Your American Masters

[xoxoxoBruce]

I know what we're not missing....water.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

...I'd lay odds on China. Seems to me they're biding their time the last couple of decades.

yeah, but do you see how they treat their dogs?

Originally Posted by Aliantha

I live in a country where there's less than 25 million residents. Very small...

Oh, come on. Great Britian is small and they ruled the world, baby! They've never gotten over that, apparently.

[Aliantha]

Well, when you live in a country that's over 70% desert, water is always going to be in short supply.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well, when you live in a country that's over 70% desert, water is always going to be in short supply.

Yes, it's the same on the west coast of the US. Beautiful along the coast, but as you go inland water starts to get scarce.

From what I've seen of Australia, in pictures/TV/internet, parts of the country are incredibly beautiful.
The people are nice too. I guess being on the bottom of the world, you spend so much time trying to keep from falling off, you're too busy to give anybody any grief.

Just kidding....I guess this is the top of the world because people up here wrote the description.

New Zealand looks beautiful, too, but I think I'd get damn sick of climbing hills.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Middle Eastern men think Western women are all whores and Western men are castrated ninnies and they can't figure out how a bunch of whores and ninnies are winning the game.

They're wrong?

[MsSparkie]

I fully support the U.S.A. and always have. :-) I support the fight against oppressors and dictators and tyrants and murderers and fanatics. Trying to imagine how anyone can support the "bad guys" and it just blows me away. I suppose it's due to poverty and no education and brain washing. But you would think they would want in their hearts for themselves and their familes...the standard of living the west has. And if they would stop fighting and hating and become peaceful and democratic it's doable. WTF? How do you reach them and get them to see the good possibilities that exists for friendship and trade and tourism and cultural exchange, etc etc????????

The need to wake up. Drop leaflets on them every day in their own language reaching out to their intellectual and logical side, and not the emotional freaking out side.

They also need a sense of humour!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by MsSparkie

I fully support the U.S.A. and always have. :-)

I must say, this sentiment is not at all usual from our foreign friends. Thanks! For the record, despite what I say about Frogs (my mother is one) I like Canada.

I think a lot of the hatred is because they see the Western world as evil, godless (or, Mohammed-less) demons who can't keep women in their place.
Middle Eastern men think Western women are all whores and Western men are castrated ninnies and they can't figure out how a bunch of whores and ninnies are winning the game.

[Undertoad]

Middle Eastern men think Western women are all whores and Western men are castrated ninnies and they can't figure out how a bunch of whores and ninnies are winning the game.

This is exactly right, I think.

It's not just that Israel is full of Jooos. It's that it's massively successful.

This is totally unacceptable to the average *intelligent* Arab Muslim because Allah is supposed to kick their ass nine different ways. It isn't supposed to turn out like this, where the Muslims are undeveloped and backwards and, where there isn't oil, desperately poor. But these cultures have several points wrong on Ralph Peters' seven signs of uncompetitive states:

• Restrictions on the free flow of information.
• The subjugation of women.
• Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
• The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
• Domination by a restrictive religion.
• A low valuation of education.
• Low prestige assigned to work

We are heretical to them.

[Undertoad]

where i first read that

The Q'uran also tells them that their nations should be powerful and important, and there was a time when it was true. The golden age of the Islamic empire was glorious. It also ended 600 years ago, and these days the reality is that the only reason that Saudi Arabia isn't a terribly impoverished third world nation is that it's sitting on reserves of oil. But among the Islamic nations, the only ones who have managed to succeed at anything other than selling natural resources have been those which have adopted western ways, western technology, western attitudes. The more devoutly Islamic a nation is, the more it seems to be a failure in all other ways. To be devout should mean being strong, but it seems to make them weak. It's almost as if the Q'uran was wrong – but the Q'uran cannot be wrong; it's the word of God.

So we (you and I) are a living, walking, talking heresy. We're not even trying to spread our culture to the Islamic nations; it just happens on its own because, quite frankly, they are not very fun places to live. Irrespective of whether a devout Islamic life might be good for the soul, it's boring and unpleasant for the body and mind. The people there prefer our lifestyle; they eagerly seek it out. We seem to have no interest at all in their culture, however, except as an intellectual curiosity. There's zero chance of American women adopting the abaya, for example.

Indeed, it's our women who are the worst problem of all. They insist on being equal to men, and most of our men like it that way. They drive cars. They walk alone in the city. They go where they want, and they wear whatever they feel like. They show immorally large amounts of skin (i.e. their elbows and knees) and walk around with their heads uncovered. Many of them live alone, and have jobs and careers. They bear arms; they serve in our military; and many of them are officers and give orders to men. This is unholy; God tells the Islamic extremist that women must be subservient to men at all times.

And the women of the Islamic world want the same, and it scares the men running al Qaeda. And it's important to note that they are all men. Our culture attracts their young, and it attracts their women of all age. It even attracts some of the older men. Islam is losing the war for the Arab mind.

The extremists wish a return to the glory of Islamic dominance of the world, because it is what God told them would happen. And every year that passes makes this seem less and less likely, as the Islamic nations fall further and further behind the west in nearly every way that can be measured. 600 years ago, Islam was a great and glorious culture, but 600 years ago there was no humanist, liberal democracy combined with capitalism and science. Now those things exist, and no nation combines them better than we in America; and in every possible way that can be objectively measured, secular liberal democracy and capitalism and science are kicking Islamic culture's ass.

They're being buried, and we don't even seem to be doing it deliberately. We are so much more powerful, and our culture so much more vital and vibrant, that we don't even notice theirs.

They call us devils, because they truly see us as evil. We are the embodiment of the forces fighting against God and Islam, and we're winning. We win in terms of economic might; in terms of military power; in all forms of temporal power in fact. And we're winning the fight for minds and souls; our ideas are infecting the Arabs even in Holy Saudi Arabia, the very core of Islam, home of the two Mosques. We profane their faith just by breathing.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

where i first read that

Yes, I was reminded of Denbeste when I read this this morning.

Wright draws a fascinating picture of Sayyid Qutb, the font of modern Islamic fundamentalism, a frail, middle-aged writer who found himself, as a visitor to the United States and a student at Colorado State College of Education in Greeley in the 1940’s, overwhelmed by the unbridled splendor and godlessness of modern America. And by the sex: like so many others who followed him, Qutb seemed simultaneously drawn to and repelled by American women, so free and unselfconscious in their sexuality. The result is a kind of delirium:

“A girl looks at you, appearing as if she were an enchanting nymph or an escaped mermaid,” Qutb wrote, “but as she approaches, you sense only the screaming instinct inside her, and you can smell her burning body, not the scent of perfume, but flesh, only flesh. Tasty flesh, truly, but flesh nonetheless.”

It wasn’t much later that Qutb began writing elaborate rationalizations for killing non-Muslims and waging war against the West. Years later, Atta expressed a similar mix of obsession and disgust for women. Indeed, anyone who has spent time in the Middle East will recognize such tortured emotions.

WRIGHT shows, correctly, that at the root of Islamic militancy — its anger, its antimodernity, its justifications for murder — lies a feeling of intense humiliation. Islam plays a role in this, with its straitjacketed and all-encompassing worldview. But whether the militant hails from a middle-class family or an impoverished one, is intensely religious or a “theological amateur,” as Wright calls bin Laden and his cohort, he springs almost invariably from an ossified society with an autocratic government that is unable to provide any reason to believe in the future. Islam offers dignity, even in — especially in — death. Living in the West, Atta and the others felt these things more acutely, not less. As Wright notes:

“Their motivations varied, but they had in common a belief that Islam — pure and primitive, unmitigated by modernity and uncompromised by politics — would cure the wounds that socialism or Arab nationalism had failed to heal. They were angry but powerless in their own countries.

Long about now some "progressive" should chime in with a guilt-ridden whine about how this is our fault...

[Aliantha]

I wholeheartedly agree that Australia is a beautiful place. Spectacular even. On the other hand, most countries in the world have beauty for the viewing if you're willing to look for it.

What I like the most is the casual lifestyle and the attitude of the people. It's different to any you'd find anywhere else in the world. Maybe that's why so many people want to come here and visit. I don't know. I'm pretty selfish about Australia though. Sometimes I wish there were less tourists. They really can be a pain in the arse.

[Aliantha]

Brianna...I don't think we have enough catholics in this country. At the moment, the government is trying to encourage people to breed, but they're not having that much success. Their slogan is, "One for Mum, One for Dad and one for the country". I don't ever think we'll have the population to take over the world.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Aliantha, change that frown to a smile. and be thankful you can't take over the world. You don't want it.....it sucks.

[Happy Monkey]

What lesson is that then?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

What lesson is that then?

Ipse dixit.

Originally Posted by tw

...first learned the perspectives of the world rather than preach to the world what was right and wrong...