yeah, I understand what you are saying. Man, there are times I think I ought to organize a trip to the Middle East for CSers so that we can all learn a bit more about the place and its peoples.
Like all religions, Islam has people who are entirely devout in their practice, some who are not at all, and the full range in between. So if you had contact with Muslims youwould pretty much be able to choose what levels of dedication you would associate. There are many Muslims in the US that are indistinguishable from the rest of the American population.
You may even know one already! Uh oh! Just kidding...
If you were ever curious, you could easily contact someone at the local mosque and go talk with them about Islam and their practices. I can almost guarantee you that they would welcome you openly.
(I'm not talking about Black Muslim mosques, though I have met several times with people who are Black Muslims and after a certain moment of suspicion and anti-white feeling, they are also quite open and willing to talk about their beliefs.)
I've lived in Muslim countries and communities, and travelled with Muslims occassionally. The praying thing -- which is not my thing at all -- was not a problem. It gave me some nice time outs for myself, when I could read, or write, or think a bit about things without interruption. I've been at parties where most of the people are Muslim, and they will simply go to another room for a few minutes and pray. I've always rather enjoyed this. It is a bit like watching someone paint a picture, or working on a sculpture...
Good point. Theer are many Muslims in the US. Good people, solid communities. Unfortunately, they are under a lot of pressure from intolerant people. They do deserve better, and so does America.
I have had only limited contacts with Seventh Day Adventists. Occassionally a couple will show up at my door, and each time it has resulted in an interesting and useful discussion. Even had tea a couple of times. The other contact was in the sixties, when a store owned by a SDA family donated lots of foodstuffs for a protest against the VietNam war. I was pretty impressed, as most of the other establishments we solicited were scared to be associated with the anti-war movement and offending Nixon and Kissinger.
When did the SDA/Messianic Jews merger take place? Did it have an impact on how SDA folks view Israel?
What an intriguing world we live in! Glad you are here, TransientMind!
It is easy to get the nuclear fuel cycle confused! To start at the top:
There are several uses for nuclear fuels. The two that are involved when people argue about Iran are: 1) nuclear power (electricity production in nuclear reactors), 2) and nuclear bombs (which then have to be built into a larger and in many ways more complex weapons 'system' -- without the system the bomb becomes next to useless).
Both power and bombs required enrished fuels, that is fuels that have been purified and concentrated from the state in which they are found naturally.
Uranium is the common fuel for these uses, and a by-product of the power use is plutonium, which can also be used for bombs.
(Note: one can make both nuclear power and bombs from materials other than uranium and plutonomium.)
Uranium requires less enrichment -- a lower level of concentration -- for use in nuclear power reactors than the enrichment needed for bombs, but the enrichment technology required for both is the same.
IAEA inspections focus among several things on the levels of enrichment that a country is producing. The assumption is that if a country is enriching beyond the level needed for the power preactors, that they are then pursuing nuclear weapons technology, or some other non-military use. Enrichment is a fairly easy thing to monitor, though there are ways not known to most countries including Iran to by-pass the easy-to-monitor enrichment methods.
Because of the ease of enrichment monitoring, the ease of monitoring raw material mining (yellowcake production), and the long lead times required to 'weaponize' a nuclear bomb, the scientific, intelligence, and military communities are not particularly worried about Iran's nuclear weapons potential.
I hope this wasn't too much!
Turning to the politics of the situation, it seems clear to me that the 'worry' about Iran comes entirely from a limited number of political interest groups that want to see Iran and other Muslim/Arab countries thrown into chaos, and the 'nuclear bomb' issue is being used to try to scare Americans and people of other countries into going along with their objective.
The 'father-son' metaphor is an interesting one, I agree. But if we use it, we have to recognize that Iran is an ancient and generally honorable society, and that it is the US that is the youngster on the block, with barely 300 years of white-people history behind us. The US should be taking lessons from Iran, and not vice versa.
Unfortunately, it is the US that since WWII has initiated more aggressive military actions than any other country in the world. I saw a list of them once: there were several dozen. Only a handful could be considered moral and/or legal.
Of those dozens, my guess is that an American citizen, if asked to compile such a list, would be able to name no more than a dozen.
How do we turn this situation around? That's the question that worries me.
I've always wondered why cursing and ignorance seem to go hand in hand. Is it in the hope that the shock of the cursing will hide the emptiness of the comment?
Do keep in mind that Iran has a right to enrich nuclear fuel. It is not a right that any other country can take away, though some may bully Iran into not acting on this right. But that is what it would be: bullying.
Muslims believe in the same God as Christians do, Carol. Jesus is mentioned in the Muslim Qur'an far more than Muhammad.... Different styles of worship, but similar prayers, similar theological beliefs. Jesus is one of the prophets of Islam. Muslims embrace the teachings of Christ without any reserve. The major difference is that Muslims also believe that there was a revelation after Christ's, that of Muhammad the Prophet, who came along some 600 years after Jesus.
Hop this clarifies a bit.
There was a wonderful thread started by Dusty not too long ago on the differences between Chritsianity and Islam, where I posted quite a bit of information. You might like to go check out that thread.
Yeah, Iran said that if the UN as a result of US pressures, was going to take the position that Iran couldn't continue enriching their own uranium, then they would withdraw from the IAEA and the IAEA inspection program. The US backed down a bit, the UN said that that wasn't what they were demanding of Iran, and the inspections continued....
Scout, bro, I've gotta think that the American people aren't as bad as you are saying. You know, we may be slow to figure things out sometimes, but in the end the American people want to get it right and do the right thing. We DON'T want to be oppressors. We DO believe in justice for all, and DO want to live in a world where everyone can rise about poverty and live in dignity. And in the end we will get out from under the massive, unreasoning, and unreasoned fear that has gripped this country since Sept 11. I think we'll get it straight. My only concern, and it is a huge one, is whether we will get it straight fast enough, before we have cut ourselves off at our own knees.
We are not the only ones who want to do things right. The world wants us to do it too, and as we make our way from the brink of insanity that we are now at, the world will for the most part help us and not stop us.
Yes, it will now take a lot of time. But keep a couple of things in mind....
First, the number of 'them's who are taught to hate America since childhood is extremely small. I have visited schools in a number of areas that are considered deeply anti-American and do not find this to be the case at all. It is true that Israel has incurred the enmity of millions of people around the world, but that anger only extends to the USA to the extent we blindly support Israel. It is, of course, a choice we have as to whether we want to incur that penalty or not.
And yes, the stationing of US troops on Arab soil and particularly in Saudi Arabia is also resented though less so by Muslims all over the world; our troops are seen as occupiers, and not protectors.
Were it not for American neocon obsession with Iraq, we would not have the numbers of troop stationed in Saudi that we have, and I think this issue would pretty much go away when we leave.
Having said all that, yes, the US now has a long hard road ahead of it to regain the confidence of the world. But if we clean up our own foreign policies and activities I feel confidant that we can do so.
Speaking of which, I have to get back to work folks....
Actually by all accounts, the strategy of containing Saddam was working well. The Clinton people thought so, Bush Senior (who srated it) thought so. Blix (the guy in charge of the inspections program)and the UN thought so, Collen Powell thought so, US intel thought so, and until Rummy came in and told everybody he knew best, DoD thought so.
You are right, the US tried to provoke Saddam into attacking across the no-fly zones, and planned to do so in other ways (see the CIA's 95-96 assassination plans, and later Anabasis). And Saddam didn't.
So, yes I do say tricked, and I mean that quite literally. The was a cabal, largely led by Paul Wolfowitz and the neocons, which even before Bush became president were trying to get the US to attack Iraq. When Bush became a candidate, these neocons flocked to his campaign, thinking he would be an easy man to influence (see the Vulcans). When he came to the White House, the neocons stepped into positions of power in the administration, at both the State Department and DoD, and immediately -- and well before Sept. 11 -- laid the groundwork for justifying an attack on Iraq (see Bletchly II) and for starting an Christian vs Muslim "war." They were successful when Sept 11 occurred, and used the anger and feat that that produced in this country to slip their policy into place. Saddam was, they said, responsible for Sept 11. Saddam had WMD. Saddam was pursuing a nuclear bomb. Of course, EACH of these accusation turned out to be wholly manufactured by the neocons, and yet they used their new positions within the government to assert them repeatedly, even while the CIA and every single other part of the US intelligence community was asserting that EACH assertion was false. Steven, it is not as if there was any sliver of doubt that someone could sort of hang an 'opinion' on. We knew before we attacked Saddam that each one of the reasons the administration and the neocons were using to sell the attack to the American people was totally false.
So, yes, I say 'tricked'. And I could use much stronger language...
And now we see the same pattern of lying being used as the neocons try and manipulate us into attacking Iran. There is no shame in them, but then, they have totally different agendas than looking out for the interests of the US.
I know this is not the impression that the general American has of things, of course. But records are now being released an many books wirten about this, each with their pieces of the puzzle, and the picture that is emerging, as I've summarized it here, is not pretty.
Yes, and the Iranian government agrees with you. Iran welcomes IAEA inspectors and are not playing the games thsat Saddam did. IAEA inspectors are in Iran as we speak, doing the regular rounds of inspections.
What Iran will not accept is being told that they don't have a right to build their nuclear power industry, and that includes enrishing the fuel they need for it. And in my opinion they have, like any other country (including the US), the right to do so.
Yeah, we often overlook this, jvind. But the way to defuse the anti-US sentiment is to behave decently in the world. People don't want to hate America, but when we do things that oppresses people that is what we end up creating. A good decent new adminsitration with good decent foriegn policies will go a long way to defusing that anger directed against American behavior.
Oddly, they already have us by the throats, if they so want. The Bush adminsitration is spending so much (Iraq alone is approaching trillion dollars) that we are having to borrow extraordinary sums from other countries. The Chinese have become to biggest holder of US paper. If they want to hurt us, all they will have to do is not buy any more paper when it comes due. If they do that, the dollar tumbles like we've never seen it tumble before, and every American will be relatively impoverished.
This has always puzzled me: why are so many American willing to put themselves in such a position of vulnerability? Or do they think that our foreign adventures come 'free'?
Agreed about the parties. The Democrats while they haven't pushed the strange policies on the 'war on terror' or Afgahinstan (which is getting worse and worse) or Iraq (which will continue to get worse), but they sure have gone along with the Bush admin. It is, in my opinion, just sickening.
On an absolutely selfish note, I've been diversifying my investments and am now about half outside the US. Anybody else with investments may wish to consider whether this would be a good thing to do as well.
Yes, North Korea IS. But there I am not as concerned as some others, because it takes a lot more than building a bomb to have a nuclear weapons capability. I agree completely that this is where we do have to keep a sharp eye.
Interesting note:
The people who tricked us into attacking Iraq and are now trying to get us to do so to Iran are nowhere to be be heard when it comes to N Korea. Why not? Their agenda is the Middle East and Israel, and not anything else.
IF there is any country that we should be confronting, it is N. Korea. There, at last the US State Department is actually doing its job and is making pretty decent progress via diplomacy. This is one thing the Bush adminsitration is not botching. Oooops, did I say say something positive about the Bush admin? Oh well. Gotta call them as I understand them!
oceans5555 Forum Posts (803)
Well, UK, I hope she didn't spread any Big Lies about you....
RE: Would you date a Muslim?
yeah, I understand what you are saying. Man, there are times I think I ought to organize a trip to the Middle East for CSers so that we can all learn a bit more about the place and its peoples.Like all religions, Islam has people who are entirely devout in their practice, some who are not at all, and the full range in between. So if you had contact with Muslims youwould pretty much be able to choose what levels of dedication you would associate. There are many Muslims in the US that are indistinguishable from the rest of the American population.
You may even know one already! Uh oh! Just kidding...
If you were ever curious, you could easily contact someone at the local mosque and go talk with them about Islam and their practices. I can almost guarantee you that they would welcome you openly.
(I'm not talking about Black Muslim mosques, though I have met several times with people who are Black Muslims and after a certain moment of suspicion and anti-white feeling, they are also quite open and willing to talk about their beliefs.)
Oceans
I won't use the wine or beer emoticons....
Oceans