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To Susan, Canadian - point by point for a change - and in closingReader comment on item: How the West Could Lose Submitted by Michel C. Zala (United States), Jan 13, 2007 at 21:39 Hi all – Susan, I address your comments for once in detail, as you still massively misunderstand where I come from. First of all – allow me to thank you for proving the fact that our discussion demonstrates why the struggle was not entirely in vain. The passion and freedom to voice such, even radical opinions at times, opinions, resulting often in heated debate, will make our CIV persevere against any outside enemy. It is why I do have still a fundamentally optimistic outlook for our Civ. Secondly – I will admit, that I am disappointed, as I seem to have overestimated the ‘moderates" of all breeds, cultures or religions, to be willing to give us their point of view en masse. Other than Canadian and very few others, this segment is either not reading this Blog or simply too cowardly to take a stand. Albeit, I am not willing at this point in time to concede that the segment is nonexistent and have given possible circumstantial evidence to that in other posts. I will one last time - as we seem to go in circles – take a stand to various specific statements of your above posts: Susan : "...why do they need to use that tactic when in some western states they can take the power by numbers?"You can not have it both ways, Susan. You can not mount evidence to declare ISLAM as the fundamental enemy, willing to pursue the non-militant (as Noah calls it, migratory attack) plus at the same time be networked with the militant fundamentalist ISLAM with its anarchic, terrorist objectives, then simply dismiss the argument of inexistence of such attacks. Take the power by numbers alone will take decades. According to you all, they have numbers, means, opportunity and motive already. WHY ARE THEY WAITING? WHY are human beings, the most impatient of all species not taking advantage of this perfect moment? I have outlined in several posts, how, assuming for the sake of the argument, that they are ALL evil, tunnel-visional on our eradication and focused on world-domination, easy it would be for them to attack us on all fronts including the home front, with militant, terrorist means. Given such as a true fact, If I was a militant Muslim strategist, I could come up with a doable strategy right now to destabilize the Western World. N O W. Susan: " During an official meeting on Islamic-Christian dialogue, an authoritative Muslim person, speaking to the Christians participating, at one point said very calmly and assuredly: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you." Even in what I call the more progressed Muslim countries , such as Turkey, a massive reactionary movement tries to turn the clock back, hence it was never my intention to put Turkey on a pedestal, they have a long way to go still. Albeit – putting Turkey with at least grassroots tendencies towards a modern democracy into the same category with medieval middle-eastern countries is neither constructive nor appreciates any reality. Susan: Nowadays thanks to petro-dollars, emigration, abuse of western welfare and our medical help in their countries there's a demographic assault that finds no comparison anywhere, As far as your migratory attack is concerned, I state again, that the civilized world is master of their own destiny here. I offered many feasible approaches and even templates, how this concern could be addressed. We do not need waiting in paralysis, until most European Countries have a Muslim majority. We have decades of time to look inwards and address the so often here admitted western decadency. ( Just one simplistic expression, I chose to envelope and somewhat consolidate an overall state of affairs : cultural, moral, attitude, mentality, structural, political) Susan: why destroying all our buildings when they will expropriate us of in the near future? That statement demonstrates once again just the standard paranoia. It will take generations ( during which we as a whole would have to be non-responsive and passive). Let us for a second assume, that the Netherlands will in 20 years (most pessimistic estimate I have seen) have the Muslim Majority. Let's for the sake of the argument assume that these voters will influence the local legislature to implement Sharia as law. How do you think the rest of the Civ, will react to that? They'll stand by passively, while criminals get beheaded or stoned in Rotterdam? Think about it, Susan and see the surrealism of your hypothesis. Susan: Secondly, how much time will it pass from the suicide bombings in fast food in america before it's declared free open season hunting for muslims. They know they cannot play with fire too much unless they reach a good 40%. That is once again simply a (sorry) dumb statement. Terror organizations of drastically more limited extent ( Red Brigades in Italy, Bader Meinhof in Germany, IRA, ETA in Basque Spain and so many more have been able to almost destabilize entire Western Countries. ( I know how serious the threat was within the various govs) If the existing minority within the USA ( estimates of up to 25% of the populus I have seen) was entirely militant, and all your evidence to that fact was true, we'd be seeing a state of war at present. Why wait until a majority of people "wakes up and assumes your viewpoints". Why wait, until we all realize this threat and start the incredible machine we have available to us? Tactically and strategically with a sheer terrorist scope in mind, the moment was yesterday to destabilize the western World and not wait, until the rest of the passive Western CIV assumes a patriot act type of legislature. "The war on terrorism" has already to an extent unified the western world, including strange allies such as Russia and China. Now is the time for them, Susan, not later. As military leader of the global Muslim army you so adamantly want to see, I'd start that war immediately with a low tech, soft target tactic. 100 Terrorists/ country only, sniping randomly selected civilians, would break us within months, as I have tried to outline in another posts. Albeit, out of millions of Muslims living already naturalized and "well infiltrated" within the US borders, it seems to be impossible for the militants to find even such small numbers of suicidal killers as recruits? It is a cognitive dissonance you and so many here simply are unable to resolve: IF YOU WERE RIGHT, WE WOULD HAVE ALREADY SEEN DESTABILIZATION, DESTRUCTION, EROSION OF LIBERTY AND CHAOS OF AN UNHEARD SCALE. Susan: French police face 'permanent intifada Yep – France with a serious "migratory attack" from Africa and Algeria mainly, has a powder keg to deal with. (I am 50% of French origin by the way) We have indeed recently seen social unrest there like never before. The majority of it however was homegrown ( farmers, students). The problems in their ghettos of minority communities ( e.g Marseilles) are even more grave as in major cities in the US, because of a much wider socio-demographic, economical gap. I do foresee hence a significantly higher potential for Islamic founded unrest in the near future. France also manifests a significant higher level of "appeasement", due to erosion of their own enforcement forces and fear of their own Minorities, which is historically not going to work. But once again – as one possible explanation ( not excuse) these people turn to fanatism and religion because of purely economical reasons and France as we as a whole would have many means and ways for a successful assimilation strategy, counteracting this. Alas - mes amis n'ont pas de courage et volonte. Susan: 70% of all people jailed in europe are muslim, even in countries when they amount to 2-3% of population. Sorry – another bit of baloney. Currently the highest number of jailed within the last decade throughout Central Europe comes from the former Jugoslavia with a big chunk of Albanians controlling the drug trade. The highest percentage of jailed in the US are blacks and Hispanics to a vast majority originating from these mentioned poverty stricken ghettos. Across the western world the common criminal and not the religious fanatic makes up the highest percentage of imprisoned. Hence, if one absolultely wants to bring in the religious component, I dare to venture that most imprisoned grew up within the Judeo/Christian environment. Kind of mute logic, though, just a touch of sarcasm. Susan: Even the barbarians that invaded the roman empire when it was on the verge of collapsing they used force, but they didn't destroy everything. As a matter of fact they had good use of the streets, buildings and structures of the old roman empire, so much that those things EXISTS even today. But what do I know, the barbarians converted to christianity! Well, I happen to just read about, how Constantin "implemented" Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. Arguing admittedly in a cynical manner from the viewpoint of the original "Romans" worshipping Jupiter and the likes, I could easily call your "conversion" genocide or bloody oppression. Christianity developed evidently within the Roman Empire from a secret, oppressed "infiltrating" society to state religion. (BBC - Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire) I quite actually would love to use this bit of historical reference to argue the point that oppressing a religion or culture is in the long run contra-productive. After all Christianity took over the western world, right? and Jupiter 's followers got wiped out, converted, missionarized - choose any expression you like - in the process. Susan: After 9-11 we didn't use any proper reitaliation, but this doesn't mean we cannot use it in the future. Susan : if they act this way their dirty game is exposed everywhere. Thanks to hitler, an attempt to genocide on a whole country such as the usa, attacking civilians would drop all the attempt at portraying it as the religion of peace they brag about, and would jeopardise what they have been planning for 1400 years. You belay your own statements and logic again: According to the above, therefore it is the immigration, non-militant arm of the Muslim movement you fear? Okay - so we do not need fear terrorist attacks committed on a large ( ISRAEL) scale? So they are not militant? They simply wait generations, until they outnumber us? Then take over with their evil religion? You warn continuously about their radical, militant intentions, and, when I prove to you that there is no evidence for this large scale homegrown terrorism, you go back to solely the migratory attack and a long term strategy they pursue to take us over – make up your mind please, and stick to it. Susan: You keep on writing about the mythical 80% moderate muslims, but you mistake their indifference as moderation. It's just indifference, the same indifference that some germans had while watching the trains for concentration camps. They didn't do anything but they didn't try to stop it either. I said it before - I will not argue numbers. According to Noah"s evidence he presented, a huge number of Muslims live already here. According to you all, fanatic, militant followers of an evil religion. All I say is, that I do not see evidence of this segment being militant. I do not argue that they seem to be indifferent at best. The lack of Muslim responses here seems to evidence it. Susan: Chicago Tribune reported that the CIA spokesman had acknowledged on the record that the agency is involved in the search. There is a description that the car bombs that were used at the Murrah building are favored by Islamic fundamentalists…. Susan: And how do you wash away 1400 years of indoctrination that they are the master race and everybody else is their rightfully slave? Susan: are you that naive that restricting freedom of speech will prevent those from calling us apes and pigs and call for the death of israel? On the contrary, it will plague people like pipes, spencer, bostom, that are trying to warn us of this danger. Once again – you simplify dangerously: Pipes and the likes do not call for genocide, eradication, ban of ISLAM or mass scale deportation or oppression. They remain civilized and state the dangers as they see them. Unemotional and rational. In my book that is not inflammatory nor would have to be censored. It is the preaching of militancy, the call for violence in any form, the slandering grosso modo, I condemn and advocate to "censor". The posters in the storefront after a terrorist attack, Noah talks about. Enforcement of the restrictions of Freedom of Speech is key and should apply equally to everybody.To make it simple for you: I do not care, if anyone calls me a pig ( in his private home) , yet draw the line, when he takes out an advert in a news paper, to do so, or calls publicly for violence against me. Susan: .. It's not going to happen, your nancy pelosi, your newly elected muslim keith ellison will scream ISLAMOPHOBIA! You are right, inasmuch as any statement by any religion seems to be "politically correct" at present and is viciously being protected, something I strongly disagree with. I agree with you that anyone currently is allowed to pretty much say anything about anyone. It is tragic and applies across the board – not just , as far as ISLAM is concerned. Susan: Listen,...I live in Italy and I know of Switzerland more than you. The only thing that prevents Switzerland to be overrun is that it takes 30+ years to get citizenship and the locals have the final word on who's getting in. They make polls on the population of the village to see if they accept mr ahmed from palestine. And guess what? muslims are always rejected!Whoa - Susan – now you entered my home turf, as I am , as opposed to you, Swiss with tight and close family ties to that country. It is you, I fear, who is utterly misinformed. Allow me to educate you with passion and a bit of proud patriotism: In a nut shell, Switzerland is one great example for peaceful co-existence of pretty much any subculture there is – in close quarters, I might add. Instead of labeling them or one individual culture as Racist, how about examining and exploring, why they are so successful in that integration effort? Why not adapt this proven, solid concept, as far as democracy and its liberties vs immigration is concerned? I am certainly not putting Switzerland on a pedestal – after all I emigrated from there for a variety of reasons– and much is to be said about other aspects of the day to day life there, but as far as immigration and the multi cultural fabric is concerned, this template of an overall, integrated, multi-facetted approach to these cultures could be well a recipe for our approach to your so called migratory attack. Susan: well, me and noah believe that all people are equal. You, the mumbo jumbo relativist think that we are "strong" and they are weak. While we grant mental capabilities. You don't grant them mental capabilities. Typical. Dont' forget to label US as racist. You contradict yourself once again and can not have it both ways. Labelling ISLAM as one integrated evil force without distinction, which needs to be banned and deported and now all of a sudden everybody is equal? What a load .... You are the master of evidence and references, quotes and statistics. Now go ahead and compare the combined power ( military, economical) of the Muslim countries to ours. A mouse vs a mammoth comes to mind. Hence, Y E S, at present we are still strong and would have a huge arsenal of means to counteract any threat from within or abroad. I advocate to use those means and as opposed to you first look inwards and find ways to strengthen our own position. (Sun Zsu - the art of war) You vilify an entire people and leave it at that, while I tried to offer segmented ways and evidence for the fact that we are still masters of our own destiny, if we critically first look inwards and do something about our "decadence" as defined above. Lastly – I do not underestimate the threat, radical, fundamentalist Islam poses. Even though the attitude (I call it Napoleon Complex) of Islamic terrorism leads me to believe that they are not nearly as smart as we fear, since they still have not grasped the concept yet of truly destabilizing us( Soft targets) and still look for solely "spectacular" targets, which does not inflict damage of significance What I do not do is support the paranoia of giving all Muslims too much credit by labeling them as an overall organized movement with a long term strategy. That's giving them way too much credit as a people. Susan: we didn't treated like mentally challenged the japaneses, the germans, the italians, we left them on their own to reform and clean their own shit. Why you grant muslims super treatment? are you going to clean their house too? ...Do I speak Chinese and you are responding in Russian? Do you ever read and understand, what you comment ? I have never advocated to treat Muslims as mentally challenged, just the same, as we treat any other culture. We DID NOT leave the Japanese or Germans alone to clean up. For years with outright occupation and monitoring, democracies were grown, until they could stand on their own feet. We followed through with Japan and Germany to the very end, which would be required in IRAK today. Read your history for a change and see, that decades of indoctrination were followed by decades of counter-conditioning in Japan and Germany. Brainwashed people of even utterly different origin and culture (Japan) became stout supporters of modern democracy and great allies that way. In the case of Japan with an extremely oligarchic, patriarchaic and anything but democratic system and century old non-christian culture, that development must be considered as outright revolutionary. Hence proof in point again: It was and still is doable to "export and install" democracy, if there is will, force, determination and follow through. Lastly the treatment I offer as one of many possible strategies for Muslim countries which have a tiny chance to become eventually free democracies, is not just the morally right thing to do – I leave that argument to the Christian Church and philosophers, Susan : Also, by saying this, you also consider the other non-muslim immigrants (chineses, africans, east europeans, south americans etc) like second class human beings, because you don't grant them the same attentions you grant to muslims. One last time - read my posts : I advocate total, utter, complete, color-blind, fundamentally equal treatment for any immigrants of any color or creed. Nothing more and nothing less. Enforced legislation. That alone however constitues from your slanted viewpoint a preferential treatment for Muslims? You sound like our own Black minority which applies at times what we call "reverse discrimination", where Equal treatment is not good enough. Again you contradict yourself denying one culture of our social fabric the rights you so passionately want to defend. By doing that, you subvert and pervert exactly the achievements as a democracy, you always claim to protect - hence in consequence, what you proclaim is directly counterproductive to what you try to achieve. Pure mathematical logic applied to your own causal chain - Do you follow? Susan: " first you sounded like this expert of the muslim world, now you admit you only worked with them once and they were already settled in san fran. ... For the record and once again – think before you start typing away endangering your keyboard. 1. I never proclaimed to be an expert on ISLAM. (You on the other hand sound like you claim to be) 2. I only reported of personal experiences like Noah. As opposed to him who had negative, mine were positive. His find of course your applause, while mine are not representative or "idiotic". Argued again with logic ( probably futile, considering your passionate hatred) that makes you by definition exactly into what you so despise in the average Muslim you describe: a simple straightforward Racist. When will you realize that you with your posts display the very precise qualities of what you so condemn in others? Your ramblings defy any teaching of Christianity or dogma of the free western world you permanently and passionately defend. Highly ironic, how I try to see Christianity from a somewhat objective, critical, reflective, inwards looking viewpoint, yet funny enough end up, sounding much more like a true Christian than you, the defender of Christianity and the Free World. Either you live on a different planet altogether, where logic is inexistent, or you do indeed manifest what Pipes started up with : a fundamental self-loathing in the Western Society, as you clearly display all qualities of precisely the Monster you tell us about. 3. Working as a Westerner for an entire year with Muslims may not make me an expert, but certainly lends my perspective a bit more credibility, as far as any judgment is concerned, than the hate filled ramblings of an individual who gets his/her information solely from websites and history books. Speaking of History : How many times have I heard " Read your history" . Years and dates may be congruent, dear tunnel-visioned friends, but the analysis is as multi-facetted, as there are cultures. Proof in point: Read about 20th century history in a Swiss, Taiwanese or Chinese history book and you get three different stories. ( I spent also a year in Taiwan, by the way) Denying that even history books feature various "colored" perspectives, depending on the authors, regimes, cultures, heck, even religion, is as naïve as believing in Santa Claus. There is no universal truth, just a million interpretations with at times general agreement amongst leading experts at best. So - stop quoting History as the one fundamental truth, set in concrete and use it with a slither of consideration of the above. While I ( individually and personally) certainly accept fundamental historical lessons as a fact, and suggest to draw common sense conclusions, I invite all of us to not commit the fundamental mistake of considering Judeo/Christian history as the only source for the ultimate truth and accept as fact of life that to a certain extent we too are "indoctrinated" in the purest definition of the word. For you - Susan - put into simple words – I can see a lot of black and white here, but no grey. But grey is - fact of life - the predominant color in any human relations. Time to put on the glasses, signora. Thank you for that compliment. I could not have put the conclusion into any better words. With your last statement you distill my whole point to 90vol% or - - - one mother of a schnapps. People like you with such surreal and horrific suggestions, have caused all horror of a past you so often reference. That very mindset of yours, advocating such terrible inhuman actions, was responsible for most of the genocides, atrocities and war. That mentality within any culture, people or empire was the foundation for all the misery. It is indeed a tragic fact that such existed in every culture or on every continent up to this day. We humans seem unable to learn from the by you so often mentioned History. GOD help us, if ever again in our civilized world such a mentality becomes a majority force again. No matter, if it comes from ISLAM fundamentalism or any other movement. ...Move from behind from the desk, enjoy your life and abandon your acrid bitterness, let humor in, dance, watch a good movie and get a good laugh. Then....Go and meet the evil people – get your intelligence first hand. Yes sir mam boss, everything is relative, as there is no absolute, other than in mathematics. Dear - there is no black and white - there are only millions of shades of grey. Take a minute and let that penetrate. Ommmmmmhh To use that darn logic again: I am grateful and a bit proud to be called a relativist by you, as that confirms me as a 21st century realist, which is - I dare to venture - diametrally opposite from what you tried to achieve. Don't you hate when that happens? (I send you a big broad smile from freezing California.) Susan : ving force, as all moral relativists is to pat yourself on the head for being on the moral higher ground, opposed to us that would want all the muslims deported.
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