[Norman Ball]

"[Somalian refugees'] presence in such numbers here is a source of low-level controversy, and serves as an example of the absence of democratic decision-making in what you would think is a fundamental aspect of social and political life, the demographic character of the community"

I think you're hammering around self-determinism. If you've been following this thread, this is far from a given.

"sovereignty is an absolute illusion that has to be put behind us. The days of hiding behind borders and fences are long gone."
--Peter Sutherland, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.as...6#.Vk0cSnarTIU

Community is a crutch. Coherent social fabric is a resistance point towards perfect malleability. As for people satisfied with life as it is in their present communities, they are hiding behind overtaken illusions. No doubt they're rubes, unsophisticates or, worse, white Christians to be disabused of their provincial backwardisms and barbaric crucifixes. This has troubling shades of Bolshevik resettlement programs under the 'humanitariain' banner of refugee beneficence. Millions of people are being shifted to and fro with the indigenous and largely unconsulted populations being told to accept the new realities. Only cold hearts and xenophobes would dare offer resistance.

The globe is the only community. So says the globalist. I'm not even weighing in on the possible long term benefits of a humanity buffed of its sharp tribal edges. I'm simply pointing out there is a muscular agenda working diligently behind the crisis. I'm further troubled by who is leading the parade. Have they been properly vetted by Plato?

[Julie Steiner]

Someone was asking why the world was so much less chaotic some decades ago.

To me, it seems obvious that it was because the United States and many other countries were "making the world safe for democracy" by propping up dictators.

Dictatorships are nice and stable. They keep their people under control, or at least more concerned with local grievances than international ones; and to deal with that country, your own government only has to keep one person happy. Easy-appeasy.

Unfortunately, when a foreign power decides that the dictator isn't really working out for them anymore, and they want to get rid of that dictator, they piss everyone off. The dictator's former internal supporters are obviously unhappy, but so are the many people who remember that the fickle foreign power that is helping them out now was long responsible for keeping their enemy in power, and thus cannot be trusted. (And if the removal of that dictator was clearly not what the foreign power wanted, so much the worse for warm and fuzzy feelings from the new regime.)

Also dictators, by definition, habitually eliminate serious threats to their leadership, both institutional and individual; when they are themselves removed, the resulting power vacuum tends to get filled with numerous lesser talents squabbling for power. Often violently. (And, in the absence of strong democratic institutions, often with the aid of whatever other tools of power are convenient, such as religion.)

Putin thinks that the way to solve Syria's problems is to return to that nice, stable dictatorship model of yesteryear. Put Bashar al-Assad back in charge, and everything will be hunky dory, so far as Putin is concerned. It might not be so great for the people of Syria--particularly the ones who tried to get rid of al-Assad in the first place--but hey, it'll be more tolerable for non-Syrians, and that's what counts. Give al-Assad the tools to destroy those who hate both him and us, and we can all go back to not caring what happens in Syria.

At least until al-Assad's dictatorship ends, and all hell breaks loose again.

I'm more mistrustful of the long-term efficacy of the "propping up a dictator" model than Putin is. But then Putin seems to think that a nice, stable, macho, powerful dictatorship is a great idea for Russia, too.

[Don Jones]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Siham Karami]

Well said, Julie. Very well said. Democracy is by its nature a bit messy, hence the toning-down and reining-in of democracy in the US. People theoretically love "freedom"—as long as it's theirs or that of like-minded people—and "democracy," as long as it doesn't create "messy situations" where those "others" among us pop up front and center. People more practically want to just go through their lives unthreatened and surviving with some kind of diversion and a cap on pain or risk. The conflict between theory and practice is that gray area where minimal gray matter is used, where politicians master the art of appearing to solve the problem by waving the magic wand of rhetoric.

Meanwhile the earth is undergoing monumental changes. The Quran, with its many passages warning people to take care of the earth and not to "corrupt the earth," goes unheeded by those who claim to believe in it. The Quran's most frequently used phrase (well, one of them) is "will you not use your minds?" Wahhabism, which in various forms passes for "mainstream" Islam, requires adherents to obey their strictures without thinking. Among those are such things as stoning to death—NOT a punishment for anything in the Quran...not even mentioned—and beheadings—also NOT Quranic but on the contrary there's a strict command "do not be excessive in killing" which in our world means beheading (in days before guns, I suppose it would be more of a necessary evil in wartime, wars being a matter of defense...and I'll spare you more but the violations are many. The only way they "honor" the Quran is by putting it on the highest shelf, or having competitions for melodic readings. The meanings? The know-nothings win.

Dear John,
When you say "Islam is behind this," you treat Islam as an individual, like, say, corporations. Halliburton killed him. Hang Halliburton from the highest tree. Etcetera. It doesn't take 500 years to effect change in the Muslim world. It doesn't take invading Iraq for example...unless one believes freedom can be imposed by force without even the slightest preparation. I'm SURE you don't think that! The Egyptian revolution of 2011 was started by "young liberals" who were mostly Muslim not just in name but in practice. They invented a symbol highly popular in that revolution combining the cross and the crescent in one unit. Christians guarded Muslims in Tahrir square when they prayed and Muslims guarded Christians in various situations. When Mubarak was first ousted there was peace in the streets and people cleaned the streets and patrolled them for each other to protect against ex-govt thugs. They loathed the idea of the brotherhood taking over, but cooperated with the latter thinking it was vital to achieving democracy. When you equate, under one umbrella called "Islam", those young Muslims with ISIS et al, you are doing a great disservice to the efforts of a great many Muslims to achieve mutual cooperation and peace between people. Is there NO way to be both safe and just????? I think there's no true safety in injustice.

Btw, when Osama bin laden declared prior to 9/11 in a televised interview that he would spare no women or children or families, he was making an open declaration of enmity against Islam, an open rejection of Islam. In the name of Islam. He committed prohibited acts and it is the Muslim world that has suffered most overall. By far. Look at Egypt now. We've got "our man" who is doing nothing but stealing the resources of the country, the money of his people from banks and also exacts half of any money wired to people from outside, not to mention kidnapping, torturing, raping, murdering, and simply detaining and slowly killing those very liberals who started the revolution, along with countless others such as many doctors, medical students, anyone with or trying to get an education (they were behind it!), young women and men, as well as anyone who speaks out against him or his regime or dares to protest. Many many have disappeared. The atrocities are unimaginable. He has no regard for human life (I refer to Sisi). Or property. Life inside Egypt is now hell. Is he Muslim? Hardly. But that name is used and abused by all sorts of people. Or maybe we could arrest all the employees of Halliburton? The US governors should be ashamed of themselves. The most effective foil against terror recruitment is widespread knowledge that this is not Islam. But by making it "onward Christian soldiers" vs the "evil East"... It feeds into the propaganda of the ignorant.

In any case, so many excellent comments on this thread. And your response to Janice, John, suits me fine. I just had to say a little bit more...

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Someone was asking why the world was so much less chaotic some decades ago.

I don't know. Was it? For us, the 60's was Vietnam. But there were also other proxy wars all over the place, mixed up with independence wars at the end of colonialism. In France, there was murderous unrest over Algeria: http://rebellyon.info/Le-massacre-du...e-1961-a-Paris

In the 70's, we still had Vietnam for almost half the decade. The cold war was still going on. Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yom Kippur, Angola, Iran. In France, Action Directe carried out 50 separate attacks.

In the 80's, it was Salvador, Beirut, riots in India killed tens of thousands. Iran-Irag killed hundreds of thousands, an entire generation of young men. Airliners were getting blown out of the sky: Air India, Lockerbie, Sakhalin. The Falklands, Angola, Tiananmen. In Europe, it was the time of the Brigades Rouges: there were guards with submachineguns on street corners everywhere I went. Fascism was on the rise: the English department where I taught suffered arson attacks, the building where I lived was bombed. Twice.

Things got worse in the 90's: Somalia, Rwanda. Congo, Chechnya, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Kuwait and the Gulf war. Oklahoma City, WTC. In France, there were nearly a dozen bombings of the Paris Metro.

We forget. Even though we lived through those times, we still forget. Yes, the dictator of Iran who we supported locked the doors of a crowded theater, and burned it down. Yes, dictators used the attack jets we and the Russians sold them to bomb their own citizens. But in spite of our policies, dictators are not all that good at preserving stability. Suharto ruled for 30 years, but he ruled over corruption, chaos, and blood.

But most of the things listed above weren't the direct result of dictators. Something much larger goes on. I'm not a historian, so I won't hazard a guess on exactly what it is. But it never seems to go away. Hence Trotsky's famous quote: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Yours, in peace,

Bill

[Bill Carpenter]

Thanks for your thoughts, Norm. It seems the French have a much more developed popular antiglobalist discourse than we do. Naturally, because we imagine we have benefited from globalism, but that is debatable. Examples: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3WQ6BbZT664. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2Z3zgcOj4


Sorry, Don, I'm not tracking you. Is it that we are submitted to elite tyranny in the area of demographic manipulation, and also in gun control? Because the Supreme Court has placed some limits on state and local gun control legislation? I don't see the parallel, because local governments have had zero control over refugee and immigrant settlement, while there is a wide range of gun control regimes. Our state legislature passed a successful concealed carry statute, and city law enforcement is very active in collecting illegal firearms. So I don't see the same democratic deficit in the two areas. In immigration, there is quite a lack of political competition because the biggest donors, symbolically the Chamber of Commerce and SEIU, agree on bringing in as much cheap labor as possible. There is definitely a democratic deficit, though, where a community would like to legislate firearms out of existence and a distant federal court says no way.

You might enjoy John Taylor's New Views of the Constitution, which I learned about from Schlesinger's informative Age of Jackson. Taylor points out that Hamilton and Madison actually failed to get their monarchizing and centralizing schemes adopted by the Constitutional Convention, but nonetheless made themselves the foremost interpreters of the Constitution they didn't want, wrenching it towards their party at every opportunity. Puts quite a different spin on the term "Federalist." Under his theory, I don't think a federal court could nullify a state gun control law.

[Don Jones]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Janice D. Soderling]

Norman, about your post #86: Come on Janice, you're more than capable of backfilling the cliches I leave out.

I am trying to understand your several posts, Norman. But they remain for the most part impenetrable. They seem to be a collection of hints, insinuations, straw man arguments and political buzzwords harvested from obscure propagandist sites and articles. I think I discern a stew of half-articulated warnings about both capitalism and socialism. In context or out of it, individual sentences such as these quoted below remain unintelligible. At least to me and it may be that your powers of persuasion are less than your enthusiasm, or that you collect your Internet gleanings in bushels of half-thought, or that I am lacking mental ovens that will bake the bread. Perhaps you can assist me? (In cases below where I have not provided traceable references, the source can be found simply by googling the text.)

Homologation, in essence,is a prelude to the panopticon where every individual is equidistant from the observation platform; an indeterminate flatland ruled by God-knows-who from above. This is borderless, global totalitarianism presided over in essence by multinational corporations and financial institutions of which the PTT is but one of its early ‘enticements’.

All right, let's try to understand that.

Homologation (the granting of approval by an official authority), in essence, is a prelude to the panopticon (Jeremy Bentham proposed the panopticon as a circular building with an observation tower in the centre of an open space surrounded by an outer wall. This wall would contain cells for occupants. This design would increase security by facilitating more effective surveillance) where every individual is equidistant from the observation platform; an indeterminate flatland ruled by God-knows-who from above. This is borderless, global totalitarianism presided over in essence by multinational corporations and financial institutions of which the PTT is but one of its early ‘enticements’.

The syntax is flawed but I think your premise is that a prerequisite for global surveillance of the citizenry by multinational companies is that an established authority gives its approval and (by implication) the EU is that central authority. I don't know the abbreviation of PTT except as Post, Telephone, Telegraph, and I think that is indeed the tree you are barking up though I don't see any possum in its branches.

The EU deregulated the national PTTs to increase competition and to standardize telecommunications. That action has had its flaws as witnessed by the ongoing scandal of one of the Swedish companies bribing in Uzbekistan and elsewhere http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0ML2VL20140324 and other easily found sources. Is that what you are intending to say with that extract above? It has also, through recent regulation, led to the lowering of excessive mobile phone tariffs throughout Europe. There are examples of both good and bad consequences, but I think we are less controlled by big business than in the US because we do not elect politicians through bottomless super-PACs.

I'm imagining a bullet-proof, Pan-European flag flying high over a desolate, bombed-out landscape. Unperturbed, the flag-wavers claim...victory. It's like nihilism in its kumbaya permutation. Or is it that some people insist on seeing a Shangri-La where's there's only an abyss? Both can't be right. What side does this week's Paris argue for?

It seems to me, Norman, that you are conflating the Pan-European organization with the EU. They have quite different roots and goals.

The International Paneuropean Union has four main basic principles: liberalism, Christianity, social responsibility, and pro-Europeanism. At the same time, it openly welcomes and acknowledges the contributions of Judaism and Islam whose heritage they share.

You may be unduly influenced by lengthy dwelling on the Russian propaganda site you touted in your post # 15 http://russia-insider.com/en/politic...empire/ri10025 , the (as I told your earlier) Russia-backed propaganda site.

Your generosity towards the influx of Muslims is abundant and well-evidenced. But how did ‘white supremacism’ suddenly get a dog in this hunt? And it’s kind of you to note that Breivik is a ‘so-called’ Christian. He was a paranoid schizophrenic too, and as such does not rise to the level of ideological practitioner. There's enough antipathy towards Christianity without lashing a demonstrable psychopath to its mast; so, while a very interesting comment from you, a non sequitur for this discussion.

Firstly, the Norwegian massacre was very close to home. Not only in geographic terms, but in emotional terms. Like nearly everyone else in Sweden, I am personally acquainted with someone who was directly touched by it. I am somewhat dubious about your expertise in the matter.

Secondly, yes, I wrote "so-called" because Breivik refers to himself as both Christian and white .

"At the age of 15 I chose to be baptised [sic] and confirmed in the Norwegian State Church," the 32-year-old Breivik wrote. "I consider myself to be 100 percent Christian." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_910379.html

His final diagnosis was not paranoid schizophrenic.

Forensic psychiatrists Torgeir Husby and Synne Sørheim, who conducted the psychiatric analysis of Breivik and released their report in December 2011, found that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, supporting a would-be insanity defence or criminal insanity ruling by the court. However, subject to massive criticism from legal and psychiatric experts, the court decided to appoint two new psychiatrists, Terje Tørrissen and Agnar Aspaas, who were to conduct another analysis. Breivik was initially uncooperative with the new psychiatrists because of the previous report having been leaked to the media, but he later changed his mind and decided to cooperate. On 10 April 2012, psychiatrists found that Breivik was legally sane. If that conclusion is upheld, Breivik can be sentenced to prison or containment.

That conclusion was upheld and he is now in prison.

Explaining why the court found Breivik to be sane, the court stated that "many people share Breivik's conspiracy theory, including the Eurabia theory. The court finds that very few people, however, share Breivik's idea that the alleged "Islamization" should be fought with terror."

This perhaps is as good a place as any to define the word Eurabia and consider where it comes from. Personally I do not think it is worthy of being introduced into any respectable debate (which this one may or may not be) unless it is defined and dissected rather than being injected as a clever buzzword.

Eurabia is a political neologism. The concept was coined by Bat Ye'or in the early 2000s. Bat Ye'Or (pen name of Gisele Littman) claims a conspiracy of Europe, allegedly led by France and Arab powers, to Islamise and Arabise Europe, thereby weakening its existing culture and undermining an alleged previous alignment with the U.S. and Israel.

The term has gained some public interest and has been used and discussed across a wide range of the political spectrum, including far-right activists, counterjihadis and different sorts of antiislamist and conservative activists. Bat Ye'Or’s “Mother conspiracy theory” has been used for further subtheories. The narrative grew important in expressing Islamophobic sentiments and was used by movements like "Stop Islamisation of Europe". It gained renewed interest after the 9/11 events and the use of the term by 2011 Norway attacker Anders Behring Breivik. It is as well a part of classical Anti-Europeanism, a strong influence in American culture and American exceptionalism which sometimes sees Europe on the decline or as a rising rival power, or, as is the case here, both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurabia

This post is already too lengthy so I won't give any more examples. Norman, I hope this will give you an idea of why I find your posts to incline more toward obtuse rants than meaningful contribution to an important discussion.

[Don Jones]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Janice D. Soderling]

If you have seen the video of that big-mouthed, small-brained Donald Trump ranting about guns http://theslot.jezebel.com/trump-on-...uld-1742976283
you might be interested in the EU response to guns after the Paris attacks. (Scroll down for the video.)

It isn't to make it easier to get them, it is to make it considerably harder. Not to loosen up the gun laws, but to impose further restrictions.

The use of firearms by criminal and terrorist organisations poses a great security threat to our citizens, as we have witnessed on several occasions this year. These tragic events call for a stronger, coordinated European approach to control the use of weapons and fight against trafficking of firearms, as well as to combat crime and terrorism.

The EU gun policy is right here:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release...15-6111_en.htm