April 21, 2013

Diversity is their strength in Dagestan

From the NYT:
Search for Home Led Suspect to Land Marred by Strife 
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ANDREW ROTH 
MAKHACHKALA, Russia — Tamerlan Tsarnaev had already found religion by the time he landed in Dagestan, a combustible region in the North Caucasus that has become the epicenter of a violent Islamic insurgency in Russia and a hub of jihadist recruitment. What he seemed to be yearning for was a home. 
... “When he came, he talked about religion,” said his aunt, Patimat Suleimanova, who saw him a few days after he arrived in January 2012. 
The reunion with his aunt and uncle in their third-floor apartment on Timiryazeva Street was a happy one, marked by contrasts with his life in America. “He said, ‘The people here are completely different. They pray different,’ ” Ms. Suleimanova recalled in an interview Sunday. 
“Listen to the call to prayer — the azan — that they play from the mosque,” Mr. Tsarnaev said, according to his aunt. “It makes me so happy, to hear it from all sides, that you can always hear it — it makes me want to go to the mosque.” 
“What, you can’t hear the mosques there in America?” she recalled asking, and he replied, “Something like that.” 
Mr. Tsarnaev stayed for six months in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where he had spent most of his teenage years and where his parents had returned to live after several years in the United States.  
... This continuing strife between Islamic militants and the Russian authorities receives little attention outside Russia, but it has yielded a long string of terror attacks, many of them in Dagestan, that have caused many more deaths than the three in Boston. It is a cycle of bloodshed that Mr. Tsarnaev would have experienced close at hand when he was living here. 
... According to his aunt, he was born in Kalmykia, a barren patch of Russian territory along the Caspian Sea. His family moved to Kyrgyzstan, an independent former Soviet republic in Central Asia, then to Chechnya, the turbulent republic in the Russian Federation that is his father’s ancestral home. Then to Dagestan. And then to America, where Tamerlan finished high school, married and had a daughter, now a toddler. 
Wherever he went, though, he did not quite seem to fit in. He was a Chechen who had never really lived in Chechnya, a Russian citizen whose ancestors were viciously oppressed by the Russian government, a green-card holder in the United States whose path to citizenship there seemed at least temporarily blocked. ...
Two weeks after his arrival, another grenade was tossed in a residential area. It was apparently meant to draw the police into an ambush, because several minutes later, in a pattern eerily similar to the marathon bombing, a larger bomb hidden in a garbage pail went off, killing a small child and injuring another. 
And so it went all the time he was in Dagestan: two or three deadly bombings a month on average, constant “special operations” in which the federal police killed dozens of people they said were Muslim insurgents, and numerous other attacks. ...
They twice traveled together to Chechnya to visit relatives, the father said, but he otherwise stayed near home. 
Dagestan is a place where the graffiti outside one mosque says, “Victory or Paradise.” 
Living in such circumstances may have had an impact on Mr. Tsarnaev even if he did not join any organized militant group, said Mairbek Vatchagaev, president of the Association of Caucasus Studies in Paris. He noted that the violence is worse in Dagestan than in Chechnya or Ingushetia, neighboring republics that are also predominantly Muslim and have a history of violence. 
Mr. Vatchgaev and others noted the numerous crosscurrents in Mr. Tsarnaev’s profile: the sleeping-in that could conflict with morning prayers, for instance, or his desire to leave the United States but also to become an American citizen. Mr. Tsarnaev applied for citizenship last fall, three months after returning from Dagestan and around the time it was granted to his younger brother, Dzhokhar. 
Something, it seems, may have driven Tamerlan Tsarnaev to violence, and Russian news outlets have reported that investigators are looking into connections he may have had with mosques known to promote extremist views.

From Wikipedia's article on Dagestan, some iSteveish sections:
The Republic of Dagestan (pron.: /dɑːɡɨˈstɑːn/ or /dæɡɨˈstæn/; Russian: Респу́блика Дагеста́н, Respublika Dagestan; also spelled Daghestan) is a federal subject (a republic) of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea. 
With a population of 2,910,249,[7] Dagestan is ethnically very diverse (it is Russia's most heterogeneous republic, where no ethnic group forms a majority) with several dozen ethnic groups and subgroups inhabiting the republic, most of which speak Caucasian and Turkic languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Azeri, Lezgin, and Laks.[13] Ethnic Russians comprise about 4.5% of Dagestan's total population. ... 
Dagestan has been a scene of low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism since the 1990s. According to International Crisis Group, the militant Islamist organization Shariat Jamaat is responsible for much of the violence.[16] Much of the tension is rooted in an internal Islamic conflict between traditional Sufi groups advocating secular government and more recently introduced Salafist teachers preaching the implementation of Sharia law in Dagestan....
The word Dagestan is of Turkic and Persian origin. Dağ means 'mountain' in Turkish, and -stan is a Sanskrit suffix meaning 'land'. The word Dagestan therefore means 'the land of mountains'. 
Names for Dagestan [in the various languages spoken in Dagestan] 
Aghul – Республика Дагъустан (Respublika Daɣustan)
Arabic – جمهورية داغستان (Jumhūrīyat Dāghistān)
Avar – Дагъистаналъул Республика (Daɣistanałul Respublika)
Azerbaijani – Дағыстан Республикасы / Dağıstan Respublikası
Chechen – Деxастан пачхьалкъ (Dexastan Pačxalqʼ)
Dargin – Дагъистанес Республика (Daɣistanes Respublika)
Kumyk – Дагъыстан Республикасы (Dağıstan Respublikası)
Lezgian – Дагъустандин Республика (Daɣustandin Respublika)
Lak – Дагъустаннал Республика (Daɣustannal Respublika)
Nogai – Дагъыстан Республикасы (Dağıstan Respublikası)
Persian – جمهوری داغستان (Jomhuriye Dâghestân)
Russian – Респу́блика Дагеста́н (Respublika Dagestan)
Rutul – Республика Дагъустан (Respublika Daɣustan)
Tabasaran – Дагъустан Республика (Daɣustan Respublika)
Tsakhur – Республика Дагъустан (Respublika Daɣustan)
Turkish – Dağıstan Cumhuriyeti ...
History 
... The institution of heavy taxation, coupled with the expropriation of estates and the construction of fortresses (including Makhachkala), electrified highlanders into rising under the aegis of the Muslim Imamate of Dagestan, led by Ghazi Mohammed (1828–32), Gamzat-bek (1832–34) and Shamil (1834–59). This Caucasian War raged until 1864, when Shamil was captured and the Khanate of Avaristan was abolished. ...
As with its neighbors Georgia, Azerbaijan and Chechnya, Dagestan developed a renewed nationalist movement in the late 1980s. Dagestani nationalism, however, rested on very unstable foundations, as the republic was (and is) extremely multiethnic, with many of its regions being recent additions, and even the existence of a unified Dagestan was relatively new with little historical context (previously, Avaria had been a separate entity, and most areas were completely unrelated to any sort of centralizing government). Dagestan's new elite, composed overwhelmingly of Avars, Dargins and Russians founded and consolidated its power. To this day, Dagestan is a very troubled region. There are various underground Wahhabist/Islamist movements (some more moderate than others, there was also a constitutional Islamizationist party before it was banned), originating as early as the late 80s. 
Dagestan's poor population, often displeased with the "official" clergy (who they deem as government puppets, either of the Dagestani government or of Russia), is occasionally drawn to these groups as a form or reaction against the government (not in the least because of the unifying power of the common Muslim religion in a highly multiethnic area paired with the promises of the Islamists to "end inequality, patriarchalism and corruptions of the true faith" paired with their occasional assistance to poor communities). 
However, attraction to Islamism varies between sectors of the population. People from Southern Dagestan, poorer people, people with a lower education level and people from certain ethnic groups are more inclined to support Islamist tendencies.[citation needed] Whilst people from Northern Dagestan, Russians (who are not Muslim), Turkic peoples (who are often highly syncretic in their practice and often drawn instead to Turkic nationalism as a revolt against the authorities), more wealthy people, people from the hundred-or-so "governmental families", people with a higher education, and groups who are officially "not-native" to Dagestan (Russians, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, etc., regardless of actual nativeness they are not "titular groups") are less inclined.[citation needed] Separatism is also prominent: various groups resent the dominance of Dargins, Avars and Russians in government and revolt against this by calling Dagestan an artificial nation and demanding higher self-determination (i.e. secessionism). This is most noticeable among the Kumyks.[citation needed] 
During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the traveler came as a large and moving Torb. Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you! [citation needed] 

Oh, wait, that last paragraph isn't from Wikipedia; it's Rick Moranis's prophecy about Gozer the Gozerian in Ghostbusters. Sorry. Back to Wikipedia:
In 1999, a group of Muslim fundamentalists from Chechnya, led by warlords Shamil Basayev and Ibn Al-Khattab, launched a military invasion of Dagestan, with the aim of creating an "independent Islamic State of Dagestan". Although Basayev and Khattab had expected that they would be welcomed as liberators, the Dagestanis instead saw them as occupiers and unwelcome religious fanatics, and the initial resistance against the invasion was provided by the Dagestani police, spontaneous militias and villagers.[citation needed] Once Russian military help arrived, the invaders were beaten and driven back to Chechnya. As a retaliation, Russian forces subsequently reinvaded Chechnya later that year.[citation needed] 
Demographics

Because its mountainous terrain impedes travel and communication, Dagestan is unusually ethnically diverse, and still largely tribal. It is Russia's most heterogeneous republic. Unlike most other parts of Russia, Dagestan's population is rapidly growing.[18] 
Population: 2,910,249 (2010 Census);[7] 2,576,531 (2002 Census);[19] 1,802,579 (1989 Census).[20]

So, Dagestan is demographically vibrant as well as diverse.

But how's that working out for Dagestan?

Seriously, Dagestan should stand as an object lesson to the DC-NY-Cambridge conventional wisdom about the benefits of multiculturalism. Everybody in Dagestan knows that diversity is their weakness. The lack of solidarity keeps the place futile and backward. So, the people of Dagestan look to rise above their diverse dysfunction, their lack of nationalism, through one of two larger concepts -- Russianism or Islamism.

Yet, Russianism and Islamism are the two things the neconservatives say they fear most.

34 comments:

  1. If you're interested, here is the younger ones prom pic from 2011.

    http://i.imgur.com/zLBFzlf.jpg

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  2. It is rather naive to believe that the tragedy in Boston will be enough to derail 'comprehensive immigration reform' (which may or may not pass, in some form -- I don't know). Virtually the entire weight of the media and the executive branch of the federal government is behind it (not to mention a significant number of elected representatives of both parties). One can foresee a few choruses of 'we can't let the terrorists win', and a short postponement, followed by a renewed push.

    See this comment for a further example of the kind of, uhh, argument that will be advanced.

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  3. Torn and Frayed4/22/13, 12:53 AM

    If we recall that a ruling class is an organized minority which dominates a disorganized majority, then we must admit that the diversity of the ruled class is indeed the ruling class’ strength.

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  4. This is an object lesson of how diversity is strength. Can you imagine the sort of ethnic cuisine on offer in Dagestan? Just like Detroit, only with better food!

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  5. "If we recall that a ruling class is an organized minority which dominates a disorganized majority, then we must admit that the diversity of the ruled class is indeed the ruling class’ strength."

    By that logic, with all this Byzantine divide and conquer of minority against minority, surely Dagestan must be a Jewtopia, a veritable second Israel! Well then, let's turn the whole world into Dagestan and Chechnya to cement the Jewish position of ruling classedness once and for all! At the same time, it will prevent pogroms ever happening again, ever! This plan is foolproof I tell you, foolproof!

    http://forward.com/articles/162028/dagestans-mountain-jews-flee-chaos/?p=all

    Chechnya isn't much better either.

    http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/01/09/3116411/chechnya-to-rebuild-only-synagogue-75-years-after-closure

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  6. a new feudalism is dawning. nobility = CEO's and financiers, commoners = diverse lethargic tax-slave sheeple living near or at the subsistence level, no public sphere to speak of (education, police, utilities etc), etc.

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  7. "By that logic, with all this Byzantine divide and conquer of minority against minority, surely Dagestan must be a Jewtopia, a veritable second Israel!"

    Actually, there are Jews living in Dagestan - the Mountain Jews. They appear to be kinda badass: http://en.wikipedia.org
    /wiki/Mountain_Jews

    Based upon the list of notable Mountain Jews, most of them seem to have moved to less diverse Israel. Given their prominence in the IDF, it seems they have retained the feistiness they developed as residents of diverse Dagestan.

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  8. Torn and Frayed4/22/13, 4:09 AM

    Anonymous @ 1:30 AM

    Are you serious? Or perhaps Scotch-Irish? Or perhaps Ruling Class?

    The concepts of “ruling class” and “Jew” are not interchangeable. Sure in SOME societies Jews make up a disproportionate percentage of the ruling class, but the two terms are hardly synonyms. Are you really saying the relative absence of Jews in China means that there is no such thing as a Chinese ruling class?

    And by the way ruling classes can be and often are diverse and struggle against each other.

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  9. I couldn't find it mentioned clearly; here, or on wikipedia, or in the boston globe article: What was Tamerlan and Russel's current relationship status?

    Were they divorced, separated? Custody of the toddler?

    If he lost the custody of the toddler in a case "Tsarnaev vs City of Boston" or sthg, I would understand how his tribal mind could go into a revenge mode..

    For a guy married with child(ren), neckbeard madrassa student wanting to cash in his coupon for 72 virgins explanation doesn't make sense at all.

    So does his brothers involvement. It's not organized terrorism, it's not lone wolf terrorism. But it would make sense if it was a family matter.

    Similarly, what was his employment status?


    BTW, FBI was onto him for at least 2 years. Baad, Baad Intelligence!

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  10. >>The lack of solidarity keeps the place futile and backward.<<

    This is exactly the point of diversity, and why the elite- per Gen. Casey and Obama- prefer it over basic safety. Lack of solidarity may make a society weaker, but it also makes it easer to rule.

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  11. Steve said: Yet, Russianism and Islamism are the two things the neoconservatives say they fear most.

    Hunsdon: As the American Committee on Peace in the Caucasus shows, the neocons hate Islam but they hate hate HATE the Russians. (Thanks, Whiskey, for the hate hate HATE thing, it's coming in handy.) I had a lot of admiration for Shamil Basayev as a combat leader, but hell, even for me Beslan was a couple of tokes over the line. Midge Dector and NorPod and Woolsey, though, they remained true believers. RUSSIA BAD!

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  12. Sailer once again assuming that humans are like the Borg from Star Trek, with a hive-mind and no individuality.

    It all boils down to individual people and what they do. I have visited Harvard, Yale and other places with EXTREMELY high levels of cultural as well as ethnic diversiy, and guess what? The white, east Asian, Asian Indian,etc, students all get along fine. They are highly inelligent, gentle and relate to each other in a civilized manner.

    Sailer in one of his aricles claimed that the only reason why Ivy League professor and students can be "liberal" is because Massachussets is full of aggressive Irish-Americans who keep the blacks in line. He misses the point that the Ivy Leaguers can be pretty libertarian with each other and it works just fine. A simple logical deduction tells us that Massachusetts would be much better off if BOTH the aggressive Irish and blacks were not there. Think wha Sailer is saying:

    "Thank goodness that there is this group of violent people around to keep in check the other group of violent people."

    This is stupid. Obviously, we would all be better off if BOTH were no around. We, the peaceful people, should be so thankful!

    And nationalism, Sailer, is the greatest source of disgrace in this World. I laughed out loud when you claimed that "globalists" and "cosmopolitans" killed Khaddafi. That is so terrible, because he was such na angel. In reality, it is naionalists who cause all of the World's wars. When have we seen libertarians picking up weapons to kill for cosmopolitanism? NEVER. When do you see men picking up weapons to kill for nationalist causes? ALL THE TIME. As Einstein once said:

    "Nationalism is the cancer of Mankind."

    In the 20th Century alone, nationalist killed 80 million young men, and Sailer wants MORE of it. More nationalism, more deaths. Nationalism is nothing more than tribalism 2.0. It is basically the pre-Neolithic human social organization revamped. It is time we get rid of these atavisms once and for all. With nuclear weapons and such, we either get rid of nationalism and proceed towards a global consesus or we will eventually blow ourselves up in the next 100 years and never become a Type I civilization in the Kardashev Scale.

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  13. Reading from the Wikipedia article, Dagestan seems to be a country that Borges would have loved to invent for one of his short stories

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  14. To us old movie buffs who rely on Hollywood for our history, this Chechen stuff is old news. Years ago Steve Reeves starred in White warrior. As described by IMDb
    " The story of Hadji Murad, a 19th-century Chechen chieftain who led his warriors in a fight against the invading forces of the Russian Czar."
    So the Russians have had their problems with Chechens for a long time.

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  15. It seems that their mother was arrested for shoplifting when she was in the US:

    http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/04/mom-of-bomber-suspects-was-arrested-for-shoplifting/

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  16. Florida resident4/22/13, 8:13 AM

    Can somebody clarify, what was the source of income of that family ?
    Community college, UMass Dartmouth (sure, not the Ivy League Dartmouth College, but still …) cost money even to start there. Cars, gym, etc. ?
    I read somewhere that Mrs. Tsarnaeva (mother of terrorists) was found to have stolen $ 1,600 from Lord and Taylor. Usually thiefs get caught for small fraction of their deeds.

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  17. Speaking of the great sheykh Shamyl, he is reputed to have said "I am weaving a rope to hang engineers, students and in general all those who write from left to right." It seems anti-westernism goes back a ways in the caucasus

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  18. Much of the radical and militant style of Islam that's been rising in the past thirty years has been due to the export of the Wahhabi version throughout the Muslim world from it's center, Saudi Arabia. They've spent a lot of money building mosques and financing religious leaders who espouse their version of Islam. They've used their oil money to rekindle interest in Islam in former Soviet states where religious interest had been rather apathetic. They've financed their brand of Islam everywhere, from Europe and the US to Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus, etc.
    Our ally Saudi Arabia is the kernel of evil in all this. Many Chechens, as well as others, have become radicalized by the constant militant and emotional preachings. Some have ended up far away from Chechenia, fighting other fights in the belief that it was all one jihad. In this it seems they have been cynically exploited as zealous cannon fodder. Supposedly some have ended up in Syria, fighting the government. As is well known, the rebels are instruments of other governments, including the US, who have their own goals. Chechen breakaway was supported by Brzezinski and prominent neo-cons. One would think they'd be aghast at radical Islam gaining a foothold somewhere but apparently not; they have a silent cooperation with it, finding it useful.

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  19. marred by strife

    To repeat a comment I made the other day - to immigrationista liberals that strife is entirely independent of the population in the area.

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  20. Awesome! Sly Ghostbusters reference gets you a donation from me my next paycheck. Always loved just even the cadence of that speech ("they chose a new form for him"). Apparently Ackroyd actually believes in a lot of that paranormal stuff- comes from a long line of Canadian spiritualists.

    Don't have much to add here. Somalis are what you get when you cross bin Laden with Willi Horton. Chechens are a real-life biker gang straight out of Mad Max. Yet whiter sort of people (East Coast corridor elite, Midwest Lutherans) just can't seem to get enough of them. Who could have predicted this? EVERYONE! Media really stuck their foots in this one by blitzing us with so much coverage it'll be hard to flush it down the memory hole. Perhaps they can eventually spin this as the acts of 2 gay marriage opponents.

    FYI- from your older article on Taki's you said Obama's ideal career would have been as a "Muslimist"- intermediary between the worlds of Islam and the West. Correct technical term for this would have been- dragoman.

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  21. Prediction:

    The neo-con noise machine will try to goad us into blaming (real) Russia and not Islam for this. Ergo the "solution" will be to expand NATO and the nuke defense shield to all of Russia's neighbors but not Russia itself.

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  22. Nick Diaz: Shut up. I explain.

    Nationalism is the only glue, proven by history, to provide shelter from predatory elites and a good life for most of the people. Speaking as someone who had ancestors fight in the Mexican, Civil, WWI, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War, let me again tell you:

    SHUT UP.

    You have neither the right nor the ability to speak of America and those who fought for it. Your family history is what? Your family fought for America? Nope. Only and until your family has shed blood for America do you have any right to speak of America and Nationalism.

    The Islamic conquests, Persian Conquests, Alexander, Rome, Carthage, Egyptian Pharoahs, Hittites, Assyrians, Tamerlane, Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, the dynastic wars of the Hapsburgs, the Thirty Years War, the Northern Crusades, Saxon Wars, etc. all were multi-national imperial wars causing much grief and bloodshed. The cumulative death toll was horrific.

    And the only antidote to nationalism is more nationalism. Britain did not stand alone against Hitler for PC and "diversity." Neither did Soviet soldiers die in the tens of millions for Gay Marriage and Multiculturalism. Nationalism can get out of hand, so too can exercise. But like exercise it is critical to a healthy body politic.

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  23. Anon -- your conflating Israeli Jews, mostly the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who concluded that only their own ethnostate under arms will provide protection, with Arab Jews cleansed and moving to Israel as refugees, topped up by Soviet/Russian emigres, with American Jews who are indistinguishable from WASPy and for that matter, Irish Boston Americans.

    The thing about Boston is that a mayor like Thomas Menino, or the Kennedy Family, or Elizabeth Warren, have attitudes pretty much identical to the descendants of the Puritans. They view themselves as a beacon of light in total darkness, pre-ordained "saved" in some way, hate symbolism and traditional celebrations (the Puritans banned Christmas), love "meetings and a lecture," regulate every single aspect of daily life, have enormous pressures for conformity (straight out of Ibsen, the Puritans are merely Danelaw immigrants to the US); and hatred of other English speaking cultures particularly their polar opposite, the English/Scots border peoples.

    The tragedy of the Western World is the triumph unopposed of this culture -- with organic group think reinforcement, its real strength in the liberation of women and their critical roles in society. It has real strengths: low crime among its people, general social equality, demand for no flaunting of power and privilege, no ritual humiliation of those lower on the scale.

    But as Steve notes, it is coming undone by its internal contradictions. It cannot have low crime and fear of violence and all that implies: an open rather than fortress architecture, public spaces, high trust, a strong communal life, with lots of "vibrant" immigrants.

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  24. @Whiskey

    Ahh, Nationalism.

    How else could we get good young men to die for free (relatively) for the profit of predatory elites?

    http://i.imgur.com/n8bB5DY.jpg

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  25. Nationalism is nothing more than tribalism 2.0. It is basically the pre-Neolithic human social organization revamped. It is time we get rid of these atavisms once and for all.

    So says the man from La Raza. Everyone is allowed to be tribal save white Europeans.

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  26. Re: Whiskey's comment at 4/22/13, 11:46 AM

    Holly crap, I actually agree with something Whiskey just wrote.

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  27. @Whiskey

    "Nick Diaz: Shut up. I explain.

    Nationalism is the only glue, proven by history, to provide shelter from predatory elites and a good life for most of the people. Speaking as someone who had ancestors fight in the Mexican, Civil, WWI, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War, let me again tell you:

    SHUT UP.

    You have neither the right nor the ability to speak of America and those who fought for it. Your family history is what? Your family fought for America? Nope. Only and until your family has shed blood for America do you have any right to speak of America and Nationalism.

    The Islamic conquests, Persian Conquests, Alexander, Rome, Carthage, Egyptian Pharoahs, Hittites, Assyrians, Tamerlane, Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, the dynastic wars of the Hapsburgs, the Thirty Years War, the Northern Crusades, Saxon Wars, etc. all were multi-national imperial wars causing much grief and bloodshed. The cumulative death toll was horrific.

    And the only antidote to nationalism is more nationalism. Britain did not stand alone against Hitler for PC and "diversity." Neither did Soviet soldiers die in the tens of millions for Gay Marriage and Multiculturalism. Nationalism can get out of hand, so too can exercise. But like exercise it is critical to a healthy body politic."

    "Whiskey", I have already told you before that you are a stupid person with intellectual pretentions. Your arrogant, condescending tone does not suit you. And the fact that you have the audacity to talk to me, someone who's intelligence vastly surpases yours, like this only adds to how contemptible you are.

    You claim nationalism offers protection from "predatory elites". How are "international" elites predatory? Most businessmen who have asses in myriad countries create value in all the societies they have businesses at. Consider the BMW Corporation, which started as a family business. They have factories in both Germany and the U.S, and they create value in BOTH societies. How are they "predating" by virtue of being not "loyal" to any given country? They create jobs in BOTH countries, and they offer value to both countries.

    And how can you bring up Genghis Khan and Rome as examples to prove your point? Rome's wars started as NAIONALIST wars of self-defense. They conquered and expanded their empire for ROME. In fact, Roman conquest and the formation of a tran-national empire brought PEACE. Ever heard of Pax Romana, moron? The same for Genghis Khan. He conquered for his tribe of Turanid Mongols. And while Mongol rule was brutal, it led to LESS warfare in territories that were conqered by them. It is tribalism(nationalism) that creates wars. Trans-nationalism actally DECREASE warfare.

    You missed the gist of my argument, that it all boils down to INDIVIDUALS. The fact that inteligent and educated people of different ethnicities get along fine disproves your theory that nationalism based on ethnic and cultural ties are needed for a happy society.

    And finally, I can say whatever I want about America. Do you understand? I will say whatever I want, and what your family did is not relevant as I judge merit individally. My ancestors are not relevant. And yo WILL accept more immigrants, as you can't do anything about it.

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  28. Ok, I get it. Nikki D isn't real, he's a troll. Unless someone is posting in his name w/o permission.

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  29. Chicago said "Much of the radical and militant style of Islam that's been rising in the past thirty years has been due to the export of the Wahhabi version throughout the Muslim world from it's center, Saudi Arabia."

    While this is true in most of the world ,Chechniya was always somewhat radicalized in its islam, as witness Shamyl etc. This is somewhat surprising as the dominant strain of Islam in Chechniya was naqshbandi tariqa a sufi sect, but blood will out I suppose.

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  30. FL resident, I've been asking the same question. Maybe big bro's wife gets some gelt from her medical professional parents, but tooling around in a Mercedes with no visible means of support? His "only American friend" was a murdered drug dealer, so maybe Steve was on to something a few posts ago. Chechens acting Checheny...

    UMass Dartmouth (formerly Southeastern Massachusetts University, or SMU) is the redheaded stepchild of the UMass system. It's a community college writ large. It tells you what kind of school Cambridge Rindge & Latin is when little bro, a CR&L honor student, managed to get seven "F" grades in three semesters at a totally remedial place like UMD.

    Nick Diaz, the "tough Irish-Americans" in Boston have been bought off by the Ivy Leaguers. Someone has to be cops, firefighters, MBTA stiffs, etc. What the prison guards are to Cali, the almost 100% Irish, six-figure earning Probation Department is to Mass. It's a position so lucrative and sought after that the former head, John O'Brien, on trial for corruption, had to have his secretary keep an Excel file of campaign contributions and who was related to whom. O'Brien got off, and his secretary just got another state job.

    Steve, kudos for the recent output.

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  31. "Based upon the list of notable Mountain Jews, most of them seem to have moved to less diverse Israel. Given their prominence in the IDF, it seems they have retained the feistiness they developed as residents of diverse Dagestan. "

    That was my point. From the first article I linked to:

    "After 12 centuries of comfortable co-existence with the Muslim majority, the so-called Mountain Jews are fleeing to Israel. Their numbers have gone from 50,000 to 4,780 over two decades, and their unique culture is literally dying out."

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  32. 'The concepts of “ruling class” and “Jew” are not interchangeable. Sure in SOME societies Jews make up a disproportionate percentage of the ruling class, but the two terms are hardly synonyms. Are you really saying the relative absence of Jews in China means that there is no such thing as a Chinese ruling class?'

    No. But China is not particularly diverse now, is it? And the Chinese ruling class seem to be ruling over it fine without having to import every warm body it can find from around the world in order to supposedly stabilise its rule. Which particular ruling class has found it supposedly necessary to do that? To my country? Which was my point, along with that the endpoint of all this willy nilly immigration is a country that is a lot less liveable and useful for them. But rather than look at what is actually "good for Jews" (TM), they seem more beholden to the Emma Lazarus poem than to their own best interests.

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  33. "We read the article with some care. The passage recalled by Bioy was perhaps the only surprising one. The rest of it seemed very plausible, quite in keeping with the general tone of the work and (as is natural) a bit boring. Reading it over again, we discovered beneath its rigorous prose a fundamental vagueness. Of the fourteen names which figured in the geographical part, we only recognized three - Khorasan, Armenia, Erzerum - interpolated in the text in an ambiguous way. Of the historical names, only one: the impostor magician Smerdis, invoked more as a metaphor. The note seemed to fix the boundaries of Uqbar, but its nebulous reference points were rivers and craters and mountain ranges of that same region. We read, for example, that the lowlands of Tsai Khaldun and the Axa Delta marked the southern frontier and that on the islands of the delta wild horses procreate. All this, on the first part of page 918. In the historical section (page 920) we learned that as a result of the religious persecutions of the thirteenth century, the orthodox believers sought refuge on these islands, where to this day their obelisks remain and where it is not uncommon to unearth their stone mirrors. The section on Language and Literature was brief. Only one trait is worthy of recollection: it noted that the literature of Uqbar was one of fantasy and that its epics and legends never referred to reality, but to the two imaginary regions of Mlejnas and Tlön..."

    Borges

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  34. Nicky D.'s "education" in Chicano Studies is wonderful to behold. His "analysis" is that people are INDIVIDUALS.

    Brilliant work, son. You make Whiskey look like Thucydides -- no mean feat.

    Since by your lights nationalism is the scourge of mankind, I am sure you agree that hey, hey, ho, ho, Chicano Studies got to go.

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