Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Selectric II who wrote (7797)	10/27/2001 7:46:52 PM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Respond to of 281500

<We do like our cars, our homes heated, etc., and our population is growing ....> Exactly... Ilmarinen But the worst thing are all those who have invested in more efficient use of energy, watch out, the japanese are coming. Jingo-jingo... but luckily there is CA, lost in smog and energy demands, water,gas and all that stuff, the savior from the east and the surrounding desert??

To: Selectric II who wrote (7797)	10/27/2001 9:52:16 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Selectric, OK, no virgins, no deal. Re: --First of all, this didn't start as an oil dispute, remember? Oh, I see. History started on Sept. 11..... Come on, my friend, let's get real here. Bin Laden made perfectly clear in 1998 that his jihad was all about American bases on sacred ground, Israel and America's complicity in the hardships of the Iraqi "street". While I don't give a hoot about claims about sacred ground, I do understand his concerns about turf. Especially Saudi turf, or sand, as the case may be. Re: Just because you might not be up to the long struggle doesn't mean our country shouldn't struggle to preserve its way of life rather than bowing to terrorist extremists. Well, does it cross your mind that the only way to get back to our status quo ante, i.e. preserve our country's way of life, may be to disengage from the lunacy of Middle Eastern politics? I'm not inclined to bow to terrorists, I endorse their elimination. But in a world that encompasses 95% foreigners and an ever increasing number of them with a chip on their shoulder and the Goliath of America as the most convenient scapegoat for their relative lack of well-being, I'd say that we might want to pull our horns in a tad, exhibit a bit less hubris and arrogance and at least give some lip service to the needs of the rest of the world. Tom Friedman's headline today sums it up. We are alone. This can't possibly be sustained in world where youth and vigor are moving to the most dispossessed of human beings, while the OECD settles into a grey-haired senescence. Eventually the dam will burst and those who are seen as the exploiters of the world will be ever more in danger of terror campaigns and uprisings of the dispossessed, lead by zealots of the upper classes of discombobulated cultures like Bin Laden and Zawari. What I propose, in short, is disengagement from the madness that is enveloping the Mid East. This isn't exactly far-fetched, or unprecedented. In our own history as a nation, a preponderance of the immigrants to this country were seeking a respite from the madness that was call Europe in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. A continent that was as dysfunctional as it was prolific with technological advances. But for millions of immigrants, including my grandparents, disengaging from the madness was a great idea. We can no longer serve as that frontier promise to all those mentioned in the tiny bronze plaque at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty. We can't possibly solve the problems of the "street" in the Islamic world. But, if you'd reconsider your position on the 72 virgins......... Salaams, Ray <w>