by OLD1953 » Mon Aug 08, 2011 12:40 am
Apparently the fear of other governments in the region has moved from "Syrian troubles may spread if we speak up" to "we will have trouble if we don't speak up". How much of that is sincere and how much is "hurry up and kill enough to get them to go home so we don't see it on the news every night" I don't know.
There is a lot of frustration among educated Arabs over things like "I'm too high up to end the fast yet". This has evolved to the point where the educated will pick out a few of the traditional restrictions to keep, avoiding liquor or pork or loose women or whatever, and ignore the rest. And that is the wellspring of the culture clash the Arab world is trying very hard to suppress. They can't live without locally trained technicians, scientists, engineers and so forth (though some states certainly have made an effort) but the religious underpinning of the governments can't live with them either.
While it's possible the world could go sane and fix the worldwide financial mess, I seriously doubt that will happen short of war. The next election in the US will be interesting, to say the least. I predict that whoever paints a clear vision of a desirable future for the US will win. Obama's greatest failing is that he has not portrayed a clear vision of where he wants America to go and what he wants it to be.
The bankruptcy of the Post Office was and is inevitable, discussion of pensions, cost cutting, etc., is irrelevant to the simple fact that Post Office revenues are heavily dependant on direct mail advertising, and that is being replaced by electronic advertising, which can be both cheaper and more effective - unless of course you are an ad hater like me, who simply blocks most of the web ad sites from displaying on your browser. Bliss! Some web pages are complete blanks on my brower, they are nothing but ads, and missing that doesn't bother me at all!
Ads delivered by a web site itself will still show up, but the sneak popunders and so forth usually come up as blanks or just a dot. And I almost never get malware attacks.
Israel is simply preparing for all out war. So is Palestine. Turkey intends to make it difficult for the US to intervene, and that's another problem, will the US see Turkey leave NATO simply to offer Israel token support in the UN during a war? Certainly anyone can see the world breaking down all around us.
Apparently the fear of other governments in the region has moved from "Syrian troubles may spread if we speak up" to "we will have trouble if we don't speak up". How much of that is sincere and how much is "hurry up and kill enough to get them to go home so we don't see it on the news every night" I don't know.
There is a lot of frustration among educated Arabs over things like "I'm too high up to end the fast yet". This has evolved to the point where the educated will pick out a few of the traditional restrictions to keep, avoiding liquor or pork or loose women or whatever, and ignore the rest. And that is the wellspring of the culture clash the Arab world is trying very hard to suppress. They can't live without locally trained technicians, scientists, engineers and so forth (though some states certainly have made an effort) but the religious underpinning of the governments can't live with them either.
While it's possible the world could go sane and fix the worldwide financial mess, I seriously doubt that will happen short of war. The next election in the US will be interesting, to say the least. I predict that whoever paints a clear vision of a desirable future for the US will win. Obama's greatest failing is that he has not portrayed a clear vision of where he wants America to go and what he wants it to be.
The bankruptcy of the Post Office was and is inevitable, discussion of pensions, cost cutting, etc., is irrelevant to the simple fact that Post Office revenues are heavily dependant on direct mail advertising, and that is being replaced by electronic advertising, which can be both cheaper and more effective - unless of course you are an ad hater like me, who simply blocks most of the web ad sites from displaying on your browser. Bliss! Some web pages are complete blanks on my brower, they are nothing but ads, and missing that doesn't bother me at all! :lol: Ads delivered by a web site itself will still show up, but the sneak popunders and so forth usually come up as blanks or just a dot. And I almost never get malware attacks.
Israel is simply preparing for all out war. So is Palestine. Turkey intends to make it difficult for the US to intervene, and that's another problem, will the US see Turkey leave NATO simply to offer Israel token support in the UN during a war? Certainly anyone can see the world breaking down all around us.