You seem to rely very heavily on the US press,
I guess that means I'm not permitted to read the Financial Times any longer, eh?
Actually, I rely upon the internet for my news... news from many different locations in the world... I even used to read ArabNews.com, if only to read the biased rhetoric they were using against both Israel and the US...
In principle, I don't limit my news sources... I'll read any news source that I perceive provides some semblance of the facts, without too much of the obvious biased BS associated with it.. And that includes US media..
which I think this administration has very cleverly manipulated and continues to control.
As opposed to the blatant control of the news media in the middle east by those who rule there? Or, as was discovered with Al-Jazeera, on the payroll of Saddam Hussein..
The US has a free press.. And that free press is constantly being challenged by the use of the Internet to confirm and refute facts.
And, if anything, it isn't the US government controlling the media. I can personally cite an instance, which I reported several months ago on FADG, where Al-Jazeera had reported that a US soldier had been killed by a grenade. US media sources picked up this story and commenced reporting it. But in talking with an acquaintance of mine who works at the Pentagon's PA office, I discovered that this attack had NOT occurred, and that she had told over three different major media networks just that (including CNN). Yet they continued to report it as if it had happened. Would the US government do that??
They tell me that the Muslim fundamental movement is very strong in these regions.
Yes it is.. And it has been growing in power over the past 15 years. But Chinu... you have to ask yourself:
WHY NOW, and NOT PREVIOUSLY?? (The moslem brotherhood has existed since the early 1920's).
WHY HAS IT BEEN GROWING?? (political?, spirtual?)
WHAT CONDITIONS create this revivalism? (Demographics, economic conditions?)
A short response, is that those countries which make up the former Ottoman empire have been searching for an identity. Nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and now, since the previous systems have failed to be successful (given the nature of Kleptocrats).., fundamentalism...
Religous fervor and revivalism is the bastion of those who have been so brutalized by secular despots that they are willing to subject themselves to religious tyranny, as directed by corrupt clerics/priests, for an solution to their earthly problems.
But rather than seeking God for spiritual guidance and the power to peacefully change the hearts of others, the see themselves as the tools of God's wrath, hoping to wreak vengeance on any variety of forces that they see as having oppressed them and left them in their current predicament.
Islam doesn't have a monopoly on religious fanaticism. It's existed(exists?) in Christianity, Judaism, and many other religions. But we haven't seen this kind of militant manifestation of religious fervor since the Crusades.. A fanaticism that permits people to openly believe they have the right (and duty) to kill innocents in a manner approaching genocidal fervor.
People who, once they possess WMDs, would likely see them as one more tool that God has provided them to destroy the infidel...
Sure the fundamentalist movement is very strong.. Because many of these people have been forced to "end of their rope" by the Kleptocracies and inequities that are the result of unfettered (unregulated) capitalism. They have been left behind by the ongoing Globalization of the economy. They have few skills, are alienated from the world, and they are seeking a solution which their religious leaders are selling to them.
But the young people of Iran, who have lived under such a religious theocracy for the past 23 years, know that these religous leaders don't have any answers, let alone the sophistication, to deal with the global forces that are relegating them permanently to the backwaters of the global economy.
So yeah... they are becoming reactionary militants. And so would you or I if we were living in economies where 30-50% unemployment were the norm.
The German people followed Hitler, seeking a solution to the povery created by imposed reparations from WWI. But what resulted? What answers did he have but to use massive deficit spending and military rearmament and conquest to maintain this economic ponzi scheme?
Militant Islam is a sympton of an increasing social problem. It's not something that has just suddenly arisen of its own volition, which cannot be stopped.
Hawk |
