Brilliantly, sadly observed

[ish mailian]

As the Man in Black sez, "I've been everywhere", but I get your meaning.
And, as Kermit sez, "It's not easy being Green."

Being Muslim in America is both increasingly a great opportunity,
especially for the educated and skilled, and for females, and, increasingly
a risk and, far more stressful than should be.

 I say should be because, as I our discussion has drawn out, the direct
conflicts between the US and the Muslim world have escalated by the actions
and failed policies of governments, and by the complex global political
shifts, the internal politics in the US and in its Westerns and ME
partners, and, most importantly within Islam.

The crisis in Islam, one that is threatening the security of the world, is
the major cause of stress, and while its unfair that these stresses are
felt more intensely by Muslims in the US, and, while the US must do what it
can to reduce this stress, it's not a short term problem and there are no
easy solutions to it.

How the US responds is critical.

The damage done by US policy and propaganda has precedent in South and
Central America and in South East Asia and so, if those relations are a
precedent, we can expect the repair, if it comes,  won't be quick or easy.

Cubans once had a difficult time in the US. Mexicans are still, too often
 treated as alien farm workers and migrants. South East Asians are not
quite the model minority, the Asian America is often said to be. The list
goes on.

It's not easy being an American citizen, resident, immigrant undocumented
in the process....if you don't look European, though this is improving as
the demographic shift from European White to Non-White and Non-European
takes place, at what can only be described as, as something only America
can do on such a scale. The Canadians, for example, do it better, but then,
they are not 350 million strong, and they don't take the poor tired
masses....well the US is getting away from that too, but the US is, to use
another controversial and abused word, exceptional.





On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Tara Brady <madame.brady at gmail.com> wrote:

> "....and the fact that the Muslims are accepted in the US as they are not,
> and probably never will be, in Europe"
>
> You haven't been to Bradford, then. Or Birmingham. Or Manchester. Or
> Nottingham.
>
> On 6 December 2015 at 01:21, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Once again you are putting words and intentions in my mouth. I never
>> apologized for the violence of Syria, Iraq, Iran etc. I do think Iran had
>> every right to defend it’s territory, but I never excused or apologized for
>> the abuses of power by any country.   That accusation is    without basis
>> or evidence. I am simply turning that same moral standards frequently
>> applied to them to US actions. This seems necessary and obvious to me since
>> the US is theoretically a constitutional republic with an open right of
>> dissent and criticism and I am a citizen.
>>
>> Your assertions about Iraq’s WMDs is absurd Bush-fart nonsense. Few
>> things have been more thoroughly disproved.
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Dec 4, 2015, at 10:27 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Now, before you accuse me of defending Bush for his stupid invasion of
>> Iraq, or apologizing for US and Western policy, Iraq, as I stated, or a
>> group like ISIS that might take control of the weapons, was more of a
>> threat after W pulled his boner, but the threat was there and is there. Not
>> simply because of what we do and what we have done, but because of what the
>> nations and factions in the region do. To treat the region as some sort of
>> white man's burden is patronizing, dare I say paternalistic and oriental.
>> >
>> > They are big boys too. They are not super like us, but they so most of
>> the fighting and killing all by themselves.
>> >
>> > On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 10:19 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Your critique of the US and Western policies is sketchy, at best, a
>> gloss of the complexity and the history, but it is with your apology for
>> the regions wars and the policies of the nations and factions in the region
>> that is most in need of correction.
>> >
>> > You apologize for Syria's government, for Iran's government, for Iraq's
>> government, Pakistan's,  for Afghanistan's, for ISIS and so on, you excuse
>> all their incompetence, all their use and abuse of Islam, of terrorism,
>> because you are so blinded by your thesis, that the problems and conflicts
>> are never self-inflicted, not a product of religious conflict, not
>> something inherent in Islam, nor products of the complex integration of
>> resources, geography, politics, internal revolutions, but are all caused by
>> external pressures by the West, or the Cold War etc....so you blame anyone
>> else but the religious groups in Syria that are waging war, Muslims killing
>> Muslims. You blame the Iran Iraq War on the US, and apologize, again, for
>> the governments, for the killing of Muslims by Muslims.
>> >
>> > Basic knowledge of that protracted war would tell you that most of the
>> killing and dying was down to incompetence and arrogance and a primitive
>> belief in the religious warrior. Though Iraq had clear military advantage,
>> Iran had more religious motivation, and Iran used that Religious motivation
>> with better strategy, though both were essentially primitive armies
>> organized and directed by idiots and zealots who knew little of how to wage
>> war against their enemies. .
>> >
>> > There was also fortune. Recall that the Iranians, after the Revolution,
>> could not get US equipment, parts, intelligence, and they condemned the
>> Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, so they had to scramble, to wait for
>> Reagan's deal etc, but in the meantime, the General Dynamics  fighter
>> planes, built and contracted for Iran, were sold to Israel, who used them
>> to knock out Iraq's French built Nuclear Program in Iraq.
>> >
>> > Some of these debates in the press, over, WMD, for example, are not
>> controversial at all. The French built a Nuclear Program in Iraq, the
>> Soviets supplied the means of delivering a nuclear weapon. Countless
>> nations provide the region with chemical weapons, so we know, as our
>> soldiers who were damaged by them know, that WMD were in Iraq. Was Iraq a
>> threat to use them against the US? To sell them? to be toppled by a new
>> extreme group, like ISIS and then use them?
>> >
>> > Yes.
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> > Well I was clearly wrong in my memory of the verifiable timeline.
>> Still, if, as the article indicates, it is widely believed in the region
>> that we did Ok the Iraqi attack, and it is known that we then did support
>> this war. The effective message combined with other US actions are that
>> power is achieved with war. Not that we invented this particular idea.
>> >
>> > The thing that I see is the parallel between Wahabi notions of divine
>> war of the faithful, and our notions of being appointed to bring the true
>> way through strategic bombing. Both sides seem to have found good reasons
>> to think of the other as demonic. They are beliefs that are equally insane,
>> and equally violent and destructive  in their net effect.  I don’t know
>> what will work but check out this interview with a captive of ISIS.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20151207/fc7c60a2/attachment.html>