[Ed Shacklee]

A bit of perspective about who kills who, here.

[Michael Cantor]

What Nemo said in Post #26.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Check this out. From Stockholm.

https://www.facebook.com/sthlmpanda/...47013/?fref=nf

"Jag litar på dig" means "I trust you".

Here is the translation of the sign.

I am a Muslim. Not the same thing as a terrorist. Do you trust me? I trust you.

Posted on FB.

[Norman Ball]

Well if national borders have outlived their usefulness (and boy is that a mouthful worthy of a referendum or two), let's call off the G20 confab of national leaders. No matter how effectively it's been sold under more palatable auspices, ever-larger (and more bureaucratically remote) 'centralisms' simply won't deliver more democracy.

Capital wants a manageable flatland of seven billion ATM card carriers. Variegation, community character, ethnic distinction, borders, etc. impede optimal capital flows. Borders start wars, we keep hearing. Not so fast. Boom-bust cycles inflame people causing border frictions which start wars. War's an economic phenomenon, the last cycle in a secular trend when the planet finds itself gorged on unsustainable debt, precisely as it is now. The complication today is that we have existential warriors who view life as a niggling waystation. Anyway, those are your two in extremis factions: multinationals and jihadists. Neither camp is predisposed to idiosyncracy; one wants unwavering belief, the other, undifferentiated Return On Capital. The rest of us (99%?) are in the middle. It's a big middle.

By contrast, localism is thorny, unyielding, and all-too human. One neighborhood ends. Another begins. And you can feel the difference, the boundaries between sensibilites and communities. Human environs are chockful of starts and stops. This makes them both capital-inefficient and too heterogenous for radical monotheism. Perfect. I'll take it.

But don't believe me. Take a look at Nemo's NYC 'gentrification' pictures. That's a microcosm of the 'bad globalization' process. Chain stores. Dull gray economies of scale. Erased character. People don't live on an aggregated globe. They live in neighborhoods with weather, traffic jams, school referendums and corner stores. This whole globalism gig is catnip for megalomaniacs and completely excised of authentic human coordinates.

But I'm down with the Pope's polyhedron for which he clearly earns his hat.

[Janice D. Soderling]

This is the only sentence I understood in your post, Norman. So it is the only thought I can reply to.

They live in neighborhoods with weather, traffic jams, school referendums and corner stores.

Of course they do.

[John Whitworth]

I had heard of Sunnis and Shias, which is more than your late President had. Rather like Protestants and Catholics eh? Except that in general protestants and catholics don't kill each other any more. Islam believes in the theocratic state. Americans and Frenchmen do not.

I personally would be happier if there were fewer muslims in my country. Your country is your own business. French people are generally of my opinion.

As for Paris how many of you have been there? I have been to Paris at least a dozen times, not for a holiday but to work.

The EU has abandoned their idea of open borders. That is dead. Of course they don't say so, not yet.

Oh, and that foolish Merkel woman is finished.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I remember when London had no refuse bins on the sidewalk because (as a bobby explained to me) they were places bombs could be hid. I remember when I had to show my purse each time I entered a restaurant or public building and I'm sure you remember that too, John, the IRA. Those were hard times for Londoners. I hope they are gone for good.

Yes, I've been in Paris. I love that city. And London too. And Athens.

In the late nineties I was in Athens when a bomb went off. That would have been the Revolutionary Nuclei. I'm not sure what year it was, but it was a loud explosion.

Check out Ed's link above.

When it was announced on Thursday that the Italians had revealed a terrorist plot, and Norway was threatened it was understandable why the borders had been closed. The borders will open again. This is temporary.

[John Whitworth]

I bet you ten pounds it is permanent, Janice.

[Bill Carpenter]

Hi Janice,
Not trying to put words in your mouth, just attempting to infer first principles. It seems that a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best. As people are now, they will be at each other's throats without a higher power to keep them in line. The democracy at several removes of the EC seems to answer for now, with its ability to guide national governments. That is what I infer, not maliciously, from your various statements and I'm not making any judgments on it, just trying to clarify. The viability of a U.S. of Europe remains to be seen, as does the ongoing viability of the U.S.A. and Russia.

Don,
I was not referring to Eurabia as an imaginary dystopia to which I was passionately objecting, but as the name given to the long-term economic and legal integration of European, North African, and Middle Eastern nations. I don't think that description is inaccurate and I don't think people have objected much until relatively recently when conflicts have broken out over the occupation of cultural and physical space. Integration turns out to be more challenging than most people expected. Actually it is very easy at the top of the social ladder and virtually impossible at the bottom. People look at the problems from different altitudes. It even becomes a status symbol not to know about difficulties là bas.

[Don Jones]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm