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Thursday, January 10. 2013

Afternoon links

The Islamization of France in 2012:



As the politically active Muslim population in France continues to swell, and as most Muslims vote for Socialist and leftwing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to win future presidential elections in France.



The Problem with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel: They Are Products of the Vietnam Generation


Israelis Lose Faith In International Guarantees


PA uses water as a political weapon


West fears Iran will try to seize Syria's uranium stockpile

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 15:42 | Comments (26) | Trackbacks (0)

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Muslims and Socialists have been using each other for years. A couple of years ago, Maggies Farm linked to an article discussing this relationship in Chechnya. Both groups would re-interpret the other's messages to insist they were allies...but that was fiction as both were trying to get the upper hand on the other (reminiscent of Mad's 'Spy vs Spy').

I see the same thing going on in France, only Hollande and supporters seem far more oblivious to the threat. This is colonization by Islam, pure and simple.

It's true elsewhere as well.
#1 DrTorch on 2013-01-10 17:24 (Reply)
the West should come to grips with the fact that one day, sooner rather than later, Iran will be a nuclear power.

at which time the equations of the Cold War come back.

if Iran uses nukes against the US or an ally, it will be turned into glowing rubble. we can make this credible threat (if we had a credible president) because Iran does not have, and never will have, first strike/counter force ability. Iran cannot prevent retaliation on the order of magnitudes greater than it deals out. in fact, with US and Israeli anti-ballistic missile capability, Iran might not even successfully land a first strike.

I'd assume that Iran understands this equation and knows it cannot attack Israel with nukes without being destroyed by Israeli retaliation alone. the mullahs are religious zealots, but they're not suicidal, nor, I'd guess, are the leaders of the guards and regular armed forces.
#2 wirraway on 2013-01-10 19:33 (Reply)
The problem with John Kerry is he didn't face a firing squad 35 years ago.

I like talking about him with progtards because when they start that hater shit they do for once they are exactly right.
#3 B Moe on 2013-01-10 22:55 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Bryan Preston: The Problem with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel: They Are Products of the Vietnam Generation ... My generation, of which Barack Obama is a member, tends to see Vietnam as one of several conflicts, not the defining American conflict. If anything, World War II and Desert Storm say more to most of us than Vietnam does.

Notably, Preston ignores the debacle of the Iraq War, which reinvented many of the same problems of the Vietnam conflict, most especially, the faulty premises for the war, and American ignorance of the society they sought to remake.
#4 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 09:16 (Reply)
Regarding Iraq, I don't know whether it was ignorance of the society (societies, given tribal factions) as much as wildly overestimating the power of a democratic political framework to instantly infect the population with genuinely democratic tendencies - or at least democratic tendencies that wouldn't merely replicate the tribal divisions that already existed.

That may amount to a kind of ignorance, but maybe more ignorance - or willful blindness, even - about how enduring democratic institutions develop.
#4.1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-01-11 10:47 (Reply)
T.K. Tortch: Regarding Iraq, I don't know whether it was ignorance of the society (societies, given tribal factions) as much as wildly overestimating the power of a democratic political framework to instantly infect the population with genuinely democratic tendencies - or at least democratic tendencies that wouldn't merely replicate the tribal divisions that already existed.

Good points. People sometimes think modern democracies are the governments, when they are actually all the various institutions that make up civil society.
#4.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 16:58 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Soeren Kern: The Islamization of France in 2012: As the politically active Muslim population in France continues to swell, and as most Muslims vote for Socialist and leftwing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to win future presidential elections in France.

They let them vote!?

What is described is fairly normal friction with immigrant populations. There was a time, not so long ago, when it would have been considered extraordinary for a Catholic to become president of the U.S., his taking orders from the Pope and all. Irish need not apply.
#5 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 09:31 (Reply)
Yes, but: France isn't he U.S. They don't have our immigrant population circa 1900 or now. Even our Muslim immigrants aren't like France's. And even now we expect our immigrants to get with the program, be Americans and set aside Old World ways.

France may be experiencing "fairly normal friction", but maybe what's abnormal is the United States' and a few other countries' ability to smooth out that kind of friction and avoid enduring political factionalism based entirely on ethnicity - or religion.

France - and most of the Continental nations - don't seem that adept at assimilating their immigrants. They could be having our Iraq problem in reverse - assuming that a large number of immigrants from places that lack democratic institutions will become natural democrats once they live somewhere that has them. And if the immigrants don't really want to be French anyway, or aren't really expected to be, then trouble.*

*To be fair, in the case of France, I think they talk up a good game of egalite & franternite but look at say the children of North African immigrants and think "no way you're French, can be French, will ever be French". That spells trouble, too; letting in a bunch of people in a sort of bad faith.
#5.1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-01-11 11:27 (Reply)
T.K. Tortch: Yes, but: France isn't he U.S.

That's quite so. Still, while the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, France has been absorbing large numbers since WWI, including Armenians, Southern and Eastern Europeans, and North Africans. France has a very strong culture, and immigrants will have trouble maintaining their identities. In America, everyone's Irish now, like the U.S. president O'Bama.
#5.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 17:06 (Reply)
France has been vulnerable ever since the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre set off a low-to-hot religious war between Christians that really lasted until the Robespierre cataclysm gave the people an even worse affliction to worry about.

===

Zach, the Iraq War, and the Afghan War, were both as good as won for the brief period before the needs of the Kerry presidential campaign revived and resuscitated the Viet Nam template, and brought the enemy out of his despair.

And the same with the southeast Asian war, with adjustment for sequence.

Your party is the single greatest catastrophe that has ever cursed the human race.
#6 buddy larsen on 2013-01-11 14:05 (Reply)
"Your party is the single greatest catastrophe that has ever cursed the human race."

Hear, hear!

Even if I was once stupid enough to be one.
#6.1 XRay on 2013-01-11 14:21 (Reply)
Shows you up even better, X-Ray --you sought, found some untruths, and had the guts to shuck 'em --
#6.1.1 buddy larsen on 2013-01-11 15:42 (Reply)
Actually it wasn't so much untruths as truths. As in the truth of airliners slamming into sides of institutions that woke me up. Our commenter, Z, could likely come up with many a reason why I shouldn't be so concerned about that event. Well, you know I think, what I think of him, and his relativism.
#6.1.1.1 XRay on 2013-01-11 23:07 (Reply)
XRay: Actually it wasn't so much untruths as truths. As in the truth of airliners slamming into sides of institutions that woke me up. Our commenter, Z, could likely come up with many a reason why I shouldn't be so concerned about that event.

Sure you should. Why would you so grossly misread our position so as to reach that conclusion?
#6.1.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 23:25 (Reply)
You're smarter than me, Zach, fine crafter and manipulator of language and meaning such as you are. Or, at least in the sense of never fully addressing the also smarter than me commenter's here. You can be refuted in the majority of your assertions, in my opinion, even if most don't wish to take the time to do so.

Just accept that I know what you're about, and even if I'm wrong, it doesn't make any difference. Just as you don't make any difference here, other than as occasional conversational fodder.
#6.1.1.1.1.1 XRay on 2013-01-12 21:30 (Reply)
That's not a response. Perhaps if you could attempt an answer to this question, it might shed light on the matter. Why are people generally more concerned about the three thousand dead due to the terrorist attacks of 9-11 than the far greater number dead due to automobile accidents every year?
#6.1.1.1.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-13 09:05 (Reply)
buddy larsen: France has been vulnerable ever since the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre ...

Doing pretty good considering. It has been four centuries since.

buddy larsen: the Iraq War, and the Afghan War, were both as good as won for the brief period before the needs of the Kerry presidential campaign revived and resuscitated the Viet Nam template, and brought the enemy out of his despair.

Iraq was coming apart at the seams within weeks of the invasion.

buddy larsen: Your party is the single greatest catastrophe that has ever cursed the human race.

We're not a member of any of your political parties.
#6.2 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 17:16 (Reply)
They're still disputing Shang Dynasty settlement borders in the Yellow River valley, and that's four millenia ago.

Iraq was coming apart at the seams ever the nazi-baaths took over --we had a good shot at knitting up the whole trouble if only the Dems had not switched off the Uncle Sam Determined Frown national consensus WILLpower, in the primary season before the 2004 election. Look up the history --don't slough me off with pedantic snifferey, please.

You don't have to be an offically formal signatory to a party membership, to be a slavering acolyte of its platform. Not that you in particular seem to be one of that large number of the walking image-stunned brainless self demi-gods, but if you DID happen to so seem.
#6.2.1 buddy larsen on 2013-01-11 18:47 (Reply)
Americans watched on TV as the entire country fell apart in the weeks after the U.S. invasion. The U.S. had no realistic plan for stabilization. The entire country was looted in the first weeks of the occupation. Then the country descended into years of sectarian violence. The killing started because once anarchy descended on the country, the worst elements gained power, scores were settled, and radicals filled the power vacuum.
#6.2.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 23:11 (Reply)
...and ''doing pretty good considering...."

--compared to what?
#6.2.2 buddy larsen on 2013-01-11 18:51 (Reply)
France is one of the most highly developed and technologically advanced economies in the world. French citizens enjoy a high average standard of living, widespread education, quality universal health care, and high life expectancy. They also have great food and wine.
#6.2.2.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-11 23:18 (Reply)
http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/59/5998/S1PQG00Z/posters/frank-cotham-i-took-aim-pulled-the-trigger-and-then-suddenly-shots-rang-out-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg

--know why that toon is funny, Zach? Because you're the witness, the decedent is 'victory' and you're telling the court in the toon and me here on this thread that those bullets were inevitable.

===

--and re France, yes but you didn't tell me how France would be had there not been the thing you mocked as too long ago to have any effect on today.

The St Bart's massacree brought in the first Bourbon king Henry IV (not the English H IV, different guy). The Bourbons ruled France and sometimes Spain (time out for Napoleon) right up until the mid-1800s, when the industrial revolution and yet another Spanish succession rivalry brought on the Franco-Prussian War --which molded Germany into one state and set the stage for the ongoing hundred's year war 1914 -2013.

Nothing ever un-happens, Zach --and symbols, not men, rule the world.
#7 buddy larsen on 2013-01-12 13:34 (Reply)
buddy larsen: --and re France, yes but you didn't tell me how France would be had there not been the thing you mocked as too long ago to have any effect on today.

Never said it didn't have an effect. Rather, you said France has been "vulnerable" since 1572. Sure, so is everyone, all the time. Meanwhile, France is doing better today than at many other points in its history. Not sure your point.
#7.1 Zachriel on 2013-01-12 20:32 (Reply)
Point to me, at least, is that France would be speaking German today, if not for us. Would you argue that?
#7.1.1 XRay on 2013-01-12 21:51 (Reply)
Though it might well be Russian as well. Think deep, Zach, I know you can.
#7.1.1.1 XRay on 2013-01-12 21:54 (Reply)
First you say German, then Russian. Or maybe they would still be speaking French. When you change one part of history, a lot of other things change too.

Many French citizens do speak German (8%), by the way. Other popular languages in France include English, Spanish and Italian. Not sure your point.
#7.1.1.2 Zachriel on 2013-01-13 09:16 (Reply)

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