
they are just going to keep on popping up.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:03, Reply)

Or just build a massive wall around the place?
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:06, Reply)

is much like it was in Europe about 400 years ago, their politico-social timeline is just like ours but 3/4 centuries behind. In another hundred years they'll be having their own "enlightenment". Maybe sooner, because of information technology.
I think we've just got to leave them to it, they have to be able to stand on their own feet because whenever we try to prop up a regime in order to force our values on the region, that's what makes these people, they think the Crusades are still going on.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:11, Reply)

well, quite.
The thing they are trying to fight against is a very real thing, and a very real threat to their way of life and values. So we present them as trying to destroy our way of life and our values, but we think that because our violence against them is state sanctioned, it's therefore rational and proper.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:28, Reply)

The crusades are still going on.
People are killing to spread their religion and to secure holy sites.
And the Jihadists don't represent the life and values Muslim populations any more than the brown shirts represented the British public
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:38, Reply)

the Muslims already have all the holy sites, the two holiest ones, Medina and Mecca, being in Saudi Arabia. Unless they want Stonehenge I don't know what you're referring to.
Jihadists don't represent most ordinary Muslims, this is true. Nevertheless they are fighting for what they believe to be their own indigenous culture, even against other Muslims in fact. We are seeing that in Syria.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:45, Reply)

What, Jerusalem isn't a holy site?
And Syria isn't about religion.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:51, Reply)

Syria isn't about religion. "Islamism" isn't about religion. It's jingoism in religious garb.
Tell me what Syria is about. If you think the Syrian rebels are fighting for democracy, you've got it backwards. Syria was one of the most secular and Westernised countries in the middle east, most people there support the government, the rebels are Islamists.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:55, Reply)

Ok, things may be quieter these past few years but it's still a holy site coveted by all sides.
I bow to your better knowledge of the great democratic state of Syria.
And ignore Assads support of Hezbollah.
Secular does not mean democratic and Religious does not mean dictatorship.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:00, Reply)

Who supports who is really besides the point... the United States supports Islamist regimes as well. They're pals with Saudi Arabia, for one.
Secular doesn't mean democratic, this is true. Syria might not be as democratic as we would like, the Ba'ath party is a sort of national socialism so I won't stick up for them.
Religious doesn't mean dictatorship, but Islamist usually does.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:07, Reply)

( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:18, Reply)

Islamists want to completely destroy the State of Israel, of course, but Jerusalem isn't that much of a hot spot by the general standards of the middle East at the moment. It might be a point of annoyance to some people but it's not fundamentally what this is all about. It's about globalisation, which is little more than the privatised continuation of European imperialism.
Certainly nobody is making bombs in London's suburbs in an attempt to take Jerusalem.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:23, Reply)

I hope it's not going to be "it's because they're Muslims, that's what makes them turn into maniacs".
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:47, Reply)

My criticism is of your assumption that history has just one clear path, that the basic difference between different cultures is how far along the path they've travelled, and that it's a matter of some cultures being ahead of, or behind, others. It doesn't, it isn't, and it isn't.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:20, Reply)

it's what I see, when I look at it. Compare the Islamists to the Puritans, the Islamic states to feudalism, think of the "French Wars of Religion" and the English Civil War, and how it all coincided with the rise of capitalism.
Mohammad's Islamisation of Arabia even looks a bit like Constantine's Christianisation of Europe.
It's an oversimplification, I admit, but the parallels are there.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:28, Reply)

www.livescience.com/16315-rare-earth-elements-afghanistan.html
now I know what was in those container lorries...
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:22, Reply)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18882996
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:51, Reply)

And currently Chinas got the monopoly on them by a long shot.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:55, Reply)

if current trends continue. So we can't go buying the stuff from them.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 12:57, Reply)

( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:02, Reply)

China is also likely to start poking its nose into the middle East, so then they will hold all the cards.
( , Thu 19 Jul 2012, 13:08, Reply)