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

To: Bruce L who wrote (182132)	2/19/2006 11:52:08 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<imagine the reception among liberal Europeans -- or on any American campus -- if a professor published a book purporting to prove that women were intellectually inferior to men> They are of course. And Moslems are intellectually inferior to Japanese. And Ashkenazi Jews are superior to all of them. In certain ways anyway. That is obvious when one thinks of the evolutionary history of the various groups. Women bear children. Men don't. Japanese evolved in a geographically distinct realm and there is no particular reason why all groups should end up with the same characteristics, just as my nose isn't as long as an elephant's and it isn't prehensile. Bearing in mind that that's a general statement and more precise definitions are required for people who don't understand statistical discussion. People lacking in intellectual function will say that they know some female/Moslem/elephant who is as good as any other as though that invalidates the point. Of course there could be an elephant with no nose. A woman with the right breeding could be the smartest person on the planet and in fact I have been advocating just such genetic engineering and breeding programmes to get us out of our cartoon-like attempts to run the world in a sensible way. Not all Moslems are wanting to murder, burn, rape, pillage and plunder because several highly benign cartoons were drawn and published. I doubt that women or their acolytes are going to want to murder me because I think women are so dumb it's surprising that they can stay alive. A lot can't of course. Okay, I admit I'm tempting dumb people to conclude from that that males are a LOT smarter than females. But the same applies to men only more so. Male survivability is universally worse than female. Heck, some of my best male friends have failed to stay alive. Come to think of it, as I was plummeting out of a tree yesterday, I was thinking I was heading for a Darwin Award. Our DNA drives us to risky activities. Such as rioting over trivial cartoons, building nuclear weapons to attack Israel and the infidels, pruning trees without thinking that the tree might fight back by having brittle branches which normally would bear the load. Falling humans would make excellent nutrients for the tree, like flies are excellent nutrients for the venus fly trap plant. Okay, I admit that that makes the tree smarter than me, but only in some ways. I can phone Tree Busters and give them a credit card to take out the tree. So there Mr Smart Alecky tree. We'll see who is King of the Hill. Once I've dealt with the tree, I'll take on the women. If I make it past them, I'll sort out the Ummah. Somehow, in quieter moments, the whole scene doesn't look like humans are the amazing 10th Dan creation in the image of God that they like to imagine. It looks more like monkeys in the jungle. If I had a prehensile tail like a gibbon, I'd have done much better. Or even a prehensile nose like an elephant. The males run around fighting each other and ripping up trees and chasing the girls, who are conspicuous by their absence. We blokes have to be smarter to survive the carnage. Women just sit happily in the cave, waiting to see who shows up with some wildebeest, corn, a bunch of flowers and a Ferrari. Those who survive are probably smarter than a tree, so they get to make the next generation, which is a bit smarter than those who have gone before. Mqurice PS: The tree drew blood and some of my ligaments and muscles are creaky, but there was no permanent damage. Nature has developed repair mechanisms as it expects some blunders along the way due to war with trees.

To: Bruce L who wrote (182132)	2/19/2006 6:01:21 PM
From: Noel de Leon	Respond to of 281500

"This has created a serious barrier between moderate Muslims and Europeans who were opposed to the United States. They were the ones most likely to be willing to collaborate, and the current uproar makes that collaboration much more difficult." Which leaves the field to extremists on both sides. "There is a prohibition in Islam against making images of the Prophet Mohammed." This is just not so. It is considered to be true for the Old Testament by some. "The prohibition against "any graven image, or any likeness of any thing...," if interpreted literally, would seem to forbid a wide range of objects, including a statue in a church, a cross, a crucifix, or even to a photograph of a person." The Koran refers indirectly to the 10 Commandments and therefore to the Judaic prohibition of "graven images" but there is no direct prohibition. That's something that arose in the conflict between mono and poly theism. Another story. religioustolerance.org ""It becomes increasingly difficult for Europeans to distinguish between their own relationship with the Islamic world and the American relationship with the Islamic world." Friedman begins with an implication that there is a more unified relationship between the US and the Islamic world than there is between Europe and the Islamic world. That's a double error. 1) Americans are not unified on Bush's Islamic world policy. 2) Europeans are 25 nations who never are unified about much. "and of advocates of laws against racial hatred demanding absolute free speech" Have not met, seen, read anything that these two points of view were advocated by the same person. Which Friedman confirms later on. "difficult to speak of the "European position" -- there really isn't one." "The objections of a Muslim cleric in Denmark upon the initial publication by Jyllands-Posten eventually prompted leaders of the Islamic Faith Community to travel to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon in December, purposely "to stir up attitudes against Denmark and the Danes" in response to the cartoons." Friedman has missed an important point here. Those Muslim clerics would never have gotten to the Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese foreign offices if there wasn't an agreement within those governments to spread the cartoons. Which they did. The Egyptian ambassador was one of the 11 who were refused a meeting with the Danish Prime Minister and she was very upset about that rejection. One could think about the cartoons as the straw that could break the camel's back, the prime minister as the one who put the straw on the camel's back, and the Egyptian ambassador as the one who told the camel that its back was broken.