I've been trying to stay interested in the Most Important Event Since the French Revolution, but here's today's three-degrees-of-meta NYT headline and it's not helping:
Allies Press U.S. to Go Slow on Egypt
Maybe if there were some more attacks on camelback, but a lot of these things these days just turn into a test of who has better restroom facilities.
What I'm reminded of is that fairly similar stuff happens in Mexico regularly without the U.S. press paying much attention at all.
What I'm reminded of is that fairly similar stuff happens in Mexico regularly without the U.S. press paying much attention at all.
For example, back in 2006, there was an uprising in the capital of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca in which revolting schoolteachers seized the central plaza and held it for months against attacks by the government. I thought that was pretty interesting and followed it for awhile, but it kept going on and on. And then, after a long while, it wasn't going on anymore, but I still don't know what happened. Here's the Wikipedia article on it, but it looks way too long for me to read. So, I guess I was wrong, it wasn't very interesting after all.
Or there was the Presidential election in 2006 in Mexico when the leftist challenger was leading in the vote counting up until the last truckload of ballots arrived, and then -- suddenly -- the ruling party candidate had won. The aggrieved leftist loser announced he was the Real President of Mexico and that he and his followers would occupy the Zocalo. And they did, for awhile, until they didn't. Or maybe they're still there. I don't know.
And don't get me started on 1994 when masked rebels seized control of part of Southern Mexico (Do they still have control? Do they still wear masks? I've lost touch) and there were a bunch of awesome Manchurian Candidate-style assassinations: of a Cardinal (in full robes at the airport), the ruling party's Presidential candidate (only five miles from America), and the ruling party's chairman, who was the President's ex-brother-in-law. Have these been solved? I guess the President's brother went to prison for the last one, but the last I heard he was out and the case had sputtered out.
And then there's been all the head-chopping over the last four years. Here's a headline form yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune:
Is this important? I dunno.
All these years, I've been trying to pay attention to Mexico when everybody else is obsessing over the Middle East. After all, I reasoned, Mexico is right next door to us, while the Middle East isn't. Plus, you gotta admit this Mexican stuff can be pretty colorful. How about the growing cults of Jesus Malverde, the narco saint, and Santa Muerte?
On the other hand, how much of this Mexican history has turned out to be all that important? Mexico seems to keep on being Mexico, just with more Wal-Marts and more chopped heads. Maybe the American press was right to pay little attention to Mexico. On the other hand, how much of this Middle East stuff that preoccupies them turns out to matter much either?
If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over in Egypt, then your insouciance is going to look pretty dadgum juvenile in retrospect.
ReplyDeleteOn his show today [Monday, 2010-02-08], Glenn Beck had a statistic that 84% of Egyptian Muslims want the death penalty for "apostasy" [which would essentially apply to Muslims who leave Islam for Christianity].
It makes you realize that those chicks at Cairo University are donning the veil because they WANT to don the veil.
Which, in turn, suggests that maybe we are just stalling for time at this point - that maybe the tide has turned and that an Islamification of Egypt is now a demographic imperative.
PS: What would you nominate as the narcoterrorist's "Koran" or "Communist Manifesto"?
"Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas"?
We have the luxury of laughing at the narcos because [if we overlook a little Che nostalgia and a sprinkling of liberation theology & reconquista theory] they are completely disorganized - sort of a Keystone Kops of criminality.
But the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan, and it's called the "Koran".
And it's coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
That's because Mexico is next to a big shitty country called United States of America. But Egypt is bordering the most important country on earth: Israel.
ReplyDeleteSince an attack against Israel means an attack against Western civilization (because Israel is the a Western nation ... lols), we must spend every minute of our life being preoccupied with what's happening in Middle East.
BTW, here is the original source for Glenn Beck's assertion about the 84% figure in Egypt [scroll down to "Support for Severe Laws"].
ReplyDeleteloved this post!
ReplyDeleteReporters find Egyptian protesters interesting because the handful of English-speaking ones their fixers introduce them to use Twitter ("OMG -- you too?"). Reporters assume Mexicans don't use Twitter, because they never see the Mexican barbacks and busboys at their local hangouts in Manhattan using smart phones.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but Manhattan must get the elite of Mexican illegals. They are quiet, industrious, and unobtrusive. Like little robots, almost. The reporters don't know their names or talk to them; they just talk to the (invariably, white) waiters and bartenders. So maybe the reporters assume that Mexico is as orderly and unremarkable as the local Mexican illegals.
(It could be that Manhattan's illegals act crazier on their own time, but reporters would never know, because none of the Mexicans live anywhere near the fancy parts of Manhattan or Brooklyn).
What happens in Eygpt will ultimately be important for the region, and therefore, for the US, but the problem is that on a day to day basis you don't see the backroom deals, shifting alliances, power plays, and bitter compromises that will shape the outcome. What you see is a bunch of people milling around Tahir Square, interspersed with talking heads, most of whom are telling you stuff about the situation in that you don't really believe, or that you could easily have figured out on your own.
ReplyDeleteAl Jazeera has the best coverage, but I can't imagine sitting and watching it for hours on end. Eventually, even the Eygptians are going to get bored with it, which I suppose is what Mubarak is betting on.
Lucius, oops. I mean Anonymous, the whole point of the post is that an Islamist takeover of Egypt = who gives a shit. And indeed. We can pick our own damn cotton.
ReplyDeleteAre any of the major Mexican newspapers translated into English?
ReplyDeleteJust browsing the Wiki entry for Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Accusations of murder, vote-rigging and other electoral malpractice, genocide, destruction of historical buildings, repression of free speech/intimidation of the press, firing on striking teachers (who sound a feisty bunch - can't imagine UK teachers defending a square against police attack) - no, nothing to see here.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how media, particularly in the US, ignore the chaos and carnage next door. Hasn't Obama got a view on who should be Mexican leader?
Wow. I need to start following Mexican politics.
ReplyDelete"Reporters assume Mexicans don't use Twitter, because they never see the Mexican barbacks and busboys at their local hangouts in Manhattan using smart phones. "
ReplyDeleteAll of my American born hispanic students have smart phones. Of course, the don't all have jobs.
For that matter, what's going on in Tunisia right now? I probably went two decades without once thinking, "Hey, I wonder why I never hear about Tunisia?" Then, all of a sudden it's on the front pages, and now it's not. Has the situation there been resolved? (And this was just two weeks ago.)
ReplyDeleteMost of the demonstrations in the Middle East, including Egypt, the overthrow of the Tunisian Governemnt, and the demonstrations in Jordan and other places, started out as reactions to the rapid rise in the price of food. The press seems to be lost on that part of the story and wants to spin this as something similiar to the fall of communism. This seems to be the only story that I could find about this:
ReplyDeletehttp://money.cnn.com/2011/01/28/news/international/inflation_food_prices_middle_east/index.htm
The narcoterrorists' holy text is "Scarface." The Al Pacino one.
ReplyDeleteIt seems I've hardly heard any Egypt news in the past day or so.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amused at the booga-wooga-here-come-the-scary-Muslims attitude of your first commenter. Slapdash crazy, and a fact gleaned from Glenn Beck. If Egypt goes full-burka, keep an eye on the Copts. If the Copts get chased out, then we can worry a bit. If not, it's just an ordinary power grab.
Here in Texas, lacrosse for boys is growing by leaps and bounds ... as white athletes continue to leave basketball, football and soccer.
ReplyDeleteYay! Forever War (tm) continues.
ReplyDelete"Troops may be needed in Mexico."
At least this time when we blunder into something we don't fully understand it's closer to home, with the potential to spill into our own borders.
It's been a while since we militarily mucked things up in our own hemisphere/time zone, and I was starting to feel slighted.
Has the MSM shifted tact on this Egypt thing recently?
ReplyDeleteInitially, there seemed a big euphoria about the democratization of Egypt like there was with Poland, the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, the Ukraine, Georgia, etc.
Lately it seems to have shifted to what will be the consequences.
The US doesn't care about protesters in Pakistan demanding true democracy. We don't want Pakistan to have both nuclear weapons and democracy.
Why is the US so uncharacteristically supporting and encouraging unseating our local despots who kept a lid on a volatile place like Egypt. Did we have a better stooge in the wings? Did Mubarak cross us? Was his iron grip slipping?
Why Mubarak and why now?
If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over in Egypt, then your insouciance is going to look pretty dadgum juvenile in retrospect.
ReplyDelete[...]84% of Egyptian Muslims want the death penalty for "apostasy" [which would essentially apply to Muslims who leave Islam for Christianity].
It makes you realize that those chicks at Cairo University are donning the veil because they WANT to don the veil.
So, it doesn't all hinge on Steve's state of souciance after all?
But the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan, and it's called the "Koran".
And it's coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
That it's coming to a neighborhood near us has pretty much squat to do with what the Muslim Brotherhood gets up to in Egypt, and everything to do with the scum-sucking nature of our rulers, and the passivity of the ruled. In a sane West, what chicks decide to put on their heads at Cairo U would be irrelevant to what chicks decide to say in Western cities.
yes then an AIPAC sponsored replacement can quietly be installed... need to pacify the egyptian people first, how about some free-dumb.. MTV or something to get the youth distracted.
ReplyDeleteAmericans are deathly afraid of Muslims but not of Mexicans. That explains the difference.
ReplyDeletePeter
Yeah, Steve, your insouciance is pretty freakin juvenile!
ReplyDeleteEverybody knows you're one of the most powerful opinion shapers in the country - sorry, the world - read by statesmen, presidents and prime ministers on several continents. Mubarak is probably checking iSteve on an hourly basis just to see what you say he should do.
If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over in Egypt, then your insouciance is going to look pretty dadgum juvenile in retrospect.
ReplyDeleteI live in Britain, we are much nearer to Egypt to and I dont give a toss if the MB take over in Egypt. If I dont, why should you?
We have the luxury of laughing at the narcos because [if we overlook a little Che nostalgia and a sprinkling of liberation theology & reconquista theory] they are completely disorganized - sort of a Keystone Kops of criminality.
Secure the US borders, deport the invaders and the already comical narcos become a complete irrelvance. Job done.
But the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan, and it's called the "Koran".
Sorry, I dont care about their plan as long as they are implementing it in Muslim countries. If there are no Muslims in our countries it doesnt matter. You dont want Muslims in our territory. Do you?
Mexico is important because it is a failed state. Failed states cause more problems, thus more political drama. Canada is stable and prosperous. It will do business with us and that's that. We won't greatly change Canada, and Canada will not greatly change us.
ReplyDeleteBut US has had a major impact on Mexico since the Mexican-American War. Mexicans traditionally eyed the gringo with a mix of awe, admiration, fear, envy, resentment, hatred. In a way, Mexicans define themselves in contrast to cold, modern, soulless, and 'racist' Yanquis. In another way, Mexicans want to be more like Anglos(though more wanna be like Afros, what with rap music and all. I wonder which group in Mexico feel greater resentment against the US? The rich white Hispanic elites or the mestizos and poor browns? It could be the rich white Mexicans. For the uneducated poor, US is a source of jobs. For the rich white Mexicans, the gringo is a challenge to Mexican elite authority. Also, American egalitarianism and democratism have been a threat to the old Mexican elites who wanted to keep the browns under wrap. Since the tide of democratization was unstoppable, the white Mexican elites kept the masses in line by fanning anti-gringo hatred. Mexican elites made themselves out to be fellow 'people of color' oppressed by those Norte Americanos; the oppressors portrayed themselves as fellow victims of white American 'racists'.)
For most of history, US had far more impact on Mexico than other way around(though to be sure, many American radicals went to Mexico to sow their wild ideological oates. If some went for vacationing and some went for natural resources, others went to blow things up. Mexico's instability and crisis-mode filled many with hope. It was also haven for Trotsky and other radical European emigres(who weren't welcome in Europe and the US). Guevara spent time there too. But, Mexican instability became a kind of stability, and everyone got used to it or bored by it. And as Cold War ended, ideology mattered less and POWER was what counted. Besides, the so-called PRI proved to be as corrupt and inept as the communists who ran Russia for 70 yrs. So, Mexico is now a narco-state.
With globalism and NAFTA, Mexico matters more to us than ever before. Demographically, it is wreaking havoc on the US. California could be the harbinger of the future.
So, Mexican history does matter. Not because it is stable and successful, like Canada's or Switzerland's, but because it's a failure, a constant source of instablity. If we had closed borders with Mexico, it wouldn't matter, but we have virtual open borders, and all those problems are spilling over here.
Demographics is destiny as they say. The failure of Mexico will matter more to us than the success of Canada in the future.
Mexico may not export great thinkers and scientists, but they export a lot of criminals, welfare cases, cheap labor(that the American elites love so much), and future voters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/us/08census.html?_r=4&hpw
Mexico matters to us in the way the Caucasus region matters to the Soviet Union and the Balkans mattered to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Empires are inherently unstable. If old empires had a center of power--Austrian Hapsburgs ran the Austro-Hungarian empire--, the North American empire is more unstable because it has no center. Mexico, Canada, and US are political equals. We cannot force Mexicans to change their ways. We can only plead, and it's not working.
There are two forms of instability. Acute, which every nation goes through. Chronic, which is the case with places like Afghanistan or Mexico.
ReplyDelete"Yeah, Steve, your insouciance is pretty freakin juvenile!
ReplyDeleteEverybody knows you're one of the most powerful opinion shapers in the country - sorry, the world - read by statesmen, presidents and prime ministers on several continents. Mubarak is probably checking iSteve on an hourly basis just to see what you say he should do."
Nah, Steve's no help to
Move-on-rak. Movey should check one of Gladwell's never-ending best-sellers to for the answer on how to dig himself out of the current hole.
I heard it's a case of "It's the economy stupid" in Egypt. Well, if people want jobs and Mubarak out, maybe Mubarak can offer them a deal, a kind of killing two birds with one stone. Egyptians should go to work to build new pyramids(which will create jobs), and when pyramids are finished, Mubarak will step down and go lie inside one of them.
ReplyDeleteWhat's really boring is America. Wall Street goons robbed us blind, but all we could up with is the Tea Party. WE should be protesting like the Egyptians. Egypt has Mubarak and we have Barack. Both are owned by the AIPAC gang.
ReplyDeleteI've been bored by it for about 2 weeks now.
ReplyDeleteI guess I just can't ever get very excited about news from the Middle East since it never seems to matter in the long run. What's that? Jews and Muslims still don't like each other? You don't say.
I was bored with the whole Middle East by mid-June 1967.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the Valley of the Kings, though. Preferably before the present-day vandals get any more bright ideas.
"If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over in Egypt, then your insouciance is going to look pretty dadgum juvenile in retrospect."
How so? It's possible for someone or something to be both deadly dull and a deadly threat. Until the threat becomes imminent, why bother engaging with the dullness?
It's not quite the same thing Steve.
ReplyDeleteIn Egypt we are seeing, in real time, the spectacle of a hated dictatorship being challenged by popular will.Whether it succeeds or not is uncertain at this point, but as spectators to history we can sit becak and watch the evening news and see the twists and turns of a real crisis play out by the day - a rare event last seen perhaps in 1979 and the downfall of the shah.
Mexico, however is I believe a fully functioning democracy and its ruling clique are pretty secure.The spectacle of unwashed indios occupying a town hall is minor and the atavistic Mexiac urge to sacrifice severed heads rather jaded to Americans assailed by gangbanger antics in the former SoCal.Mexico's malthusian trap is relieved by geopolitic's biggest blow-off valve, located north.
Egypt is located in the world's current cauldron, the middle east - a refion that increasingly resemble pre-1914 Europe of the habsburgs and ottomans - disaster waiting to happen, and a disaster Europe has never recovered from and never will.Add to to this fact a nuclear Iran, and it's potential global nuclear nuclear holocaust time.All it needs is that 'hapsburg moment', Lebabon 2008 was almost it.
Compared to all this Mexico has nothing of interest, not the severed heads or drugs to provide any real meat (no pun intended!) to the armchair historian geo strategist and pompous pontificator.
Not only is it OK to be bored with Egypt, it's your duty as a Patriotic American. You must repeat, loud and often, how you are not interested in anything at all that has to do with Middle East. You must state your profound uninterest at every single opportunity. If you don't believe me, ask commenters on this site.
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't worry about Egypt too much. They were one of the first places to settle down and plant crops and get wimpy. They have rarely had a strong nomadic pastoralist element among the natives, so hotheadness and cowboy behavior isn't as likely to catch fire and turn the place into Iran or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteThe big exception was the Mamluk Sultanate that kept out even the Mongols, but those guys were all your standard Turkic horse-riding, milk-drinking pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe, not native Egyptians.
I don't see why you guys are so obsessed with Mexico. It's not like anything that ever happened in Mexico is relevant to the U.S.
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't worry about Egypt too much. They were one of the first places to settle down and plant crops and get wimpy. They have rarely had a strong nomadic pastoralist element among the natives, so hotheadness and cowboy behavior isn't as likely to catch fire and turn the place into Iran or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteThe big exception was the Mamluk Sultanate that kept out even the Mongols, but those guys were all your standard Turkic horse-riding, milk-drinking pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe, not native Egyptians.
wrong, in so many ways. Mamlukes were white christian boys who had been taken from their famlies at birth and islamisized, the jannissaries.
second, the people who 'settled down' were not semetic arabs, who overran Egyp, nor Nubians, who overran egypt. they were probably some caucasian people, probably Meds, (not nordics as some asset)
Sorry Steve but philo-semites and anti-semites are agreed that if it affects Israel then it's news. You, I believe, are neither; you've got things in the right perspective and I'll take your indifference over the loving but disastrous concern of a Bill Clinton any day.
ReplyDelete"wrong, in so many ways. Mamlukes were white christian boys who had been taken from their famlies at birth and islamisized, the jannissaries.
ReplyDeletesecond, the people who 'settled down' were not semetic arabs, who overran Egyp, nor Nubians, who overran egypt. they were probably some caucasian people, probably Meds, (not nordics as some asset)"
There are two types of Mamluks. The earlier ones were indeed Central Asian Turks. Mamluk also became a catch-all term for a white Muslim. It was mostly applied to Caucasian whites, not European whites.
The problem with following news from some faraway region of the world is that you need to follow it for awhile (and know something about the region and history) before it makes sense. But becoming informed enough to have a non-cartoon view of things in the middle east, or elsewhere, has a high cost for most of us. I don't have family in that area, I don't speak any of the local languages, I never lived there, few of my friends have a strong interest in it, and I don't really need to travel there much. So unless I find the region fascinating for some reason, it's an awful lot of work to really know what's going on.
ReplyDeleteAs an analogy, imagine someone from China who has only the vaguest knowledge of US history or culture, trying to understand what the heck the 2010 midterm elections meant. Was it dangerous right-wingers taking control of the government? Or maybe crazies with guns having rallies? Or a reaction to some kind of plan to lower medical costs with sinister-sounding "death panels?" Or was it something to do with some kind of ethic politics somehow?
I don't know what he'd understand of this, but I'm pretty sure it would bear little resemblance to reality, because he just wouldn't know enough. Let him spend a few days watching occasional snippets of Fox and CNN coverage of the election, and he will remain bewildered.
Americans are deathly afraid of Muslims but not of Mexicans. That explains the difference.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the key point. Mexican narcotrafficantes aren't going to be flying airliners into buildings in the US. People in the American media (and to a lesser extent the public at large) are disdainful of Christians, but they're terrified of Muslims.
As Glenn Reynolds likes to point out, there's a moral hazard here. As every parent knows, if you lavish attention on people behaving badly you encourage bad behavior.
Mamluks and Janissaries aren't the same thing.
ReplyDeleteMost of the former were from the Caucasus, as were many of the latter.
My not very informed prediction: If the MB takes over in Egypt, it will have little impact on us. They pose no particular threat to us, since they're very far away and are several orders of magnitude less powerful than we are. They will probably be less friendly with Israel, and stop cooperating on the Gaza blockade, but won't pick an unwinnable fight with Israel.
ReplyDeleteIf we find their future government annoying, we should cut off their two billion dollar a year aid. That probably won't make them less annoying, but it will save us a couple billion dollars, and it will leave them with a couple billion dollars a year less money to be annoying with.
The answer is, BOTH are important, and neither are boring.
ReplyDeleteWant 50 million more Mexicans simply arriving in California and Texas? Then you better pay attention to Mexico's no longer slow motion collapse.
Want AQ's #2, Ayman Al Zawahari, replaying Lenin's train ride from Switzerland to St. Petersburg, and taking over Egypt? Then you'd better care about who runs it.
Egypt controls the Suez Canal and the Sumed pipeline through which substantial amounts of oil and cargo pass through. A new widespread ME war means defacto an Arab Oil Embargo. You might not care (or even cheer) if Israel is wiped out, but you will pay for it by gas at $10 or more per gallon. Better get used to moving into places like South Central at those prices. Or riding the bus not your private car. Egypt in the MB control means defacto, AQ's return and ruling there. Which means a huge threat to Saudi, and thus Saudi turning down the oil spigot to drive prices up and pay off internally to stave off bin Laden's return.
What is happening in Egypt is right out of Zawahari's playbook. It is what he wanted, and tried to bring about. As he has written extensively, his next step is to conquer Southern Europe through mass waves. He also wants to acquire nukes through Pakistan/China/North Korea.
BECAUSE America depends on imported oil, we need stability in the ME (unless you look forward to riding the equivalent of the Blue Line everyday) AND in Mexico (source of our illegals). Same goes for Haiti. Want a million Haitians showing up on Florida's shores?
Although I'm not exactly bored with Egypt, I don't see what we can do about the place one way or the other. It is what it is, and que sera sera.
ReplyDeleteWe have the luxury of laughing at the narcos because [if we overlook a little Che nostalgia and a sprinkling of liberation theology & reconquista theory] they are completely disorganized - sort of a Keystone Kops of criminality.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. Torture, beheadings, cross-border kidnappings and massacres, military and police in on the action ... they're a laugh a minute all right. And they're already duking it out in El Paso and Phoenix. Do you live there? Maybe you could stroll outside some time and yuck it up with them.
Thread Summary -
ReplyDeleteInsouciance: "N"
Lucius Vorenus: 0
Oh well, don't say I didn't try to warn you.
Who cares what genetic race they belonged to? -- that has nothing to do with the gulf between farmers and herders, or sedentary and nomadic people generally. That's the key, as I spelled out.
ReplyDeleteThat's also why Indonesia, with a huge Muslim population and history of Western imperialism, is nowhere close to Afghanistan or Arabia in the per capita rate of Islamic extremists / terrorists / etc. Basically none. They have no history of pastoralism, so no wild cowboy culture.
Keep your eye on the ball next time, dumbass.
Fred: "Not only that, but Manhattan must get the elite of Mexican illegals. They are quiet, industrious, and unobtrusive. Like little robots, almost."
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed!---It's really pretty mysterious. After all, anyone who spends a little time reading the commentary on rightwing or quasi-WN websites such as this one or VDare or Mangan's or a bunch of others knows perfectly well that Mexican illegals tend to be lazy, violent, criminal, and extremely "boisterous." And since these are exactly the characteristics of a model worker, that presumably explains why employers are so eager to hire them, despite serious legal penalties for doing do.
This reminds me of when I first visited Japan many, many years ago. Having watched a lot of Japanese movies, I naturally expected to see Ninja assassins and Yakuza gangsters dueling with swords and wracking up huge body-counts on every city street. I even thought I might see Godzilla and a few of his rival monsters destroy all of Tokyo for the tenth or eleventh time. But none of that happened---all I saw were vast oceans of quiet "sararimen" going off to their office jobs every morning. I really felt I'd been cheated on my plane fare.
Ha, ha, ha, ha...
SFG said... Are any of the major Mexican newspapers translated into English?
ReplyDeleteThe National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) puts out a daily translation of news--mostly astonishing crime news--from newspapers south of the border. It's called the M3 Report.
Why not combine Jesus Malverde and Santa muerte? Then a jolly ol' saint nick can visits all the little drug dealer residences while they sleep and if they've been good little boys all the policia will be curled up dead around their house in the morning...
ReplyDeleteWho cares what genetic race they belonged to? -- that has nothing to do with the gulf between farmers and herders, or sedentary and nomadic people generally. That's the key, as I spelled out.
ReplyDeletebut sweetheart, some peoples are genetically predisposed to be one of these, but not all of these, Darling.
OT. Jobs at 23.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY
Egypt has Mubarak and we have Barack. --anon
ReplyDeleteAnd aren't we blessed? From Wikipedia on Baruch:
The root B-R-K meaning "blessing" is also present in other Semitic languages. The most common Arabic form is the passive form Mubarak, but the form Barack is also used.
(Redundancy is Wikipedia's, not mine.)
Whiskey: Want AQ's #2, Ayman Al Zawahari, replaying Lenin's train ride from Switzerland to St. Petersburg, and taking over Egypt? Then you'd better care about who runs it.
ReplyDeleteThe Anti-Gnostic: Oh yeah. Torture, beheadings, cross-border kidnappings and massacres, military and police in on the action ... they're a laugh a minute all right. And they're already duking it out in El Paso and Phoenix. Do you live there? Maybe you could stroll outside some time and yuck it up with them.
I didn't say that the narcos aren't evil.
Obviously they are.
But they represent a disorganized evil.
The Muslims, like the Bolsheviks, are united by the umbrella of ideology, and so present a systematized, coordinated threat to Western Civilization.
"We like hookers & blow, and are willing to murder for them" is not a unifying ideology.
"Allah promises me 72 virgins in heaven if I murder you" is a unifying ideology.
Now you could equally well point out that the narcos, backed by the fertility rate of their aboriginal Amerindian demographic base, pose an existential threat to America [and you would be correct if you did argue that], but it is not the systematized, coordinated existential threat which Islam [or the Frankfurt School] poses.
Whiskey, I bet you $10,000 at 100:1 odds (in your favor), that Ayman al Zawahiri will not be part of any Egyptian government.
ReplyDeleteThat's because Mexico is next to a big shitty country called United States of America. But Egypt is bordering the most important country on earth: Israel.
ReplyDeleteYep.
We cannot force Mexicans to change their ways. We can only plead, and it's not working.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember the "exact" figures for Mexicans living in Mexico vs. Mexicans living in America. Something like 20+% of Mexicans are living in America.
Mexico's 2nd biggest foreign source of income (after oil) is remittances from Mexicans working in America. That's a LOT of money.
We've got plenty of leverage on Mexico. Mexico's ability to change is far more in doubt than our ability to induce change in Mexico.
Sending all the Mexicans back to Mexico would run a good chance of precipitating Mexican collapse.
I can explain it. Enthusiasm and optimism for the prospects of a democratic Egypt are just another form of SWPL posturing intended to prove one's superiority to other white people. Just like professing confidence that ghetto kids will excel in calculus if only they are given the chance to take it. And just as likely.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty hard to see how low IQ in Egypt would be otherwise than central to the outcomes of the current turmoil. All the lofty emphasis about democracy
ReplyDeletedoes not quite confront the fact that a huge amount of the population base is not urban, not educated much at all, and by the work of such scholars as Lynn, the overall population IQ is very low.
Democracy does not work to its aims in such a circumstance. When such a nation "finds itself" it is not too unlikely it'll be back close to that which it has purportedly just now departed.