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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I've mentioned this before, but across the street from my house is a family of Syrian Muslims. Culturally, they are very different from us, but they are among the nicest and most gracious people we've ever met. They regularly give us gifts in return for watching their children as they come home from the bus.
Recently, my wife visited them to give them a holiday present and was invited in for tea (!!). The wife told her how grateful she was to live in a neighborhood where people don't hate them on sight for their ethnicity and religion. She is sometimes fearful to go out because of the reactions she gets.
She described how members of her and her husband's extended families in Syria are starving — eating grass — because of how expensive food is, and how her children beg her not to travel there any more for fear that she might not come back. This is the real, human toll of the war on terror and we cannot ignore it.
Screw the Republicans and their facile stories about carpet bombing the Middle-East.
edited 22nd Dec '15 7:24:05 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's about a third South Asian, a quarter Arab, a quarter African American and the remainder "other". Most converts are African American though, which may have something to do with how people in prison often convert to Islam.
edited 22nd Dec '15 7:30:03 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
As has been stated before, bombing alone will acomplish nothing.
The only feasible way to crush ISIS is with a ground assault that will never happen, because Isolationists feel its not our problem or the Politicans basically saying :
"I will not send American boys to do a job that the Arab boys ought to be doing for themselves."
But if your talking about in general, there doesn't seem much that anyone can do.
Thanks for breaking it down.
edited 22nd Dec '15 7:34:24 AM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.The only realistic way to beat ISIS is to sort out the situation with Assad.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play![]()
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Does it matter where?
Iranian dual citizens fight new US visa rules
Neysun Rouhani and his wife live in the UK. He's a concert pianist and piano teacher who travels to the US often, both for work and to visit family. But once changes to the US visa waiver programme are implemented in 2016, he will require a visa every time he wants to visit, even though he's a British citizen. "It makes my life more difficult. Right now I'm not sure the trip we have planned since five months ago will happen or not in January," he says.
The US Congress has passed a measure as part of a budget bill that will no longer allow citizens of 38 countries
- including the UK - who have either travelled to Iraq, Syria, Iran or Sudan in the past five years or are dual nationals of these states, to travel to the US without a visa. The president signed the bill into law on Friday.
Rouhani, a dual citizen of the UK and Iran, will be affected. His wife, who is a citizen of those nations and the US, will not - American citizens who are also passport holders of these nations or have travelled there will be able to enter the US freely.
The move has angered European diplomats. "If you're a terrorist, you don't have a great big Syria stamp in your passport - you have Turkey, for example. It's not going to catch the people who don't travel legitimately, it's going to target the people who do travel legitimately," an EU official told the BBC.
All European Union ambassadors of member states recently published an editorial
arguing against the changes - an unprecedented occasion to see a unanimous agreement among all the representatives of the union, the official said.
The new legislation comes on the heels of the terrorist attacks in Paris last month that sparked fears of a similar act being carried out on American soil. This prompted lawmakers to take a look at tightening the borders, igniting national debate about refugees.
"If a terrorist has been to Iraq and Syria and wants to get to the US, they will likely go through Europe. That's the problem," said one congressional aide to the BBC. "Europe doesn't have a threat of foreign fighters coming from our country."
edited 22nd Dec '15 7:39:24 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnSo a Trump supporter has been arrested for planning to bomb Muslims, he had a device but police don't know if it was inert or not.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.It's not inaccurate to say that the reactionary, Trumpite style Republican that we're discussing would have no insurmountable moral qualms about annihilating an entire race and/or culture, in much the same way as the citizens of Nazi Germany tacitly abetted the Holocaust. They live in a world in which they have been trained to fear these people and regard them as less than human.
This must be distinguished, however, from blaming them for those attitudes. To an extent, they are passive victims of an enormously successful propaganda exercise, turned into viral carriers of that propaganda. Put them in Syria, facing the horror of the civil war, and they'd change their tune pretty quickly. That doesn't make them any less dangerous, though.
edited 22nd Dec '15 9:06:16 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Apparently Trump leads male voters against Clinton, but loses big-time with female voters.
Sad. That so many men support him. The man is clearly unhinged and a giant dumbass, but when he says shit that pisses off women, men like him more? Doesn't sound like Trump's supporters support him for rational reasons. What is he aiming for, the MRA vote?
White, adult/middle aged (youth are different) tend to vote Republican as a demographic anyway. But presidential races are won and lost by who can get other demographics out to vote for them; and there Trump is doing dreadfully. He may have lost this race during his first speech, the "Mexicans are rapists" one, because the Latino vote is so vital.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Honestly, I'm kind of hoping that Trump actually wins the bid for Republican candidacy, because in all likelihood, the Democrats would get the Presidental office without so much as having to lift a finger.
Of course, it's always possible that he could pull out a win against all odds, but if he doesn't get the candidacy, then someone else will, and most any other Republican would likely have a better chance of getting elected than Trump. Whereas if Trump gets the candidacy, then the Repulicans might end up losing the Presidential bid for a third time in a row, which I'm sure everyone who isn't an insane redneck would be happy with.
edited 22nd Dec '15 12:35:38 PM by kkhohoho

posted in asia thread