ABC Radio News fell to an all time low today. Unless you’ve been on vacation (or think Jon Stewart is News), you’ve probably heard that the “Stupid War” in Iraq is back. The group someone is calling ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is taking over the oil cities of the North and headed toward Baghdad. According to the things I have heard, these are the folks who enjoy cutting people’s heads off.
In attempting to characterize the group, the ABC News report characterized the group as the “Puritanical” part of Islam.
Help me out – what are some of the similarities between ISIS and the Puritans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan
The general explanation of who they were was that they were Protestants in England who thought the Church of England was too slow to adopt the reforms happening in Europe and staying too close to the Roman Catholic church. They fled to the Netherlands to avoid the wrath of the Church of England and ultimately came to North America.
Okay – I’ll start
Puritans believed that marriage was between one man and one woman.
That’s clearly the moral equivalent of cutting peoole’s heads off with a dull knife
Jon Stewart’s thoughtful analysis
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/13/jon-stewart-turmoil-ridden-iraq-is-finally-ready-to-greet-us-as-liberators/
Perhaps the Kurds from Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran could once again be joined together as one nation and then they could kick some Sunni and Shia butt.
Ooops forgot to add the Kurds have done a good job in protecting Protestant (Puritan) Christians.
The victors in World War One laid the foundation for all of this by drawing national boundaries to deliberately split apart ethnic groups and force together groups with very different cultures and histories.
If I were King, I would take “must maintain existing international recognized boundaries” off the table. Let Libya split into the two countries it used to be, allow the Pashtuns to merge Southern Afghanistan with the “unmanageable part of Pakistan”
It was an effective strategy. The victors realized the coming importance of access to oil and the chaos ensured there was going to be no one with enough power to prevent them from obtaining it at low cost.
Moving our country from one major language to two will set us back as well.
Well, it is a slippery slope when you suggest that borders might be moved based on ethnic, religious or cultural differences. One could make the case that Hawaii, Puerto Rico and parts of the Southwest US should be free to leave – or even the South.
Of course, there is the little issue of their portion of the $14,000,000,000,000 in debt they would need to assume or pay off.
You all are talking like a couple of conspiratorial theorists, but what you are saying does make sense.
Just heard a news report, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani’s response to the evolving Iraqi civil war was to basically say “Hey, if Iraq splits-up, you can be sure we are also becoming a sovereign once again.” This sort of aligns with what he said back in 1998. You can read a more current article here:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2012/11/barzani-four-state-project.html#
“slippery slope”
That is the answer to your question a month or so back when you asked why we should be following Nigel Farange and the UK IP party that he leads. Since then, he has lead them to a stunning victory in the UK, as shocking as Eric Cantor’s loss.
What is the single goal of the UK IP? To extract the UK from the EU in the same manner that the south tried to extract itself from the USA:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/482225/Nigel-Farage-Ukip-MEPs-arrive-in-Brussels-to-take-fight-to-EU
I thought I was saying, “Hope UKIP kicks the Tory/Liberal/Labour butts all the way into the English Channel.”, and, it looks like they got a good start. Good for them. Hope America gets good news and a good shake-up in the elections ahead of us.
Do you expect a different outcome?
“Do you expect a different outcome?” Depends. Is Van Rompuy a Lincoln? Who is EU President van Rompuy?
Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dranqFntNgo
Since I was way too vague, do you think a withdrawal of the UK from the Union of European States would have a different outcome than when Virginia (and friends) voted to quit the United States?
For the most part, I would expect the unpleasantness to happen on financial markets using credit default swaps and bond ratings rather than infantry and bombers – although one could lead to the other. I probably would consider loans to the Channel Tunnel authority to be high risk
Well, I don’t think it will happen, but I don’t see that much significance to it as the UK still has the BoE and uses its own currency and has road speeds marked as miles per hour.
Tony Blair addressed the Congress about 10 years ago and almost apologized for EU membership saying that the UK is only a dozen miles off the coast of Europe and not a dozen miles off the coast of New York.
Someone should have told him that the UK is half as far from New York as is Hawaii. 😉
Off Topic:
Maylasian Flight 370, or whatever the # was, gotta read this:
‘Unprecedented’: 13 aircraft mysteriously disappear from radars in heart of Europe
A total of 13 aircraft suddenly vanished off radars for about 25 minutes on two occasions over Austria and neighboring countries, Austria’s flight safety monitor said, calling for an EU probe into the “unprecedented” incidents.
http://rt.com/news/165636-aircraft-disappear-radfars-austria/
Crisis in Ukraine? Illegal Dreamers flooding in over the Mexican border? Emails lost at the IRS? A little skirmish or two in Iraq, you say?
“What? Me Worry?” Not when I had these free tickets and transportation to a soccer game in Brazil – this game “is a big fucking deal”
http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/worldcup26.jpg
You can never have too much sports!
Hockey is over and so is the NBA. Only a month or so until Football season!
I thought the Sun never set on the Football Empire.
Don’t get started on Football vs Soccer. That’s a 100 % successful troll to draw out the Anerica haters.
Hey, dude! I ain’t trolling here even if my real name is Justin Rollins.