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9447. Jenerator - 3/28/2012 4:50:04 PM Wombat - forgive me if you have alerady answered this, but what kind of work do you do? 9448. Wombat - 3/28/2012 11:38:35 PM I have been most recently doing intelligence work. 9449. concerned - 3/29/2012 12:58:07 AM Do tell! 9450. concerned - 3/29/2012 12:58:44 AM Jes' funnin! Jes' funnin! Don't want you going all Trayvon on me! 9451. vonKreedon - 6/19/2012 11:12:51 PM Apparently Mubarak is dead, or "clinically dead", after suffering a stroke, though a military spokesman denies this, saying, "He is not clinically dead as reported, but his health is deteriorating and he is in critical condition." I think he's dead, but let the conspiracy theories begin. 9452. judithathome - 6/20/2012 4:37:52 AM A Russian ship carrying weapons and equipment to Syria reversed course this afternoon.... 9453. vonKreedon - 6/20/2012 4:23:21 PM I just heard on NPR that the ship turned back because the British insurer withdrew the insurance under guidance from the British government. Nice use of soft power there.
In other news, Mubarak is not dead...yet. 9454. Wombat - 7/3/2012 1:02:13 AM How about Generalissimo Franco? He still dead? 9455. concerned - 7/13/2012 10:50:08 PM Today's Kids Inherit World Reverting To Barbarism
excerpt
I've lost count of the times I've found myself sitting at dinner next to a westernized Arab woman d'un certain age who was at college in the 50s, 60s or 70s, and listened to her tell me that back then "covering" was for wizened old biddies in upcountry villages, the Islamic equivalent of gnarled Russian babushkas. The future belonged to modern, uncovered women like her and her classmates.
The assumptions of her generation were off by 180 degrees: The female graduating class of Cairo University in the 50s looked little different from Vassar. Half-a-century later, every woman is hijabed to the hilt.
Mohammad Qayoumi, now the president of San Jose State University, recently published some photographs from the Afghanistan he grew up in: The girls in high heels and pencil skirts in the Kabul record stores of the 1960s aren't quite up to Carnaby Street cool, but they'd fit in in any HMV store in provincial England.
Half a century later, it was forbidden by law for women to feel sunlight on their face, or leave the home without male permission. Even more amazing to my female dining companions, today you see more covered women in London's East End or the Rosengård district of Malmö, Sweden than you do in Tunis or Amman.
The mistake made by virtually the entire western media during the Arab Spring was to assume that social progress is like technological progress — that, like the wheel or the internal combustion engine, women's rights and gay rights cannot be dis-invented. They can, very easily.
In Egypt, the youth who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood are more fiercely Islamic than their grandparents who backed Nassau's Revolution in 1952. In Tunisia, the young are more proscriptive than the secular old-timers who turned a blind eye to the country's bars and brothels.
In the developed world, we're told that westernization is "inevitable." "Just wait and see," say the blithely complacent inevitablists. "They haven't yet had time to westernize." But westernization is every bit as resistible in Brussels and Toronto as it's proved in Cairo and Jalalabad.
In the first ever poll of Irish Muslims, 37% said they would like Ireland to be governed by Islamic law. When the same question was put to young Irish Muslims, it was 57%.
In other words, the hope'n'change generation are less westernized than their parents. 36% of young British Muslims think the penalty for apostasy — i.e., leaving Islam — should be death. Had you asked the same question of British Muslims in 1970, I doubt the enthusiasts would have cracked double figures.
But keep pretending that it's Republicans who are retrograde when almost all Muslims lean left politically.
9456. bhelpuri - 9/1/2012 4:46:12 AM Yesterday was the first time in years I actually felt a twinge about pulling the plug on TV in our household. Would have liked to see that Clint bit live (course, at some point I'll youtube). Seems memorable Theatre American, like that rabid "spitballs" rant of a previous RNC.
But even from this distance - even only reading twits tweeting - it's obvious Romney is fundamentally unelectable even by the low standards plumbed recently by Americans. He performed his historical role yesterday for his "church" and now it is just a long and expensive dance to confirming that he was toast all along. 9457. bhelpuri - 9/1/2012 4:47:58 AM Yesterday was the first time in years I actually felt a twinge about pulling the plug on TV in our household. Would have liked to see that Clint bit live (course, at some point I'll youtube). Seems memorable Theatre American, like that rabid "spitballs" rant of a previous RNC.
But even from this distance - even only reading twits tweeting - it's obvious Romney is fundamentally unelectable even by the low standards plumbed recently by Americans. He performed his historical role yesterday for his "church" and now it is just a long and expensive dance to confirming that he was toast all along. 9458. bhelpuri - 9/1/2012 4:58:00 AM I concede that there will be ritual tension over the final outcome of the presidential election. How could there not be, with the US economy the way it is (among other grave systemic problems).
But the final analysis cannot be poll-driven. Even Americans - harried as they are by abysmally poor government management decisions since Reagan - have not been driven fully bat-shit.
The fact that a bat-shit option remains on the table is entirely due to historical accident, and a rapidly shrinking bat-shit "base" that is being rapidly eroded in plain sight, not least by irreversible demographic changes already underway. 9459. alistairconnor - 9/3/2012 3:48:36 PM The batshit factor would come back with a vengeance if Bibi gets his war. You don't re-elect a Muslim in wartime. Or batshit sentiments to that effect.
I don't believe he will, mind. But I'm sure that's the plan. 9460. vonKreedon - 9/4/2012 7:41:47 PM Bhel - I think you are quite a bit too complacent about the US electorate, particularly in the face of torrents of cash to convince them that Obama and the Dems will run their hopes and dreams into the ground given another four years. I expect Obama to lose, but have some small hope based on his '08 campaign and how he and the Dems have managed framing Romney and the Repubs so far this campaign. But still, I believe it's Romney's election to lose. 9461. judithathome - 9/6/2012 2:43:24 AM Seriously?
I think Romney made a BIG mistake not mentioning the troops in his keynote speech last week.
He AND his wife came off as entitled snobs. I've heard them both say "It's our turn" one too many times... 9462. bhelpuri - 9/6/2012 7:11:51 AM Naw, Kreedon. You seem addled by the echo chamber. Romney plays creakily like okay right now, but it is not going to last.
9463. bhelpuri - 9/6/2012 7:12:30 AM Not that I am any keen Obama supporter, jes' the facts. 9464. resonance - 9/11/2012 4:35:18 PM I don't think there's a hooting hope in hell for Romney to win. I think the smart money has Obama pulling close to 330 electoral votes. That lack of enthusiasm people can see among the Republican base ultimately boils down to a couple of things none of them want to say. One is that I think rank and file, working class Republicans do understand that the guy isn't looking out for them, and they aren't motivated to turn out to support him. The second is the fact that the Christian Right can't go full retard in favor of a Mormon.
There'll be a lot of analysis that dances around and tries to explain a Romney loss in other terms. But, at least if you ask me, those two are the ballgame, not counting all the unforced errors.
If you're thinking Romney has a chance, you're probably watching too much television. :) 9465. resonance - 9/11/2012 4:36:34 PM Who's in or near China these days, anyone? 9466. bhelpuri - 9/29/2012 7:23:58 AM How near are you talking about, Res?
I have gazed across its border three times in the last five years, and will (gulp) stray very, very close again in 2013.
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