Ah… an ignorant comment… how unexpected… PROVE IT! And do make the effort or you will be embarrassed… oops! too late![/quote]
You are the one who brought up human rights violations and mass atrocities. You source it. Or else be thought of as a fool.
[quote=“fred smith”]sorry, but I am going to take this back to demographics… NOTE to those who reply before reading (This means you Big John): Demographics ISN’T everything and the article notes numerous nations where the fertility rates are still soaring (these being mostly in the Sahel indicate to me that Boko Haram is just getting started and we will have a generation of fighting there). That said, the youth bulge (and let’s be honest, the problem is always with having too many young men, not women) is disappearing and the countries that used to be the source of instability have rapidly moderated: Lebanon, Iran, Maghreb, Saudi Arabia and even to some degree Egypt) but with Yemen, West Bank, Gaza, various Gulf states and the wide swath across the Sahel and Iraq and Afghanistan all experiencing the high growth rates that are going to lead to economic issues given their low literacy rates and high unemployment rates.
[quote]OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Fertility Implosion
By DAVID BROOKS
When you look at pictures from the Arab spring, you see these gigantic crowds of young men, and it confirms the impression that the Muslim Middle East has a gigantic youth bulge — hundreds of millions of young people with little to do. But that view is becoming obsolete. As Nicholas Eberstadt and Apoorva Shah of the American Enterprise Institute point out, over the past three decades, the Arab world has undergone a little noticed demographic implosion. Arab adults are having many fewer kids.
Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates. But, according to the United States Census Bureau, Iran now has a similar birth rate to New England — which is the least fertile region in the U.S.
The speed of the change is breathtaking. A woman in Oman today has 5.6 fewer babies than a woman in Oman 30 years ago. Morocco, Syria and Saudi Arabia have seen fertility-rate declines of nearly 60 percent, and in Iran it’s more than 70 percent. These are among the fastest declines in recorded history.
The Iranian regime is aware of how the rapidly aging population and the lack of young people entering the work force could lead to long-term decline. But there’s not much they have been able to do about it. Maybe Iranians are pessimistic about the future. Maybe Iranian parents just want smaller families.
As Eberstadt is careful to note, demographics is not necessarily destiny. You can have fast economic development with low fertility or high fertility (South Korea and Taiwan did it a few decades ago). But, over the long term, it’s better to have a growing work force, not one that’s shrinking compared with the number of retirees.
If you look around the world, you see many other nations facing demographic headwinds. If the 20th century was the century of the population explosion, the 21st century, as Eberstadt notes, is looking like the century of the fertility implosion.
Already, nearly half the world’s population lives in countries with birthrates below the replacement level. According to the Census Bureau, the total increase in global manpower between 2010 and 2030 will be just half the increase we experienced in the two decades that just ended. At the same time, according to work by the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, the growth in educational attainment around the world is slowing.
This leads to what the writer Philip Longman has called the gray tsunami — a situation in which huge shares of the population are over 60 and small shares are under 30.
Some countries have it worse than others. Since the end of the Soviet Union, Russia has managed the trick of having low birthrates and high death rates. Russian life expectancy is basically the same as it was 50 years ago, and the nation’s population has declined by roughly six million since 1992.
Rapidly aging Japan has one of the worst demographic profiles, and most European profiles are famously grim. In China, long-term economic growth could face serious demographic restraints. The number of Chinese senior citizens is soaring by 3.7 percent year after year. By 2030, as Eberstadt notes, there will be many more older workers (ages 50-64) than younger workers (15-29). In 2010, there were almost twice as many younger ones. In a culture where there is low social trust outside the family, a generation of only children is giving birth to another generation of only children, which is bound to lead to deep social change.
Even the countries with healthier demographics are facing problems. India, for example, will continue to produce plenty of young workers. By 2030, according to the Vienna Institute of Demography, India will have 100 million relatively educated young men, compared with fewer than 75 million in China.
But India faces a regional challenge. Population growth is high in the northern parts of the country, where people tend to be poorer and less educated. Meanwhile, fertility rates in the southern parts of the country, where people are richer and better educated, are already below replacement levels.
The U.S. has long had higher birthrates than Japan and most European nations. The U.S. population is increasing at every age level, thanks in part to immigration. America is aging, but not as fast as other countries.
But even that is looking fragile. The 2010 census suggested that U.S. population growth is decelerating faster than many expected.
Besides, it’s probably wrong to see this as a demographic competition. American living standards will be hurt by an aging and less dynamic world, even if the U.S. does attract young workers.
For decades, people took dynamism and economic growth for granted and saw population growth as a problem. Now we’ve gone to the other extreme, and it’s clear that young people are the scarce resource. In the 21st century, the U.S. could be the slowly aging leader of a rapidly aging world.[/quote][/quote]
Are you suggesting the profiles of the 9/11 bombers are then outliers? It appears most of them don’t fit the demographics you suggest (young, jobless, unmarried) (see e.g. historycommons.org/timeline. … rHijackers)
I’m not necessarily arguing your point, I just don’t have enough information about the demographics of known terrorists over a large enough known pool to make any statistical guess.
[quote]Are you suggesting the profiles of the 9/11 bombers are then outliers? It appears most of them don’t fit the demographics you suggest (young, jobless, unmarried) (see e.g. historycommons.org/timeline. … rHijackers)
I’m not necessarily arguing your point, I just don’t have enough information about the demographics of known terrorists over a large enough known pool to make any statistical guess.[/quote]
What I am suggesting is that we have seen the same phenomenon throughout history but THIS time it is using Islam as a symbol or Cause to inspire the violence, hatred and terrorism that have manifested themselves previously as Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Apartheid Racism, Jim Crow Racism, tribalism… We cannot divorce Islam from this debate because the terrorists, themselves, cite Islam for inspiring their actions. Obviously, this is not something good for Islam. But whether for Communism, Nazism, Facism and now Islamofascism or militant Islam, the core remains the same, the pseudo intellectual paranoid narcissists who feel slighted or not accorded the proper respect (Karl Marx, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Osama bin Laden) with their burning resentment against the bourgeoisie or aristocrats or Jews or whomever they see as having something that they do not and feel that they deserve (no doubt all had doting mothers who convinced them that their very turds were precious). Why do so many of these leaders and followers start out as drunks, dropouts, drug addicts, petty criminals with police records FIRST and THEN become devotees to the Cause? Not a coincidence and today’s Islamofascists are nothing but the petty racaille of the Parisian banlieu pilloried by Sarkozy. Think about it: most white racists and neo-Nazis are hardly the creme de la creme of the genetics that they peddle? I mean if you wanted poster children for eugenics, you would start with them, surely? And in the same way, Communists like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara with all their violent ideals were hardly the intellectual stalwarts of the movement and don’t you think that they knew that? It also smells a lot like the politically correct witch trials that flare through America every so often, punishing, destroying the “enemy” while uplifting the mob that drinks on the sanctimonious holier-than-thou purity of its cause?
So we have the chain-smoking nihilist black turtleneck wearing “intellectual” Commnists hanging out in Paris cafes and getting drunk and throwing stones… to give meaning to their lives… and the fascists with their eternal parades and now the online grievance and bravado of the Islamofascists with their masks and guns and “uniforms.” Hell, look at the violence and herdlike behavior of the anti-G8 crowd with the same masked faces and uniforms and violence or the militant environmentalists with their millennarian dreams of destruction in the guise of catastrophic climate change. All share the same tendency (bullying) that evaporates into cringing whines when challenged or Hitlerian Gotterdammerung nihilistic self-destruction when the dream collapses into reality. It is all about the Symbol. It is all about the Cause. It is all about the “Escape from Freedom” that subverts the conscious ego into the chthonic Id. The problem is that even these delusionists have moments of clarity and I think that accounts for the constant need for “action” and “violence” and “destroying the enemy” only to wear off like an opiate with the need for even greater doses of violence and destruction to bring about the oblivion that they so eagerly seek. My solution (and may it be a final one" and that is deliberate), let’s pass out poison or Kool-Aid to all these would-be martyrs and help them reach their final goal: an end to self-reflective thought through the eternal sleep of death and GOOD RIDDANCE. Remember President Diems’ wife in Vietnam? When asked about the self-immolation of the Buddhist monks protesting her husband’s reign suggested that anyone who wanted to follow in their footsteps could stop by the Presidential Palace and she would supply the matches?
Much like while privileged, mouthy,white schoolyard prick who cries foul to the principal because he got thumped using his middle finger as a means of expressing himself to negros . Somehow I don’t think it is a good idea for the principal to tell the kid he should continue expressing himself for obvious reasons. Common sense dictates…at least one would think so.
So… all the other notables who attended were wrong to do so?
Shame on them.[/quote]
The US is a special case. Would be perceived as a red flag waving in front of a raging bull. And the backlash would be on the flag, not the bull.
Terrorists would fall over themselves for the chance to get a shot at Obama/any top US official. Just the attempt would bring the kind of consequences they are striving for. It is about publicity. And an imaginary badge of so called “honor”.
Any other dignitary -even the ones from places with debatable issues themselves- cannot compare to the juicy, tempting prize of any US mark. The Great Satan and all that jazz.[/quote]
Well, they say he’s going to Riyadh. I guess he feels safe there.
While we are on the topic of religious extremism:
“The Religious Extremism the Media Doesn’t Tell You About”
globalresearch.ca/the-religi … ut/5426519
This is along the lines of what some contributors to this thread have already said, just wanted to add it for the record.
[quote=“rowland”]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11374899/Blasphemous-artwork-removed-from-Paris-exhibition.html
[quote]
An artwork depicting high-heeled shoes on Islamic prayer mats has been removed from an exhibition after a Muslim group warned of possible violence in the wake of the Paris attacks.
The French-Algerian artist, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, withdrew the work from an exhibition in a northern Paris suburb with a large Muslim population after an Islamic group told local authorities it could provoke “uncontrollable, irresponsible incidents”.
It is considered disrespectful to step on Muslim prayer maps with shoes.
[/quote][/quote]
why we must tiptoe around Muslims and religious fanatics is beyond me in today’s largely secular world.
[quote=“Jack Burton”]
why we must tiptoe around Muslims and religious fanatics is beyond me in today’s largely secular world.[/quote]
Because they’ll kill you even sooner if you don’t.
[quote=“rowland”][quote=“Jack Burton”]
why we must tiptoe around Muslims and religious fanatics is beyond me in today’s largely secular world.[/quote]
Because they’ll kill you even sooner if you don’t.[/quote]
You don’t have to tiptoe around Muslims, unless they are religious fanatics.
[quote=“BigJohn”][quote=“rowland”][quote=“Jack Burton”]
why we must tiptoe around Muslims and religious fanatics is beyond me in today’s largely secular world.[/quote]
Because they’ll kill you even sooner if you don’t.[/quote]
You don’t have to tiptoe around Muslims, unless they are religious fanatics.[/quote]
You can tiptoe through the tulips, but watch out for the land mines.
[quote=“BigJohn”][quote=“rowland”][quote=“Jack Burton”]
why we must tiptoe around Muslims and religious fanatics is beyond me in today’s largely secular world.[/quote]
Because they’ll kill you even sooner if you don’t.[/quote]
You don’t have to tiptoe around Muslims, unless they are religious fanatics.[/quote]
I beg to differ; they are the new sensitive “minority” around which we are being bullied to be more PC.
Little precious does not like to be “bullied” into becoming more PC? or just in areas that he doesn’t like feel sufficiently “sensitized” to appreciate the importance of “sensitivity” to the marginalized group whose narrative has been devocalized?
I don’t have a problem with wannabe jihadis exercising their right to throw gasoline on the fire of sectarian hatred. My only problem is with them then using the inevitable blowback as a pretext to drag the rest of us further into their jihad masquerading as freedom of expression.
So go ahead. Express yourselves. Just take it out in the parking lot where it belongs. Jihadi versus jihadi.
[quote=“Winston Smith”]I don’t have a problem with wannabe jihadis exercising their right to throw gasoline on the fire of sectarian hatred. My only problem is with them then using the inevitable blowback as a pretext to drag the rest of us further into their jihad masquerading as freedom of expression.
So go ahead. Express yourselves. Just take it out in the parking lot where it belongs. Jihadi versus jihadi.[/quote]
Yeah, just like it took the Wars of Religion to housebreak Christianity, maybe we should just put a big wall around the Middle East (you can put a little wall around Israel) and just let the Sunnis and Shiites go at it until the survivors are so war-weary that they realise killing each other over the Holy Book is stupid, and they experience their own Enlightenment.
Then they can start killing each other over sensible things like nationalism and ideology, like we do.
Run! The Jihadis are lurking around every corner. They are just waiting for the right opportunity to eat the eyeballs from your dead , burned ,decapitated baby’s body.
Considering there hasn’t been a lot of Islamic reaction to the relentless and obvious hate campaign via laimstream news,or anti-muslims ads on transit systems, or burning of mosques,or heavily armed protests outside of mosques , or burning their holy book, or evangelist Christians tormenting them at gatherings, or the increasing number of reported assaults on muslims…I say maybe,just maybe this jihadi thingy is being a little overhyped ?
Then again I would imagine it is just a matter of time before someone does overreact and the Pam Keller fans can have their “see I told you so” moment of glory.
Meanwhile in the US of Amnesia:
Run! The Jihadis are lurking around every corner. They are just waiting for the right opportunity to eat the eyeballs from your dead , burned ,decapitated baby’s body.
Considering there hasn’t been a lot of Islamic reaction to relentless and obvious hate campaign via laimstream news,or anti-muslims ads on transit systems, or burning of mosques,or heavily armed protests outside of mosques , or burning their holy book, or evangelist Christians tormenting them at gatherings, or the increasing number of reported assaults on muslims…I say maybe,just maybe this jihadi thingy is being a little overhyped ?
Then again I would imagine it is just a matter of time before someone does overreact and the Pam Keller fans can have their “see I told you so” moment of glory.
Meanwhile in the US of Amnesia:
washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/ … -2012.html[/quote]
Statistics are particularly susceptible to manipulation in order to reach a conclusion you want. I went over to the database they used as their conclusions seemed somewhat incredulous and noted the vast majority of these terrorist incidents have 0 fatalities and 0 injured. 911 had something like 3000 fatalities, and from 2000 to date all others combined are something like 30 (including the Boston bombing) so, in my cherry picked statistical analysis can state you are 100 times more likely to die at the hand of a jihadist than any other terrorist in the USA. See how that works?
Check it out if you don’t believe me. start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Res … ults-table
Run! The Jihadis are lurking around every corner. They are just waiting for the right opportunity to eat the eyeballs from your dead , burned ,decapitated baby’s body.
Considering there hasn’t been a lot of Islamic reaction to relentless and obvious hate campaign via laimstream news,or anti-muslims ads on transit systems, or burning of mosques,or heavily armed protests outside of mosques , or burning their holy book, or evangelist Christians tormenting them at gatherings, or the increasing number of reported assaults on muslims…I say maybe,just maybe this jihadi thingy is being a little overhyped ?
Then again I would imagine it is just a matter of time before someone does overreact and the Pam Keller fans can have their “see I told you so” moment of glory.
Meanwhile in the US of Amnesia:
washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/ … -2012.html[/quote]
Statistics are particularly susceptible to manipulation in order to reach a conclusion you want. I went over to the database they used as their conclusions seemed somewhat incredulous and noted the vast majority of these terrorist incidents have 0 fatalities and 0 injured. 911 had something like 3000 fatalities, and from 2000 to date all others combined are something like 30 (including the Boston bombing) so, in my cherry picked statistical analysis can state you are 100 times more likely to die at the hand of a jihadist than any other terrorist in the USA. See how that works?
Check it out if you don’t believe me. start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Res … ults-table[/quote]
So in 14 yrs since 911 there has been 1 terror attack by Islamic extremists in which people died. Well then, I guess Homeland security and the vigilant people of the good ol US of A have got those extremists thinking twice about fucking with the greatest country in the the world, huh?
Here is another statistic you can be proud of.
washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/ … orist.html
I wonder what the statisics are for muslims vs non muslims blowing up government buildings, school shootings, gang related deaths, drug related deaths,rapes , armed robberies are?
[quote=“agentsmith”]
So in 14 yrs since 911 there has been 1 terror attack by Islamic extremists in which people died. Well then, I guess Homeland security and the vigilant people of the good ol US of A have got those extremists thinking twice about fucking with the greatest country in the the world, huh?
Here is another statistic you can be proud of.
washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/ … orist.html
I wonder what the statisics are for muslims vs non muslims blowing up government buildings, school shootings, gang related deaths, drug related deaths,rapes , armed robberies are?[/quote]
Why would I be proud of that, you realize Im not American, right? It’s pretty easy to see the blog you keep linking to is using the statistics in a way to minimize the threat from a jihadist. It’s easy to do, the last 10 years in the US have seen less deaths at the hands of terrorists, than the city of Baltimore has in the last month.
The concern I think is looking forward, the potential of individuals who have joined ISIS will return to the US and UK and what they will do. I agree scare mongering or whipping up anti Muslim sentiment isn’t helpful but then again if I were the US or UK authorities and suspected a person of being a sympathizer, I’m pretty sure putting them under surveillance would be a good idea.
Also, the title of the article you liked to is sensationalist as well “You’re Nine Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist”. No I am not, because Im fairly certain the vast majority of police shootings are justified against criminals. Unless you think the vast majority of police shootings are innocent civilians minding their own business.
yes, sure, those things happen too, but they are not connected nor carried out with a common purpose. Jihadism conducted by Muslim fanatics and wanna-bes does have a common purpose. Big difference.