I agree with what Samuel Huntington wrote, we should stay out of their internal affairs. Really, I think we could thrive at home if we applied Nomad pragmatism to other civilizations, not half baked Prophet crusades.
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I agree with what Samuel Huntington wrote, we should stay out of their internal affairs. Really, I think we could thrive at home if we applied Nomad pragmatism to other civilizations, not half baked Prophet crusades.
I'm certainly proud to be a '68er, and our revolution continues in the Arab Spring, as it did in 1986-91, and all over the world. Power to the people! Our mature world view leads away from stereotyping anyone as people who do not want the same basic things that we want; not to be like us in every way, but to be part of this world liberation from ancient tyranny. Seeing that all people want freedom is mature; seeing some people as inherently inferior and backward is infantile.Originally Posted by Tussilago
Neo-colonialism is not the way forward, but support for a people rising up for freedom against tyranny, in the form of money or arms, is support for a people doing what they want to do, not us making them over in our image. That is a clear-cut line. The solution is not for us to get caught up in their war. But where there is a clear-cut side of a people fighting for basic human dignity, against a criminal who is killing and torturing them just for speaking truth to power, what we are doing now by standing aside and watching the slaughter happen is just a bad reaction to our justified weariness of Bush's wrong neo-colonial methods.
Stereotyping these brave people as a thin veneer, is sheer prejudice and hatred. Islam is not something to hate or belittle. It is a great world civilizing force. It is abused by some who are lost in traditional thinking and tribalism, but guess what? That exists in Christianity too. Just consider the red states of the USA. Very little difference. Those of us on the side of freedom and progress can look beyond traditional religious bigotry, whether Christian or Islam.
The young people of the Arab world today are tired of the old religion. I'm with them, and I am rooting for them with all my heart. They just want some freedom and a better life. You need to open your eyes to what's going on. '68 is and was the future. The revolution continues. And the same 2 planets are showing that it's time again, as it was in 1968; and right on schedule, just according to predictions, it is indeed happening. Get on board with destiny, and stop with your senseless Islama-bashing. It does not do you proud.
As bad as the wrong-headed type of prophet crusades have been, I see little evidence that today's nomad pragmatism has brought us any blessings at all.
-That's actually a pretty important component, especially if it's only the first step.
-"Stereotyping" is analyzing people based on general patterns, a form of prejudice.
Therefore, describing the Free Syrian Army as Jihadi is not "stereotyping", but description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army
About two-thirds of those elected to the new command were individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria...
...keep in mind, the FSA are the supposed good guys in the opposition.
Name me one red state where gays are stoned to death, and women are required to dress like mummies whenever they step outdoors - and broads driving any cars? Figgedaboudit!
'68 is and was the future. The revolution continues. And the same 2 planets are showing that it's time again, as it was in 1968; and right on schedule, just according to predictions, it is indeed happening. Get on board with destiny, and stop with your senseless Islama-bashing. It does not do you proud.
Wrong: '85 is and was the future - for at exactly 10:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time on Good Friday of that year, hundreds of thousands of radio stations all over the planet dropped what they were doing and played We Are The World.
Furthermore (and perhaps more relevantly), a bit over a month later, the pseudo-revolutionaries of MOVE blew themselves up, and took an entire neighborhood in Philadelphia with them - showing just how outdated and ridiculous the '68 mindset was, even then.
Last edited by '58 Flat; 05-30-2013 at 03:09 AM.
But maybe if the putative Robin Hoods stopped trying to take from law-abiding citizens and give to criminals, take from men and give to women, take from believers and give to anti-believers, take from citizens and give to "undocumented" immigrants, and take from heterosexuals and give to homosexuals, they might have a lot more success in taking from the rich and giving to everyone else.
Don't blame me - I'm a Baby Buster!
Red states are still backward and intolerant.
Boring song. "Pray" is so much better. It was a nice thought though, and entirely a reflection of 68.Wrong: '85 is and was the future - for at exactly 10:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time on Good Friday of that year, hundreds of thousands of radio stations all over the planet dropped what they were doing and played We Are The World.
That wasn't the 68 mindset. My how quickly people forget.Furthermore (and perhaps more relevantly), a bit over a month later, the pseudo-revolutionaries of MOVE blew themselves up, and took an entire neighborhood in Philadelphia with them - showing just how outdated and ridiculous the '68 mindset was, even then.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...e__118603.html
...Multiculturalists talk grandly of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, usually in contrast to the core values of the United States and Europe. Certainly, in terms of food, fashion, music, art, and architecture, the Western paradigm is enriched from other cultures. But the reason that millions cross the Mediterranean to Europe or the Rio Grande to the United States is for something more that transcends the periphery and involves fundamental values — consensual government, free-market capitalism, the freedom of the individual, religious tolerance, equality between the sexes, rights of dissent, and a society governed by rationalism divorced from religious stricture. Somehow that obvious message has now been abandoned, as Western hosts lost confidence in the very society that gives us the wealth and leisure to ignore or caricature its foundations. The result is that millions of immigrants flock to the West, enjoy its material security, and yet feel little need to bond with their adopted culture, given that their hosts themselves are ambiguous about what others desperately seek out.
...if the city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts, and the federal government of the United States extended the Tsarnaevs years’ worth of public assistance, why would such largesse incur such hatred of the United States in the hearts of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar?
...Why for that matter did Major Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian-American citizen whose family was welcomed into the United States from the war-torn West Bank, so detest his adopted country that he would kill 13 fellow Americans and injure 32 others... When General George Casey worried that the army’s diversity program might be imperiled after the slaughter, did the general ever express commensurate concern that Hasan apparently had never taken, as part of his military training, any course on the Constitution and American history, one that would have reminded him why he was sworn to defend his singular country’s values and history?
Why would Anwar al-Awlaki, another U.S. citizen, whose family was welcomed to the United States for sanctuary from the misery and violence of Yemen, grow to despise America and devote the latter part of his adult life to terrorizing the United States? He certainly need not have conducted his hatred from a Virginia mosque when all of the Middle East was ripe for his activism. Was Awlaki ever reminded in school or by any religious figure why exactly America was more tolerant of Muslims than Yemen was of Christians?
Why did Mohamed Morsi wish to go to university in the U.S. or teach in the California State University system — given that California values were antithetical to his own Muslim Brotherhood strictures...?
The United Kingdom is currently reeling from the beheading of a British soldier by two British subjects whose fathers had fled from violence-prone Nigeria. Why did they not return to Nigeria, carve out new lives there, and find their roots? ...For that matter, why do some Pakistani immigrants in cold, foggy Britain brag of establishing Sharia there...?
These cultural hypocrisies are not always violent, and they do not always involve fundamentalist Muslims waging jihad against their own adopted nations. In June 2011 the United States national soccer team played the Mexican national team in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena before a supposedly “home” crowd...
...many of us are still bewildered about contradictory impulses: the emotional need to display Mexican decals on cars and hang Mexican flags on houses and businesses — or boo an American team at a soccer match — coupled with equally heated expressions of outrage that anyone might suggest that those who broke American law in coming to the United States would ever have to return where their hearts would “always be.” That paradox is the most disturbing — and ignored — aspect of the immigration debate: the contradictory impulse to fault the United States for a litany of sins (exploitation, racism, xenophobia, nativism) without commensurate attention to why any newcomer would wish to reside in a place that is so clearly culpable... [ ]
Sociologists and psychologists can adduce all sorts of reasons for an immigrant’s contradictory behavior, whether the lethal kind of the Tsarnaevs or the more benign expression of the tens of thousands in the Rose Bowl. It is tough being a newcomer in any country, and tribal or religious affinities serve to offer familiarity and by extension pride to one who is otherwise alienated from contemporary culture.
More practically, in the last half-century, having some identity other than white Christian made one a member of a growing “Other” that could level grievances against the surrounding culture that might result in advantages in hiring or college admission — or at least in a trendy ethnic cachet...
Is not that the ultimate paradox: The solution to the sort of violence we saw in Britain and Sweden the past week, or to the endless acrimony over “comprehensive immigration reform,” is that the Western hosts will so accede to multiculturalism that the West will be no longer unique — and therefore no longer a uniquely desirable refuge for its present legions of schizophrenic admiring critics. If the immigrant from Oaxaca can recreate Oaxaca in Tulare, or the Pakistani second-generation British subject can carve out Sharia in the London boroughs, or a suburb of Stockholm is to be like in one in Damascus, then would there be any reason to flee to Tulare, London, or Stockholm?
-Which is why people are fleeing places run by "Blues" in favor of living in places run by "Reds"; people naturally flee to poverty and oppression...
Continuing violence against the host society...will eventually result in moves by the host society to protect itself.
Last edited by TimWalker; 05-30-2013 at 03:12 PM.
It seems to me that tolerance is based on trust. What happens to tolerance when trust is eroded?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-in-Syria.html
John McCain has denied that he knowingly posed in a photograph this week with Syrian rebels who kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shi'ite Muslims...
Awesome.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...omething-else/
...We are in a new ballgame... The new ballgame began a while ago, when Jihadist leaders said to themselves and to some followers: “Wait a minute. Guess what? We have done it... You can stop rubbing Aladdin’s lamp. Look, the Genie is out of the bottle...
You, faithful Jihadists, are the Genie, each and every one of you. We have conjured you up, released you, called you into being. Now go. You know our wishes; carry them out.
You don’t need detailed instructions. The time has come for do-it-yourself Jihad..."
And they said to each other: “When are we, Jihadists, vulnerable? It’s when we plan, when we organize. It’s when we train new Jihadists, when we travel, raise funds, smuggle arms — when we do things, when we engage in what infidel security calls ‘traffic.’ That’s when the unbelievers find us. That’s when they arrest us if we’re in New Jersey or Ontario, or they send commandos, Navy Seals, or drones to kill us if we stay in Pakistan or the Hindu Kush.
“So we reduce the traffic... We talk less; we’ve talked enough. We travel less; we’ve travelled enough. We raise fewer funds; we’ve raised enough."
“Where will the money come from? Why, Jihadists have jobs, and if they don’t, they have welfare..."
"Weapons? Every store sells box cutters, and pressure cookers, and meat cleavers..."
The most curious effect of do-it-yourself terrorism may be on the authorities. It may lead them to believe that they have defeated the terrorists, or at least have them on the run. They will believe that at the very time when the Jihadists are most successful at widening their popular base.
How? Simple. By concluding that lone wolves are crazies, not terrorists...
...There are two ways of eliminating terror (or any crime.) The hard way is to eradicate it, the easy way is to reclassify it.
Believe it or not, I agree with Rand Paul here: A victory for the "rebels" equals a victory for al Qaeda.
Guess it's true what they say about stopped clocks.
But why didn't Bill Clinton think about that when he threw the Serbs under the bus in Kosovo? The terrorist Kosovo "Liberation" Army had incontrovertibly proven links to al Qaeda - plus bin Laden had been physically photographed, on the ground, in Kosovo.
But maybe if the putative Robin Hoods stopped trying to take from law-abiding citizens and give to criminals, take from men and give to women, take from believers and give to anti-believers, take from citizens and give to "undocumented" immigrants, and take from heterosexuals and give to homosexuals, they might have a lot more success in taking from the rich and giving to everyone else.
Don't blame me - I'm a Baby Buster!
And Kosovo is doing much better than when the Serbs were killing them off. The rebels in Syria will do much better when the Assad crowd is no longer killing them off. Siding against Muslims just because they are Muslims, and calling them all Al Qaeda, as you do, is absurd and cruel in the extreme.
-No, Flat is calling the Kosovars AQ because the movement was infiltrated by AQ types. Now, most of the UCK were actually just a combination of Marxist/Fascist thugs, but that's not really an advertisement for them, is it?
Oh, in case you haven't noticed it, Assad's guys are Muslims, too, if you consider Alawites to be Muslim, and don't include the Christians who are fighting for their lives against your freedom fighters...
-Some new hope for Eric the Chickenhawk.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...officials-say/
...McCain said on the Senate floor Thursday that the rebels desperately need more powerful armaments. "These people of the Free Syrian Army need weapons and heavy weapons to counter tanks and aircraft, they need a no-fly zone," McCain said. "Just providing arms is not enough."
But keeping the weapons away from the most militant factions of the Free Syrian Army could prove impossible, according to critics. They say light weapons piped into the rebels have already fallen into the wrong hands...
...In recent weeks, reports have emerged of rebels committing atrocities, including the recent killing of a boy accused of insulting Islam, mass executions and a shocking Internet video that showed a rebel leader biting into the heart of a fallen Assad loyalist...
Obama still opposes putting American troops on the ground in Syria and the U.S. has made no decision on operating a no-fly zone over Syria...
The U.S. has so far provided the Syrian rebel army with rations and medical supplies. In April, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the administration had agreed in principle to expand its military support to the opposition to include defensive items like night vision goggles, body armor and armored vehicles.
-How about the Kurds in Hasakah Province (NE Syria)?
They don't seem to be infected with any AQ/Muslim Brotherhood types, and I suspect that their brethren in Iraq would be happy to do us the favor of handling the transport...
And the lighter side:
http://www.duffelblog.com/2012/07/un...rian-invasion/
With the latest nationwide unemployment figures showing another rise in jobless claims, a crowd of out-of-work anti-war protesters took to the streets last Friday in several major cities to demand a US invasion of Syria...
...little did Duffel Blog know...
Just for this one time, let's butt-out, and see if the locals can fix their own problems. Yes, I know that the problems are messy, but they resent us "helping", yet sit on their hands while we try. Perpetually getting involved is a symptom of White Man's BurdenitisTM, as if we have not done enough of that to date. It's never worked well in the past, it's always expensive in blood and treasure, and the only consistent winners are the very ones most likely to stir-up more chaos in the future. No thanks.http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...officials-say/
...McCain said on the Senate floor Thursday that the rebels desperately need more powerful armaments. "These people of the Free Syrian Army need weapons and heavy weapons to counter tanks and aircraft, they need a no-fly zone," McCain said. "Just providing arms is not enough."
But keeping the weapons away from the most militant factions of the Free Syrian Army could prove impossible, according to critics. They say light weapons piped into the rebels have already fallen into the wrong hands...
...In recent weeks, reports have emerged of rebels committing atrocities, including the recent killing of a boy accused of insulting Islam, mass executions and a shocking Internet video that showed a rebel leader biting into the heart of a fallen Assad loyalist...
Obama still opposes putting American troops on the ground in Syria and the U.S. has made no decision on operating a no-fly zone over Syria...
The U.S. has so far provided the Syrian rebel army with rations and medical supplies. In April, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the administration had agreed in principle to expand its military support to the opposition to include defensive items like night vision goggles, body armor and armored vehicles.
-How about the Kurds in Hasakah Province (NE Syria)?
They don't seem to be infected with any AQ/Muslim Brotherhood types, and I suspect that their brethren in Iraq would be happy to do us the favor of handling the transport...
And the lighter side:
http://www.duffelblog.com/2012/07/un...rian-invasion/
With the latest nationwide unemployment figures showing another rise in jobless claims, a crowd of out-of-work anti-war protesters took to the streets last Friday in several major cities to demand a US invasion of Syria...
...little did Duffel Blog know...
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
I fear Syria is about to become a repeat of 80's Afghanistan along with a helping of Ethnic Cleansing.
Shii'ite Syrians need to get out before the Saudi-backed rebels slaughter them.
The Western "Powers That Be" would rather Syria be an anarchic terrorist haven than a Iranian puppet. And the Gulf states are more that happy to fund Wahhabi fundamentalist Islamists.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
That's what I see too. Though, between Iran, the remnants of the Baathist Syrian government and associated militias, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi government, the Shia might have the upper hand. Depends on the extent to which surrounding countries get involved, and how much the Western powers put their thumbs on the scale.
Stupid. Evil and stupid.
I have made so many correct predictions on this site since 1997, that it is impossible to track them all down, which thread they are on, how far back, etc. I am working on collecting the predictions I made on the 2012 election, at least for the presidential election which I had some basis for predicting, which I called right from the primaries to the general, and in every detail, right there on the 2012 elections thread that David Kaiser started in 2011. But how to collect all the other various predictions I made here (such as about the course of the Arab Spring, Libya, etc.)? It's wise I guess to post them in more than one place.
Remember that a while back, and in fact even in my Jan.1997 published book, I predicted that the grand trine of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune in July would portend some peace/international agreements and possibly some new constitutions among the countries who had been undergoing revolutions in this period. The chapter in which I referred to this is even posted online now, here
In fact, the trine is forming now, as Jupiter comes within "orb" of its trines to Saturn and Neptune, which themselves (moving more slowly) are already closely in trine. Trines are considered fortunate or expansive angles among planets. This is a powerful and beneficent figure, which occurred during the constitutional convention in 1787, and the be-ins and love-ins of early 1967; a wider one even occured in 1928-29 when the Kellogg-Briand Pact that "outlawed war" was signed and Martin Luther King Jr. was born. Of course, this pact came to nothing, because just as the huge T-square (difficult aspect) in the early 1930s between Saturn, Uranus and Pluto indicated, the crash, depression and subsequent Nazi rise to power followed.
This time though, the same T-square of 2009-2011 which led me to correctly forecast BOTH the great recession AND the wave of revolutions and government-depositions that followed, has already happened, and the revolutionary Uranus-Pluto square (that was part of these T-square formations of c. 1931 and c.2010) is on-going for a few more years. This beneficent grand trine figure is so close as to be virtually exact, within 3 minutes of arc. The same three planets joined that closely in an alignment in Nov.1989, and you know what happened then (something else I predicted!), as well as when the first French Republic was founded in 1792; and other Jupiter-Neptune figures have often been significant too for world peace and social progress (most-recently the long conjunction in 2009-early 2010 that coincided with the ACA that I predicted would pass); but I don't know of any grand trine among 3 of these most-significant outer planets that has ever been this exact. That will happen July 17, but it is already forming now, and will continue into early August.
Just today we heard that the Taliban has agreed to come to the table for negotiations, and control of the armed forces is passing to the Afghans, on the same day. A conference regarding Syria is being organized for July, the USA has now stepped up its necessary and welcome aid to the rebels there, and a new president elected yesterday is set in August to come into office in Iran, a moderate reformer who is open to negotiations about their nuclear program. In short, my prediction is in the process of coming true.
I was beginning to think it would take a miracle for this prediction to be fulfilled. I am most gratified at the direction of these events, and let's hope they come to fruition over the next 2 months, as I predict they will. That does not mean the upheavals and revolutions of our time are over, but it could be a shining moment that is helpful in the long-run.
Jordan and others, you may have to be prepared to eat your words again, as astrology proves itself a good tool again. No-one is saying astrology can predict everything that happens in every detail. But I doubt anyone has a better predictive record than I do; even the T4T author-prophets here, who also made some great predictions about the fourth turning and millennials, but those were only a few predictions, since they only have access to one of the cycles-- the same cycle that astrologers already knew about! I have done a lot of research over many years, and a lot of times it pays off. I hope to publish an update soon.
Remember my book was published the same month as the subject book of this forum. That was probably no coincidence.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 06-18-2013 at 09:23 PM.
Actually, I seem to recall you predicting another war in July.
Now you were predicting peace? Cool trick. Just throw out a bunch of predictions and trumpet the ones that "count". Hell, apparently you can even backdate them. MLK'S birthday? Kellogg-Briand? Give me a break.
Yes, but it's their evil and stupid for now. We should avoid makng it ours. Apparently, the Israelis agree with that assessment too, which says a lot no matter what your opinion of the current Israeli regime might be. This is the Muslim equivalent of the Protestant-Catholic strife of the past.
Religion, you can't live with it; you can't burn it at the stake.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Show me. I don't recall such a thing. It is clear that the stars point toward peace this July and August. I did predict more USA involvement in the Syria situation for July. That is already happening. There could be an actual US military intervention this November; maybe that's what you recall. But if the Iran situation moderates starting in August, then that possibility lessens considerably. Even so, the USA is getting ready to protect Jordan from possible attack by Syria.
MLK Jr. was a major peace prophet. Birth charts count. Pacts are real events. If you recall I did not say the breakthroughs revving up today and due to make more progress in July/August will end all the troubles. More violence is due around Christmas and in the Spring. But what happens in July/Aug could have some longer-range benefits.
I have done the research that is the basis for my predictions. If you are interested, read my book.
I didn't think so.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 06-19-2013 at 12:35 PM.
US policy is aiming toward helping the rebels establish a non-sectarian government. This is something that may be dealt with at the upcoming conference this Summer. A commitment to that effect by the rebels could lead to more international aid for them, and thus a quicker end to the civil war, whose only possible end is removal of Assad. As for Israel, could you imagine anything more unpopular in a Muslim country than for Israel to aid a rebellion by Muslims? The bad opinion of many about the Israeli regime, is based on the fact that they oppress Muslims. That is not irrelevant to Muslim rebels and their people.
More like, you can't live with it, but you can't live without it. Sorta like government. Religion does a lot of good in the world, but misused and misunderstood, does a lot of bad too.Religion, you can't live with it; you can't burn it at the stake.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 06-19-2013 at 12:33 PM.
Until a less militant faction arises in that part of the world, we will be opposing bad guys by supporting different bad guys. Whatever the conclusion will be, it needs to be more organic to the region, and less reliant on outside forces of any kind.
I'm a bit suprised that the Russians are willing to step into that tar pit again, after their last several disasters. They must have a death wish.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Yes, but I see no reason to doubt that the administration isn't lying on this. They are working with that "less militant faction" in Syria already, which they have helped to organize.
I wouldn't call it stepping into anything really, it's just salesmanship these days. The Russians will sell weapons to anyone with hard cash. Guess where the arms we send to Syria will be coming from? (hint: they won't be getting M4's)