54 Replies to “The Big Zero”

  2. BREAKING NEWS: Electrical usage soars in the US as the “light bulbs” finally go on in millions of voters minds. Utilities warning of possible brownouts.

  4. My only question: How come it’s taken so many so long to figure out that the BIG “SEER” O is the BIG ZER-O?

  6. batb,
    It’d be easier for folks to figure it out if impartial, unbiased MSM types weren’t saying things like this:
    “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

  7. Exactly, Kathryn.
    Sort of makes 2 Timothy:4 relevant today:
    “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers [gods] to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
    Look at all the mythical gods: Obama’s just become one of them, towering over Olympia …

  9. I am a dream has an approval rating of 56%, slightly better than the percentage of votes cast for him in the election.
    When reality meets I am a dream’s rhetoric, it will be seen for what it is … nothingness delivered in a convincing fashion, like air in a milk shake.

  11. Sorry, louie, one thing you cannot claim about Rasmussen, try as you will, is dishonesty. They are the most respected name in polling. So, ah, I think you’ll have to explain your conclusion of its dishonesty.
    Note the slopes. The ratio between strongly approve vs strongly disapprove has closed since Obama’s taking office. He went from a double digit positive rate to a single digit positive by the end of March. You can see the daily polls at Rasmussen. And the disapproval has a strong positive slope, i.e., going up, while the approval has gradually sloped down.
    Today’s ratio is plus one; where 34% strongly approve while 33% strongly disapprove. Essentially the same.
    At the moment, 53% somewhat approve of Obama; this is his lowest level to date, while 47% somewhat disapprove.
    What seems to bother voters the most, is Obama’s socialist activities; that seems to be the basic worry and cause of the disapproval.

  12. Every time the POTUS gives a speech his approval ratings drop. Too bad, so sad that USA is going towards USSA at warp speed. All we can hope for in Canada is that PMSH and the Conservatives will win the majority government when the election is called.

  13. Louie – you need to to to the Rasmussen website and discover for yourself what the graph is showing – it certainly doesn’t show 68% approval. Where it gets really interesting is that Dubya, the guy you love to hate, scored better than Obama at a comparable point in his administration. As more and more people recognize the hopey-dreamy-changey speeches for their inherent shallowness, BHO’s score will continue to erode.

  14. An analysis of polling data between Obama and Bush, by Schoen and Rasmussen (March 13) points out that Obama’s rating sharply dropped after his taking office and indeed, was below Bush’s rate at an analagous period in 2001.
    Essentially, Obama’s approval has dropped to the hardcore Democrats; he has lost virtually all electorates of the Republican party and has lost a significant proportion of independents.
    Despite his rhetoric of promoting bipartisanship, he has done the opposite and has polarized the electorate. A key area of discontent is Obama’s economic policies of socialism, enormous government spending and goverment intrusion.
    Obama’s strategy of blaming the Republicans for all ills, and moving into emotional appeals has a limited attraction at this stage in his presidency, where actions not words are desired.

  15. If you go to the Rasmussen web site and look at the daily history, it’s apparent that Obama’s strong disapprovals had bounced (due to sampling error) around 30% for the past three months.
    Then a few days ago, his strong disapprovals took a jump of about 2-3%.
    I think this is the first sign of American public reaction to the Cairo speech.

  16. August – no, I think the strong positive slope of the disapproval ratings is due to Obama’s activities in the economy.
    Yes, that was a nice view by David Warren on Obama, specifically with his comment that Obama’s key problem is his failure to acknowledge realities. But that’s because Obama, long ago, moved out of the real world and into a fictional world where he alone controls all that happens.
    That’s what his rhetoric and actions are focused on – his control over you. He has only three tactics: misinformation, emotional manipulation via fear and hope; and, if you reject or criticize him, accusations of bias (racism).
    If he cannot control you, then you simply cease to exist; you are outside of this Text. And there is no reality for Obama outside of this text.
    I myself don’t see him as an incredible debater or rhetorical giant. Without the teleprompter he can’t ‘think on his feet’; he can’t analyze questions or participate in a debate. That’s because he’s not an intellectual, logical person, but one who interacts only by manipulation.
    I disagree with Warren who disliked the Cairo speech. Yes, it was filled to the brim, each paragraph, with misinformation and manipulation. But that was its agenda; he was speaking, I think, to the youth of the Middle East. Not to Americans. Not to the ME leaders. But to the youth, and telling them that they can participate in the modern world; they can modernize.
    Such an agenda is against the wishes of the Old Guard Leaders of the ME arab states, who prefer to keep their population repressed and fundamentalist and taking out their anger at the west rather than against their own dictatorial leaders.
    Obama doesn’t write his own speeches. In my view, he has no knowledge of history, or current affairs, or the economy. He’s intellectually empty. His only skill is to manipulate people. He’s just a front man for the BackRoom Cabal.

  17. an egotistical ignorant man with incredibly ignorant inept speechwriters and a very dodgy suspect administration…
    but the boy’s got a plan alright…now let’s see how well common sense realpolitik a sense of self preservation and american democracy does in countering his misguided socialistic goals and his naive foreign relations..
    fasten your seatbelts..

  18. Eloquent speeches. Unemployment rises. Nothing else happens. Eloquent speeches. Unemployment rises. Nothing else happens. Eloquent speeches. Unemployment rises. Nothing else happens.
    Americans will get it soon.

  19. He has D-Day ceremony and a Dresden apology to do then will be +10% for sure. being one the 9.4%, me and my bank account are overjoyed with this messiah.
    whoopdedoo

  20. ET: “I disagree with Warren who disliked the Cairo speech. Yes, it was filled to the brim, each paragraph, with misinformation and manipulation. But that was its agenda; he was speaking, I think, to the youth of the Middle East. Not to Americans. Not to the ME leaders. But to the youth, and telling them that they can participate in the modern world; they can modernize.”
    With all due respect, ET, how can a speech — whomever it’s addressed to — be in any way admirable when it’s “filled to the brim” with misinformation and manipulation? That just doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s relativism: Oh well, that’s his agenda anyway and he’s speaking to young Muslims, not ME leaders … so misinformatin and manipulation are OK?
    You’ve said many times that Obama’s agenda stinks and that he’s having his strings pulled by a backroom cabal, so how, in the same breath, can you defend Obama’s ME speech? Since when is it his role to address ME “youth,” and how can you be so sure that young Muslims want Obama’s hope and change — or even if they did, how would they go about participating in the modern world apart from the approval of their leaders?
    I think that you are unduly optimistic that ME youth “can participate in the modern world; they can modernize.” We haven’t seen Muslim youth who no longer live in the ME — in Sweden, in France, for instance — participating particularly co-operatively in the modern world, except to enjoy its benefits while trashing the West’s values and freedoms, not to mention our private property.

  21. At this point, what is significant about the numbers is that they reveal the lie behind Mr Obama’s claim to be a “uniter”, the One who will bring together all classes, factions, races, etc. He is rather the Great Polarizer, no more than one would expect from his whole political history and the recent history of his party.

  22. louie – you’ve tried the dishonesty tactic to disparage the Rasmussen poll, and now, you are trying the false analogy.
    No, you cannot conclude that a 53% (you wrote 58, which is as incorrect as your original 68%) approval rating is ‘pretty damn good in a recession’. The reason you can’t say this with any validity is because you have no evidence that 53% is ‘good’ in a recession’. Try again.
    After all, the world is not static; life isn’t a summer’s day at the cottage. That means that all governments are faced with difficult decisions at all times. Therefore, the rating of a leader must reflect his decisions taken during the difficult times.
    Obama’s steadily declining rates reflect his actions.
    These include his moving the US into the most massive deficit economy in its history; his stimulus package which had zilch to do with infrastructural stimulus but was filled with pork-projects; his pretence of not knowing about AIG bonuses and his lynch-mob behaviour; his contempt for the people and their Tea Party complaints about his economic policies; his take-over of GM, his appointment of administrators who, so many of them, are tax-dodgers; his insults to US allies and their leaders; his denigration of America in his speeches; his trivialization of the War on Terror..and so on.
    These are real actions he has taken, and there’s a great deal of concern about their results.
    Oh, and louie, insults to people who post at this blog are a clear sign that the writer has no arguments to provide.

  23. louie- you are the one who is doing the ‘Pavlovian Puke’. That’s why I’ve asked you for evidence to support your assertions. You’ve gone from one false claim to another false claim.
    These include your assertion that the Rasmussen poll is dishonest; your assertion that Obama’s approval rating is 68%, then 58%. Then, there’s your assertion that ‘a 58% approval in a recession is good’. None of your assertions are factual; you provide no evidnce. So, don’t start trying to shift the responsibility to us, the reader, for your assertions. Prove them.
    Since you are the making making these assertions, it’s up to you to provide the proof.
    And please don’t move into insults and name-calling. Stick to the issues.
    And no, these policies of Obama that I listed were most certainly not similar to those of Bush. These include his massive increase of the deficit, his pork-filled stimulus, his purchase of GM, his health care agenda – and – his insults to foreign leaders, his denigration of America..and so on.

  24. Obama is quickly nearing the break-even point on the overall according to Rasmussen.
    As correctly pointed out by ET, the approval-disapproval now sits at 53-47%.
    Also, the Chrysler/GM giveaway to the UAW is something entirely of Obama’s making. The US auto industry has been in steady decline since the introduction of imports 30 years ago.
    Obama’s proposed budget, which kicks in later this year, contains a one-year expenditure that exceeds the combined money spent on Iraq and Afghanistan since 2008.
    TARP was Dubya’s creation, but banks are now clamouring to repay the grants once they understood the control-freak nature of the Obama administration.
    So far, the $300 billion of stimulus money had been neutralized by American savings going up $300 billion, according to a radio report I heard yesterday.
    Somebody has to pay the $550,000 per man, woman and child (according to Glenn Beck) the US taxpayer is now saddled with.
    We the People are pissed and the momentum suggests Obama’s approval ratings are on the verge of dropping faster than the debt-saddled US dollar.
    Reality is about to bite Obama.

  25. batb – many political speeches are filled with misinformation and manipulation – on both sides.
    My feeling is that what the West has to do is create a wedge between the youth of the Middle East – and remember, the majority of the population is below 30 and the majority have no essential role in the economic and political decisions of their country.
    Therefore, telling these youth that they can participate in the modern world, and do not need to be a fundamentalist, a hater of the West, a terrorist – is important.
    Instead, what we’ve seen with the Muslim in the West, is their rejection by the West (esp in Europe) and their isolation into impoverished enclaves which are then rapidly radicalized by the agenda of The Old Guard of Saudi Arabia who are busy brainwashing all Muslims, both internal and external…to remain fundamentalist (and thus, retain the Saudi tribalism).
    Or, we’ve seen their acceptance in a relativist manner, where we kowtow to their differences and fall all over ourselves allowing them special dispensations and etc.
    Neither will work in the West. And above all, the Old Guard tribalism in the Middle East Arab Nations has got to go! Creating a wedge between the youth and the Old Guard is one small step.
    Of course it’s his role to address the youth of the Middle East, since the US is the major free country in the world. Wasn’t it Bush’s role to start the structural change in the ME towards democracy? Talking about it wouldn’t have been enough. And as I said, Obama was only able to talk about freedom and democracy because of the actions that Bush had taken.
    Of course the Muslim youth can modernize; they aren’t genetically deformed! They are brainwashed, they are isolated, they are trapped within a fundamentalist Islamism – but if these are addressed, then they can modernize.

  27. raswho:
    No mystery at all.
    American people understand pocketbook issues quite well.
    They know they’re being saddled with future debt for something they had nothing to do with (at least they wanted nothing to do handing over their money so that Chrysler/GM could be owned by the UAW).
    There’s a palatable theme here … buyers’ remourse from the independent swing vote … the severely normal American.
    Next time, they’ll vote for the candidate who promises to spend the least amount of their money.

  28. Kate, time for another Juxtapose! sda saw it all coming a long time ago.
    How is Obama’s Canadian popularity doing these days ? Especially amongst the fawning media. (And don’t say smalldeadanimals didn’t warn ya)
    June 6, 2009
    WHISTLER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Canadian municipal leaders threatened to retaliate against the “Buy America” movement in the United States on Saturday, warning trade restrictions will hurt both countries’ economies.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE5551NE20090606

  29. ET: “Of course the Muslim youth can modernize; they aren’t genetically deformed! They are brainwashed, they are isolated, they are trapped within a fundamentalist Islamism – but if these are addressed, then they can modernize.”
    You’re an optimist, on what evidence I’m not sure!
    Muslim youth are definitely not physically deformed, but they have a political and cultural DNA which is badly warped and it’s a stretch to suppose that they can escape their brainwashed, fundamentalist, anti-Western, anti-modern world view if these issues are addressed. Who, other than Obama, is going to address them, and is one speech in the ME going to do it? I’m not aware of a two-, three-, or four-pronged approach of Obama’s to reach and hopefully change the minds and hearts of these young Muslims. Is this/was this ever on his agenda?
    Why have they been “isolat[ed] into impoverished enclaves in the West?” It seems to me that it’s because their imams, their parents, and they, by extension, have shown no desire to be assimilated into the cultures into which they have moved.
    I sincerely hope that your scenario has legs and that Muslim youth find a new motivation to throw off the retrogade Islamofascist tribalism/terrorism many seem all too happy to embrace.
    As to how Obama’s honeyed words a few days ago are going to accomplish a Prague/Cairo Spring for Muslim youth is a little difficult to comprehend. His soothing words are beginning to cloy with people who like — or liked –him, who like America, and who voted for him. By what stretch of Obama’s melodious rhetoric are Muslim youth all of a sudden going to follow the Western (Great Satan) Pied Piper into the modern world?

  30. At the risk of, I don’t know, jumping into the deep end of the shark tank above my pay grade, may I say that, while I agree with ET’s oft-stated assertion that a tribal culture is incompatible with democracy, I simply can’t see how a culture can be de-tribalized. Has it worked anywhere in Africa?
    Combine a tribal culture with imported political gangsterism (Hamas, Fatah and all the rest), general ignorance, a macho inferiority-complex, general dehumanizing of the infidel, hysterical Judenhass, and a murderous, suicidal death cult, throw in legitimate personal grievance (which I believe deserves to be directed at the Arab states, which cynically declined to absorb the “refugee” Palestinian population decades ago, rather than at the Israelis) and you have a situation which seems inescapably toxic and quite hopeless. (Phew.)
    Those Palestinians who manage to become educated leave.
    I don’t favour Israel because I’m hung up on the idea that anyone has a biblical right to land. I believe in Israel because it’s a civilized (not perfect) democracy in a sea of barbarity. If a Palestinian state were created tomorrow, it would – not devolve into – manifest itself as a cesspool. And Israel would have to deal with the fallout; noone else.
    Okay, that’s a bit OT, because we weren’t discussing the Palestinians specifically. But the moon will morph into cambozola before Saudi Arabia ceases to be a nightmarishly mismanaged, terror-sponsoring, misogynistic, fraud-monarchical kleptocracy. My instinct would be to place my best bets on Iran… I mean, if it weren’t for the Ayatollahs, President Ahmanutso and the whole nuke thing.
    Well, noone’s ever accused me of being an optimist. I hope ET’s right too. I just doubt it.

  31. batb – who said one speech will accomplish the change? After all, it took over 400 years for the West to move from tribalism to democracy – and those were vicious bloody years.
    There is no such thing as a DNA in culture or political systems as you very well know. These systems are human constructs and therefore, can be deconstructed. After all, at one time in the West, if you were promoting the Protestant ideology, you were branded as a heretic. The 12th century Scholastics in the West had effectively isolated thought and repressed individualism, repressed questions..and that couldn’t be sustained…and it began to break apart.
    The political structure of the ME is tribal; that sets up a hereditary elite who control the non-elite. There is no middle class. But this system is only viable in a medium size population and can’t function in a population in the millions and in an industrial economy. It cannot operate, except by repression – and oil has enabled the elite to repress the population, brainwash them, and keep them isolated.
    But it takes a lot of ‘energy’ to repress a population and in our modern world, in the electronic age, this can’t continue. And, the oil can’t continue.
    Therefore, the Muslim population has to move out of its tribal ideology and into an ideology that permits the use of Reason, Science, innovation and entrepreneurship of the individual. No choice. They can’t maintain the repression.
    Nothing to do with me or optimism. Basic complex adaptive system theory.
    Again, it’s hardly one speech. Don’t forget the work of Bush who actually enabled a democratic Islamic state. It doesn’t happen in a mechanical second but there’s no choice; they have to modernize and enable a middle class to emerge and take political and economic power.

  32. ET
    “The political structure of the ME is tribal; that sets up a hereditary elite who control the non-elite. There is no middle class. But this system is only viable in a medium size population and can’t function in a population in the millions and in an industrial economy. It cannot operate, except by repression – and oil has enabled the elite to repress the population, brainwash them, and keep them isolated. ”
    With a few insertions and minor dressings it’s not hard to imagine Canada was described.
    I think the problem with the ME is religious.

  34. Of course ET the real question is which society is the aberrant society ours or theirs. Should the middle east run out of oil will their society collapse or will our society collapse.
    We believe our society is more enlightened and advanced. Surprise surprise they believe their society is more enlightened and advanced.
    Which society has the determination to impose its will upon the other because that is what it is going to take. I don’t believe the modern west has the intestinal fortitude to win the battle in the long term because it is too focused on Self without a philosophical underpinning to support it.

  35. joe – the world population is too large for a non-industrial economy, and an industrial economy requires a middle class. It’s as simple as that.
    A middle class is, by definition, non-hereditary and based on the work, physical and intellectual, of the individual.

  36. Nice theory ET. Too bad I’ve heard it so often in so many other ways. The Titanic was too well built to sink, GM was too big to fail, Rome would never fall, Constantinople was impregnable…
    Now answer me this how many years has Islamic countries been facing ‘advanced cultures’ and which society has prevailed?
    Here’s Rudyard Kipling’s take on Afghanistan
    When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
    And the women come out to cut up what remains,
    Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
    An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
    Go, go, go like a soldier,
    Go, go, go like a soldier,
    Go, go, go like a soldier,

  37. ET: “Therefore, the Muslim population has to move out of its tribal ideology and into an ideology that permits the use of Reason, Science, innovation and entrepreneurship of the individual. No choice. They can’t maintain the repression.”
    I’m not sure about the “has to” part of your statement. Civilizations great and small have waxed and waned and, who knows?
    Perhaps the Middle East’s tribalism will be its downfall. Or, as Joe predicts, perhaps the West’s overweening, Godless, I-myself-and-I, narcissism will be our downfall.
    IMO there’s no inevitability in this scenario.

  38. Agreed batb: I’m not going to sit here and say that one or the other will succeed or fail, but I will say that until the west rediscovers its intestinal fortitude as shown by the pioneers, the soldiers of WW I and WW II, or the drive of the Christian missionaries as they brought a better life to the ‘dark continent’ Islam will win.
    Not every culture is a Homer Simpson clone exclaiming, “Oh look a shiny”! Or as a Wise Man once said, “Man shall not live by bread alone”.
    Unfortunately the West has in large part degenerated into looking for a better loaf of bread and a new shiny to distract ourselves from what really matters.

  39. Ditto, Joe.
    What’s that expression: If you don’t stand for something [other than a better loaf of bread and a new shiny] you’ll fall for anything?
    I know that it is the faith of our fathers and mothers that gave them the courage and fortitude to stand and fight for our freedoms in the last century. Freedom never comes cheap. It comes at a great cost, and we have to be willing to defend it, sometimes to the death.

  40. joe and batb – the comparisons with the Titanic, or GM or Rome or Constantinople are invalid, because the premises are weak. The Titanic was a mechanical construct and therefore could fail. GM was a man-made system and therefore, could fail. Rome and Constantinople as political organizations could fail but the people not only survived but moved on to more complex societal systems.
    My premises have nothing to do with ideology but are biological. A society, believe it or not, is not simply an ideological construct. It’s a biological system..and that means that its societal construct is based on its population.
    A small population can sustain itself in a non-industrial economy and organize itself in a stable tribal political system. A large population cannot sustain itself except by industrialism – and industrialism requires a middle class. Simple as that. It’s strictly and only based on population. And population requires a large economy – and the ME’s only economy is oil. Not enough; they are too dependent on western technology, food, equipment.
    The population of the ME has grown, since WWII, exponentially and it is too large for a tribal political system. It has managed to retain that structure only by authoritarian force, paid by oil – and the ME could not develop that oil by itself. It had/has no knowledge, no technological skills, no capacity to obtain or process oil. All the technology has come from the West.
    How long can oil pay for this? What happens when the oil runs out? How will they repress their populations without the authority, military and theological, to do so?
    Again, this analysis has nothing to do with ideology. It’s biological and strictly based on population size.

  41. ET I would likewise say that it is biological that societies such as what we see in the Middle East are the norm for humanity, not the artificial construct that is the modern (or is that post modern) West. Through out human history ‘great cultures’ have developed and inevitably that self same ‘great culture’ has devolved into petty tribalism.
    Sad to say but hubris such as shown in the (post)modern west shall be its downfall. Every human institute at some point comes to believe that it has reached it acme and from that point onward its descent is ever accelerating.

  43. It’s biological and strictly based on population size.
    Now where did I hear that before? HUMMM
    I seem to recall, back in grade school reading, some guy named Paul Ehrlich I believe who boldly told us all that our world was bound for hell because we were weren’t paying any attention to pending explosion found in The Population Bomb.
    I discounted, based on history, his allegation and likewise I reject ET’s faith in population as being indicative of anything other than the number of humans alive on the planet.
    A little pestilence, drought, frost, or disease and the population changes quite quickly.

  44. ET
    your assertions are based on the “fact” that societies must move move forward and must progress. That is were you fail, there is no assurance that society will keep on advancing. It appears that quite possibly the bell curve has started a left sift, or at least that it is arrested, so possibly society it’s self will also digress and populations reduce. If so, then your surmise is erroneous!!

  45. ET: “How long can oil pay for this? What happens when the oil runs out? How will they repress their populations without the authority, military and theological, to do so?”
    Quite probably, they won’t be able to repress their populations, and then we may see wholesale mayhem and slaughter, not the progress into a modern society that you predict is inevitable.
    I simply don’t comprehend your insistence that the Islamists will, biologically, because of their population, necessarily evolve into a modern society from their tribalism. Societies rise AND fall.
    And, as many others have noted here, it seems very much as though Western society, having achieved modernity, is on the slide.

  46. The Supreme Court will soon break this tie and hopefully the Fiat-Chrysler tie as well.

  47. joe – no, societies such as are now in the Middle East are not the ‘norm’. There is no ‘norm’. The way in which populations organize themselves as societies is based on the size of the population, and that size it itself dependent on the supply of food, water, shelter.
    And no, a little pestilence, etc, doesn’t change the situation. That was ‘tried’ in the European medieval period, when waves of disease, famine etc would reduce the population only to have it explode again. Eventually, they had to do the last thing any group ‘wants’ to do; change their ideology to privilege the individual, the use of reason, and permit innovation.
    GYM – no, I am not assuming any progress. Because a society changes its societal organization doesn’t mean that it has ‘progressed’. What does that term mean? Progress to what? There’s no linear path of progress or advancement!
    All I’m saying is that the organization of a group is directly correlated with the size of the group. One type of societal organization, eg, tribal, functions well but only in a medium size, no growth population. If the population increases beyond the ‘carrying capacity’ of that organization, the society will become dysfunctional and must change.
    batb- yes, the change from one type of systemic organization to another is violent. That’s because you have to essentially destroy the old structure, dysfunctional as it is, to enable the new to develop. As I’ve said, it took the West 400 plus violent years to move out of its tribal mode of feudalism into emerging democracy. WWI and WWII were a movement out of a structure of blocs of nationalism-colonialism into the development of a global network.
    My point is that the tribal structure of the Middle East is now dysfunctional and must fall. They must move into a modern democratic system that enables a middle class. They cannot keep that size of a population as lower class.
    We in the West are moving more into a global networked societal structure…and this network will eventually include the ME but, only and when, that ME moves out of its tribal structure. A tribe cannot network!

  48. ET, I’m not sure, the way things are going and with nuclear power, that the tribal Muslims have 400 years plus in which “to move out of [their] tribal mode of feudalism into emerging democracy.”

  49. batb – yes, you are right. They don’t have 400 plus years; it has to be done quickly.
    What they were doing, prior to Bush, was trying to stop any change and moving internal dissent and unrest by the youth against their rigid control..by diverting the focus to anti-American and anti-Israel themes And also, by installing a fundamentalist Islam..Wahhabism.
    But the real problem is that internal structure – not Israel and not the US. What Bush did, and it was a vital act, was to move this anger, diverted to the West, back where it belonged. Internal to the Islamic states.
    So now, Muslims are fighting each other, and this will go on..but the youth have to be motivated and encouraged that they CAN participate in their economic and political life; that they CAN participate in the world as constructive and innovative agents.
    And, as you say, it has to be done quickly. It is fascinating, however, to consider that as populations increase..and it sounds strange..but, systemic organizations move faster.
    The ancient societal system of hunting and gathering existed for 100,000 years…Agriculture only developed about 10,000 years ago, when populations increased. And industrialism has only been around for about 200 years!
    Societies organized as nations, rather than as tribes, has only been around for 1,000 and really less than that..The modern system that we are moving into – the global network – that’s been just 50 years or so.

  50. Thanks for your response, ET. I only hope that you’re right. If you are, global stability is much more assured than it would seem to be from the present perspective.

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