Attacks on US diplomats/embassies.

[Mr. Perfect]

Honestly sparky you may need to restrain yourself a little here, this is blowback for your recent little neocon adventure so you're really not in a position to be pointing fingers.

Yes - fair point. I mean, at least during the noble reign of the good Colonel*, not one single act of terrorism was commissioned in jolly old Libya. And, you know, those Islamic fundamentalists are so reasonable and ... oh, hang on...


*Khadafi, not Sun, obviously. That wily Japanese bugger has more blood on his hands than Dario Argento has ever sprayed on actresses' tits.

Oh, you are under the assumption this is a single isolated incident. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

[Mr. Perfect]

Azari, have been laughing hysterically, liberal CNN broadcasters/"journalists" baffled that Libyans could be mad at us after "all we did to help them".

Laughing very hard at the moment.

[Ibrahim]

Got to agree, ALI, and if such comes to pass it will mean the reformation of Islam.

Go, Ahmadinejad, go . .

Since your Christian one climaxed in the 30 Year War, I'm not so sure I'd wish a reformation on anyone.

I don't wish any such thing on anyone, Sparky, I'm simply saying that the reformation of Islam must happen and will.

That said, how could things be worse? These people have been slaughtering each other and their neighbors now for hundreds of years, not for just thirty years.

An "Islamic Reformation" is a theological redundancy. The specific religious issues addressed by the Western Christian reformation are not applicable in, or already addressed by, Islam.

I asked Marcus for specific examples of necessary reforms to prove this point, but none were forthcoming. Suffice to say that there are plenty of problems in "the Islamic world" but a "reformation" isn't the solution. Really it's just a clunky way of saying one of two things: 1. the Islamic world needs economic and social development (true), or 2. Muslims need to adopt another religion (good luck with that).

[Ibrahim]

These people have been slaughtering each other and their neighbors now for hundreds of years, not for just thirty years.

Oh sure - but haven't we all?

No, just enthusiastic about the prospect of Muslims living at peace with the rest of the world whatever it takes in the short run.

Yes, but for Christians at least, not in the name of religion for several centuries now . . with the possible exception of Ireland . .

If we are assigning religions to nationalities and ascribing the actions of nations to religions as a whole then "Christians" have been murdering civilians in the "Muslim world" on a daily basis for over a decade, so complaining about the bellicosity of "Muslims" using these general terms isn't very persuasive. There is no "peaceful side" in this.

[Mr. Perfect]

Raise flag. Obama fundraiser tonight.

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/18840

A black Islamic flag is currently flying over the U.S. embassy in Tunisia after it had been stormed by an angry mob of protesters, who were upset over an anti-Islam film that was made by Americans.

This is just one of many incidents occurring around the world today, in which Americans are being targeted.

In Tunis, the mob overran the compound, scaling walls and setting fire to trees before tearing down the American flag and replacing it with a symbol of Islam. It is not thought that any U.S. staff were actually in the embassy in Tunis. An American school in Tunis was also set on fire. Police responded to the mobs by firing tear gas, and police gunfire could also be heard.

Several dozen protesters were also briefly able to enter the embassy compound and set fire to cars in the embassy parking lot. Police and special forces pushed them back outside.

In Lebanon today angry protesters ransacked a KFC and Hardee's restaurant, police were firing on protesters in Yemen, and there was also unrest in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Turkey. Additional unrest occurred in Sudan where an angry mob attacked British and German embassies. In Bangladesh tens of thousands took to the streets to protest, and in India there are widespread protests in Muslim Kashmir. In London, protesters burned an American flag outside of the U.S. embassy.

http://www.theroot.com/buzz/obamas-day- ... hite-house

In the evening, the President will attend a campaign event at a private residence. This event is closed press.

[Mr. Perfect]

CNN reports street thugs chanting "Obama, Obama, there are a millions more Osama's".

Thank goodness there is no War On Terror. What do we call it now?

[Sparky]

Honestly sparky you may need to restrain yourself a little here, this is blowback for your recent little neocon adventure so you're really not in a position to be pointing fingers.

Yes - fair point. I mean, at least during the noble reign of the good Colonel*, not one single act of terrorism was commissioned in jolly old Libya. And, you know, those Islamic fundamentalists are so reasonable and ... oh, hang on...


*Khadafi, not Sun, obviously. That wily Japanese bugger has more blood on his hands than Dario Argento has ever sprayed on actresses' tits.

Oh, you are under the assumption this is a single isolated incident. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

Oh, you are under the assumption that Islamic fundamentalism emerged from the Arab spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

[Mr. Perfect]

Oh, you are under the assumption that Islamic fundamentalism emerged from the Arab spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

What's an Arab Spring?

[Sparky]

Oh, you are under the assumption that Islamic fundamentalism emerged from the Arab spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

What's an Arab Spring?

Hans would tell you it's the source of the Zamzam well. Others might say it's what smashes through an oppressive movement after being wound up too tightly for too long.

[Azrael]

To ridicule a joke has repercussions.

You can say that again.

[Mr. Perfect]

Oh, you are under the assumption that Islamic fundamentalism emerged from the Arab spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

What's an Arab Spring?

Hans would tell you it's the source of the Zamzam well. Others might say it's what smashes through an oppressive movement after being wound up too tightly for too long.

To me it sounds like an old The Who song. Meet the new boss...

[Mr. Perfect]

Oh, you are under the assumption that Islamic fundamentalism emerged from the Arab spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

What's an Arab Spring?

Hans would tell you it's the source of the Zamzam well. Others might say it's what smashes through an oppressive movement after being wound up too tightly for too long.

To me it sounds like an old The Who song. Meet the new boss...

Sound like an old Crue song also.

BXG0q0qesRw

[Mr. Perfect]

We have the United States (embassies and similar properties are considered sovereign) under attack in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, the Sudan and more I think, due to popular uprisings in alliance with terror orgs across a whole region.

Has this ever happened before? Any ideas? It seems clear that the hug a Muslim approach championed by the left for the last 9 years is total flop at this point, regimes now have a deep well to draw from now for anti-US actions and posturing. A deep, deep well.

I expect more terrorism. Libya was a mistake. We should pull our embassies and troops from all Muslim countries.

Is this significant or is it WTO Seattle/Fleabagger material that will be forgotten. It seems like this is a big deal to me.

[Azrael]

We have the United States (embassies and similar properties are considered sovereign) under attack in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, the Sudan and more I think, due to popular uprisings in alliance with terror orgs across a whole region.

Has this ever happened before?

You obviously don't know how to use Google.

2002 Karachi, Pakistan: bomb explodes outside American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 12. Linked to al-Qaeda.
2003 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: terrorists storm the U.S. consulate, killing 5 consulate employees. 4 terrorists were killed by Saudi security.
2007 Athens, Greece: the U.S. embassy is fired on by an anti-tank missile causing damage but no injuries.
2008 Yemen: a car bomb and a rocket strike the U.S. embassy in Yemen as staff arrived to work, killing 16 people, including 4 civilians. At least 25 suspected al-Qaeda militants are arrested for the attack.

So, yeah, nobody dared attack U.S. Embassies or Consulates when Bush was President. I guess his "resolve" must have scared them off.

[Sparky]

Oh, you are under the assumption that Islamic fundamentalism emerged from the Arab spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head. Sorry, I did not realize you were laboring under that assumption.

What's an Arab Spring?

Hans would tell you it's the source of the Zamzam well. Others might say it's what smashes through an oppressive movement after being wound up too tightly for too long.

To me it sounds like an old The Who song. Meet the new boss...

Well, you do have your election on your mind, I suppose. Note however that these sorry events aren't the work of the new bosses.

Oh, and the Crue? "not available in your country". Just lucky, I guess.

[Mr. Perfect]

Try the Crue song then if you're going to get picky.

I guess stormed embassies are just another Tuesday in your worldview?

[Mr. Perfect]

Err Az, we're talking multiple sustained attacks over days in a number of nations with large mobs, resulting in embassies being overrun.

[Zack Morris]

Yes, there is a precedent: the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy.

Four months later, Muslims protested across the Islamic world, some of which escalated into violence with instances of police firing on crowds of protestors resulting in a total of more than 100 reported deaths,[1] including the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan and setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming European buildings, and burning the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, French and German flags in Gaza City.[2][3] Various groups, primarily in the Western world, responded by endorsing the Danish policies, including "Buy Danish" campaigns and other displays of support. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the controversy as Denmark's worst international crisis since World War II.[4]

Of course, it was on a smaller scale then but it was quite shocking at the time and drew a great deal of attention in the Western media. I think the scale of the 'protests' now can easily be explained by a perfect storm of factors:

1. The film was made in America this time, not a Scandinavian country no one in the middle east knew existed before.
2. The 2000's cemented America's status as the Great Satan in the Muslim world. These tensions take more than a few years to relieve.
3. Ideologues and militant factions are more self confident in light of the bottom-up, grassroots regime changes that have swept the region in recent years.

It was said that the region was already a tinderbox when the spark quite literally went off in Tunisia. I'm not surprised that any of this is happening but am dismayed at how poorly much of the world understands the tenets of Western civilization: democracy, freedom of speech, secularism, and rule of law.

[Mr. Perfect]

Mm, good point. I would say that died down quite a bit. I wonder if this will be different.

[RPM]

It was said that the region was already a tinderbox when the spark quite literally went off in Tunisia. I'm not surprised that any of this is happening but am dismayed at how poorly much of the world understands the tenets of Western civilization: democracy, freedom of speech, secularism, and rule of law.

These events also illustrates how poorly west understands rest of the world , and thinks that democracy will function the same way everywhere. This is the fallacy of Obama/Clinton doctrine , when they agreed to bomb libya.

[Ibrahim]

It was said that the region was already a tinderbox when the spark quite literally went off in Tunisia. I'm not surprised that any of this is happening but am dismayed at how poorly much of the world understands the tenets of Western civilization: democracy, freedom of speech, secularism, and rule of law.

These events also illustrates how poorly west understands rest of the world , and thinks that democracy will function the same way everywhere. This is the fallacy of Obama/Clinton doctrine , when they agreed to bomb libya.

Libya had an election, and the winner of that election was not an extremist, which is precisely why the attack on the US consulate happened.

[Mr. Perfect]

Hi Ibs, thanks for posting in my thread.

Regarding your comment, what difference does that really make? Or in other words what is so special about Libya that we're supposed to risk US lives to take an interest of any kind there?

[Hans Bulvai]

.

special agent Morsi

Ain't that the truth. Been reading Egyptian newspapers. There is A LOT of anger at Mursi and his Brotherhood. A LOT. From all segments of Egyptian society; Salafists to seculars. The latest blunder came today when he went to the Mosque of Zainab to pray. He had something like 3000 police, snipers, armored vehicles, secret police, etc... Once he entered the mosque, no one else was allowed to enter. People were disgusted. An op-ed directed at him said that a true leader of the people gets protection from the people; not protection from the same elements that protected the last dicktator. Then of course there is the never ending accusation of the Brotherhood consolidating power across all aspect of the political spectrum including the military.

poor Turkey

that secular, military backed, democracy as-good-as-it-gets (for Tchingiz khan cousins) was sacrificed for a "soft-Islam" rubbish (to counter Iran - not knowing that Turks, Ossmans, court language and administration was Persian) .. and .. Saudi-Katari money bribed Turkey into making Turkey an enemy of SECULAR (Christian and Kurdish and Alwavit) Syria...

Again there was a lot of anger at Erdogan in the papers today. He supposedly again said that Asad's days are numbered while on a trip to Yalta. There were many comments about his broken record rhetoric. It seems that the Turkish regime's image is getting tarnished especially since people were expecting him (Erdogan) to have harsher words about the whole movie events unfolding.

Good to have you back Azari.

[Hans Bulvai]

You guys should read this.
Interesting.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/47803154/Towa ... mes-Davies

"Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. People then subjectively fear that ground gained with great effort will be quite lost; their mood becomes revolutionary. The evidence from Dorr's Rebellion, the Russian Revolution, and the Egyptian Revolution supports this notion; tentatively, so do data on other civil disturbances. Various statistics—as on rural uprisings, industrial strikes, unemployment, and cost of living—may serve as crude indexes of popular mood. More useful, though less easy to obtain, are direct questions in cross-sectional interviews. The goal of predicting revolution is conceived but not yet born or matured."

davies-j-curve.jpg (25.74 KiB) Viewed 1048 times

[Hans Bulvai]

To be fair, this radicalism did not just fester four years ago. It has been in the making for quite some time.

Don't mistake this as a defence of Mr. President.