WIP

Quantum physics is a bad analogy to compare with supernatural truth claims. First of all, uncertainty and randomness exist at the sub-atomic level, and do not affect the physical causal chain of events that occur at our level. Virtual particle pairs constantly pop into existence from the fabric of space-time, only to re-combine after a brief instant in time, and annihilate each other, and vanish back into the space-time where they came from. This would be the equivalent to studying how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, if it wasn't for the fact that the physics of how electromagnetic radiation is propagated through space depends on that prediction of the existence of virtual particles. In 1974, Stephen Hawking used their theoretical existence to make a prediction that the randomness of quantum mechanics found in the Uncertainty Principle, would cause Black Holes to give off gamma radiation -- he reasoned that at the event horizon of a black hole (where escape velocity = light speed) virtual particle pairs could be separated -- with one of the particles falling into the event horizon, and the other escaping as radiation. The existence of "Hawking Radiation" has been confirmed in observations of suspected black holes, and in high energy lab experiments....adding to the evidence for virtual particles. Long story short -- no matter how strange and counter-intuitive physics is at the sub-atomic level, with it's uncertainty, randomness, and particles popping in and out of existence, there have been numerous predictions based on the principles of quantum mechanics -- so we don't get to believe or disbelieve, any more than we can choose to believe or disbelieve in whether the sun will rise tomorrow. For all its strangeness, quantum mechanics makes predictions that have been verified and used for the development of new technology. But on the other hand, when it comes to supernatural truth claims, we don't get any predictions that can be verified. You can choose to believe in a supernatural realm, but you can't provide direct or indirect evidence for its existence.

I gave AW all the room necessary to provide a logical reason why a mosque can't be built near the former WTC complex, and after more than a month and more than 30 pages of arguments, she still provides no underlying reason why a mosque can't be built because the existing building received minor damage from the wing of one of the airplanes. Everybody gets the same reply. In the most recent version:"Do you think they'd be less able to mourn if they built on property that wasn't damaged by the attacks on 9-11?" Since no other reason is given for this conclusion, I am left to presume that the WTC is now a sacred site, and that includes not only the trade center towers that were destroyed, but any building that may have been touched by the plane's flight-path. And of course the sanctity of this holy site is defiled by the presence of Muslim worshipers.

Since your cryptic non-answer stated that U.S. foreign policy was too complicated for me to understand, I was curious if these "complications" were factually based, or just your idea of a witty rejoinder.

I've ignored this thread up till now because the concept is just too stupid to take seriously. The first irony is that if rightwingers want to frame the Gulf blowout as Obama's Katrina, they are acknowledging that Hurricane Katrina was Bush's Katrina! Up til now, they have tried to shift blame elsewhere. Also, this disaster is man-made, and should not have occurred if a proper regulatory environment had been in place to evaluate the risks of deepwater drilling. And thanks to the pro-oil Bush/Cheney Administration, the BP Disaster should be called Cheney’s Katrina The timeline of Bush/Cheney Administration energy policies shows how the pro-oil policies and permissive regulatory environment created during the Bush administration set the stage for Cheney’s Katrina—the BP oil catastrophe. Certainly as time goes by, President Obama is in a good position to inherit Cheney's Katrina. I'm not sure what was expected during the first weeks after the Blowout....maybe he was supposed to turn into Aquaman and dive down 5000 feet and twist that broken riser pipe into a pretzel, and stop the leak....unfortunately that didn't happen! But now, the Obama Administration loses points as the days go by, by refraining from getting Navy submersibles in there to do an accurate assessment of how much oil is leaking -- the amount of oil leaking will determine to the size of the fines that the EPA can levy against BP. They also need to get independent analysis of what's happening to all the oil that's being hit with dispersing chemicals. They don't have any clear idea where most of the oil is going, and what effects the dispersing agents will have on fish.

And what is the status of your prediction:"The war is winnable and will be won sooner, not later." that you made when you started this thread three months ago?

And what exactly are those complications?

So, we shouldn't trust Arab Christians either I suppose, because these people are barbaric by nature? I'm glad there are sites like JewsOnFirst which keep a list of the stories that pop up in the news from time to time, and demonstrate the over-arching theme of the Christian Right.

Yes, even with a contract on his life from Ayatollah Khomeini, Rushdie has refused to travel the low road with other Muslim dissidents like Ayan Hirsi Ali -- who no one would argue does not have legitimate reasons for anger with the religion and culture she was raised in, but she lied about her personal circumstances when she sought refugee status in Holland and has completely embraced the other side of the conflict, including Western interests who colonized the Middle East and share a big part of the credit for the resurgent fundamentalism in Islamic countries. I was particularly disgusted with her call for Afghanis to support the government soldiers against local Taliban, since she either isn't aware that most of the soldiers are corrupt and taken from northern tribesmen, or she just doesn't care, and will say whatever Neocon propaganda the A.E.I. wants her to say. I was even surprised by the reaction to a Lebanese-American girl winning the Miss USA pagent recently. I started a thread on it partly for the nice picture links to her and runner up Miss Oklahoma, but more importantly because right from the start there were right wing agitpropagandists declaring that she was a Hezbollah agent....because she has the same last name as some Hezbollah commander! Obviously if she's wearing a bikini in a beauty pagent, she didn't come from a fundamentalist home -- her brief bio indicated that her parents were Muslim and Christian ( I forget which is which) and she attended a Catholic School in her youth. But, nevertheless, any Muslims reading the reaction to her winning the title have even more evidence that no Muslim is acceptable regardless of how Western they are.

Right now I am more concerned about the direction Israel is going in, where they are building walls and new settlements to make it impossible for a future Israeli government to wind it back to a two state solution. The solution you offered on another thread to go back to the pre-1967 borders (except Jerusalem) may be impossible for two reasons: religious Muslims are never going to surrender control of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the former Muslim Quarter of the City; and that mess of settlements and walls is going to cost billions of dollars to remove. During Sharon's unilateral disengagement, they had enough problems just getting Israelis out of Gush Katif in Southern Gaza. The hardcore religious Zionists on the West Bank, are far more numerous, and are not going to leave, even for an ironclad peace treaty. But, Netanyahu's backers appear to be playing a winner-take-all game here anyway, and if they lose, or the game gets even more costly, their allies lose as well. They are betting that Obama will not be re-elected, and a Republican, backed by their Christian Zionist "friends" will take power and continue to write blank cheques for whatever the Israeli government wants to do. If they have to go it alone, they're screwed! What are they going to do -- threaten to launch the nukes?

And the weapons put on display remind me of the "weapons of mass destruction" that were displayed after the Iraq Invasion....remember those pipes that were claimed to have been for building centrifuges? The next question that needs to be asked is 'is the blockade legal?' You can't have your cake and eat it too! If Israel wants it's blockade of Gaza recognized as legal and legitimate, then have to answer whether or not the conflict with Hamas, that is used to legitimize the blockade, is an international conflict between two belligerent sovereigns? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belligerent They don't seem to be interested in testing the rules of international law otherwise, likely because they don't want Gaza to have the rights of a belligerent state in an armed conflict. This seems to follow the pattern of undeclared wars, where international law and sanctions are only called upon by the dominant military power when it suits their wishes.

Weapons! An IDF video of their weapons seizure displays knives, an axe, night vision goggles, an electric circular saw....yeah, everything you need to invade a country! I'm surprised so many people are falling for this bullshit. If they were really trying to smuggle real weapons in, they would have used one of the tunnels that Hamas has dug to bring in their supplies. They wouldn't be on ships that were certain to be boarded. The IDF's seizure of weapons looks like they raided the kitchen and some utility closets to come up with stuff that would look dangerous.

Is that a rhetorical statement, or did you actually check to see if there are reform movements throughout the Muslim World? Your simplistic presentation of a large group of nations, with thousands of different racial and ethnic groups cannot be distilled down to one category. Even at ground zero (Saudi Arabia) there are stories that keep drifting out about women demanding voting rights, the right to drive cars, and I found this one particularly interesting, because it indicates a ground shift in cultural attitudes: New generation of Saudi novelists breaks taboos Now you're lumping all atheists together? Do you complain when the atheists are puppets of the American Enterprise Institute, such as Christopher Hitchens and Ayan Hirsi Ali, and parrot the Neoconservative foreign policy agenda? "Crimes of Passion" still occur in Italy, and if the defendant can prove adultery, he likely will still get off with a light sentence. The only difference 30 years ago, was that it was grounds for acquittal. But just as with honor-killings in the Muslim World, it did not work for the women who accused their husbands of adultery. I find it strange that you want to get on your soapbox and incite hatred without bothering to learn a few basic facts first! For one thing, Arab is not an equivalent term of Muslim. And you are judging the entire Muslim World by citing some shocking stories on the internet. But what triggers my gag reflex every time one of these Muslim-bashing threads start is that it is the right wing conservatives who are deliberately setting economic and social policy to bring back patriarchy in the West. The very people who are pointing fingers at misogyny in Muslim nations would damn well do the same thing here once they have adequate control. The case has been presented by a number of conservative theorists that feminism, and even extending the vote to women, has harmed the interests of conservatism by creating the demand for social spending, while weakening the "needs" for military spending. But when you use South Africa as an example, I hope you're aware aren't that it was the right - in the form of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who fought against imposing sanctions on South Africa. Certainly economic sanctions is not as harsh a penalty as actual military invasions, occupations, and an exodus of refugees; but nevertheless, the Afrikaners in South Africa dug in deeper when faced with universal condemnation. The situation of South Africa under Apartheid was more akin to Israel -- one group of people with full rights of citizenship, and another without civil rights. What is Muslim Apartheid? ----

Wow! The sky is falling. When civil order starts to fail, the fascists usually prevail over the socialists. The right highlights the few examples where leftwing Marxist revolutions have succeeded, but which side has won the most civil wars? Hint: the one that has the wealthiest citizens supporting it.

What a pile of crap! Right wing militias have spawned mass murder before (Tim McVeigh), have been large scale attacks right now (Hutaree Christian Militia), and when bad comes to worse, they will fill the role of the Brown Shirts in a homegrown patriotic fascist government. Eugene Robinson puts the false equivalence between the threat from the right compared to threat of an imagined leftwing conspiracy in the proper perspective: It is dishonest for right-wing commentators to insist on an equivalence that does not exist. The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction -- the right, not the left. The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day -- and, quite regularly, at Tea Party rallies -- is calibrated not to inform but to incite. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032901891.html

Speaking of Turkey'! Look what those crazy fundamentalist Muslims are up to now: Nude hotel opens — briefly — in Turkey He can't offer orgies, but the owner of Turkey's first nudist hotel promises good times.

Off the top, your analysis is flawed, so I have to wonder about what sort of education you are advocating here! Even in Saudi ARabia and Iran, the rules of patriarchy are starting to crumble. The stupid thing to do in the West is to give the conservatives evidence that we are attacking their religion and seek to invade and take their oil and whatever natural resources they have. You say "women have to be covered?" Couldn't you at least have done a quick search to reveal that this is complete bullshit? Many Muslim women don't wear any hair coverings, even in Muslim nations. The burqas and niqaabs are not universal, and even the hijabs are a recent development over the last three decades...not a Muslim tradition. They could continue or get scrapped largely depending on how confident and open Muslims feel in those nations. I'm not familiar with enough of your work to know how progressive you are on the issue of women's right. I know from previous reading that you come across as a social darwinist when it comes to economic issues. And that in itself compromises whatever good things you might have to say about women's rights, since women are more likely than men to end up in poverty because of divorce and the needs of their children. If you want to know why those of us on the left...including those of us who have abandoned the right in recent years...refuse to get on the bandwagon everytime one of these Arab and Muslim-bashing threads gets started, it's because we know full well that the religious right leaders who occupy the moral center of this movement that highlights abuse of women in the Muslim World, have almost identical contempt for women here in the West! The motivations behind the over-concern for abortion are not about "life," it's about getting more women back in the baby-making business. That's why they are also against birth control...but they are still soft-selling that fight for now. At church, the Christian Right is starting to put more emphasis on those Bible verses that call for women to be silent and submissive to their husbands...this is what "family values" is all about! Women who have control of when or whether they decide to have children, have fewer children in general, and are more involved in the workplace as well as in politics. For several decades, a number of conservative philosophers have noted that the emancipation of women has hurt the conservative agenda since their whole philosophy is dependent on the continuation of patriarchy. One conservative theorist who's name I don't recall at the moment, blamed the rise of the Welfare State on women's voting rights. He noted that previously, governments only grew during times of war, and then scaled back afterwards. But after women got the right to vote, there was a greater voting block in favour of expanding social services, and needless to say, this is why conservative ideologues, both religious and secular, want to turn the clock back to the time before women's rights. They don't want government to spend money on things other than military and war-making. So, to summarize, unless this is a rhetorical question, don't ask why we don't support Christian conservative patriarchs over Muslim conservative patriarchs. There are Muslim women's rights organizations in every Arab and Muslim country, and I'll follow their advice on how we in the WEst can assist them. So far, I'm not seeing any who consider Western Neoconservatives to be of any help to them! ====== When I lived in Italy for about a year, many years ago, I saw the exact same things! I saw men beat their wives right out in public, while their cowering children watched, and when I stepped in to stop it one time, my friend pulled me back, apologized to the husband, telling him that I was a foreigner who didn't know better; and insisted to me afterward that I was making the situation worse. And the looks from bystanders indicated that I would have had a mob turn on me if my friend didn't pull me out of there. But now, even in the rural parts of the country, things are changing, and the traditionalists aren't happy about it. It has only been about 25 years that a husband who accused his wife of adultery, is charged for murdering her. Over there, it was called a "crime of passion"...but it was essentially the same thing as an honour killing! So, cut the bullshit about abuse of women and children being an exclusively Muslim thing. The ground is shifting under the feet of the patriarchs in the Muslim World as well. There are movements in every Muslim nation that want to break with the past, rather than maintain the stifling patriarchy. We are not helping them by bashing all Arabs for whatever abuses we see, and telling them that they have to abandon their religion. That solution only hardens the resolve of those in the middle, and be more resistant to change. It's not for us to decide how Muslims will adapt their religion to modern life, science, and dealing with different religions as well as sects within their own. If you really want to help the forces of change there you listen to what they have to say....hint, telling them we're going to kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity doesn't work!

Daily Beast blogger Ethan Perlson seems to think this is a good news story: Bibi's Unlikely New Fan Club Well, I suppose it is for the Likud Party, but the prospect that the Israeli left: consisting of socialists, peace activists and secularists; are rallying around the flag, unfortunately means that most Jews living in Israel have decided that the overwhelmingly hostile response to the attack on the aid flotilla, and continued blockade of Gaza, has created enough xenophobia to set aside other important issues for self defense. It's unfortunate that the majority of Jews in Israel are adopting the fortress mentality, because this strategy means endless war and makes it more and more costly to be in alliance with them. Also, over the years, secular Jews get fed up with the rocket attacks, suicide bombers, and threats of future war and decide to leave Israel. The ultra-Orthodox Jews who have a manifest destiny, are inspired to move there by the threat of war and bombings, and to build more settlements in occupied territories. The hardline anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, pro-Israel advocates here keep referring to Israel as a secular democracy. Well, set aside the issue of how much of a democracy it is for a non-Jewish resident, there is no mistaking that Israel is becoming more theocratic, more conservative, and less democratic for everyone. Israel is transitioning into a Jewish version of Iran or Saudi Arabia, and unfortunately the remaining secular Jews there have decided to join them. I can't see any peaceful resolution coming between two sides who claim God is on their side.

Pat Condell, trying to incite a riot....as usual!

Watching the Sunday news shows today, it's fascinating watching so many Republican politicians and talking heads demanding federal government action to stop the Gulf Disaster. These were the same guys who wanted to shrink the federal government, get government out of the way of business, deregulate business, and cap corporate liability under the guise of tort reform.....drill baby drill indeed. Well, now the chickens have come home to roost. The same Republicans degraded the effectiveness of other federal agencies (remember "Brownie" the equestrian judge who was put in charge of FEMA!), so should we be surprised that the Minerals Mismanagement Service were accepting cocaine and hookers, along with the usual sports events tickets, to rubber stamp approval of whatever offshore operations the big oil companies wanted to undertake? What I'm waiting for now is an apology from libertarians and so called fiscal conservatives, for shrinking government to the point where it cannot effectively monitor corporate malfeasance, or provide adequate services for the growing underclass of people who are falling below the poverty line.....so far, I'm not seeing any concern on the right that maybe they allowed corporations to get to big, too rich, too influential with their money, and defanged the only institution that is equipped to prevent these artificial legal persons from turning a mixed economy back into the feudal societies we emerged from a few centuries ago. Right now, my hopes will either be restored or dashed depending on whether the Obama Administration realizes that they have to do the right thing this time, and follow Robert Reich's advice and put BP into temporary receivership. And it's not just a matter of getting accurate information and getting the company to do all it can to aid areas that are already affected by oil -- over the weekend, information started leaking out that BP's scheduled dividend payment later this month will be in the 10 billion dollar range...equal to last year's! Sorry BP shareholders big and small, But until we know that your investment has given its last drop of blood and pound of flesh to pay for the disaster they've created, NO DIVIDENDS should be payed out period.

No, this line that Christendom used to be fascist, but has been democratic and secular since the Reformation is a simplistic ruse. There is no one "Christianity," there are thousands of different sects that rise and fall in numbers and influence over the years, and the attitudes about how to deal with non-adherents or whether or not Christians should control government and law, is also continually in flux. Right now it is ridiculous to point to Christianity in Canada or the United States as a model for Muslims to follow when the evidence indicates that our churches are trending towards fundamentalist attitudes and demanding more control of law and government again. How can conservatives in particular, get up on their soapboxes and demand reformation and secularization in Islam, while they are advocating theocracy out of the other sides of their mouths? I didn't say that the U.S. was completely responsible for the rise of Islamic theocratic movements, but rather than listen to what people in Muslim nations were telling them at the time, they made a simplistic judgment that anything that was anti-communist was an American ally, and that's why they are paying a price for that choice now. I heard one prominent Pakistani writer (I can't recall the name) comment on the problem, and note that when he was a young man growing up in Pakistan during the 1960's, being too religious was the equivalent of being too old fashioned. The secularists were mostly on the political left in most Muslim countries, and that made them suspect to the CIA and the State Dept.. So, even if they weren't outright Marxist-Leninists, the U.S. administrations did whatever they could to help the Islamists fight against them. So, why would any secularists in the Muslim World trust U.S. intentions now? Especially after the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and their continual blindspot for Israel.

No, this is not a matter of having unanswered questions; the problem is that they are making conflicting claims right from the outset. How much credibility does one of these "skeptics" have in claiming that there is no AGW, when they don't agree on whether the planet is warming, or whether atomspheric CO2 is a forcing factor? And many of the frequently cited skeptics, like Dr. Roy Spencer, who appear regularly on FoxNews and right wing radio, are not even skeptical about climate change evidence in the first place. They merely make a stupid argument for adjusting to a warmer climate: creating new, genetically modified seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat; moving populations in lowlying areas like Bangladesh inland; and a general move northward as the ice caps melt. Right now the Americans are screaming about Mexicans moving north, but we are going to end up with a mass migration into Canada in the coming decades, as populations move north to escape southern and equatorial regions...Canada is going to get a lot more crowded in a generation or two! The debates have been structured, and although the Earth's climate and ecological cycles are extremely complex and make climate prediction modeling suspect, the verdict on whether CO2 levels are increasing -- whether the rise is anthropogenic or natural -- whether rising CO2 levels will force global temperatures higher -- is all in! The only questions that remain are how fast change will come (depends on positive feedback loops such as methane from thawing tundra, and whether oceans will continue to absorb excess CO2), and how an increasing amount of energy in global weather cycles will impact us locally in the coming years. Another question that remains is whether the human race collectively, is really capable of using that highly developed pre-frontal cortex to rationally choose the best course of action for survival. Preliminary evidence indicates that most people do the bulk of their thinking with the older sections of the brain that responds to emotions and sensory gratification. That's why there are wars and uses of military power to claim valuable resources. And the almost complete lack of concern for the issue of climate justice (a word almost never mentioned in MSM media) also indicates that the human race may just continue to scratch and claw for the dwindling available resources. The complete failure to arrive at any substantial agreement at the Copenhagen Climate Summit indicated that most of the West is not interested in any serious reductions to CO2 emissions, nor willing to adjust the gross imbalance in living standards that exist. If we examine what we take from the environment as an ecological footprint, we are all competing with each other for the limited bio-capacity of the planet, whether we are conscious of it or not. Here is the simple reality. The average human needs about two hectares to sustain the average lifestyle on Earth. That includes the assimilation of carbon dioxide and other waste, but primarily it's consumption in the Third World. Waste production enters in to this very much in the First World. On a nation by nation comparison -- Canadians use about 6 hectares per person. So we are about three and a third times the world average of 1.8 hectares per person. Americans use almost 9 hectares per person, about 5 times above the world average. On the flipside, some impoverished Third World countries are having to get by on less than a third of a hectare per person, per year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint The point then is, that the world is growing in population, the per capita input in consumption is increasing even faster. And so we passed sometime in the 1980's, the point at which the average consumption on Earth exceeded the average capacity on the planet to maintain that level of consumption. So if you add up the total aggregate human ecological footprint, it is greater than the biocapacity of the planet. How is this possible? Unfortunately the answer isn't that the Earth is a giant candy store that will just keep supplying us what we need; the real story is that ecological systems can be compared to bank accounts -- you can keep taking out more than you are putting back in until the cheques start to bounce. We have a good example of this in the fishing industry, where most of the oceans are fished out, and even a moratorium on fishing, such as off the Grand Banks, will take years before that bank account of cod fish is back in black. If the problems associated with climate change were easy to fix -- such as banning cloroflurocarbons to reduce depletion of the upper ozone levels of the atmosphere -- it would be easy to get everybody to agree on taking real action. The problem is that this is an all-encompassing dilemma that is not going to be solved by quick fixes like mini-fluorescent lightbulbs, or building a bunch of windmills and solar panels. The problem is that almost one third of the world's population is living off of something below a subsistence level and having to drink dirty, unpurified drinking water to boot! They want a better life, but the West, which is taking the bulk of the planet's resources will need to go on a diet....and on a longterm basis, a permanent solution cannot be arrived at without reducing present population levels. And that's going to require some action taken in opposition to the world's fundamentalists, who are at war with planned parenthood and are still advocating a policy of high birth rates. The Catholic Church and various Muslim clerics in particular, who are fighting this insane battle to keep the baby boom going, need to be taken down as soon as possible; and the first step is informing the people that these reactionary religious leaders are advocating policies that are more dangerous and destructive than what any of the world's energy companies are doing.

I've been waiting a couple of days before commenting, to get a fix on the conflicting claims being made about the raid, and I am coming to the conclusion that if the U.S. and Israel's new best friend - Canada - are real friends, they should stop kowtowing to the Israel lobby in Washington and their Christian Zionist fanatic allies, and give the Israeli Gov. a straight honest opinion about the direction they're headed in. It would have been nice if the Obama Administration was up to the job, but after hearing about Joe Biden's apologetic performance on the Charlie Rose Show, it's not likely going to happen. It looks more like they will continue to write blank cheques for whatever Israel does...at least until that long awaited attack on Iran actually happens...then, all bets are off. The biggest lasting damage of this midnight raid is likely going to be a complete severing of diplomatic relations with Turkey. Adding Turkey to the enemies list not only removes their only regional ally, it also makes it more costly for the U.S. to continue to offer blank-cheque absolute support for Israel. Also, the neutral Arab neighbours likely that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia will have to re-position themselves to take a more hardline stance against Israel, to avoid the wrath of the angry mobs in their own countries. The IDF used to be considered invincible. Their responses were reasoned and executed flawlessly. Now look what's happened! Dropping commandos one at a time into an angry mob on ship's deck, and then having to kill in order to save them. The brief, censored videos they put up as evidence of being attacked are laughable! What the hell did they expect would happen? It's like Somali pirates expecting to be welcomed aboard ship. The Israeli government could have made a few phone calls to Turkey to offer some sort of compromise, if they were worried about weapons being smuggled aboard. The writing should have been on the wall that they would have to make some compromises on their embargo of Gaza. The claim that aid would be distributed from Ashkelon has no credibility in light of all of the materials that have been banned. If everything but weapons were really allowed through, the flotilla wouldn't have been necessary in the first place. The increasing radicalization of Israeli politics is leading to a situation where Israel is becoming America's North Korea. China is stuck being unwilling to condemn North Korea for sinking a South Korean warship, and paying a financial and diplomatic price because they believe they have to keep North Korea from falling apart. Something similar is happening between the U.S. and Israel, where the Israelis no longer care about becoming a pariah state, but the price for cutting off aid to Israel, or other punitive measures, is not one that any U.S. government will be willing to make.

Thanks for that! I noticed the last time I got into the global warming debates here that when I followed the links to these so called skeptical scientists, their experts all have different stories to tell, and I suspect that's part of the reason why the Republicans only feature one at time at these Congressional hearings. There are scientists who earn a good living working for conservative think tanks and writing books for this audience, and more importantly, many now are working for universities that have become totally dependent on grants and endowments from oil and coal companies, which may bias their research. Of the most prominent names I recognize who are continually on FoxNews and rightwing infotainment sites, Richard Lindzen, Tim Ball, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer -- they all have different and conflicting theories about climate. If they appeared together on a panel, and informed critic could start comparing their various conflicting claims and that would be the end of the debate. They can't agree on whether there is global warming; if so, is it related to atmospheric CO2 levels; and they can't even agree on the most crucial point about whether AGW is a significant factor. Some aren't really skeptics at all, but just claim we can adapt to whatever environmental changes occur over the coming decades and centuries. That's a non-falsifiable argument since if they're wrong, and the human race degrades to eventually extinction, no one will be around to say 'I told you so'.

I'm a little dubious about this term "Islamofascism." It's a little simplistic to concoct a hybrid of Islam and Fascism, since the Christian version is generally understood as a fascist state appealing to religious authority to reinforce their control over the people. The Wahabis and the Saud family would have lost control without U.S. intervention. Who's to blame for the influence that Wahabis have now in the Muslim World, when the U.S. followed a policy for decades of backing them as enemies of Communism. Bingo! All these problems with Islamism may have never happened if the U.S. had not supported the clerics and religious parties as allies against the left wing nationalists in many Arab countries. They built them up, and now they are trying to knock them down. All this talk now from the Right about the need for secularism and moderates in the Muslim World, ignores the fact that there was a wave of secularism throughout the Muslim World for several decades, but the U.S. supported all of the Islamist groups to bring down these leftwing secular nationalists. Now they are trying to kill off the allies that they created in a number of cases.

Your Quran-quote mining completely missed the point, since I already noted that you can find repulsive verses in all of these old holy books. The question is what do religious adherents today believe. Do they believe they can win a religious war between Christianity and Islam? Or do they believe that in this already dangerous world of nuclear weapons and ecological catastrophes, we either all live together or we all die together! Wars of conquest are mutually assured destruction. Muslims who want a better quality of life for their children are going to do what the Christians and Jews who don't have suicidal urges already do -- ignore the crap about smiting enemies and stress the verses that apply universal values. It was sharia arbitration panels, not Sharia Law! They would apply in areas of civil law, and when the controversy erupted, most of us here in Ontario discovered for the first time that there were already Orthodox Jewish and Christian fundamentalist religious arbitration panels operating in the province for years! The McGuinty Government had to ban them also when they struck down the proposal for Sharia arbitration. And Muslim-haters who keep bringing up this story about how Ontario almost got Sharia Law five years ago, seem to forget the part of the story about the proposal being stopped by Muslim women's groups who opposed introducing Sharia arbitration here. Likely because it doesn't fit the narrative about a fascist religious movement seeking world domination that keeps their women oppressed.