Don't know, but when you delete him feel free to add me.

What about Hawaii? Maybe I could work out a plan for Hawaii?

It looks like a scenario for an extreme situation. I think we are unlikely to go into such a condition soon. However if such a situation were to exist there would have to be some sort of backup plan. As to whether this particular plan would be appropriate, well it looks pretty extreme to me. Blinders? I'm not so concerned with the nature of the plan in and of itself, I'm more concerned that steps could be taken to artificially drive us into such an extreme situation and that in that case such an extreme plan would be the only backup plan. Seems to me there are emergencies that would require something less than marshaling the people into cages.

Call to mind in the book 1984 Orwell's suggestion "There will be constant news about foreign wars, making it clear that the government must take extreme measures to protect the population's security form seditious forces". That was a paraphrase rather than an exact quote, I don't have time to read the book and find the exact words.

Best interest? Yes I'm sure those guys are calling me out by name and saying that it is my interests in particular that they need to watch out for. I was raised to this lofty position by some inexplicable quirk of fate. Eat your heart out.

Well its nice to know they have a backup plan.

Can you see me smirking?

Mostly the responses I see here are hilarious. Remember I didn't write the article, I just thought it was interesting. I expect most of the article is true as it rings the right bell in my stack of memories. It does not explain the fine choices made by Bush but it does illustrate something of the foundation for the regional troubles.

So much for my Paris plans. I guess I'll just stay home and read a book.

That's probably why they are always talking about a little head too.

Its kind of long, sorry about that, but interesting. I did not write this stuff.

In the mid twentieth century, US-Iran relations prospered. Many Americans celebrated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a model king. President Lyndon B. Johnson pronounced in 1964: "What is going on in Iran is about the best thing going on anywhere in the world".

During the 1970's Iran's Shah propelled Iran into becoming a dynamic middle-east regional power. The Shah implemented broad economic and social reforms, including enhanced rights for women, and religious and ethnic minorities. Economic and educational reforms were adopted, initiatives to cleanse politics of social upheaval were systematized, and the civil service system was reformed. When sectors of society rioted to demand even greater freedom, the Shah promised constitutional reform to favor democracy. In the face of Soviet and fundamentalist Islamic pressures, constitutional reform remained on the back burner, as the Shah built what on paper was the world's fifth or sixth largest armed force. In 1976, it had an estimated 3,000 tanks, 890 helicopter gunships, over 200 advanced fighter aircraft, the largest fleet of hovercraft in any country and 9,000 anti-tank missiles.

The Shah used Iran's military might to address regional crises consistent with foreign relations goals of the United States. The Nixon and Ford administrations endorsed these efforts and allowed the Shah to acquire virtually unlimited quantities of any non-nuclear weapons in the American arsenal.

The Shah used Iran's military might to address regional crises consistent with foreign relations goals of the United States. The Nixon and Ford administrations endorsed these efforts and allowed the Shah to acquire virtually unlimited quantities of any non-nuclear weapons in the American arsenal.

In accord with the pleasant US-Iran relations then-existing, President Carter spent New Year's Eve in 1977 with the Shah and toasted Iran as "an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world". Nonetheless, between 1975 and 1978, the Shah's popularity fell due to the Carter administration's misguided implementation of human rights policies.

The election of Mr. Carter as president of the United States in 1976, with his vocal emphasis on the importance of human rights in international affairs, was a turning point in US-Iran relations. The Shah of Iran was accused of torturing over 3000 prisoners. Under the banner of promoting human rights, Carter made excessive demands of the Shah, threatening to withhold military and social aid. Carter pressured the Shah to release "political prisoners", whose ranks included radical fundamentalists, communists and terrorists. Many of these individuals are now among the opponents we face in our "war on terrorism".

The Carter Administration insisted that the Shah disband military tribunals, demanding they be replaced by civil courts. The effect was to allow trials to serve as platforms for anti-government propaganda. Carter pressured Iran to permit "free assembly", which encouraged and fostered fundamentalist anti-government rallies. The British government and its MI6 intelligence agency also heightened the Shah's precariousness. The government-controlled BBC presented Iranians with a dossier of twenty hour newscasts detailing the location of all anti-Shah demonstrations and consistent interviews with the exiled outcast Ayatollah Khomeini, making a religious scholar few Iranians knew about into an overnight sensation.

When the Shah was unable to meet the Carter Administration and British demands, the Carter Administration reportedly ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to stop $4 million per year in funding to religious Mullahs who then became outspoken and vehement opponents of the Shah. Unfortunately, the Shah's efforts to defuse the volatile situation in Iran failed, despite the grant even of free and democratic elections. Confronted with lack of US support and unleashed Mullah fury, the Shah of Iran fled the country.

Subsequent to the Carter Administration's ill-conceived foreign policy initiative, Iran is now a dungeon. Ayatollah Khomeini's dictatorship executed the Shah's prisoners, predominantly communist militants, along with more than 20,000 pro-Western Iranians. Women were sent back into servitude. Citizens were arrested merely for owning satellite dishes that could tune to Western programs. American diplomats were taken hostage, and the Soviet Union invaded Iran's eastern neighbor Afghanistan as a result of this chaos, allowing it to secure greater influence in Iran and Pakistan. The struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the defeat of this invading Superpower with help from the United States under President Reagan gave rise to the radicalization and emergence of Muslim zealots like Osama bin Laden. Moreover, within a year of the Shah's ouster, Iran on its western flank was locked into the Iran-Iraq War, in which the U.S. sided with secular Iraq and its military dictator Saddam Hussein.

In retrospect, the Iran-Iraq War would never have occurred had Jimmy Carter not weakened the Shah's regime. This conflict cost the two nations more than 500,000 lives, including thousands of Iranians killed by Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons. The Iran-Iraq war triggered the rise of Saddam Hussein as a major power whose invasion of Kuwait was repelled by Desert Storm. The United States refrained from deposing Saddam Hussein in a continuation of the Desert Storm operation out of concern that the resulting "power vacuum" would be filled by Iran's Ayatollahs.

Thus Jimmy Carter's misguided implementation of human rights policies not only indirectly led to overthrow of the Shah of Iran, but also paved the way for loss of more than 600,000 lives, Iran's rule by Ayatollahs, the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait and Desert Storm, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and the mass murder of Americans and destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.

Considers helping out Gypsee. We may have to start with jumping on the bed to break it in properly

Bl8tant, I spent two years arguing politics with the students at the University of Utrecht. Of the students I met, I agreed with most of them on most topics. Then there were a few who would not agree on anything. If you were to find common ground they would immediately take a different position.

You are right, its not fair to paint everyone with the same wide brush. And you are also right, the media is always screaming at us about there being so much to fear. But just because you are paranoid doesn't mean someone is not out to kill you.

You can't exclude all the public from your life, as a practical matter. Neither is it practical to invite everyone you meet home with you. Feeling sorry for them or wanting to give them a chance to do better with their life is no justification for inviting every homeless person home. Not all homeless people are insane or dangerous, but if you invite enough of them home the likelihood is that one will be a problem. People lock their doors for this same reason.

Zero, I don't know much about the sort of guys who target women the way you mention, but I know they do exist. Mostly I have heard some anecdotal accounts from women I have met. That sort of thing is usually pretty far from my life. I have seen some women who were quite a lot like that towards men and I'm pretty careful about what I'm willing to give to help someone out, particularly if they are pretty and using their appearance to gain favor. I know some guys who have been hurt very badly. I'm doing ok myself.

People have to have character, work together and trust one another. It all goes hand in hand. After that its also good if they have enough to keep themselves comfortably.

Bay Area Gal, close your eyes for a moment.

Gypsy I'm having a look around to see if I can find my passport. That was an invitation wasn't it? Don't tell Bay Area Gal, she'll be trying to go in my place. Dang its tough to keep a secret on here.

I don't really like this topic much as it makes me face the fact that I feel intolerance towards islam. I know that there are many muslims who are neither dangerous nor evil. Evil is an overused word lately anyway. I would be hard to persuade that there are not large numbers of dangerous muslims, intolerant of even the most basic of human rights. These people, many of them, are looking for more ways to be even more dangerous and to kill more innocent people.

I heard a comment on the radio yesterday, maybe not related. Someone was talking about pit bulls and made the following comment. "There are no bad dogs, only bad owners." So I'm asking the question, what does that mean? Are dogs better than people? Dogs cannot have their own personality and maybe be dangerous just from within themselves?

There are those who will defend the pit bulls as sweet lovable dogs till hell freezes over. Only last week a woman was mauled in her own bed by a pair of pit bulls who sneaked in her doggie door at night. The owner said "Those dogs are always sweet and would never hurt anyone. I just don't know how this could happen"

There are those who will defend muslims under any condition and tell you that they should have as much right to immigrate to the United States or Western Europe or Canada or Australia as any other group. The original quote as I started this thread shows that not everybody feels this way. What surprises me is that any more than a few extremely tolerant people feel that way. I suspect that the most extremely tolerant may be the ones with the biggest mouths. Unfortunately.

This country has bigger problems than this. We need to find ways to manage relations with Russia and China, and we should be doing more things to help conditions in Africa and even South America. We could make a lot of progress in these very important areas if we weren't always having to deal with a bunch of tyrants and greedy autocrats, parading around in the name of religion and promoting anarchy around the world to solidify their own prominence.

Well. I would probably be interested in some of that love potion, but we'll have to devise a test so I can be sure I'm getting the right stuff.

I'm not so convinced either king. Still I see poll results that suggest it. I suspect there is some kernel of truth in there somewhere. I'm not usually intolerant of others, but I find myself getting a little ire at the thought that people want to turn the whole world into islamic puppets and they promote the end through violence and murder in the name of allah. I just don't like it.

Instead of thinking well of muslim women because they try to dress like some pious religious conservative, I think that they are contemptuous towards our culture in general and our women in particular. I also think that their men are hateful towards their women for making them follow such a tradition, and that if they are hateful towards their own wives, how can you expect them to have any better feelings towards you.

I'll make the point here that I'd rather have a million illegals from Mexico than a hundred from the middle east. They work hard, show respect for their families and integrate themselves into society very well for the most part. The people I have met from Mexico are decent people, and I have met quite a lot. They are not making their women behave by some archaic rule and trying to convert our country by force to some disrespectful and subversive religion.

I agree that a poll is not a clear indicator that specific people are dangerous and likely to be engaging in terrorist acts. I think that it does indicate that many people approve of such acts though. So the question is, if half of them approve of such acts, how many of them do you want to allow to immigrate to your country. Another question might be, how many of them do you want to invite to your best universities to learn the best of your technology.

I think this was the point being made in the original quote when I started this thread. Many middle easterners are here now. I am not saying that it makes sense to treat them badly or disrespectfully as a individuals because they might support suicide bombings, without regard for the individual's rights or intentions. I am suggesting that if half of them support this sort of behavior it might be smart to quit inviting more of them to come to the country. Horrible isn't it, to think that way. Horrible too that such large groups of muslims think the way they do.

I've been seeing them blow the hell out of each other on the news for decades, regardless of what attempts are made for them to make peace. I suspect there may be some personal issue in their culture that is problematic.

Recent polls suggest that a large portion of muslims feel like such bombings are justified. The percentages I have heard bandied around are from 1/3 to 2/3 of the muslims, depending on the polls and where they are taken. Now I think that does not mean that all conservative muslims support such action. It means just what it says, that if you see a muslim, there is a 30 to 60 percent chance that person condones such activity as acceptable. I consider this to be an indication that they are dangerous.

Compare snakes, just as an example. If you see a snake you look at it carefully to see if it might be poisonous, even though you know fully well that not all snakes are poisonous and that not all poisonous snakes are going to bite you personally.

Passing your savings on to your customers is not a requirement in business. More likely you will have to pass it on though because your competitors will offer lower prices if you are not aggressive in your pricing. In businesses where the cost of entry is high, such as new home construction, the company has a little more flexibility to hold some of their earnings because the people who could beat their prices might not be able to enter the market because of a lack of capital.

Yeah I was noticing that too. I thought we were talking about intolerance, particularly towards muslims who, although they don't themselves blow up innocent civilians, consider it ok to do so and show it by insisting their women wear scarves over their heads or even over their whole bodies, and of course the women who show their acceptance of such behavior by acquiescing and wearing the disrespectful garb.

You have a very devious mind.

For farmers, having migrant workers often means the difference between harvesting their crops or letting them go to waste in the field. The price they pay the workers is the migrant worker price. Its not 7 dollars an hour just because they are migrant workers. College students and video gamers can work in the fields for the same price. I'm sure the farmers would be just fine with that.

For the farmers it would be a big challenge to get the home boys out there picking fruit, whether they pay 7 or 15 dollars an hour. If they step up to 20 or 25 an hour things would be easier for them. At that point they begin to have another problem. Imported food gets to be cheaper than the goods they can produce. If you want to do to the agricultural sector what has been done to the manufacturing sector, keep the pressure up.

Agricultural workers are important to farmers, but that argument has been made and largely accepted. When you consider manufacturing jobs, there is already crushing competition for any product sales that can be produced abroad.

In the construction industry there are a lot of illegals as well. It has been this way for years. As for now, if you want someone with experience in construction you better be willing to hire Hispanics. Some are illegal, some are not, and it is not always easy to tell the difference. But whether you can tell or not it might be to your advantage to hire whoever will work. If you are running a business you have to have workers, preferable workers with experience.

When they had the last amnesty program, 20 years back or so, they put in place heavy penalties and fines for hiring illegals, then they largely ignored the penalties from that point on except for some few high profile cases. Now after so many years people suddenly want to turn back the tide. Some employers have been hiring illegals for 20 years now. Imagine the barrier to entry into a business when you have to compete with that, and yet you are told that if you hire illegals the government will crush you. The employers who break the laws have the advantage in cost and hiring of experienced workers. The effect is to bar new entry into the market. But for the company who had illegal employees for so many years, taking away their labor force has the effect of stopping their business activity.

The popular view to get rid of the illegals by targeting businesses who hire them will hurt your neighbors and your local economy.

So you are having trouble with the wild hoards of women emailing you and trying to hook up? Probably makes your girlfriend mad as hell. Poor thing. Is it the beard or what? I'm thinking you've got a really tough problem there. Hope you manage to work that out. Maybe you could sluff some of those extra women to bob or something cause you might as well do some good when faced with such adversity.