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How the Arab World Came Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#151

Post by douche »

danielbln wrote: post #129
cmdrfred wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has to pay for the campaign/Clinton foundation donations somehow. Mark my words a vote for Hillary is a vote for war.[0] [0] https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/01/19496/defense-con...

So the choice is between war hawk and unpredictable megalomaniac. Sophie's choice of US politics...

The unpredictable megalomaniac is at heart an isolationist, though. I can't ever recall anyone else in my lifetime expressing the desire to step back from NATO and reduce overseas commitments.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#152

Post by TeMPOraL »

fsloth wrote: post #132
TeMPOraL wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some sources claim the book is racist Funny thing - given how easy it is to get an "racist" label these days, I'd treat this as a signal that the book may be touching on some controversial topics or reaching unpopular conclusions.

Funny, I get the exact opposite vibes. Given how crackpot racism has a strong historical background it's very hard not to treat it as a signal of being a produce of crackpot racism. "Race" does not explain anything - although, many people would love it to because that would make it easier to comprehend the world. There is very dark history of this in european pseudoscience. There is far more genetic variation in aver…

I"m not referring to racism per se, but to accusations of racism. It's way too easy to get a "racist" label nowadays.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#153

Post by pipio21 »

For me it is extremely simple: They have an extraordinary amount of oil:Iraq,Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, natural gas: Libya,Iran or they are in the middle of strategic places to build oil ducts: Syria, Afghanistan.

http://www.energybc.ca/images/profiles/oil/reserves.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...

The West needs much more energy that what they have. They have industry and without energy their society will collapse.

Anything else is secondary. Most of those places are desert, and have not enough technology to protect themselves from Western (or Eastern)plundering.

Those countries can only life in peace as protectorates from powerful industrialized countries, like Saudi Arabia(de facto protectorate of USA, its oil can only be paid in USD), or Iran(protectorate of Russia and China) or Syria(Russia).

Libya itself had a lot of Chinese civilian presence, but not military. So UK, USA and France thought it was going to be easy to take the country by force, like they did.

They also tried with Syria, but Russia had an army there. They tried hard, remember Assad having chemical weapons so the West needed to "save" and "free" the country? Putin reacted fast to that. The need of creating a fly exclusion zone(prior to the invasion, like in Libya), again Putin reacted faster sending his own airplanes.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#154

Post by ilostmykeys »

jcbeard wrote: post #76
sevenless wrote: post #13

The NYTimes itself is also a considerable part of the reason, considering Judith Miller, Friedman, Krauthammer and many others propagandized hard for invading Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

It's sick to call war "beautiful" especially given that in those first few days innocent people were bombed out of existence along with bridges and infrastructure vital to the subsistence of millions of people.

I didn't expect a sick comment to be rewarded on HN. But now I see the blatant and racist hypocrisy.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#155

Post by cholantesh »

tim333 wrote: post #71
cholantesh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic? Not in any intellectually credible circle. It's just an overlong anti Arab screed.

The reviews on amazon.com seem quite positive, especially from people who have lived in Arab countries eg "I have lived in the Middle East, on and off, for four years, and no book explained the Arab mind as well as Raphael Patai's." It doesn't seem popular with the politically correct crowd.

That it anecdotally speaks to a few anonymous persons who engaged with a small subset of Arabs in particular parts of the ME is hardly impressive, but if you want to hold it up, so be it. My immediate family and much of our circle of friends (conservative South Asians) were settled there for decades. Some are still there. The descriptions Patai uses do not jibe with our experiences, at least not in the aggregate. It also doesn't jibe with some other reviewers who've lived in the ME. I wonder why you discount their experience. Also, if you want to regard 'racist' as a conversation ender, you should be just as wary of throwing around 'politically (in)correct'.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#156

Post by wookey »

yardie wrote: post #64
hacker42 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

Have you met any Muslims that pray? Do you know anything about it all? 2 of those prayers occur before and after business hours. And even if they were working there's not a whole lot going on at 4:30am. 2 are short coffee break level prayers. A little meditation and a quick baslama and get on with it. And the longest, conveniently occurs around lunchtime anyway. I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in…

here at my workplace co-workers go to "pray" once an hour. And by prayer i mean cigarette breaks. These common interruptions are accepted and I watch as it takes minutes on return to get back to speed. those are the ones that reduce productivity. not sure the islam prayer cycle is that corrosive by a long way

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#157

Post by Diederich »

tdkl wrote: post #87
jcbeard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

> (sounds like somebody that's running for president this year) Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad. Which brings us back at the beginning of stupid actions.

> ... has pledged that the first act ...

Citation please?

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#158

Post by douche »

ilostmykeys wrote: post #154
jcbeard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

It's sick to call war "beautiful" especially given that in those first few days innocent people were bombed out of existence along with bridges and infrastructure vital to the subsistence of millions of people. I didn't expect a sick comment to be rewarded on HN. But now I see the blatant and racist hypocrisy.

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it" - R.E. Lee

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#159

Post by curiousgal »

tdkl wrote: post #94
curiousgal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody has time to thrive when they have to prey five times a day Ah huh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

The classic "Golden age" deception. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y

>I am not a historian (around 9:30)

Last I checked we were discussing history..

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