[Who Owns the Truth?] My First Regular Irregular “Keep the Pot Boiling” Column – ISIS, Rabid Fury, Status of Women, Strife, Mayhem, Political Correctness and the Future – by Gary S. Smolker

The Fight Against ISIS Is A Fight Against Political Correctness

ISIS is composed of people who follow the teachings of strict conservative Islam, an ultra-puritanical form of Islam.

They follow an interpretation of religious laws in the Koran that translates into institutionalized outrage and expression of anger, sexual slavery of women, an obsessive hatred of imagery, representation (and therefore of art and music) and also of the body, nakedness and freedom.

ISIS has published manuals explaining that it is in their religious laws to have sex with prepubescent girl slaves, to stone women for offense against Sharia law and to kill infidels and heretics.

Those rules are approved and followed by the vast majority of Muslims who live on the periphery of the society of intellectuals and officials in Muslim countries.

Depictions of how those beliefs are lived out in Muslim societies are presented in stories told in a multitude of films released in 2015, such as:

1. The American film “He Named Me Malala.
2. The Indian film “Parched.”
3. The French/Algerian film “Maintenant ils peuvent venir (Let Them Come).”
4. The French/Belgium film “Les Cowboys.”

Malala Yousafzai’s book “I Am Malala”, published by Little Brown & Company in 2013, describes what women face in countries where attacks on women are condoned.

To conservative Muslims, gay Paris is a whorehouse.

To conservative Muslims the United States is an ever more outrageous place because in the United States it is strikingly obvious that women are getting ahead, women are educated, women do not view themselves as domesticated slaves, women do not kowtow to men, women are independent thinkers, women expose their bodies in public, momen are demanding, and women have power.

In America:

• 37% of women graduate from college vs. 31% of men.
• 38% of women earn more than their husband, up from 24% in 1987.
• Since 1973, real female incomes are up 34%, and real male incomes are down 5%.
• 21% of non-working dads aged 35-44 cite child care as the primary reason, up from 2% 20 years ago.
• There are more women voters in the United States than male voters.
• Women freely express that they want power, money, a husband, and children.
• Women in the United States have multiple sex partners without being getting pregnant.
• In America it is accepted that women in America have sex with multiple sexual partners when they are not married, and sometimes while they are married.
• Women sit on the California Supreme Court.
• Women sit on the United States Supreme Court.
• A woman is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
• Women run giant corporations in the United States such as General Motors and IBM.
• Hillary Clinton is campaigning to become President of the United States.
• America promises to provide the opportunity to succeed on the basis of ability to “everyone.”
• Religious tolerance is a core American value.

In strict Muslim households women have no human rights, women are their husbands’ sexual slaves.

To people who have been educated to think that women are inferiors and should have no rights the status of women in America is an outrage, an insult to their religion.

Conservative Muslim religious leaders and political leaders get their people so excited with rage about the status of women and sex in everyday life in America the vast majority of Muslims all over the Muslim World call America the “Great Satan.”

The broadcast of facts about every day life in America to the general Muslim public by television, movies, videos, YouTube, the Internet, and social media seriously threatens and erodes the power of conservative Muslim religious leaders and dictators who run Muslim countries.

The fact that American women freely express that they want power, money, a husband and children is unbearably outrageous to conservative Muslims.

The facts that American women have the ability to have multiple sex partners, are independent thinkers, make demands, are independent and have power is outrageous to conservative Muslims.

Conservative Muslim leaders are afraid if Muslim women find out about the status of women in America and in other of the Western countries the vast majority of women in Muslim countries will want to become like American women.

Conservative Muslim religious leaders have good reason to be afraid of that because people “learn” about the life of women in the West.

How People Form Their Identities

People try to behave like people they want to emulate.

Stories provide the crucial means by which individuals, especially males, form their identities in imitation of heroic predecessors and in opposition to hereditary enemies.

Stories, by implication, indicate to individuals their role in society and how they are supposed to act.

Dictators, Kings, Military Leaders and Religious Leaders Have Good Reason to Not Want “Their” People to Watch Western Films

Film tells important stories, spark imagination, connects communities and enable filmmakers – writers, directors, actors, etc. – to express themselves.

For example, the recently released film”Suffragette” tells the story of the effort women had to go through in Great Britain in order to “get” the right to vote.

In the movie, the women who led the effort to get a law passed giving women the “right” to vote were literally and figuratively “terrorists.”

In this movie they smashed windows, blew up mail boxes, set fire to the Prime Minister’s home while it was under construction and one woman threw herself in front of a galloping horse the King of England was riding in a race at Derby.  The King was thrown from the race horse he was riding;, she was run over by the King’s horse and died.

The Inherent Dialect of Violence

In order to understand the violent acts carried out by ISIS in Paris on Friday, November 13, 2015, consider the political, economic and social context of who the “shooters” in Paris on Friday night (November 13, 2015) were and who the people they shot were.

The Muslim/ISIS terrorists in the recent Paris attacks were basically French citizens growing up in the Muslim ghettos in France where youth unemployment is forty to fifty percent.

Like conservative Muslims everywhere, members of ISIS are offended by (and very angry at) non-believers who do not live according to conservative Muslim rules.

The Muslim terrorists externalized their anger, which is what all conservative Muslims are taught to do.

Some of the people the terrorists shot were attending a rock concert others were eating and drinking in a bar or cafe.

Killing people who disagree with their way of life is the way conservative Muslims externalize their anger.

That is how the members of ISIS and members other conservative Muslim groups have been taught [emotionally educated and socially programmed] to react to the very real programmed injury they feel when someone disagrees with their religious belief and/or acts in a prohibited way.

Conservative Muslims do not want to be assimilated.

They do not want to be a peaceful integral part of a culturally diversified society.

ISIS has 100,000 battle-hardened soldiers.

ISIS and other conservative Islamist groups attack and kill us – people who do not behave the way they think all people should – because that is what they exist to do.

Nicolas Henin ( a French citizen whom ISIS held for 10 months) has written in an story about ISIS published on November 16, 2015:

“Everything convinces them they are on the right path and specifically, that there is a kind of apocalyptic process underway that will lead to a confrontation between an army of Muslims from all over the world and others, the crusaders, the Romans.  They see everything as moving us down that road.  Consequently, everything is a blessing from Allah.”

 

Cultural Attitude About Violence and Its Place in Human Affairs

Muslim society greatly values fighting.

Their warrior-prophet-leader Mohamed is their model for behavior.

The life of Mohamed is the model from which Muslim society’s cultural attitude about violence and its place in human affairs comes from.

Muslim History

Muslim history, from the time of Mohamed forward, is a history of violence and factional conflict.

Muslims have always lived in a tempestuous land of never-ending conflict and violence.

Muslims have a continuous history of experience with war and strife and a continuous history of living under the domination of leaders who have inhibited the evolution of communal and individual liberties and the kinds of community institutions which have given vitality to hundreds of towns, states, countries and communities elsewhere.

For further information on the history of the people who have lived in Muslim countries read “Jerusalem” by Simon Sebag Montefiore and”Lawrence in Arabia” by Scott Anderson.

For further information on modern-day conservative Muslim mindset read “I Am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai.

TAKEAWAY ADVICE:

• What happened in Paris on Friday, November 13, 2015, has to be seen through the lens of a way of life.
• ISIS and other strict Islamist groups are intent upon establishing a caliphate.
• William James was right: As you think, so shall you be.

Apocalyptic Violence

According to Machiavelli:

Men do injury through either fear or hate. – Machiavelli, “The Prince”, chapter 7

Such injury produces fear; fears seeks for defense; for defense partisans are obtained; from partisans rise parties in states; from parties their ruin. – Machiavelli, “Discourses on the First Decade of Titus, Livius”, book 1, chapter 7

According to psychologists, social workers, criminologists and top national security experts: Extremism and violence appeal most to “disaffected people” who feel alienated.  They don’t love themselves.  They don’t love anyone.  They are angry.

They seek revenge for being miserable.

Killing other people is their way to get revenge.

That is why they kill people.

They don’t care if they are killed for expressing their anger.

The Judaeo-Christian Rule “Love Thy Neighbor As Yourself” does not apply to them because they do not love themselves.

Things to Consider Regarding Absorbing The Current Flood of Muslim Immigrants

How will you decide where you are going to put them?

Where can you put them?

How will you vet them, school them and feed them?

How will you integrate then into “your” society?

How will you monitor them?

What will you do with them if they don’t fit in?

Deciding what to do and how to do it takes effort – takes planning, manpower, time and money.

There are easier ways for a terrorist to gain entry to the United States than to seek admission as a refugee.

The current Syrian refugee screening process in the United States takes three years.

A recent article from the Cato Institute concludes that Syrian refugees to be admitted in the United States pose no significant threat to the United States: “Few ISIS soldiers or other terrorists are going to spend at least three years in a refugee camp for a 0.042 percent chance of entering the United States when almost any other option to do so is easier, cheaper, and quicker.”

By the way, under current rules, regulations and laws, visitors to the United States from 39 different countries do not need a Visa to come to the United States legally.

The Scapegoating Process to Find Someone or Some Group to Blame for the Hard Blows of Fortune

Many Americans are unset, fretful and fearful about the way things have been going in the United States.

Their accumulated grievances find expression in presidential candidate Donald Trump’s outbursts.

Donald Trump is doing a masterful job of exploiting the climate of fear in the United States.

In his political campaign, Donald Trump is acting as lightning rod.

Donald Trump says what many people in the United States want to hear by expressing their points of view, by expressing their anger, by expressing their anxieties, fears, frustrations and by going along with their desire to blame someone else for the hard blows of fortune in their lives.

Compare what Donald Trump has said and how Donald Trump has behaved during the Republican Party’s primary election contest, with the following statement made by Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States: Nothing gives one person so great an advantage over another, as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

The Unraveling of the Social Fabric of the United States

The United States has its own form of political correctness – mostly on college campuses.

According to one survey, 40% of Millennials  are willing to limit free speech if it is racist.

On many college campuses it is understood that there is to be no speech that might offend anyone for any reason or make anyone who is a woman, or a member of a so-called underrepresented minority feel unwelcome.

Currently student protestors at Princeton University demand that  the administration acknowledge the “toxic legacy” of Woodrow Wilson, who served as university president and New Jersey governor before being elected President of the United States.  Woodrow Wilson was an unapologetic racist.  He believed black Americans were not worthy of full citizenship and admired the Ku Klux Klan for the role it had in terrorizing African Americans to restrict their political power.

The protestors’ top goal is to convince the university to rename the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs and the residential complex known as the Wilson College.

By the way, George Washington managed many slaves at Mount Vernon.

I do not know of anybody who has suggested that the capital of the United States (Washington, D.C.) be named.

However, I do know that as a result of  “political correctness” top comedians refuse to perform on college campuses in the United States.

People in the United States are living in an age of hyper vigilance about offending anyone.

At one extreme,

• Eskimos are complaining that one of the Kardashians wore a “sexy Eskimo” costume on Halloween.
• Anyone who offends anyone else is now called a “bigot.”

In my opinion political correctness is destroying the creativity of our children.

Political correctness destroys the essence of joyous creativity in them.  It suppresses them, it shuts them down.  It is devastating.

Political correct concerns has effected”retail.”

• Recently, Nordstrom’s stopped selling a Hanukkah sweater angering some customers who saw it as playing on cliches about Jewish women.
• Recently, Bloomingdales’s apologized for a catalog ad critics said made light of date rape.
• Recently, Walmart’s took heat over a Halloween costume of an Israeli soldier.

It is one thing to want to get along with other people.  It is another thing to tell other people how to behave.

It is an entirely different thing to try to control how people think, to control what religion people choose to practice, and/or to control the cultural composition of the population of a country.

Immigrants and Refugees

Consider the social, political and cultural implications of proposals (a) to put even more special limitations on the immigration of Syrian immigrants to the United States, (b) to register Muslims in the United States, and (c) the proposal to build a wall in the United States on the border between the United States and Mexico to keep people from Mexico, Central America and South America from entering the United States.

Consider the economic and cultural impact of low fertility rates in highly industrialized countries which need immigrant workers to keep their economic engines running.

Ask yourself: “Who does work and what kind of work do they do in the United States?”

Then look at the rest of the world: Consider Germany’s demand for labor, demand for “new labor sources” to keep its economic engine running.

Germany within a few years could be 20 percent Muslim, which would represent a demographic shift which would forever change the face of Germany.

We Have to Rethink What Security Means

Europe’s political and business leaders regard migration as critical to the Continent’s aging demographics.

But, as we have seen, this strategy threatens long-term social harmony and political stability in those traditionally homogeneous countries.

But consider the experience in the United States with refugees (starting with the Pilgrims).  The quality of assimilation in the United States has been very high.

• Today, the United States houses 20% of the world’s migrants but has only 5% of the world’s population.
• Up to now, the United States has been able to assimilate diverse minorities.
• Up to now, the United States has been able to not “radicalize” those minorities.

Facing a Demographic Implosion – Demographics Is Destiny

Whether people like immigrants or not, people in affluent highly industrialized societies have no choice but to accept immigrants and immigration or to forego their social security payments and witness their “welfare states” collapse because an influx of immigrant workers is necessary to keep the economic engines in their countries running.

The birthrate in almost all industrial countries is lower than replacement.

In the near future the percentage of older people who don’t work will exceed the population of working people.

Population trends will  shape policy.

Nowhere is this clearer than in China’s recent suspending its “one child” policy.

By 2050, according to United Nations projections, the number of countries with below-replacement level fertility rates is expected to nearly double, to 139 countries, accounting for 75% of the world’s population at that time.

There is a coming tsunami of senior citizens with a smaller work force, greater pension obligations and slower (or no) economic growth.

Most affluent countries and those on the way to prosperity, all face the same basic dilemma: an aging population and a shrinking workforce.

Under such circumstances countries are being “forced” to either restore fertility rates to sustainable levels or to welcome masses of people from those parts of the world that still produce a demographic surplus.

Immigrants and their children have allowed the U.S. and Australia to stay close to the replacement rate, and have kept Canada from imploding.

The Impact of ISIS Attacks on Travel — Is Now A Good Time to Go to Paris?

I have started an off-line e-mail conversation with friends and a series of face to face conversations with friends and strangers about the ISIS attack on Paris last week.

On Monday, November 16, 2015, one friend wrote to me:

“Gary,

About 8 million people live in Metropolitan Paris.  In the last year (also last week) about 500 were killed or injured in the 6 terrorist attacks.  This means about 7,999,500 people were not attacked.  The chance of being attacked was about 0.0065% over the year and less than 0.000022% on any given day.  For people who don’t attend rock concerts, the actuarial risk was even lower.

CORRECTION: I just checked and the metro Paris population is now over 12 million, o reduce the above chances of attack by about one-third.  I’d say, go, save money and avoid lines and crowding.

Name of Friend”

Music Empowers Humanity, Nurtures Creativity, Soothes the Soul and Is A Social, Sexual and Emotional Force in Western Countries

I am thoroughly convinced that music empowers humanity and nurtures creativity.

Saturday night (November 14, 2015) I went to a Caltechlive concert performance by the “Good Lovelies” at the Beckman Auditorium at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

I went to that concert while I was tremendously upset about the massacre in Paris the night before.

The “Good Lovelies” performed songs they had written.

Their performance quickly soothed my soul, quickly brought me into touch with my own humanity.

Listening to them perform made me happy.

 

The “Good Lovelies” are three young Canadian women: Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough and Sue Passmore.

I estimate they are in their early twenties.

 

At the Caltechlive concert Saturday night, the “Good Lovelies” sang love songs they had written to their husbands.

Each of the songs they sang were about their desire, yearning, and waiting to be together with the man in their life.

Their songs struck my heart deeply.

 

Below, are the beginning lyrics of one of the songs which they sang.

 

LAST NIGHT

Last night I dreamed of you

Holding me again

Cradled in your arms

Until the morning came

Where are you now

That sleep is gone?

Lonely hearts get colder

And Heaven’s overgrown

 

Are you thinking of me

When I am thinking of you?

I carved our names in a tree

I think of you

When I’m falling asleep

And nobody’s here next to me

 

They have been on the road”touring” for seven years.

Instead of writing and singing songs about a man longing for a woman, understandably they write and sing songs about a woman longing for a man.

Can you imagine three women singing a song like that in flawlessly perfect three-part-harmony?

It is a very beautiful experience.

 

Below are the lyrics to their song DON’T HOLD BACK, which is another song they sang.

 

DON’T HOLD BACK

The full flower moon is rising

And spring is overdue

My knees are growing weaker

Each time I lay eyes on you

 

Don’t hold back love

Don’t hold back love from me

Don’t hold back love

Don’t hold back love from me

 

Crawl into my arms

I’ve been waiting oh so long

For the ice to melt

For you to come along

 

Don’t hold back love

Don’t hold back love from me

Don’t hold back love

Don’t hold back love from me

 

My heart is a flutter, I’ll have no other

I am yours for the keeping

Swift and fleeting, love is a blur

I am yours just say the word

 

Don’t hold back

Don’t hold back love from me

Don’t hold back love

Don’t hold back love from me

 

The Good Lovelies’ music empowers humanity.

On stage, during the concert I attended on Saturday night (November 14, 2015),  they told funny stories of comedic adventures they have had during the past seven years while they have been on the road.

To some extent my going to their concert was a form of life style resistance against ISIS in that conservative Muslims who follow the theology/ideology of ISIS would be outraged

• by the “Good Lovelies” performing on stage,
• by me attending their performance,
• by the “Good Lovelies'”  lifestyle,
• by my lifestyle’,
• by my respect of independent women.

Conservative Muslims are outraged by the conduct of any woman who lives and behaves independently and by any man who supports their choice to do so.

What Are the Truths About the Paris Massacre Last Week?

According to one of my friends, conservative Muslims are called strict Islamists by people who are either too afraid to call them what they are or too ignorant to know what conservative Muslims believe.

According to him, Conservative Muslims believe men and women should be separated, women should not perform in public, nor should women wear the kind of clothes the “Good Lovelies” wore during their performances at the concert I attended on November 14, 2015.

They believe women are inferior to men.

They strongly believe that women should not be independent.

Conservative Muslims do not believe in “affirmative action”, women’s rights, women liberation, etc. etc.

Conservative Muslims believe they are superior to all people who are not conservative Muslims.

They believe they are superior to all people who wholeheartedly follow their interpretation of Sharia Law.

Conservative Muslims also believe that the harsh penalties and punishments set forth in the Koran are reasonable and should be followed

According to that friend, the reason the so-called Muslim/ISIS terrorists randomly shot people in the audience at the concert hall in Paris, tried to bomb the soccer stadium and randomly shot couples in Paris who were out for the night is that they consider it is their duty to rid the earth of people like the people who were in those places at those times.

They have NO tolerance for people who don’t behave in a POLITICALLY CORRECT WAY; they have no tolerance for people who don’t strictly follow their interpretation of rules set follow in the Koran; they have no tolerance for people who have a different interpretation of what the Koran commands people to do then they do.

Recent Movies Which Portray Politically Correct Muslim Behavior

“Rock the Kasbah”

The recently released Bill Murray movie “Rock the Kasbah” is about a young unmarried young Muslim woman living with her family in a small village in Afghanistan.

In “Rock the Kasbah” Bill Murray is an entertainment talent manager.

While in Afghanistan promoting one of his clients, who is a singer, Bill Murray accidentally discovers this young woman.

She has a beautiful voice.

Thereafter, Bill Murray talks this young Muslim woman into entering and into singing on a nationally broadcast singing contest.

When her father and other people who live in her village learn that she has sung in a singing contest they “disown” her.

I saw this movie recently (in November, 2015) at a local theater in Sherman Oaks, California.

“He Named Me Malala”

“He Named Me Malala” is a documentary.

It is the true story of a young woman who at age 15 (Malala Yousafzai) was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin while riding home in a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

The Taliban attempted to assassinate Malala because Malala was an outspoken champion of the idea that girls should be given an education.

The Taliban targeted Malala for assassination because Malala wanted to learn how to read and publicly said she wanted other girls to learn how to read.

The movie makes it clear that the Taliban, following strict conservative Muslim/Islamic law, is vehemently against women being taught to read.

Malala was targeted by Taliban militants for her outspokenness in support of girls’ education.

Malala has an astounding eloquence and boldness.

Even when Malala was eleven years old she was attracting the attention of international reporters because of her outspoken advocacy.

During the course of the movie, the film shows various village schools in the Swat Valley where girls are taught to read had been bombed, had been completely destroyed by the Taliban.

Malala and her father Ziauddin Yousafzai spoke after the showing of “He Named Me Malala” which I attended.

Malala told the people in attendance: When you tell your story it is a healing, it is a rehabilitation.

Malala and her father then thanked Academy Award winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim for making the documentary we had just watched. 

I saw the international premiere of this documentary in September at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

“Parched”

This is an Indian film about the plight of women in rural villages in India.

Lena Yadav, the filmmaker, stated at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival that the story told in this movie is based on true events.

According to Yadav: 80% of the women in India don’t know what an orgasm is; they are sexual slaves.

The village elders and all the local men in the village where the story told in this movie takes place repeatedly tell each other: Don’t get an educated wife, they have books riding their minds.

The story in this movie revolves around the life of a young girl who is forced to marry a young boy she doesn’t want to marry.

Her young husband brutalizes her, steals from his mother, drinks excessively and is a lazy oaf.

Watching her son brutalize his child bride disgusts her.

She then begins to thirst for more than what life has given women in her village.

The men laze around and talk to each other while the women do all the work in the village..

As the story in the movie progresses, she questions the status quo in her village, the rules of conduct in her village which favors men, sends child brides to abusive husbands and ostracizes women for being educated and opinionated – and begins to have a series of lengthy conversations with female friends – outside the hearing of men in the village – about “how women should value themselves” and what stops them from doing so.

According to the film maker the life of women portrayed in this movie is the typical life of all women in rural Muslim and Hindu villages in the countryside and in strict religious communities in big cities in India.

I saw the world premier of this movie in September at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

 

“Maintenant ils peuvent venir” (“Let Them Come”)

This French/Algerian movie is about the dark decade in Algeria in which strict Islamists tried to take over Algeria, and 200,000 died in the ensuing conflict.

It is set in Algeria in the late 1980s.

In one scene a Muslim man is told by his strict Islamist father-in-law that the marriage between he and his wife (his marriage to the daughter of the father-in-law) is not valid because he is not a strict Islamist.  He is an infidel because he is hot a strict Islamist.

The father-in-law has taken his daughter away; he has married her to a strict Islamist; and now lives with the second man.

That man already had a wife.

That man now has two wives.

His daughter is now that man’s second wife.

This film is a family chronicle which begins shortly before the man characters get married to each other in an arranged marriage, and follows that marriage and the man and woman who got married from that time forward.

I saw the world premier of this film in September at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Progress, Creativity, Political Correctness and Different Ways of Thinking

If we are going to solve the problems that are rampant on our planet, we need to have creative people with creative ideas.

Yet we continue to close down creative people, with invalidations that ever more imperiously impose from without, an institutional mentality that squashes [young] people in a way that forces them to give up the expression of their souls and, instead to worry about winning the approval of  authority figures, the approval of grown-ups, college administrators, the federal government, all sorts of protesters who don’t feel welcome in society and all sorts of other bosses and audiences.

This violation of self is insulting and injures who we are deep in our hearts.

In hopelessness and despair some people become tormented, depressed or suicidal.

In such a society everyone is forced to worry about what everyone else thinks about them, which is the route to vapid mediocrity.

Seeing the Big Picture

Forty percent of Millennials in the United States are okay with limiting free speech if it is racist.

The Mormon Church (the Church of the Later Day Saints) recently adopted a same-sex marriage policy barring children of married same-sex couples from being baptized [not allowing them to become members of the Church] until they are adults, until they are 18 years old.

In order to become members of the Church they are required to leave their parents’ home and to disavow same-sex marriage and co-habitation.

At the street level, on my recent travels in different parts of the United States, I have read bumper stickers which state:

1. CHOICE.  What a beautiful right.
2. Democracy is not a spectator sport.
3. Freedom of religion means any religion.
4. Compassion is the radicalization of our time.
5. Don’t believe anything until it has been officially denied.
6. I will believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.
7. You don’t have to burn books to destroy culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.

Those bumper sticker statements are a sign of the way many people are thinking in the United States.

Responding to Our Ever-Evolving World

The history of the human race is violent.

Only by striving to understand the behavior of people throughout history and in remote places can we hope to understand from where we have come and how much of the pasts lives unrecognized with us.

What is happening in the world today is culturally contextual, historically contextual, in our faces every day and very dramatic.

In a recent article by Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor, in Foreign Policy she states:

“The Paris attacks were not surprising.  Occasional terrorist attacks in the West are virtually inevitable; … we’ll see more attacks in coming decades, now fewer.  We need to stop viewing terrorism as shocking and aberrational, and instead recognize it as an ongoing problem that needs to be managed, rather than defeated.”

In a recent article by Charles Gave, written for a French paper in September, 2015,  Mr. Gave explains that nobody can understand the disaster that is unfolding if he knows nothing of history, past events that shaped the world today.

Mr. Gave explains:

For the past 50 years, money has flowed in a torrent from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Europe to build Wahhabi mosques: “schools” where the only things taught – and only to boys – are the Koran and religious extremism.

The goal of this project is to “purify” the Middle East and eventually the rest of the world to an “original” form of Islam.

According to Mr. Gave:

• First: The West must clearly identify the enemy which is not the Muslim religion,but the Wahhabi sect.  And it must immediately break off relationships with the states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are exporting this virulent form of extremism.
• Second: We will have to stop accepting political donations from these countries to finance our electoral campaigns.
• Third: We will have to stop selling those countries warplanes, helicopters, missiles, radars, tanks and other weaponry.  One does not prosper by selling weapons to one’s enemies.  As Lenin said: “The capitalists will sell us rope with which we will hang them.”

There Is No Such Thing As Zero Risk

How are you going to change what you are doing now?

How are you going to change what you will be doing in the future?

Consider the impact of the confluence of highly impactful forces in the news every day (geopolitical, sociopolitical, economic, cultural, historical, local political, local social, global financial forces, local financial forces).

Many political “experts” will tell you that U.S. foreign policy is responsible for the rise of ISIS, and of terrorist attacks:

• There were no terrorists threats against U.S. citizens from the Middle East when Saddam Hussain was running Iraq  and when Omar Qaddafi was running Libya.
• The consequence of the United States destabilizing countries in the Middle East has been the reign of terrorist terror we are now experiencing.

Other political “experts” will tell you that the current surge of terrorist attacks is the result of Saudi Arabia and Qatar funding fundamental extremist Muslim clergy and schools which teach boys the Koran and extremism.

Consider the impact of all of the above forces on you personally, including the impact of such forces (a) on your current investment strategies, (b) on your current investments, (c) on your current travel plans,(d) on your current career plans, (e) on your current retirement plans, and (e) on all your other current strategies and goals.

Good luck.

 

Copyright © Gary S. Smolker, All Rights Reserved