• A Quora - variety of Why the West Grew Rich - Why Israel such a technol

    From a425couple@21:1/5 to All on Wed Nov 17 14:28:57 2021
    XPost: alt.economics

    Michael Davison
    Lives in Israel (1969–present)Feb 5

    Why is Israel such a technologically innovative nation, and why haven't
    other nations in the Arab world and beyond -- been able to replicate
    their success?

    The OP may not like my answer and I’m sure that many readers won’t either.

    For the Arab world, the real underlying problem is Islam itself. Any
    religion that rejects all questions, doubts and reservations is not a
    fertile garden for original thought and innovation. Islam is not only a religion, but a political system as well… we can see what happens when national leaders are also the religious leaders of that country
    throughout history.

    Being required to accept a philosophy from the 7th century CE because it
    is “the final, immutable word of God” under penalty of death for leaving that religion isn’t a religion at all, but a method of mass mind control.

    39K viewsView 1,162 upvotesView 5 sharesAnswer requested by
    Mark Bartel

    ------
    Lee Hodson
    · October 10
    There was an Islamic Golden Age. For a while, the Islamic World was at
    the forefront of science, technology, agriculture, medicine, philosophy
    and innovation. To blame Islam for problems created by frightened,
    insecure authoritarian people who chose to use Islam to hinder the
    Islamic world would be like saying the modern Western World is dying
    because of Christianity or Catholicism. The truth is different.

    The truth is that civilizations become too forgiving of bad ideas and
    too ashamed of their own history for their own good.

    I’m not Muslim.

    The Western World now suffers from frightened politicians who view
    themselves a class above their employers A.K.A the electorate; add to
    them an underclass of people who have been brought up on a diet of fear,
    shame, lies and delusions by over protective parents and teachers who
    consider mentors the minions of Satan and consider the telling of
    hurtful truths, unpopular opinions or the telling of unofficial opinions
    and facts to be worse crimes than murder and we have a toxic mix ripe
    for frightened power hungry visionless authoritarians to bring the
    current height of Western civilisation to an end with a push back to the
    Dark Ages that allowed feudalism to develop. Indeed, one might say we
    are in a Democratic Dark Age (not to be confused with American political groups) and are headed into neo-feudalism / technocratic feudalism.

    The events might happen faster than in history but they are upon us,
    like it or not.

    I’ve warned people of the coming era of modern feudalism many times this
    past decade. Without a vision of how to progress society from one in
    which people work for income into one in which people live in leisure
    afforded by AI and robots, there will only be one way forward and that
    is one where politicians frightened by the prospect of more people with
    time to protest, riot and ignore the rules of politicians will find ways
    to exert ever more control over people’s lives. Politicians will do
    their utmost to try and hold us back from a future with less distinction between the haves and the have-nots.

    I’m not socialist, either.

    Back onto the subject of Islam and human progress. We are living in a
    Western World that is about to end because of its success. This is
    exactly what happened to the Islamic World. Its success was its undoing.
    It did not need to go dark the way it did but that’s another topic.

    Islam is not innately bad. It was co-opted and corrupted by false
    followers who viewed Islam as their path to power over people. This is
    true of Western democracy. As said many times before: societies do not
    die because of the outside world, they die from within; outsiders finish
    the job when they scavenge the carcass.

    I’m not Muslim. Many evils have been done in the name of Islam. Even so,
    I can’t let you blame Islam for problems caused by man and woman.

    For the most part, most people just want to live their lives in peace, unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are no different to
    people in other human worlds.

    ------

    Michael Davison
    · October 14
    The so-called “Golden Age of Islam” did not include equality for non-Muslims (dhimmi). In fact their rights were severely abbreviated and
    they were often required to pay a tax (Jizya) for the “privilege” of
    being allowed to breathe Islamic air.

    The idea that “For the most part, most people just want to live their
    lives in peace, unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are
    no different to people in other human worlds” hints that you may have
    never ventured out of your own comfort area throughout your life. This
    concept couldn’t be farther from the truth if you tried.

    ----------------

    Lee Hodson
    · October 14
    I was born in England. I grew up in a multicultural area of England. The
    East Midlands.

    I learned some Ukrainian while drinking and partying with Ukrainians.
    Little of it remembered now. I schooled with people from England, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other nations. I schooled with the children of Hungarians, Israelis and Poles. My dad has olive skin and so too do my
    two youngest brothers. I am white though not always. I have body
    dysmorphia so I only see my own skin colour when stood next to people
    and catch my reflection by surprise.

    I lived in the Netherlands for several years. I read Dutch (Nederlands).
    I used to speak enough Dutch to hold conversations.

    I dated a Czech woman in my early 20′s. I met her through my uncle who married her aunt. I visited the Czech Republic and stayed with her
    family frequently.

    I learned a little Czech. Enough to argue with her aunt. It is a nice
    language.

    I lived in Gibraltar for a short while. I learned Spanish. Enough to get
    around and annoy my then girlfriend who was the reason I went to Gib. I
    still understand enough Spanish to know what my Spanish speaking
    customers are saying when they switch from English to Spanish to speak
    with friends or relatives while I’m present.

    I dated an Iranian woman in my late 20’s. She is Muslim. I am not.
    People in my area made only one comment about this. The message passed
    onto me by a friend was ‘We know you are a good person so we are not
    bothered that you are dating a Muslim girl.’

    I have spent quite a few months in South Florida, too.

    Up until the last decade I averaged 3 fights (brawls, not flights) a year.

    Do I need to continue to prove my point?

    I’m not sheltered. I have lived a life that has expanded my knowledge of people, humanity and the world around us beyond that of most. I am
    travelled, though not as much as I would like to be. I am not afraid to
    throw my fists when necessary, though I prefer to use words — took me a
    long time to work out that words and compassion work as well as fists if
    not better on occasion. Words can lead to friendships. Fists usually
    create fear.

    I understand very well that Islam is a way of life and that Islam is a
    nation. I have written this many times. Perhaps you have read me in the
    past.

    Islam evolved out of the need to bring nomadic people’s together under
    one nation no matter where they are in the world. Islam is an ideology
    and a religion. I understand this. Have understood this for a very long
    time.

    Some Muslims are more strict than others. This is true of any religion.

    I think, if I recall correctly, Sikhism is the only religion that
    explicitly instructs adherents to follow the laws and practices of their
    host nation when they are there as guests.

    All mammals have a similar underlying biologically determined set of behaviours. Humans are mammals. We might think we are something special
    but we are no more special than any other mammal. Many would say other
    mammals have it easier. At least other mammals need no instruction on
    their beliefs.

    Muslims are not clones of one and other. They do not have a hive mind. A Ukrainian woman once said to me “People are people”. Know who else said that to me? An old Iranian friend I drank with. Neither he nor she knew
    one and other. They had independently arrived at that same thought. No religious instruction required; just life experience.

    I’ve drunk with a number of Muslims. According to you that should not
    have happened. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam. Maybe Muslims, like
    Christians and Catholics have minds of their own.

    I cannot and will not accept the killing of innocents or infidels. No
    one should. Likewise, no one should consider all followers of any
    ideology to be all the same. Humans are incredibly varied. Most humans
    just want to live their lives in peace. For most humans this means they
    take the path of least resistance (physics does this too). When the Imam
    says ‘Go kill all infidels’ most people ignore the Imam, like any other religious leader’s sayings. What would Homer do? Same as almost anyone else.

    I suggest it’s you who needs to get out more and speak with open ears,
    non judgmentally and with even temperament, with (not to but with) more
    varied people from a wider range of cultural and religious backgrounds.

    I think you are hurting from a past injustice. That this hurt and
    injustice has restricted your openness to see people instead of the
    version of Islam you expect them to embody.

    No one can tell you what you can and cannot think or feel. You are your
    own person. Your experience is your own truth. I think you might be
    overly hardened toward Islam and people who live where Islam is widely practiced. If I were you I would speak with a different group of Muslims
    to the ones you’re most likely to meet in or around Israel.

    -----

    Michael Davison
    · October 14
    The idea that “people are people all over the world” is, like most generalization, a fiction born of wishful thinking.

    According to your own biography, you’ve never lived in an
    Arabic-speaking, Muslim majority country for any length of time, so I
    can only wonder how you think you can make any comments about the 400
    million or so Arabs living in the Middle East and North Africa, under dictatorships of one kind or another.

    Please do some serious homework.

    -----------

    disperate perceptions there lives the truth. If we all thought the same
    about everything in life we would have no need to talk. And I think talk
    is healthy. You are correct that I have not lived in a majority Muslim
    country. What you missed in my comment is that I was saying to you that
    the people who make the rules in any country only create rules that most
    people abide by as limitedly as necessary in order to live as peaceful a
    life as possible. In many places, Muslim majority or not, life under
    those people who make (and break as often as not) the local rules for
    society and governance is either punitive or forgiving, harsh or
    comfortable depending on the fair & just or the uneven & sadistic nature
    of the rule makers, the checks in place to restrict those rule makers
    and the will of the people to follow those rules or revolt. People in
    England follow their local rules. Good and bad rules created for genuine
    or unbelievable reasons. Our democratic political system, our legal
    framework and the checks and balances in place to hinder the creation of
    rules in order to give the electorate’s (mostly) appointed
    representatives time to question proposed laws and the option to permit
    or stop the ascension of proposed laws into our legal codex is what
    keeps most bad, harmful and freedom restricting laws at bay. If the UK parliament passed a law that said people could go to market every Sunday
    to observe public canings then many people who today regard themselves
    law abiding and goodly people morally superior to ‘them others
    elsewhere’ would go watch, cheer and participate. They would do the same
    were public executions a part of UK life. They would still consider
    themselves morally superior to people in other lands because the law
    permits their (in my opinion) bad behaviour. Are people in the UK truly
    any different compared to people in the Middle East where this is law
    today or are we simply governed by a kinder local ideology? Those same
    people would leave the market place, go home and break all the rules in
    private but in public they would pay lip-service to all the rules they
    need to in order to get on in life and they would ignore the rules they
    think they can break when they chose to. I’m sure you will disagree with
    me. That would be a good thing. It would prove people can be different
    to each other. It would demonstrate we have some measure of free will. I
    like to think we all have some measure of free will regardless the
    culture we grow up within and live within. I agree with you that the
    objective of Islam is for the whole world to live under Islam. I
    disagree that all Muslims want to behead infidels or even observe Islam strictly. Do you know what I think would happen if we all lived within
    the Caliphate? Some bright spark would start a new religion to replace
    Islam with something new. Do Muslims expect another prophet to arise
    anytime soon?


    Lorenzo Cutuliero
    · October 14
    Your arguments have a lot of validity, but there’s an underlying history
    that you completely gloss over when speaking of Islamic nations: most
    (please note I certainly make no claim to all) Islamic nations were very
    much in stride with their western counterparts in regards to national, economic, education, and sexual equality issues up until the upheavals
    of the 1970s. When observations are made of urban settings, university settings, political settings, etc., we see populations that were every
    bit as “hip” as their western counterparts. Women were in positions of “power” throughout the middle-east (professors, politicians,
    businesses), and a lot of major cities throughout the Muslim world were
    tourist destinations.

    There was a horrible regression that happened in that era (who is to
    blame is entirely debatable) that has led to the entrenchment of
    zealots. I’m not sure if that will ever change in the near future as our world has become terribly polarized, but Muslims in their own right were
    in lockstep with the west for a long time.

    -------------

    Ravindra Khattree
    · October 25
    A religion is identified by its practices and its past record. For a
    good 1400 Years of blood shed, slavery, sexual slavery, forced
    conversions, discrimination ( Muslim vs non Muslim, make vs female),
    extra taxation on nonmuslims combined with endorsements of incestious relationships, child marriage and pedophilic behavior by showcasing as
    the life style of their role model pretty much has defined the Islam.
    Quran openly endorses it and justifies it and with a claim of it being
    timeless and spaceless prohibits any change from status quo.

    much of the “contribution” of Islam to science is essentially being the transfer point of indian science and mathematics to Europe. Can you name
    one single original contribution of Islam to science?

    how many Nobel prizes have Muslims countries bagged even collectively.
    How little original scientific research come from Muslim country? Before
    oil was found most Saudi people were nomads.

    How much manpower development taken place since the discovery of oil?
    Not much!!!

    I do believe that Muslim will continue to not help themselves because of
    faulty practices and their unwillingness to change.

    ----------------

    Oded Ben-Josef
    · February 13
    I think it has more to do with religion in the region, in general.
    Targeting Islam or any specific religion for criticism is not an
    effective, persuasive method. It primarily “convinces the convinced” and little else. Studies in Israel show that the more secular Israelis are,
    the higher their income; the more devout - the more poor they are (see
    graph at the comments below); also, as soon as one removes both Israelis
    and Palestinians from the region, when they immigrate to the U.S., for
    example, their official religion stays the same (Jews and Muslims), but
    their success and integration rate is similar to each other. I believe
    it is conservatism that is the inhibitor; i.e. the region’s societies -
    and many of them are not Muslim - there are other minority groups in the
    Middle East.

    To my mind, it is simply an excessively conservative and authoritarian
    region, one of many, where “wrong and strong” leadership is usually preferred over “right and weak”. The lack of liberal values, freedom in politics, education and, therefore - economics. Comparing North Korea
    vs. South Korea is an excellent illustration of how the same ethnicity
    and religion (either agnostic or Buddhist) performs radically
    differently only because of values and attitudes to liberalism. The same religion can be interpreted in various ways.

    Overly conservative societies, which are suspicious of anything or
    anyone foreign or new (and the two are frequently tied together),
    frighten away investors and initiative. Israel, for example, is at the
    same risk of devolution, if it embraces too much authoritarianism and conservative values. An Israeli “Halacha state”, for example (a
    religious orthodox autocracy), will rapidly “catch up downwards” with
    its neighbors in modernity and economics. It is the relatively liberal
    and secular communities that develop and maintain most infrastructures
    and wealth in Israel. Just like Silicon Valley in CA, those people are relatively flexible and mobile - unlike their more stubborn conservative
    and religious compatriots, who stay in the same place whether they are
    happy or miserable. The liberals can be easily driven out, if pushed too
    much. The process of “brain drain” has been going on for many decades,
    in the Middle East and specifically, Israel. Hand in hand with the
    increasing conservatism.

    Study: Economic Assimilation in the United States of Arab and Jewish
    Immigrants from Israel and the Territories

    -----

    Michael Davison
    · February 16
    Since Islam is not only a religion but a form of government, your
    argument doesn’t really hold water.

    Any person emigrating from a super-conservative society ruled by its
    church to a more open, secular society is bound to change and adopt the
    customs and mentality to some extent, at least.

    For many of those emigrating from Muslim or other totalitarian regimes,
    the changes are usually expressed in the surprise that the immigrants
    have been lied to for most of their lives by the regimes demonizing the
    more free societies.

    ----------

    Oded Ben-Josef
    · February 17
    Leaving emigration aside for a moment (not everyone can or has the will
    to) - religiosity in general has a marked effect on economics and
    success. Here is a graph in Hebrew that shows the direct relationship
    between religious devoutness and poverty in Israel. The orange bar on
    the right - seculars - have the highest average income per family (in
    thousands of NIS per month, not dollars); almost double that of the most religious Jews, Orthodox Haredi, the black bar on the left.
    The two middle bars represent less strict religious communities - people
    who are not entirely secular but not strictly Orthodox either.

    The percentages below the bars show the employment participation rate of
    each community.

    Average Income most religious =17
    then 21, then 22, most secular 28.

    ----

    Feride Can
    · February 17
    “Comparing North Korea vs. South Korea is an excellent illustration of
    how the same ethnicity and religion (either agnostic or Buddhist)
    performs radically differently only because of values and attitudes to liberalism. “

    South Korea was living under a regime of military dictatorship, which
    began in 1961 and lasted 18 years when the country's economy experienced
    a take off and a Great stride towards industrialization. It was due to
    the economic policies implemented by the Dictator who ruled in this era
    which were anything but liberal.

    Liberal economy and liberal policies are not prerequisets of eonomic development, pr technological advance, or social change, or
    industrialization, or progress, etc. These can come under authoritirian
    regimes as well.

    Ottoman underdevelepment has been studied with reference to the effects
    of islamic law on economic transactions and propery rightes, on the backwardness of Ottoman Economy. There are works which show that it
    could be,one of the factors.

    But todays predominantly muslim countries would not face this impediment
    of islamic institutions they are not governed by strick islamic rules,
    in the economic sphere islamic imfluence is at the minimum, the islamic
    ban on the interest rate is ignored one way or another. So i would not
    suggest that predominantly İslam countries are at a disadvantage.

    ----------

    Oded Ben-Josef
    · February 16
    It is a question whether the “melting pot” in Israel is working as well
    as it appears to, or marketed to outsiders. It has always been an odd
    hybrid of irreconcilables, with the lid held together tight, most
    decades, only by external threats in the Middle East and short-sighted
    social engineering efforts by the Israeli elite. It is no accident that
    there was never an elected Israeli prime minister wearing a Kippah, nor
    an army chief of staff, defence minister or director of the bank of
    Israel. They were all secular. That was “the lid” over the melting pot, despite secular Israelis amounting to 40% of society at most. However,
    the immense inside pressures and initial fissures could be seen as far
    back as 1948.

    It is not so much a matter of faith contradicting modernity in principle
    - suitably interpreted, it shouldn’t. Haredi Jews in Brooklyn do not
    oppose it. In Israeli society and the Middle East at large, faith isn’t
    just faith, it’s politics and a rigid national vision for the state at
    all levels, from community to school, business and family. The next time
    you encounter a Haredi, the pertinent question to ask is not
    metaphysical but a more practical one: “Do you support a Halacha state
    in Israel, yes or no?” or, for a secular Israeli, “Should Israel
    separate religion and state, yes or no?” Israeli society has been
    spending the last few decades in doing its damnedest to avoid those
    questions and play for time. That does not mean the answer is not in the making; quite the reverse. The question is not whether a particular
    Israeli Haredi can personally reconcile science and faith; but whether
    his discrete choice at the ballot box, community leadership and,
    consequently, boards of education would.

    Below: a screenshot from the Israeli mini-series “Autonomies”, a
    dystopian tale of a future Israel split into a secular state and a
    Halachaic autonomy. The leader of the autocratic autonomy insists that
    it is a “Noah’s Ark… at a time of a spiritual flood.” (There are English
    subtitles in the settings).

    Now that many of the external threats have dissipated, in the 21s
    century, the melting pot lid all but blew off, and Israel society is
    revealed to be a composite web of ethnic and socio-political communities
    that, while professing unity, struggle to maintain it and, in practice,
    can’t conjure sufficient unity to support even a basic concept such as a constitution, nor elect a government with anything like a sizeable
    majority that allows it to implement significant changes in any
    direction. Most elected governments in the last 20 years achieved only a
    scant majority, and spent most of their efforts on political survival
    and little else. The last time an Israeli government held sufficient
    power to implement any kind of far-reaching legislation with national or strategic implications was in 2004, the disengagement and withdrawal
    from the Gaza strip, nearly tearing Israeli society in half.

    The inflationary growth in the number of political parties, particularly
    those too small for consequence (13 parties in 2021, for 9 million
    people, compared to 9 in the UK for 66 million, for example) and the
    resultant political fragmentation and chronic stalemate - causes
    repeated elections at the cost of one billion NIS (around $308 million)
    a pop - three of them in the last year alone. This is because Israeli
    elections gradually became a costly drag show substitute to change,
    rather than an instrument of it. Israeli society is no longer able to
    implement any kind of unified vision for the future; not in economics,
    religion or defence policy. There are far too many conflicting layers
    pulling in opposite directions while maintaining a charade of unity,
    which results in treading water, playing for time and delaying strategic decisions - and even that, at immense efforts.

    ---------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From The Horny Goat@21:1/5 to a425couple@hotmail.com on Wed Nov 17 17:20:16 2021
    On Wed, 17 Nov 2021 14:28:57 -0800, a425couple
    <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

    Michael Davison
    Lives in Israel (1969present)Feb 5

    Why is Israel such a technologically innovative nation, and why haven't
    other nations in the Arab world and beyond -- been able to replicate
    their success?

    The OP may not like my answer and Im sure that many readers wont either.

    For the Arab world, the real underlying problem is Islam itself. Any
    religion that rejects all questions, doubts and reservations is not a
    fertile garden for original thought and innovation. Islam is not only a >religion, but a political system as well we can see what happens when >national leaders are also the religious leaders of that country
    throughout history.

    iI'm assuming you copied and pasted this from an unattributed web
    forum somewhere and while it was interesting reading (and I did read
    it all) there are a couple of howlers and logical inconsistencies I
    can't let slide.

    ------
    Lee Hodson
    October 10
    There was an Islamic Golden Age. For a while, the Islamic World was at
    the forefront of science, technology, agriculture, medicine, philosophy
    and innovation. To blame Islam for problems created by frightened,
    insecure authoritarian people who chose to use Islam to hinder the
    Islamic world would be like saying the modern Western World is dying
    because of Christianity or Catholicism. The truth is different.

    The truth is that civilizations become too forgiving of bad ideas and
    too ashamed of their own history for their own good.

    So Hodson wouldd presumably excuse the Spanish Inquisition and the use
    made of the Catholic church by Franco for the same reason.

    Islam is not innately bad. It was co-opted and corrupted by false
    followers who viewed Islam as their path to power over people. This is
    true of Western democracy. As said many times before: societies do not
    die because of the outside world, they die from within; outsiders finish
    the job when they scavenge the carcass.

    Im not Muslim. Many evils have been done in the name of Islam. Even so,
    I cant let you blame Islam for problems caused by man and woman.

    I can't let this one pass either. If Islam is innocent of crimes done
    in its name then Christianity by the same logic deserves a free pass
    as well for things like the atrocities committed both by Muslims and
    Catholics during the Crusades, for the Spanish Inquisition and in the settlement of North and South America (I'm thinking primarily of
    treatment of aboriginal peoples but also of slavery which still exists
    in some Muslim countries today). I would give Christianity a pass on
    the Holocaust as while Hitler was a baptised Catholic he was no friend
    of Catholicism or Christianity generally and the worst you can say is
    that there were too many Christian Germans who tolerated the Third
    Reich and not enough Dietrich Bonhoeffers or the networks that
    successfully hid Jews particularly in Holland and Denmark

    For the most part, most people just want to live their lives in peace, >unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are no different to >people in other human worlds.

    I beg to differ - there have been public opinion polls taken in
    numerous countries in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo atrocities
    where 40+% of Muslims in western countries supported the statement
    that the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists was justified for
    religious reasons while in "moderate" Muslim countries (Egypt for
    example) it was 75% yes and 85% yes in more extrame majority Muslim
    countries like Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan (even under the now
    former pro-Western government).

    You simply cannot get such large majorities in countries with
    populations making up more than 20% of this world's population and
    still say with a straight face that there is no difference between how
    them and adherents of other faiths view others not of their faith.

    If I have to self-censor myself to avoid offending those who would
    claim the right to use deadly force against me then put bluntly - I DO
    NOT LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY. And in my view anyone who believes they DO
    have the right to use violence against me for that reason have no
    place in our society and deserve immdiate deportation to a country
    that would better support their twisted views.

    As a Christian I was deeply offended by The Last temptation of Christ
    but would never for a micro-second wished harm on author Nikos
    Kazantzakis or Willem Dafoe (who played Jesus in the film version).
    The thought of wishing them harm wouldn't occur to me. I could think
    of several other cases.

    For anybody who thinks this is an isolated outlier, Salman Rushdie has
    had to pay for private security for 30+ years as he thinks (correctly
    in my opinion) that he would risk personal harm if he didn't. Ayaan
    Hirsi Ali has publicly said the same several times.

    Bottom line is that a major difference between Christians and Muslims
    is that virtually no Christian believes anyone who publishes ridicule
    of Christianity or leaves the faith should be in risk of bodily harm
    or death.

    ------

    Michael Davison
    October 14
    The so-called Golden Age of Islam did not include equality for
    non-Muslims (dhimmi). In fact their rights were severely abbreviated and
    they were often required to pay a tax (Jizya) for the privilege of
    being allowed to breathe Islamic air.

    Equal civil rights for all is definitely an anti-Muslim concept as
    Davison's discussion of dhimmis makes plain.

    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
    equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
    rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
    happiness." is also an anti-Muslim concept - and treating non-Muslims
    as 2nd class citizens in Muslim majority countries goes back to
    Muhammed.

    Which is why I categorically reject the following statement:
    The idea that For the most part, most people just want to live their
    lives in peace, unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are
    no different to people in other human worlds hints that you may have >---------

    I think I've made my point and don't need to belabor the point with a
    paragraph by paragraph analysis of a fairly long quotation from an
    unattributed site.

    While I disagree with much of what you reposted, thank you for a very interesting read.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From a425couple@21:1/5 to The Horny Goat on Thu Nov 18 10:38:05 2021
    On 11/17/2021 5:20 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:
    On Wed, 17 Nov 2021 14:28:57 -0800, a425couple
    <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

    Michael Davison
    Lives in Israel (1969–present)Feb 5

    Why is Israel such a technologically innovative nation, and why haven't
    other nations in the Arab world and beyond -- been able to replicate
    their success?

    The OP may not like my answer and I’m sure that many readers won’t either.

    For the Arab world, the real underlying problem is Islam itself. Any
    religion that rejects all questions, doubts and reservations is not a
    fertile garden for original thought and innovation. Islam is not only a
    religion, but a political system as well… we can see what happens when
    national leaders are also the religious leaders of that country
    throughout history.

    iI'm assuming you copied and pasted this

    Yes. As I tried to state in the Subject line,
    it is from Quora.

    " Quora https://www.quora.com
    Quora is a place to gain and share knowledge. It's a platform
    to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique
    insights and quality answers."

    and

    "Quora - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Quora
    Quora (/ˈkwɔːrə/) is a social question-and-answer website
    based in Mountain View, California, United States, and founded
    on June 25, 2009."

    I found those responses I posted, interesting enough
    that I posted 6 individuals thoughts and ideas.

    from an unattributed web
    forum somewhere and while it was interesting reading (and I did read
    it all) there are a couple of howlers and logical inconsistencies I
    can't let slide. >

    Sure. Those six people have expressed opinions.
    I find them more worth consideration than some
    sources, but certainly not all real ideal.

    Your opinions are welcome.

    And certainly, you could also contribute to
    the real Quora.

    Or, we can discuss these ideas here, on the newsgroups
    that you and I, and a few others are used to,
    and feel comfortable with.


    ------
    Lee Hodson
    · October 10
    There was an Islamic Golden Age. For a while, the Islamic World was at
    the forefront of science, technology, agriculture, medicine, philosophy
    and innovation. To blame Islam for problems created by frightened,
    insecure authoritarian people who chose to use Islam to hinder the
    Islamic world would be like saying the modern Western World is dying
    because of Christianity or Catholicism. The truth is different.

    The truth is that civilizations become too forgiving of bad ideas and
    too ashamed of their own history for their own good.

    So Hodson wouldd presumably excuse the Spanish Inquisition and the use
    made of the Catholic church by Franco for the same reason.

    Islam is not innately bad. It was co-opted and corrupted by false
    followers who viewed Islam as their path to power over people. This is
    true of Western democracy. As said many times before: societies do not
    die because of the outside world, they die from within; outsiders finish
    the job when they scavenge the carcass.

    I’m not Muslim. Many evils have been done in the name of Islam. Even so, >> I can’t let you blame Islam for problems caused by man and woman.

    I can't let this one pass either. If Islam is innocent of crimes done
    in its name then Christianity by the same logic deserves a free pass
    as well for things like the atrocities committed both by Muslims and Catholics during the Crusades, for the Spanish Inquisition and in the settlement of North and South America (I'm thinking primarily of
    treatment of aboriginal peoples but also of slavery which still exists
    in some Muslim countries today). I would give Christianity a pass on
    the Holocaust as while Hitler was a baptised Catholic he was no friend
    of Catholicism or Christianity generally and the worst you can say is
    that there were too many Christian Germans who tolerated the Third
    Reich and not enough Dietrich Bonhoeffers or the networks that
    successfully hid Jews particularly in Holland and Denmark

    For the most part, most people just want to live their lives in peace,
    unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are no different to
    people in other human worlds.

    I beg to differ - there have been public opinion polls taken in
    numerous countries in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo atrocities
    where 40+% of Muslims in western countries supported the statement
    that the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists was justified for
    religious reasons while in "moderate" Muslim countries (Egypt for
    example) it was 75% yes and 85% yes in more extrame majority Muslim
    countries like Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan (even under the now
    former pro-Western government).

    You simply cannot get such large majorities in countries with
    populations making up more than 20% of this world's population and
    still say with a straight face that there is no difference between how
    them and adherents of other faiths view others not of their faith.

    If I have to self-censor myself to avoid offending those who would
    claim the right to use deadly force against me then put bluntly - I DO
    NOT LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY. And in my view anyone who believes they DO
    have the right to use violence against me for that reason have no
    place in our society and deserve immdiate deportation to a country
    that would better support their twisted views.

    As a Christian I was deeply offended by The Last temptation of Christ
    but would never for a micro-second wished harm on author Nikos
    Kazantzakis or Willem Dafoe (who played Jesus in the film version).
    The thought of wishing them harm wouldn't occur to me. I could think
    of several other cases.

    For anybody who thinks this is an isolated outlier, Salman Rushdie has
    had to pay for private security for 30+ years as he thinks (correctly
    in my opinion) that he would risk personal harm if he didn't. Ayaan
    Hirsi Ali has publicly said the same several times.

    Bottom line is that a major difference between Christians and Muslims
    is that virtually no Christian believes anyone who publishes ridicule
    of Christianity or leaves the faith should be in risk of bodily harm
    or death.


    You say, "
    virtually no Christian believes anyone who publishes ridicule
    of Christianity or leaves the faith should be in risk of bodily harm
    or death.
    "
    Yes. Very few "Christians" have gone off on violent
    sprees to enforce (or avenge) religious beliefs.

    Some "Christians" have done mass violence, but it is rarely
    done with the idea of being an "avenging angel".

    I am very frustrated right now, that I can not find
    one of my books on Islamic Terrorists, and I can not
    even find it on the internet.
    Anyway, the author points out the interesting opinion,
    that when followers of other religions get more devout,
    they become LESS likely to do violence. But one of the
    warning signs that they might do a violent act,
    of potential Islamic terrorists inside the USA, is they
    withdraw into being very devout.

    ------

    Michael Davison
    · October 14
    The so-called “Golden Age of Islam” did not include equality for
    non-Muslims (dhimmi). In fact their rights were severely abbreviated and
    they were often required to pay a tax (Jizya) for the “privilege” of
    being allowed to breathe Islamic air.

    Equal civil rights for all is definitely an anti-Muslim concept as
    Davison's discussion of dhimmis makes plain.


    Yes.

    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
    equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
    happiness." is also an anti-Muslim concept - and treating non-Muslims
    as 2nd class citizens in Muslim majority countries goes back to
    Muhammed.

    Which is why I categorically reject the following statement:

    The idea that “For the most part, most people just want to live their
    lives in peace, unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are
    no different to people in other human worlds” hints that you may have
    ---------

    I think I've made my point and don't need to belabor the point with a paragraph by paragraph analysis of a fairly long quotation from an unattributed site.

    While I disagree with much of what you reposted, thank you for a very interesting read.

    I'm glad you found it worth reading,
    and commenting on.

    Sigh, for the past time of interesting discussions
    on the newsgroups.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Eric Stevens@21:1/5 to a425couple@hotmail.com on Fri Nov 19 13:12:17 2021
    XPost: alt.economics

    On Wed, 17 Nov 2021 14:28:57 -0800, a425couple
    <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

    Michael Davison
    Lives in Israel (1969–present)Feb 5

    Why is Israel such a technologically innovative nation, and why haven't
    other nations in the Arab world and beyond -- been able to replicate
    their success?

    The OP may not like my answer and I’m sure that many readers won’t either.

    A factor which is even hotter to handle than religions is inherent cultural/racial intelligence. For historical reasons jews have been
    selected and bred for intelligence. Most of the people with whom they
    are being compared have not. It's not only the jewish people who by
    and large are more intelligent but so too is their culture.

    For the Arab world, the real underlying problem is Islam itself. Any
    religion that rejects all questions, doubts and reservations is not a
    fertile garden for original thought and innovation. Islam is not only a >religion, but a political system as well… we can see what happens when >national leaders are also the religious leaders of that country
    throughout history.

    That may help explain why there is a difference in intelligence.

    Being required to accept a philosophy from the 7th century CE because it
    is “the final, immutable word of God” under penalty of death for leaving >that religion isn’t a religion at all, but a method of mass mind control.

    39K viewsView 1,162 upvotesView 5 sharesAnswer requested by
    Mark Bartel

    ------
    Lee Hodson
    · October 10
    There was an Islamic Golden Age. For a while, the Islamic World was at
    the forefront of science, technology, agriculture, medicine, philosophy
    and innovation. To blame Islam for problems created by frightened,
    insecure authoritarian people who chose to use Islam to hinder the
    Islamic world would be like saying the modern Western World is dying
    because of Christianity or Catholicism. The truth is different.

    The truth is that civilizations become too forgiving of bad ideas and
    too ashamed of their own history for their own good.

    I’m not Muslim.

    The Western World now suffers from frightened politicians who view
    themselves a class above their employers A.K.A the electorate; add to
    them an underclass of people who have been brought up on a diet of fear, >shame, lies and delusions by over protective parents and teachers who >consider mentors the minions of Satan and consider the telling of
    hurtful truths, unpopular opinions or the telling of unofficial opinions
    and facts to be worse crimes than murder and we have a toxic mix ripe
    for frightened power hungry visionless authoritarians to bring the
    current height of Western civilisation to an end with a push back to the
    Dark Ages that allowed feudalism to develop. Indeed, one might say we
    are in a Democratic Dark Age (not to be confused with American political >groups) and are headed into neo-feudalism / technocratic feudalism.

    The events might happen faster than in history but they are upon us,
    like it or not.

    I’ve warned people of the coming era of modern feudalism many times this >past decade. Without a vision of how to progress society from one in
    which people work for income into one in which people live in leisure >afforded by AI and robots, there will only be one way forward and that
    is one where politicians frightened by the prospect of more people with
    time to protest, riot and ignore the rules of politicians will find ways
    to exert ever more control over people’s lives. Politicians will do
    their utmost to try and hold us back from a future with less distinction >between the haves and the have-nots.

    I’m not socialist, either.

    Back onto the subject of Islam and human progress. We are living in a
    Western World that is about to end because of its success. This is
    exactly what happened to the Islamic World. Its success was its undoing.
    It did not need to go dark the way it did but that’s another topic.

    Islam is not innately bad. It was co-opted and corrupted by false
    followers who viewed Islam as their path to power over people. This is
    true of Western democracy. As said many times before: societies do not
    die because of the outside world, they die from within; outsiders finish
    the job when they scavenge the carcass.

    I’m not Muslim. Many evils have been done in the name of Islam. Even so,
    I can’t let you blame Islam for problems caused by man and woman.

    For the most part, most people just want to live their lives in peace, >unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are no different to >people in other human worlds.

    ------

    Michael Davison
    · October 14
    The so-called “Golden Age of Islam” did not include equality for >non-Muslims (dhimmi). In fact their rights were severely abbreviated and
    they were often required to pay a tax (Jizya) for the “privilege” of >being allowed to breathe Islamic air.

    The idea that “For the most part, most people just want to live their
    lives in peace, unwatched and unhindered. People in the Muslim world are
    no different to people in other human worlds” hints that you may have
    never ventured out of your own comfort area throughout your life. This >concept couldn’t be farther from the truth if you tried.

    ----------------

    Lee Hodson
    · October 14
    I was born in England. I grew up in a multicultural area of England. The
    East Midlands.

    I learned some Ukrainian while drinking and partying with Ukrainians.
    Little of it remembered now. I schooled with people from England, India, >Pakistan, Afghanistan and other nations. I schooled with the children of >Hungarians, Israelis and Poles. My dad has olive skin and so too do my
    two youngest brothers. I am white though not always. I have body
    dysmorphia so I only see my own skin colour when stood next to people
    and catch my reflection by surprise.

    I lived in the Netherlands for several years. I read Dutch (Nederlands).
    I used to speak enough Dutch to hold conversations.

    I dated a Czech woman in my early 20?s. I met her through my uncle who >married her aunt. I visited the Czech Republic and stayed with her
    family frequently.

    I learned a little Czech. Enough to argue with her aunt. It is a nice >language.

    I lived in Gibraltar for a short while. I learned Spanish. Enough to get >around and annoy my then girlfriend who was the reason I went to Gib. I
    still understand enough Spanish to know what my Spanish speaking
    customers are saying when they switch from English to Spanish to speak
    with friends or relatives while I’m present.

    I dated an Iranian woman in my late 20’s. She is Muslim. I am not.
    People in my area made only one comment about this. The message passed
    onto me by a friend was ‘We know you are a good person so we are not >bothered that you are dating a Muslim girl.’

    I have spent quite a few months in South Florida, too.

    Up until the last decade I averaged 3 fights (brawls, not flights) a year.

    Do I need to continue to prove my point?

    I’m not sheltered. I have lived a life that has expanded my knowledge of >people, humanity and the world around us beyond that of most. I am
    travelled, though not as much as I would like to be. I am not afraid to
    throw my fists when necessary, though I prefer to use words — took me a >long time to work out that words and compassion work as well as fists if
    not better on occasion. Words can lead to friendships. Fists usually
    create fear.

    I understand very well that Islam is a way of life and that Islam is a >nation. I have written this many times. Perhaps you have read me in the
    past.

    Islam evolved out of the need to bring nomadic people’s together under
    one nation no matter where they are in the world. Islam is an ideology
    and a religion. I understand this. Have understood this for a very long
    time.

    Some Muslims are more strict than others. This is true of any religion.

    I think, if I recall correctly, Sikhism is the only religion that
    explicitly instructs adherents to follow the laws and practices of their
    host nation when they are there as guests.

    All mammals have a similar underlying biologically determined set of >behaviours. Humans are mammals. We might think we are something special
    but we are no more special than any other mammal. Many would say other >mammals have it easier. At least other mammals need no instruction on
    their beliefs.

    Muslims are not clones of one and other. They do not have a hive mind. A >Ukrainian woman once said to me “People are people”. Know who else said >that to me? An old Iranian friend I drank with. Neither he nor she knew
    one and other. They had independently arrived at that same thought. No >religious instruction required; just life experience.

    I’ve drunk with a number of Muslims. According to you that should not
    have happened. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam. Maybe Muslims, like
    Christians and Catholics have minds of their own.

    I cannot and will not accept the killing of innocents or infidels. No
    one should. Likewise, no one should consider all followers of any
    ideology to be all the same. Humans are incredibly varied. Most humans
    just want to live their lives in peace. For most humans this means they
    take the path of least resistance (physics does this too). When the Imam
    says ‘Go kill all infidels’ most people ignore the Imam, like any other >religious leader’s sayings. What would Homer do? Same as almost anyone else.

    I suggest it’s you who needs to get out more and speak with open ears,
    non judgmentally and with even temperament, with (not to but with) more >varied people from a wider range of cultural and religious backgrounds.

    I think you are hurting from a past injustice. That this hurt and
    injustice has restricted your openness to see people instead of the
    version of Islam you expect them to embody.

    No one can tell you what you can and cannot think or feel. You are your
    own person. Your experience is your own truth. I think you might be
    overly hardened toward Islam and people who live where Islam is widely >practiced. If I were you I would speak with a different group of Muslims
    to the ones you’re most likely to meet in or around Israel.

    -----

    Michael Davison
    · October 14
    The idea that “people are people all over the world” is, like most >generalization, a fiction born of wishful thinking.

    According to your own biography, you’ve never lived in an
    Arabic-speaking, Muslim majority country for any length of time, so I
    can only wonder how you think you can make any comments about the 400
    million or so Arabs living in the Middle East and North Africa, under >dictatorships of one kind or another.

    Please do some serious homework.

    -----------

    disperate perceptions there lives the truth. If we all thought the same
    about everything in life we would have no need to talk. And I think talk
    is healthy. You are correct that I have not lived in a majority Muslim >country. What you missed in my comment is that I was saying to you that
    the people who make the rules in any country only create rules that most >people abide by as limitedly as necessary in order to live as peaceful a
    life as possible. In many places, Muslim majority or not, life under
    those people who make (and break as often as not) the local rules for
    society and governance is either punitive or forgiving, harsh or
    comfortable depending on the fair & just or the uneven & sadistic nature
    of the rule makers, the checks in place to restrict those rule makers
    and the will of the people to follow those rules or revolt. People in
    England follow their local rules. Good and bad rules created for genuine
    or unbelievable reasons. Our democratic political system, our legal
    framework and the checks and balances in place to hinder the creation of >rules in order to give the electorate’s (mostly) appointed
    representatives time to question proposed laws and the option to permit
    or stop the ascension of proposed laws into our legal codex is what
    keeps most bad, harmful and freedom restricting laws at bay. If the UK >parliament passed a law that said people could go to market every Sunday
    to observe public canings then many people who today regard themselves
    law abiding and goodly people morally superior to ‘them others
    elsewhere’ would go watch, cheer and participate. They would do the same >were public executions a part of UK life. They would still consider >themselves morally superior to people in other lands because the law
    permits their (in my opinion) bad behaviour. Are people in the UK truly
    any different compared to people in the Middle East where this is law
    today or are we simply governed by a kinder local ideology? Those same
    people would leave the market place, go home and break all the rules in >private but in public they would pay lip-service to all the rules they
    need to in order to get on in life and they would ignore the rules they
    think they can break when they chose to. I’m sure you will disagree with >me. That would be a good thing. It would prove people can be different
    to each other. It would demonstrate we have some measure of free will. I
    like to think we all have some measure of free will regardless the
    culture we grow up within and live within. I agree with you that the >objective of Islam is for the whole world to live under Islam. I
    disagree that all Muslims want to behead infidels or even observe Islam >strictly. Do you know what I think would happen if we all lived within
    the Caliphate? Some bright spark would start a new religion to replace
    Islam with something new. Do Muslims expect another prophet to arise
    anytime soon?


    Lorenzo Cutuliero
    · October 14
    Your arguments have a lot of validity, but there’s an underlying history >that you completely gloss over when speaking of Islamic nations: most
    (please note I certainly make no claim to all) Islamic nations were very
    much in stride with their western counterparts in regards to national, >economic, education, and sexual equality issues up until the upheavals
    of the 1970s. When observations are made of urban settings, university >settings, political settings, etc., we see populations that were every
    bit as “hip” as their western counterparts. Women were in positions of >“power” throughout the middle-east (professors, politicians,
    businesses), and a lot of major cities throughout the Muslim world were >tourist destinations.

    There was a horrible regression that happened in that era (who is to
    blame is entirely debatable) that has led to the entrenchment of
    zealots. I’m not sure if that will ever change in the near future as our >world has become terribly polarized, but Muslims in their own right were
    in lockstep with the west for a long time.

    -------------

    Ravindra Khattree
    · October 25
    A religion is identified by its practices and its past record. For a
    good 1400 Years of blood shed, slavery, sexual slavery, forced
    conversions, discrimination ( Muslim vs non Muslim, make vs female),
    extra taxation on nonmuslims combined with endorsements of incestious >relationships, child marriage and pedophilic behavior by showcasing as
    the life style of their role model pretty much has defined the Islam.
    Quran openly endorses it and justifies it and with a claim of it being >timeless and spaceless prohibits any change from status quo.

    much of the “contribution” of Islam to science is essentially being the >transfer point of indian science and mathematics to Europe. Can you name
    one single original contribution of Islam to science?

    how many Nobel prizes have Muslims countries bagged even collectively.
    How little original scientific research come from Muslim country? Before
    oil was found most Saudi people were nomads.

    How much manpower development taken place since the discovery of oil?
    Not much!!!

    I do believe that Muslim will continue to not help themselves because of >faulty practices and their unwillingness to change.

    ----------------

    Oded Ben-Josef
    · February 13
    I think it has more to do with religion in the region, in general.
    Targeting Islam or any specific religion for criticism is not an
    effective, persuasive method. It primarily “convinces the convinced” and >little else. Studies in Israel show that the more secular Israelis are,
    the higher their income; the more devout - the more poor they are (see
    graph at the comments below); also, as soon as one removes both Israelis
    and Palestinians from the region, when they immigrate to the U.S., for >example, their official religion stays the same (Jews and Muslims), but
    their success and integration rate is similar to each other. I believe
    it is conservatism that is the inhibitor; i.e. the region’s societies -
    and many of them are not Muslim - there are other minority groups in the >Middle East.

    To my mind, it is simply an excessively conservative and authoritarian >region, one of many, where “wrong and strong” leadership is usually >preferred over “right and weak”. The lack of liberal values, freedom in >politics, education and, therefore - economics. Comparing North Korea
    vs. South Korea is an excellent illustration of how the same ethnicity
    and religion (either agnostic or Buddhist) performs radically
    differently only because of values and attitudes to liberalism. The same >religion can be interpreted in various ways.

    Overly conservative societies, which are suspicious of anything or
    anyone foreign or new (and the two are frequently tied together),
    frighten away investors and initiative. Israel, for example, is at the
    same risk of devolution, if it embraces too much authoritarianism and >conservative values. An Israeli “Halacha state”, for example (a
    religious orthodox autocracy), will rapidly “catch up downwards” with
    its neighbors in modernity and economics. It is the relatively liberal
    and secular communities that develop and maintain most infrastructures
    and wealth in Israel. Just like Silicon Valley in CA, those people are >relatively flexible and mobile - unlike their more stubborn conservative
    and religious compatriots, who stay in the same place whether they are
    happy or miserable. The liberals can be easily driven out, if pushed too >much. The process of “brain drain” has been going on for many decades,
    in the Middle East and specifically, Israel. Hand in hand with the
    increasing conservatism.

    Study: Economic Assimilation in the United States of Arab and Jewish >Immigrants from Israel and the Territories

    -----

    Michael Davison
    · February 16
    Since Islam is not only a religion but a form of government, your
    argument doesn’t really hold water.

    Any person emigrating from a super-conservative society ruled by its
    church to a more open, secular society is bound to change and adopt the >customs and mentality to some extent, at least.

    For many of those emigrating from Muslim or other totalitarian regimes,
    the changes are usually expressed in the surprise that the immigrants
    have been lied to for most of their lives by the regimes demonizing the
    more free societies.

    ----------

    Oded Ben-Josef
    · February 17
    Leaving emigration aside for a moment (not everyone can or has the will
    to) - religiosity in general has a marked effect on economics and
    success. Here is a graph in Hebrew that shows the direct relationship
    between religious devoutness and poverty in Israel. The orange bar on
    the right - seculars - have the highest average income per family (in >thousands of NIS per month, not dollars); almost double that of the most >religious Jews, Orthodox Haredi, the black bar on the left.
    The two middle bars represent less strict religious communities - people
    who are not entirely secular but not strictly Orthodox either.

    The percentages below the bars show the employment participation rate of
    each community.

    Average Income most religious =17
    then 21, then 22, most secular 28.

    ----

    Feride Can
    · February 17
    “Comparing North Korea vs. South Korea is an excellent illustration of
    how the same ethnicity and religion (either agnostic or Buddhist)
    performs radically differently only because of values and attitudes to >liberalism. “

    South Korea was living under a regime of military dictatorship, which
    began in 1961 and lasted 18 years when the country's economy experienced
    a take off and a Great stride towards industrialization. It was due to
    the economic policies implemented by the Dictator who ruled in this era
    which were anything but liberal.

    Liberal economy and liberal policies are not prerequisets of eonomic >development, pr technological advance, or social change, or >industrialization, or progress, etc. These can come under authoritirian >regimes as well.

    Ottoman underdevelepment has been studied with reference to the effects
    of islamic law on economic transactions and propery rightes, on the >backwardness of Ottoman Economy. There are works which show that it
    could be,one of the factors.

    But todays predominantly muslim countries would not face this impediment
    of islamic institutions they are not governed by strick islamic rules,
    in the economic sphere islamic imfluence is at the minimum, the islamic
    ban on the interest rate is ignored one way or another. So i would not >suggest that predominantly ?slam countries are at a disadvantage.

    ----------

    Oded Ben-Josef
    · February 16
    It is a question whether the “melting pot” in Israel is working as well >as it appears to, or marketed to outsiders. It has always been an odd
    hybrid of irreconcilables, with the lid held together tight, most
    decades, only by external threats in the Middle East and short-sighted
    social engineering efforts by the Israeli elite. It is no accident that
    there was never an elected Israeli prime minister wearing a Kippah, nor
    an army chief of staff, defence minister or director of the bank of
    Israel. They were all secular. That was “the lid” over the melting pot, >despite secular Israelis amounting to 40% of society at most. However,
    the immense inside pressures and initial fissures could be seen as far
    back as 1948.

    It is not so much a matter of faith contradicting modernity in principle
    - suitably interpreted, it shouldn’t. Haredi Jews in Brooklyn do not
    oppose it. In Israeli society and the Middle East at large, faith isn’t >just faith, it’s politics and a rigid national vision for the state at
    all levels, from community to school, business and family. The next time
    you encounter a Haredi, the pertinent question to ask is not
    metaphysical but a more practical one: “Do you support a Halacha state
    in Israel, yes or no?” or, for a secular Israeli, “Should Israel
    separate religion and state, yes or no?” Israeli society has been
    spending the last few decades in doing its damnedest to avoid those
    questions and play for time. That does not mean the answer is not in the >making; quite the reverse. The question is not whether a particular
    Israeli Haredi can personally reconcile science and faith; but whether
    his discrete choice at the ballot box, community leadership and, >consequently, boards of education would.

    Below: a screenshot from the Israeli mini-series “Autonomies”, a >dystopian tale of a future Israel split into a secular state and a
    Halachaic autonomy. The leader of the autocratic autonomy insists that
    it is a “Noah’s Ark… at a time of a spiritual flood.” (There are English
    subtitles in the settings).

    Now that many of the external threats have dissipated, in the 21s
    century, the melting pot lid all but blew off, and Israel society is
    revealed to be a composite web of ethnic and socio-political communities >that, while professing unity, struggle to maintain it and, in practice, >can’t conjure sufficient unity to support even a basic concept such as a >constitution, nor elect a government with anything like a sizeable
    majority that allows it to implement significant changes in any
    direction. Most elected governments in the last 20 years achieved only a >scant majority, and spent most of their efforts on political survival
    and little else. The last time an Israeli government held sufficient
    power to implement any kind of far-reaching legislation with national or >strategic implications was in 2004, the disengagement and withdrawal
    from the Gaza strip, nearly tearing Israeli society in half.

    The inflationary growth in the number of political parties, particularly >those too small for consequence (13 parties in 2021, for 9 million
    people, compared to 9 in the UK for 66 million, for example) and the >resultant political fragmentation and chronic stalemate - causes
    repeated elections at the cost of one billion NIS (around $308 million)
    a pop - three of them in the last year alone. This is because Israeli >elections gradually became a costly drag show substitute to change,
    rather than an instrument of it. Israeli society is no longer able to >implement any kind of unified vision for the future; not in economics, >religion or defence policy. There are far too many conflicting layers
    pulling in opposite directions while maintaining a charade of unity,
    which results in treading water, playing for time and delaying strategic >decisions - and even that, at immense efforts.

    ---------
    --

    Regards,

    Eric Stevens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Jason@21:1/5 to eric.stevens@sum.co.nz on Fri Nov 19 12:44:17 2021
    XPost: alt.economics

    On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:12:17 +1300, Eric Stevens
    <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> wrote:


    A factor which is even hotter to handle than religions is inherent >cultural/racial intelligence. For historical reasons jews have been
    selected and bred for intelligence. Most of the people with whom they
    are being compared have not. It's not only the jewish people who by
    and large are more intelligent but so too is their culture.

    They're bred for more than intelligence. Like the Rothschilds
    first-cousin marriages tend to keep wealth within families. A fact to
    promote wealth & education.

    Come to think of it, they are not smart enough to avoid persecution
    for the past 2500 years. The Jews themselves are the ONE common
    factor over all this time!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From The Horny Goat@21:1/5 to a425couple@hotmail.com on Thu Nov 18 21:30:36 2021
    On Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:38:05 -0800, a425couple
    <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

    Sigh, for the past time of interesting discussions
    on the newsgroups.

    Doh! on missing the subject line.

    Usenet still has lots of interesting discussions - it's just that the
    volume is deeply reduced.

    Most of us here DON'T require attached photos to make our ponts and no
    question such postings on other forums annoy me. And Usenet CERTAINLY
    has no monopoly on trolls!

    Sign me one of the grognards ("grognards" was what Napoleon called his
    longest serving troops - the word means 'grumblers' and was used by
    Bonaparte affectionately)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From The Horny Goat@21:1/5 to a425couple@hotmail.com on Thu Nov 18 21:25:22 2021
    On Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:38:05 -0800, a425couple
    <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

    Sure. Those six people have expressed opinions.
    I find them more worth consideration than some
    sources, but certainly not all real ideal.

    Your opinions are welcome.

    And certainly, you could also contribute to
    the real Quora.

    I've been there and posted a few times but realistically there are at
    least a dozen newsgroups where I've participated for 25+ years (no
    fooling - I have copies of postings from April 1994 saved, and Deja
    News aka Google Groups cut back a LOT of my early postings when they
    dropped their retention.

    Given the format on Quora I'd be gobsmacked if they made it that
    long...

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Eric Stevens@21:1/5 to Peter Jason on Sun Nov 21 13:02:18 2021
    XPost: alt.economics

    On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:44:17 +1100, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:

    On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:12:17 +1300, Eric Stevens
    <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> wrote:


    A factor which is even hotter to handle than religions is inherent >>cultural/racial intelligence. For historical reasons jews have been >>selected and bred for intelligence. Most of the people with whom they
    are being compared have not. It's not only the jewish people who by
    and large are more intelligent but so too is their culture.

    They're bred for more than intelligence. Like the Rothschilds
    first-cousin marriages tend to keep wealth within families. A fact to
    promote wealth & education.

    Come to think of it, they are not smart enough to avoid persecution
    for the past 2500 years. The Jews themselves are the ONE common
    factor over all this time!

    That they have survived 2500 years of persecution says something of
    their intelligence.
    --

    Regards,

    Eric Stevens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Jason@21:1/5 to eric.stevens@sum.co.nz on Mon Nov 22 07:19:51 2021
    XPost: alt.economics

    On Sun, 21 Nov 2021 13:02:18 +1300, Eric Stevens
    <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> wrote:

    On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:44:17 +1100, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:

    On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:12:17 +1300, Eric Stevens
    <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> wrote:


    A factor which is even hotter to handle than religions is inherent >>>cultural/racial intelligence. For historical reasons jews have been >>>selected and bred for intelligence. Most of the people with whom they
    are being compared have not. It's not only the jewish people who by
    and large are more intelligent but so too is their culture.

    They're bred for more than intelligence. Like the Rothschilds
    first-cousin marriages tend to keep wealth within families. A fact to >>promote wealth & education.

    Come to think of it, they are not smart enough to avoid persecution
    for the past 2500 years. The Jews themselves are the ONE common
    factor over all this time!

    That they have survived 2500 years of persecution says something of
    their intelligence.

    Intelligent people learn from past experiences. Surviving and coping
    is not living.

    And now they have built a bigger ghetto in the Levant, where most of
    the worlds' Jews choose not to live. Intelligence?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)