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Thread: Western Europe - Page 23







Post#551 at 11-01-2005 10:59 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday ordered a permanent increase in police and undercover agents to identify troublemakers in difficult neighborhoods. However, the law-and-order minister's tough talk drew growing criticism Tuesday — even from within his own government.

Sarkozy recently referred to troublemakers in the suburbs as "scum" or "riffraff" and in the past vowed to "clean out" the suburbs.

Such "warlike" words won't bring calm, Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag said in an interview published in the daily Liberation newspaper.

He told the paper that he "contests this method of becoming submerged by imprecise, warlike semantics."

While re-establishing order demands firmness, "it is in fighting the discrimination that victimizes youths that order is re-established, the order of equality," said Begag, who was raised in a low-income suburb of Lyon.


To my mind, the bit of the story quoted here strikes me as evidence for the idea that West Europe is several years behind America in Cyclic terms. I can recall ten years ago or so when that sort of comment was commonly heard in America, and still taken seriously.







Post#552 at 11-02-2005 12:36 PM by Uzi [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 2,254]
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Post#553 at 11-03-2005 03:50 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Germany's Snarled Politics

"...six weeks after the elections, the biggest country in the European Union is without effective leaders or any notion when it might have them."

On the continuum of political chaos, do we know if snarled is worse or better than bedraggled?







Post#554 at 11-03-2005 03:54 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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America has controversies, uproars, and the occasional furor. Britain has rows: rows and rows and rows.







Post#555 at 11-03-2005 11:43 AM by Uzi [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 2,254]
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Post#556 at 11-03-2005 08:25 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?







Post#557 at 11-03-2005 09:59 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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Quote Originally Posted by Paco
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
I suspect that 9/11, and the Christianist response to that event, pretty well shot that alliance to perdition before either side could broach the subject. Thus, both will have to pursue their respective agendas separately.







Post#558 at 11-03-2005 10:02 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.







Post#559 at 11-03-2005 10:10 PM by Andy '85 [at Texas joined Aug 2003 #posts 1,465]
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Quote Originally Posted by SVE-KRD
I suspect that 9/11, and the Christianist response to that event, pretty well shot that alliance to perdition before either side could broach the subject. Thus, both will have to pursue their respective agendas separately.
At least the Christians try to enact legislation before taking action to reach their ends. The Islamists don't bother with niceties and do it when they feel like it.
Right-Wing liberal, slow progressive, and other contradictions straddling both the past and future, but out of touch with the present . . .

"We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know." - Donald Rumsfeld







Post#560 at 11-03-2005 10:11 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Make of this what you will.

The following is linked and quoted for purposes of discussion and illustration only, without intention of profit or infringement.

Riots In Paris



13 Arrested In Paris Suburb Riots


PARIS, Nov. 1, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(AP) Youths torched cars, set garbage bins alight and threw stones at police in a fifth night of rioting in a Paris suburb, and set two primary school classrooms on fire as rioting spread to two other suburban towns, police and an official said Tuesday.

Police said that 19 people were detained in the late Monday and early Tuesday rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois and three other suburbs and 13 of them jailed. A total of 21 cars — two of them police cars — were burned, police said.

The mayor of Sevran said youths set two rooms of a primary school on fire, along with several cars. Police said three officers were slightly injured in Sevran.

"These acts have a direct link to the events in Clichy-sous-Bois," Sevran Mayor Stephane Gatignon said in a statement.

The troubles started Thursday night in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, following the accidental electrocution deaths of two teenagers who hid in a power substation to escape police whom they thought were chasing them. Officials have said police were not pursuing the boys, aged 15 and 17, at all.

Suburbs that ring France's big cities suffer soaring unemployment and are home to immigrant communities, often from Muslim North Africa. Disenchantment, and anger, run high.

Besides Clichy-sous-Bois and Sevran, troubles also erupted in Aulnay-sous-bois and Bondy, police said. All communities are in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, considered a "sensitive" area of immigration and modest incomes.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday ordered a permanent increase in police and undercover agents to identify troublemakers in difficult neighborhoods. However, the law-and-order minister's tough talk drew growing criticism Tuesday — even from within his own government.

Sarkozy recently referred to troublemakers in the suburbs as "scum" or "riffraff" and in the past vowed to "clean out" the suburbs.

Such "warlike" words won't bring calm, Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag said in an interview published in the daily Liberation newspaper.

He told the paper that he "contests this method of becoming submerged by imprecise, warlike semantics."

While re-establishing order demands firmness, "it is in fighting the discrimination that victimizes youths that order is re-established, the order of equality," said Begag, who was raised in a low-income suburb of Lyon.

The president of SOS-Racism, an anti-racism group, called Tuesday for a "massive investment plan" to cure suburban ills.

"The police response alone ... are not at all adequate to the problem in question," Dominique Sopo said on France-Info radio, calling for a "real policy of breaking the ghettos." The money must go not only to building, but also to caring for the people via local associations, he said.

Sarkozy says violence in the suburbs is a daily fact of life, with dozens of cars torched each night and underground economies of crime.

In incidents apparently unrelated to the riots near Paris, youths set fire to an empty building and trash cans and stoned fire trucks in several nights of unrest in Sedan, northeastern France, authorities there said Tuesday. Officials said the youths were protesting the imprisonment of one of their peers on drug charges and for resisting arrest.
The Guardian Reports

The Guardian takes a predictable POV on the story, but the do quote an interesting comment from a French social worker:

A social worker in Val-Fourré, one of France's most notorious sink estates west of Paris, said the country's cités had now become "their own universes, where everything outside is a threat".

"We need to reverse 30 years of injustice and discrimination. We need to make insertion and integration for everyone as basic and fundamental a right as reading and writing and counting. Otherwise we're heading for meltdown," he said.


This manages to miss a key point in an interesting way: the problem is not that the French government has not sought to integrate their immigrants so much as that they have no idea of how to do so. It is very difficult to integrate two basically different cultures, unless one culture is simply absorbed and replaced by the other, which is precisely what much social policy has tried to prevent for decades now. That isn't as true of France as some European states, though, the French certainly understand the importance of national self-identity.

They just don't know how to successfully inculcate it.







Post#561 at 11-03-2005 10:16 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
The interesting question is how much of this is spontaneous, and how much has been organized. Some of it certainly shows signs of planning, but that could be a current within a larger event.







Post#562 at 11-03-2005 10:21 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.
Liar. Or is lying not un-Christian anymore?
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#563 at 11-03-2005 10:34 PM by Roadbldr '59 [at Vancouver, Washington joined Jul 2001 #posts 8,275]
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11-03-2005, 10:34 PM #563
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Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.
Liar. Or is lying not un-Christian anymore?
Scary.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King







Post#564 at 11-03-2005 10:53 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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Quote Originally Posted by SVE-KRD
Quote Originally Posted by Paco
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
I suspect that 9/11, and the Christianist response to that event, pretty well shot that alliance to perdition before either side could broach the subject. Thus, both will have to pursue their respective agendas separately.
Maybe, just maybe, the Dude might find my line of reasoning (shown above) to be at least marginally more acceptable than Hopeful Cynic's.







Post#565 at 11-03-2005 11:14 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by SVE-KRD
Quote Originally Posted by SVE-KRD
Quote Originally Posted by Paco
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
I suspect that 9/11, and the Christianist response to that event, pretty well shot that alliance to perdition before either side could broach the subject. Thus, both will have to pursue their respective agendas separately.
Maybe, just maybe, the Dude might find my line of reasoning (shown above) to be at least marginally more acceptable than Hopeful Cynic's.
Oh sure. They both think the other side is going to hell, but their mutual hatred is peculiar given how much they have in common. One sometimes resembles one's enemy I guess...
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#566 at 11-03-2005 11:27 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Oh sure. They both think the other side is going to hell, but their mutual hatred is peculiar given how much they have in common. One sometimes resembles one's enemy I guess...
It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened - just ask Hitler and Stalin. :wink:







Post#567 at 11-04-2005 12:22 AM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Or they will cave. I think the election will be a sign of things to come.







Post#568 at 11-04-2005 12:36 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.
Liar.
Linking to a page full of falsehoods doesn't help your case. She has her facts extensively wrong. That it's posted on what amounts to a left-wing fantasy page doesn't help her credibility. But let's take a look at her specific claims.

1. Yet few imagined, despite any concerns about the Bush Administration's agenda, a day when the President would disclose: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

The source for that supposed statement (which she treats as if it were an established fact) was a Palestinian claim, at second hand. Nobody's been able to confirm it, and if there was any serious reason to believe he said it, the Democrats would have used it extensively. It's crap.

2. The ramifications of that statement, and the marked deterioration of civil liberties and religious freedom in the US over the past few years, leads to a nagging question: Could the US slip into a fundamentalist mode paralleling those nations we currently deem the world's greatest threat?

Since there's been no 'marked deterioration of civil liberties and religious freedom in the US over the past few years', the author's already shaky credibility is further damaged. The claim that civil liberties and religious freedom have fallen apart gets repeated endlessly, in spite of the fact that all we have to do is look around us to see that it isn't true.

3. The role of women in Christian fundamentalist homes is generally well defined: wife, mother, and homemaker. Often, they are not allowed to work outside the home and are vulnerable to abuse, sometimes condoned, or at best dismissed, by the clergymen they may ask for help. Restrictive and unfair divorce laws and welfare reforms are also frequently proposed by the Christian right, measures that would make it more difficult, if not impossible, for women to leave lethal relationships.

This is just basic propaganda, unrelated to anything real. It's the sort of scare story liberal fanatics like to repeat to themselves rather than deal with actual facts. Some Christians do believe that the genders have defined roles, others don't. There's simply no momentum, Red or Blue, for state restrictions on such things, and you should talk to some actual Christian wives and mothers to find out their reaction to this. Most of them would laugh you out of the room.

4. Abuse of Christian fundamentalist children is well documented. As early as 1974, sociologist H. Erlanger reported in American Sociological Review that conservative religious affiliation is one of the greatest predictors of child abuse, more so than age, gender, social class, or size of residence. Other studies, reported in The Role of Parental Religious Fundamentalism and Right-wing Authoritarianism in Child-Rearing Goals and Practices by social psychologist Henry Danso and others, conclude that child discipline by corporal punishment is typically related to religious conservatism, probably stemming from fundamentalists' authoritarian nature.

Interestingly, when I googled 'H. Erlanger' in this context, the only references I found were in anti-Christian and anti-religious pieces. I didn't find any neutral references at all. Granted that was just a quick look, but it's interesting.

If you define corporal punishment as child abuse (which is erroneous), then you might be able to produce a solid connection. But otherwise it looks like more of the same list of myths. If Erlanger's claim is true, it ought to be possible to document it fairly easily.

5. Militias in the US are dangerously equipped with the skills and weaponry to manifest the kind of fear, chaos, and destruction often seen in theocratic societies.

The 'militia movement' she's talking about is a tiny froth of extremists and goofballs, who peaked years ago. They aren't even particularly relevant to today's politics or society, though they occupy a huge space in the Left's pantheon of self-created demons. What's left of that so-called 'movement' has neither the weapons nor the skills to create a theocracy.

As for the rest of the Christian Right, they don't even want a theocracy. They are a fissile, disparate, highly localized group, overall. They agree on some basic points, (many of which they share with a majority of Americans), but there's simply no movement toward nor threat of theocracy.

(Unless you define theocracy as 'any religious influence on government at all' or 'a society with a religious or faith-based underlying basis' which includes ALL societies without exception. )

But theocracy in the political sense is another empty threat that the Left likes to scare themselves with.

6. But they also believe that, with God on their side, US democracy will give way to a theocracy on its own.

No, they don't, except for the tiny, tiny fringe of nutcases that so obsesses this author. They're the Right's equivalent of Earth First or the Weatherman, except that there are fewer of that sort of nutcase on the Right, and they receive less sympathy from their supposed fellow travellers.

7. ultimately, given the right set of circumstances, the potential for inconceivable violence against those they perceive as their enemies.

That doesn't describe Fundamentalists in particular, it describes all human beings.

So, you called me a liar, and cited a page of falsehoods and propaganda as evidence. Note that I refrained from insulting you in return, since I don't know whether you realized that they were falsehoods or not.







Post#569 at 11-04-2005 12:44 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.
Liar. Or is lying not un-Christian anymore?
Scary.
Don't worry about it. Unless you also sit around worrying that the Deep Ecologists will exterminate H. sapiens to make room for more snail darters, it's the same sort of fringer the author is obsessing about.







Post#570 at 11-04-2005 02:06 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.
Liar.
Linking to a page full of falsehoods doesn't help your case. She has her facts extensively wrong. That it's posted on what amounts to a left-wing fantasy page doesn't help her credibility. But let's take a look at her specific claims.

1. Yet few imagined, despite any concerns about the Bush Administration's agenda, a day when the President would disclose: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

The source for that supposed statement (which she treats as if it were an established fact) was a Palestinian claim, at second hand. Nobody's been able to confirm it, and if there was any serious reason to believe he said it, the Democrats would have used it extensively. It's crap.

2. The ramifications of that statement, and the marked deterioration of civil liberties and religious freedom in the US over the past few years, leads to a nagging question: Could the US slip into a fundamentalist mode paralleling those nations we currently deem the world's greatest threat?

Since there's been no 'marked deterioration of civil liberties and religious freedom in the US over the past few years', the author's already shaky credibility is further damaged. The claim that civil liberties and religious freedom have fallen apart gets repeated endlessly, in spite of the fact that all we have to do is look around us to see that it isn't true.

3. The role of women in Christian fundamentalist homes is generally well defined: wife, mother, and homemaker. Often, they are not allowed to work outside the home and are vulnerable to abuse, sometimes condoned, or at best dismissed, by the clergymen they may ask for help. Restrictive and unfair divorce laws and welfare reforms are also frequently proposed by the Christian right, measures that would make it more difficult, if not impossible, for women to leave lethal relationships.

This is just basic propaganda, unrelated to anything real. It's the sort of scare story liberal fanatics like to repeat to themselves rather than deal with actual facts. Some Christians do believe that the genders have defined roles, others don't. There's simply no momentum, Red or Blue, for state restrictions on such things, and you should talk to some actual Christian wives and mothers to find out their reaction to this. Most of them would laugh you out of the room.

4. Abuse of Christian fundamentalist children is well documented. As early as 1974, sociologist H. Erlanger reported in American Sociological Review that conservative religious affiliation is one of the greatest predictors of child abuse, more so than age, gender, social class, or size of residence. Other studies, reported in The Role of Parental Religious Fundamentalism and Right-wing Authoritarianism in Child-Rearing Goals and Practices by social psychologist Henry Danso and others, conclude that child discipline by corporal punishment is typically related to religious conservatism, probably stemming from fundamentalists' authoritarian nature.

Interestingly, when I googled 'H. Erlanger' in this context, the only references I found were in anti-Christian and anti-religious pieces. I didn't find any neutral references at all. Granted that was just a quick look, but it's interesting.

If you define corporal punishment as child abuse (which is erroneous), then you might be able to produce a solid connection. But otherwise it looks like more of the same list of myths. If Erlanger's claim is true, it ought to be possible to document it fairly easily.

5. Militias in the US are dangerously equipped with the skills and weaponry to manifest the kind of fear, chaos, and destruction often seen in theocratic societies.

The 'militia movement' she's talking about is a tiny froth of extremists and goofballs, who peaked years ago. They aren't even particularly relevant to today's politics or society, though they occupy a huge space in the Left's pantheon of self-created demons. What's left of that so-called 'movement' has neither the weapons nor the skills to create a theocracy.

As for the rest of the Christian Right, they don't even want a theocracy. They are a fissile, disparate, highly localized group, overall. They agree on some basic points, (many of which they share with a majority of Americans), but there's simply no movement toward nor threat of theocracy.

(Unless you define theocracy as 'any religious influence on government at all' or 'a society with a religious or faith-based underlying basis' which includes ALL societies without exception. )

But theocracy in the political sense is another empty threat that the Left likes to scare themselves with.

6. But they also believe that, with God on their side, US democracy will give way to a theocracy on its own.

No, they don't, except for the tiny, tiny fringe of nutcases that so obsesses this author. They're the Right's equivalent of Earth First or the Weatherman, except that there are fewer of that sort of nutcase on the Right, and they receive less sympathy from their supposed fellow travellers.

7. ultimately, given the right set of circumstances, the potential for inconceivable violence against those they perceive as their enemies.

That doesn't describe Fundamentalists in particular, it describes all human beings.

So, you called me a liar, and cited a page of falsehoods and propaganda as evidence. Note that I refrained from insulting you in return, since I don't know whether you realized that they were falsehoods or not.
Blah blah blah. The only reason Christians stopped burning witches and subjegating women and beheading homos was because the enlightenment happened, but that doesn't mean that the Christianist right doesn't remain pathologically obsessed with sex and patriarchy, wants to repeal the 1960s, and secretly fantasizes about repealing the late eighteenth century as well. Thankfully, a majority of Americans don't share this agenda. The only real difference between the Christianists and the Islamists is that the latter can still get away with a helluva lot more insane barbaric shit in their own backward little corner of the world. The underlying ideas are prcatically identical though; only the names have been changed.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#571 at 11-04-2005 02:12 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas
Those poor French Muslim Kids are idiots. The next election will see every grandmother and terrified countryperson voting for the National Front.
Maybe that's the idea, a grand coalition of French and Islamist fascists. I'm still waiting for the Christianist right in America to unite with its Islamo-fascist soulmates. They appear to agree on the important issues of the day like getting women back into corsets, stoning adulters and beheading homosexuals. Why not form an alliance?
Because they agree on essentially nothing. Your analysis of their supposed similarities is incorrect.
Liar. Or is lying not un-Christian anymore?
Scary.
Is it? I didn't actually read it.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#572 at 11-04-2005 05:20 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Okay, now back to more important and topical news.

What is it with women beating the crap of their men in Britain these days?
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#573 at 11-06-2005 12:12 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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France's Catalyst?

Could this be France's 4T Catalyst unfolding before us? (This article posted here for educational and discussion purposes only.)

Updated: 08:21 AM EST
Unrest Reaches Paris Where 28 Cars Are Torched
Security Tightens as Riots Spread Across the Country
By ELAINE GANLEY, AP

PARIS (Nov. 6) - Ten nights of urban unrest that brought thousands of arson attacks on cars, nursery schools and other targets from the Mediterranean to the German border reached Paris where at least 28 cars were burned overnight in the French capital, government officials said Sunday.

Some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security on a restive Saturday night while firefighters moved out around the city to douse blazing vehicles.

At least 918 vehicles -- including those in Paris -- were burned during the 10th night of violence, said the Interior Ministry's operational center tracking the violence. There was no word yet on damage in Paris to shops, gymnasiums, nursery schools and other targets which have been attacked around the country.

Police made 186 arrests nationwide overnight.

For the second night in a row, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed the poor, heavily immigrant Seine-Saint-Denis region, northeast of Paris, where the violence has been concentrated. Small teams of police were deployed to chase down rioters speeding from one attack to another in cars and on motorbikes.

On Friday night, 900 vehicles were torched across France in the worst wave of arson since the urban unrest began.

The violence -- originally concentrated in neighborhoods northeast of Paris with large populations of Arab and African Muslim immigrants -- has now spread across France, extending west to the rolling fields of Normandy and south to resort cities on the Mediterranean.

The Normandy town of Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, appeared to suffer the worst damage Saturday. Arsonists burned at least 50 vehicles, part of a shopping center, a post office and two schools, said Patrick Hamon, spokesman for the national police. Five police officers and three firefighters were injured battling the Evreux blazes, Hamon said.

Attacks were also reported in Cannes and Nice.

The violence erupted Oct. 27 following the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who hid in a power substation, apparently believing police were chasing them. One of the dead teenagers was born in Mauritania and the second teenager's family was from Tunisia -- both Muslim countries.

Anger was fanned days ago when a tear gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois -- the northern suburb where the youths were electrocuted.

The unrest is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in poor suburbs ringing the big cities which are mainly populated by immigrants and their French-born families, often from Muslim North Africa. They are marked by high unemployment, discrimination and despair -- fertile terrain for crime of all sorts and Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out.

Government officials have held a series of meetings with Muslim religious leaders, local officials and youths from poor suburbs to try to calm the violence.

The director of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, one of the country's leading Muslim figures, met Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Saturday and urged the government to choose its words carefully and send a message of peace.

"In such difficult circumstances, every word counts," Boubakeur said.

The anger over the death of the teenagers spread to the Internet, with sites mourning the youths.

Along with messages of condolence and appeals for calm were insults targeting police, threats of more violence and warnings that the unrest will feed support for France's anti-immigration extreme right.

Arsonists have also burned grocery stores, video stores and other businesses in what Hamon called "copycat" crimes. "All these hoodlums see others setting fires and say they can do it, too."

The unrest has taken on unprecedented scope and intensity, reaching far-flung corners of France on Saturday, from Rouen in Normandy to Bordeaux in the southwest to Strasbourg near the German border.

However, the Paris region has borne the brunt.

In quiet Acheres, on the edge of the St. Germain forest west of Paris, arsonists burned a nursery school, where part of the roof caved in, and about a dozen cars.

Children's photos clung to the blackened walls, and melted plastic toys littered the floor. Residents gathered at the school gate, demanding that the army be deployed or suggesting that citizens band together to protect their neighborhoods.

Cars were torched in the cultural bastion of Avignon in the south and the resort cities of Nice and Cannes, a police officer said.

Arson was reported in Nantes in the southwest, the Lille region in the north and Saint-Dizier in the Ardennes region east of Paris. In the eastern city of Strasbourg, 18 cars were set alight in full daylight, police said.

In one attack, youths in the eastern Paris suburb of Meaux prevented paramedics from evacuating a sick person from a housing project. They pelted rescuers with rocks and then torched the waiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry official said.

Most of the overnight arrests were near Paris. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy warned that those convicted could face severe sentences for burning cars.

"Violence penalizes those who live in the toughest conditions," he said after a government crisis meeting.

Sarkozy also has inflamed passions by referring to troublemakers as "scum."

Most rioting has been in towns with low-income housing projects where unemployment and distrust of police run high. But in a new development, arsonists were moving beyond their heavily policed neighborhoods to attack others with less security, Hamon said.

"They are very mobile, in cars or scooters. ... It is quite hard to combat" he said. "Most are young, very young, we have even seen young minors."

There appeared to be no coordination between separate groups in different areas, Hamon said. But within gangs, he added, youths are communicating by cell phones or e-mails.

"They organize themselves, arrange meetings, some prepare the Molotov cocktails," he said.

In Torcy, close to Disneyland Paris, a youth center and a police station were set ablaze. In Suresnes, on the Seine River west of the capital, 44 cars were burned in a parking lot.

On Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people marched through one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois. Local officials wore sashes in the red, white and blue of the French flag as they filed past housing projects and the wrecks of burned cars. One white banner read, "No to violence."

Associated Press reporters Jamey Keaten and Angela Doland in Paris and John Leicester in Acheres contributed to this report.


11/6/2005 06:26:29


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If the rioters start getting reinforcements from the Mideast (especially from al-Qaida) it will start looking a LOT more like the real deal, I'd say. More than it already does, that is. And if the rioting then spreads to neighboring countries,... :shock:







Post#574 at 11-06-2005 01:26 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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11-06-2005, 01:26 PM #574
Join Date
Sep 2005
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Re: France's Catalyst?

Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
Could this be France's 4T Catalyst unfolding before us?
They are already in a 4T in a generational sense.

And yes. I think it could. We'll have to see where it goes.

If the rioters start getting reinforcements from the Mideast (especially from al-Qaida) it will start looking a LOT more like the real deal, I'd say. More than it already does, that is. And if the rioting then spreads to neighboring countries,... Shocked
Eurabia?







Post#575 at 11-06-2005 02:04 PM by [at joined #posts ]
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11-06-2005, 02:04 PM #575
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Re: France's Catalyst?

Could this be France's 4T Catalyst unfolding before us? If the rioters start getting reinforcements from the Mideast (especially from al-Qaida) it will start looking a LOT more like the real deal, I'd say. More than it already does, that is. And if the rioting then spreads to neighboring countries,... :shock:
Uh, I thought France, like Spain, was the model for how liberals would like to deal with terrorists here in America? I thought all we needed was to understand them better, to quit offending them with our imperialism and warmongering, and to offer them peace and a seat at the table of power. Are the French not doing these things quite correctly? Certainly these peace-loving Muslims love France, for the way they stood up for Iraq and how they told the neocon Bushlickers where they could shove it.

I don't get it... what are the French doing that so pisses these people off?
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