocents are killed, the guilty neanderthals probably escape unscathed and the remainder of the population just gets more pissed off at the west?
@ biffjr
Re: Isolationism.
agree with good part of that, but it would mean abandoning Israel which is our friend. Friends don’t abandon friends. Although I doubt if Obama would feel that way.