Hamas IS Isis and Isis IS Hamas! — Page 7

"Meanwhile, how do you think local governments operating with no federal oversight or regulation will go? Abolishing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Liberties and protection of citizens defined by each individual state?"

Don't be silly Matt. Folks that find themselves in those states could just MOVE if they don't like it! Because it's that simple for people to pick up their lives, leave their homes and jobs and move. It's simple!

Depends on whether other states would allow inter-state migration. Seeing as how the Independent States of Amurrica would regulate their own immigration laws and borders. You could get shot trying to climb the wall from New Mexico into Texas.

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Not me, but it's what Liza's Headache dreams of for our future.

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If you share such disdainful feelings of contempt toward our country and are so skeptical of our country's military, why do you stay here? A portion of your taxes are funneled into the Department of Defense, which you believe is a corrupt entity propagating holy war. Apparently. So, why not head up north to Canada? I ask sincerely.

Actually, I love Canada. But my husband hates the cold. And more importantly, I am an American citizen by birth and under no obligation to move because war crimes are committed in my name.

My point, however and for the umpteenth time, is not that we are the worst country on the planet, but that our hands are not clean in the Middle East. Slaughtering more Arabs and creating more collateral damage will only serve to inspire more jihadists. I don't know what the answer is, but we've seen what we accomplish with widespread destruction.

Saudi clerics have declared a fatwa against ISIS. Sure, one can and should complain a lot about the Saudi clerics, but I'm choosing to leave that for another day and think this is an important development which could be very helpful in fighting these assholes.
fatwa

The Saudis have been between a rock and a hard place on this. It can be argued (and has!) that Isis and Al Qaeda exist only because of their support for the Salafist clerics who promulgate the Wahabhist Islamism that fuels the terrorists.

Their karma has been that what Isis wants to achieve with their much-vaunted caliphate is to take over Arabia from the House of Saud.

Plus, all of the terrorist groups that have been spawned by Wahabbism are Sunni. For the Saudis to go against them, as they are doing here, is pitting Sunni against Sunni, which has always been considered unthinkable in Sunni religious circles.

So, on the one hand, this is a game changer.

And on the other hand, the enemy of my enemy may be a friend in the Middle East, but by tomorrow the sands may have shifted.

And please don't agree with me, Headband.

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Updated On: 9/20/14 at 03:57 PM

Rejoice, bigots! New York City busses got you covered!

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I love the way the head case, a terrorist on this very board, lays everything out as if he will be risking anything of himself through this "process."

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I forgive you for calling me a troll (which I am not).

I forgive you for calling me an ass (which I am not)

I forgive you for calling me pompous (which I am n--well, maybe sometimes).

I forgive you for calling me condescending (because I do condescend to you, frequently--and with good reason).

And I forgive you for accusing me of "bestowing" on the board "many wonderful aural and visual treats, bewitching many a poster into supporting your edicts without even pretending to understand them" (because I've never had such a bizarre and intricate conspiracy theory woven around me!).

But I will NOT forgive you for taking the name of Judy Garland in vain.

Because in my religion--Judy-ism--that is worth of a big fat fatwa.

As penance, you will have to watch all 14 minutes and 44 seconds of Judy's 1964 appearance on the Jack Paar show, including her famous Marlene Dietrich anecdote ("...but not one NOTE of music..."), which doesn't start until the 6:24 point.

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Updated On: 9/20/14 at 09:49 AM

"Funny how, over so many centuries, so much violence has been done in the name of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular. However, no one classifies either as a religion of violence."

Perhaps it is because Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who was a loving, peaceful man. And Islam is based on the teachings of Muhammad who was NOT!

I slept with a Jesus once. He was indeed very loving.

If you want to know what an Arab writer thinks is happening to Arab civilization--and to Islam overall--Hisham Melham is a Lebanese journalist who is the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya and a commentator on PBS News Hour.

His complex and thought provoking words on Arab civilization and political Islam don't fit into our easy categories. So this essay won't please the shallow thinkers on the American right or the equally shallow thinkers on the American left, either those on the right with a FoxNews-bred need for an easy villain ("Nuke the terrorists!") or those on the academic left who want to blame everything on Western racism or colonialism ("Whatever it is, it's OUR fault!").

Melham goes far beyond the comprehension of all of these facile and naive explanations and looks at the "slow death of the cosmopolitanism" that slowly destroyed once-great cities like Alexandria, Beirut, Cairo and Damascus, once great centers of learning and culture now stages for civil wars. He looks at jihadism and nationalism and political Islam and the "decades-long struggle for legitimacy between the dictators and the Islamists."

When you read Hisham Melham, you realize that everything we in the West think about the Middle East is meaningless, no more than narcissistic reductionism, seeing ourselves either as saviors or villains, without seeing the reality of the Middle and Near East at all.



POLITICO MAGAZINE: The Barbarians Within Our Gates: Arab civilization has collapsed. It won’t recover in my lifetime. By HISHAM MELHEM

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As usual, you miss the point entirely.

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