Is small and they never put the religion in front of the nationality, in Europe is completely otherwise.
Maybe it has something to do with South America being part of the New World, which was settled mainly by the Spanish and Portuguese not, in historical time, all that long after the Moors / Muslims were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, so that there was a fresh start in South America.
It’s interesting to look at maps of Europe to see how far Islam penetrated in Spain, France, and the Balkans, getting towards the borders of what is now Austria, and how long it lasted under the Ottoman Empire. The current mass migrations are less warlike, but perhaps just another step in the endless ebb and flow of peoples across the Mediterranean and through Turkey.
How did this thread switch onto Islam ? In any event, expulsions or not, it was less than likely the Muslims (or suspected “closet Muslims”) would have featured much in Spanish or Portuguese emigration to the New World. These were, from the start, conceived as Christian, Catholic Castilian/Portuguese enterprises, and the respective Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, very active in the New World, would have been effective in eliminating those who fell through the cracks. Mass migrations of the sort we are now experiencing are not that uncommon in early history. A good example, in fact, is the “Islamic conquest” of the 7th to 8th century. This was triggered, in part, by an episode of climate change, in which the Arabian peninsula became a lot more hostile to human occupation. Islam supplied the zeal; necessity enforced the movement.
As regards today’s migration - this may be less warlike, but it is still troubling. The “Islamic conquest” of the 7th and 8th centuries, allied to the movement of Islamic converts from the Caucasus and from North Africa, effectively destroyed Roman/Byzantine civilization through a large part of the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the Christian civilization of Visigothic Spain. The fact that the current migration is, generally, non-violent does not mean that it could cause serious damage to current “European civilization”, not least because the latter is pretty fragile at the moment. Short of a level of ruthlessness - and competence - unlikely to be displayed by our current leaders, considerable damage may be unavoidable. In any event, I shall probably be in my urn before the full consequences manifest themselves … Yours from the Lentil Factory, JR.
I blame Donald Duck.
Sorry, j’accuse the less amusing cartoon character known as Donald Trump.
Anyway, so far this thread is limited to Muslims.
There’s the other M word: Mexicans.
And, should he be elected by a sufficient number of his lunatic countrymen, the other M word.
Mayhem, in popular usage, but more like riot.
Speaking of Mexicans - I recall somebody in the States doing an amusing movie some years ago based on the idea that all the Gringos and Brothers in California wake up one morning … and all the Mexicans have vanished. Total chaos ensues, as oranges and grapes are not picked, lawns are not mowed, houses are not cleaned, roofs are not repaired … This is actually not just a humorous caprice; it is a realistic indication of what would actually happen if all the Mexicans (even just all the illegals) suddenly went home, leaving the “native” Americans to do their own less desirable work. This may seem a bit remote to the “Holy rollers” of Iowa; but the US economy is significantly dependent on the availability of Hispanic labor, and not just in California. Do simplistic, populist, nonsensical solutions to the problem of illegal immigration really “sell” on the US political circuit ? Apparently, it does … Yours from the Big Fence, JR.
Ah - now I get it ! The Donald wants to restore some grand traditions of US politics, such as the practice of holding “Donnybrook Fair”-style riots around political conferences. I am just old enough to remember the late-'60s. Call in the National Guard. Triple tear gas all round … JR.
I think illusionist, libertarian, Hillary Clinton adversary, and TV personality Penn Jillette is sort of where I am on Trump:
Why Penn Jillette Is Terrified of a President Trump
By Grant Burningham On 3/1/16 at 12:50 PM
If his reaction to Donald Trump has been any guide, comedian Penn Jillette puts a lot of effort into trying to see people’s good side. Perhaps that’s why the staunch libertarian—who appeared on Celebrity Apprentice, the GOP front-runner’s reality TV series—counts himself friends with a diverse group that includes Glenn Beck and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
It’s not that the comic and magician can’t be caustic, or even brutal. He once made an on-air joke calling Hillary Clinton a bitch in 2008. And you definitely wouldn’t want to be on his wrong side during an episode of his former series Bullshit! on Showtime. However, Jillette’s tendency to try to find some common ground with people in power—though the Clintons seem to be an exception—is probably why he had nice things to say about Trump, albeit with some straining, when he joined Celebrity Apprentice in 2011. But not anymore.
“The problem is, I know Trump, so my optimism has been squashed like a baby bird,” he tells Newsweek.
Penn Jillette has been frank about Donald Trump, but now he’s worried. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Even now, Jillette says he’s pretty sure he liked Trump more than anyone else who has been on the show. Several of his co-stars “absolutely loathed him,” he says.
Jillette appeared on two seasons on Celebrity Apprentice, including one in which Trump fired him because “he didn’t like me,” Jillette says, “and I thought that was completely fair, because he decides.” The two were frank, Jillette says. “Everything bad I had to say about him, I said to his face.” And Jillette kept on saying what nice things he could think of about the host. “I think he’s very good, very compelling on that show,” he says.
The mostly decent rapport changed—publicly, anyway—when Trump the TV star became Trump the candidate. Jillette says he went on TV and said that while he liked Trump as a reality TV host and as a person, he disagreed with him profoundly on political issues. (And there was also the business of Jillette’s joke that Trump’s hair looked like “cotton candy made of piss.” That comment seemed to sour the relationship permanently.)
Soon Trump was tweeting that he thought Jillette’s Broadway show was terrible (or so he’d heard). It could have been just another celebrity Twitter beef, with the added weight of one participant being in the running to become the leader of the free world, but even then Jillette didn’t respond in kind.
It’s also probably why he started this interview by saying everything nice he could about Trump. “I really like him because of his absence of filters. I really like the glimpse we get into the human heart we get when someone loses their filters,” he says approvingly. He quotes one of his longtime heroes, Thelonious Monk, who said, “A genius is the one most like himself.” “In a really weird way, Donald Trump has achieved that,” Jillette says, adding that the outspokenness is a trait held by Bob Dylan, another of Jillette’s heroes.
“If he weren’t running for president, you’d be seeing essays from me about how much I learned from Donald Trump and how much I loved being on the show,” Jillette says.
But that’s where the niceness stops.
Like most of the country, Jillette says he’s now coming to terms with the fact that despite the pundit predictions and popular wisdom, there is a real possibility that Trump could be president. “It’s beyond my imagination,” he says.
“I’m feeling so, so, so guilty, because I feel like, along with millions of other people, I played right into this. The cynicism of the Clintons, the careful, tightrope walk of all politicians, forced me, as an atheist, to get down on my knees and pray that someone would come along with some kind of authenticity,” Jillette says. “Well, someone called my bluff, goddamn it.”
Jillette claims that Trump, Richard Nixon and Hillary Clinton are the only three politicians he’s heard of who people like less after meeting.
“The stuff [Trump] is saying on immigration, the stuff he saying on torture, the stuff he is saying on war, is absolutely unforgivable,” Jillette says. “He is coming out directly against the Statue of Liberty.”
There’s also the issue of nuclear weapons. He notes that another presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, has joined Trump in promising to use them. “I’m a pure and utter peacenik. I want a president who sings the praises of people, sings the praises of peace and sings the praises of working together for a great country,” Jillette says.
“Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have laughed about waterboarding,” he adds.
Jillette’s libertarian politics appeared occasionally on the topics he debunked for his skeptical show Bullshit! that appeared on Showtime from 2003 to 2010. He’s also occasionally been a commentator on cable networks, sometimes appearing on Beck’s program to blast Obama.
And he’s never been shy about what he doesn’t like about the current president, which includes Obama’s use of drones, his perceived expansion of the federal government and his continued stance against legal marijuana. Which is why it’s such a shock to hear him say, “If you told me right now I could have another eight years of Obama, I would not hesitate to grab at it."
“He is unquestionably good and unquestionably smarter than I am, which is putting the bar pretty low. I want a president that is kinder, smarter and more measured than me," he says.
“My friend Christopher Hitchens wrote a book called No One Left to Lie To about the Clintons,” Jillette says. “I have written and spoken and joked with friends the meanest, cruelest, most hateful things that could ever been said by me, have been said about the Clintons. I loathe them. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on just about everything there is to disagree with a person about. If it comes down to Trump and Hillary, I will put a Hillary Clinton sticker on my ****ing car.”
But he says he hopes the race will turn out well enough that he feels safe casting his vote for Gary Johnson, who is running on the libertarian ticket, and who he believes is the best choice.
He’s also taking what positives he can find from the 2016 campaign. He says that Jeb Bush’s belly flop as a presidential candidate shows that Citizen’s United, the Supreme Court case that opened the door to well-funded super PACs, didn’t decide the outcome of elections. Bush was a candidate with huge money backing who couldn’t buy his way into office.
Jillette also says Trump has proved that the American people appreciate someone speaking openly. “Someone who is paying attention can do the same thing that Trump is doing with hate, and do it with love, and become president,” he says. “That’s kind of beautiful. There’s nothing more optimistic than that.”
And as for Trump, Jillette says there’s still a chance that tides could turn for the seemingly unstoppable real estate scion turned reality TV star.
“Donald Trump does, when it comes right down to it, **** up everything,” he says. “He ****s up his casinos. He ****s up his buildings… Maybe he’ll **** up his campaign before he ****s up the country.”
I don’t know the full count of Trump’s committed delegates for the Convention at this stage - but it does look as if he has a very fair chance to come out as candidate. Not surprised that the Republican establishment is terrified by this. Owing to the late thinning out of the competition, it may be very difficult to head him off without a blatantly rigged Convention. Equally hard to see how he could beat Mrs Clinton in the General Election, in view of the many political constituencies he has pissed off. We shall see. JR.
As long as Mrs. Clinton is not under indictment, or information, she can if chosen as the Candidate, stand in the Election. As to her having sufficient voter backing to win, well, that’s another story. People are beginning to see her true self now that the FBI, and the DOJ are seriously investigating her, and one of her staff has been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony. Her political future is becoming less certain with each passing week. This will be a very interesting year. (But not just for the U.S.)
Looks like he’s wearing a latex glove on his right hand.
Which confirms his status as an unashamed wanker.
(And, given the abnormal backwardly bent top of his right thumb, either he has pluckin’ banjo thumbs - “squeal like a pig” - or he’s just ejaculated through his thumb into his glove. Either way, he is seriously weird.)
He is very nontraditional, thats for sure. Some of the People of the U.S. seem to want someone who is not an insider of the Old Boys political club, but instead is a real World business oriented outsider that is not dancing to the tune of the puppeteers who seek to influence so many of the others, be it PAC’s, Parties, special interest groups etc. Given the number of well proven wankers we’ve had over the last 20 yrs, it seems prudent enough to give Trump a shot, especially since he is at this point, the current winner of the conservative race. But there is still a long stretch of time before November, so who knows what the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate may bring to us. 
Same with a lot of people here, including me to the extent that I want to see the end of political party hacks who think politics is a career for power hungry arseholes rather than a noble community service by principled people, regardless of their political persuasion.
Problem is, the likes of Trump and our last equivalent rich ****head getting elected down here, although fortunately not to national leadership in our case (or maybe not so fortunate, given the bozo we actually got who duly got rolled by his own party for also being a ****head), is that they are still drawn from a selfish unrepresentative rich elite who have nothing in common with sections of the electorate at large which stupidly think these political clowns will somehow be different from every other arsehole who seeks power for its own sake.
The only difference between Trump and his current opponents in both parties and previously is that he says he’s using his own money, instead of other people’s, to buy his way into power. And maybe not even his own money, as it now turns out that our last equivalent ****head has duly let his companies which funded his campaign go belly up, leaving his workers out of jobs. And this from our supposed ‘man of the people’ who was going to bring a new honesty to our politics. Of course, there is no reason to expect from Trump’s spectacular corporate bankruptcy history that he would be such a personal and political turd as our equivalent rich ****head. Yeah, right!
Anyway, as far as Trump goes, the last I heard he had only about 400 delegates to 600 for the other Republican contenders, so he’s obviously not the overwhelming choice of the GOP. If his Republican opponents could do the unthinkable for self-seeking politicians and agree to drop out all but the most favoured candidate, Trump probably loses the nomination and the GOP saves the planet from unnecessary international instability and conflict because a ****wit has control of the big red button.
EDIT: Beats me why arsehole gets through the forum filter but Richard Cranium (= di*khead) doesn’t, when the former is anatomically correct and the latter isn’t. Probably a filter designed by the same sort of morons who control what our politicians say publicly so that none of it is consistent or rational, much like many of their personal lives, such as this bloke. Personally, I’d vote for him, if only for his idiosyncratic dress sense and just to stick it up the establishment, of which he was very much part until these photos appeared in the press.
Go trump! He understands what’s going on and I wish Europe had a Trump too.
Wasn’t for Open boarders and allowing so many Muslims in, we wouldn’t have terror attacks. So trump has a point! Not sayn all Muslims are bad, but the amount of Muslims entering out countries makes bigger risks of home grown terror attacks.
I’m confused by what you mean by “open boarders”, as boarders are, by definition, residents who pay for their board. What do they do they do to make themselves “open”?
So allowing Muslim immigrants in is the present problem, rather than the few people who choose to follow the Islamic radicalism funded all over the planet by the oil rich Saudi Wahhabists and its virulent extensions flowering in all the appalling atrocities of ISIS? http://www.mmg.com.au/local-news/shepparton/imam-condemns-iraq-violence-1.74895
As for Muslim immigrants being responsible for terrorist attacks, how many generations back do you want to go?
Australia’s three terrorist attacks in the past 18 months at Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne, the Lindt cafe in Martin Place and Parramatta police station in Sydney were undertaken by Australians. Man Haron Monis came to Australia 18 years earlier and had become a citizen. Numan Haider and Farhad Jabar came to Australia as children with their families. Foreign fighters Jake Bilardi and Oliver Bridgeman (although disputed) are Australian-born converts to Islam, while Abdullah Elmir (known as “Ginger Jihadi”) and Khaled Sharrouf were born here. We see a similar pattern in those arrested for plotting terrorist acts and providing other support.
Only those on the extreme Right would suggest that all terrorist attacks in Europe are caused by refugees. We have seen in Europe that such rhetoric has the potential to tear apart communities; oversimplifying the issue serves only to exacerbate the problem and risks taking away the focus from other areas necessary to our strategy to counter this threat.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/strong-borders-migration-screenings-vital-to-our-security/news-story/887bc695f0714f36fa9ff113da9a0aa3
Or this home grown non-immigrant in England: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3423758/Brainwashing-Jihadi-Jack-parents-respectable-reveal-middle-class-boy-Oxford-recruited-Islamic-fanatics.html
Applying your same reasoning to the Catholic Church and the Italian Mafia in Australia would mean that if we stopped further immigration by Catholics and Italians this would see the end of crimes by Catholics, notably sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and religious orders, and Italian mafiosi, notably drug dealing, extortion,murder and various other quaint but violent Calabrian and Neapolitan customs.
Alas, that wouldn’t get rid of the various Catholics and Italians, some of them like me (proudly not Italian) sixth and seventh generation Australians with, in my case, some difficulty in authorities knowing whence to send my dissected parts for my various heritages (Irish, Cornish, Dutch, French, Portuguese etc).
The only way to stop these Catholic and Italian crimes is to expel all Catholics and all people of Italian descent from Australia, which is the logical extension of your view that we should not allow any more Muslims into Australia because some might be terrorists. How many innocents do you think should be expelled to get rid of a few criminals?
Or is it just that the ones born or previously here are okay and not a threat? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28672826
How are you going to deal with the families of Australians who aren’t Muslims but who are associated with vile Australian born jihadists such as Sharrouf? http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/the-life-and-crimes-of-australian-jihadist-khaled-sharrouf/5670312
For example, what do you think should be done with Sharrouf’s non-Muslim Australian mother in law who still has understandable concerns for her grandchildren?
http://www.smh.com.au/national/karen-nettleton-says-her-orphaned-grandchildren-are-starving-in-iscontrolled-syria-20160213-gmtbo5.html
I don’t have a problem with wiping out everyone like Sharrouf and his ISIS mates, and refusing to let his children back into Australia despite their grandmother’s understandable desire to save her grandchildren from the consequences of the jihadist culture their parents took them to for, presumably, the perceived benefit of those children.
Nonetheless, I can’t agree with you that the major current problem is “allowing so many Muslims in, we wouldn’t have terror attacks”.
Most of the poor bastards coming to the West from Muslim countries are fleeing circumstances of which we have no experience or real conception in the West, and many of those circumstances have been created or assisted by the West over many centuries, and increasingly post-WWII.
As with the various earlier floods of refugees after WWII, Greek Colonels, Vietnam War, etc, most of these migrants will bring and in many cases keep alive their own cultures while fitting new blocks into the walls which build and enrich our various nations.
I’d happily send to a remote island close to, or preferably under, Antarctica for the hopefully very short rest of their destructive lives all those among them who choose to be serious criminals in our new land, be they the various forms of organised or disorganised crime and jihadists who all undermine the society in the new land which gave them succour.
But that’s not a reason to treat all of their former countrypeople as a threat when they’re just poor bastards trying for a new life in a new land where they take advantage of their opportunities and uphold our principles, which often works rather well.
http://amesnews.com.au/lead-story/karen-nhill-experiment-regional-settlement/
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/04/20/4220107.htm
Ever considered the possibility that if the West hadn’t consistently been interfering in the Middle East, notably in support of Israel’s land grabbing and oppression of the Palestinians at the same time as, for example, a few decades ago, supporting the Iranian Pahlavi regime and its SAVAK secret police and similar regimes elsewhere then and even now, there wouldn’t have been a PLO and its bombings, Munich etc and the current Islamic jihadists? Ably encouraged by Pahlavi/ SAVAK equivalents in just about every Islamic country in the Middle East / Central Asia which often, as in Egypt in particular, were tasked to oppose the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood which sought to impose Sharia (not the usual “Sharia law” corruption in popular Western discourse but Sharia in the true sense of a nation united and run under their version of pure Islam).
As for the recent bombings in Brussels and Paris, and at the risk of being called once again an insensitive and heartless arsehole who raises historical facts to balance national and or international outpourings of grief in the interests of aiming for understanding the flow of history, compare these relatively trivial events in Brussels and Paris to the colonial activities of the Belgians and French as recently as half a century ago in suppressing democratic self-determination desires in their African colonies, never mind the brutal actions of the Belgians in particular in the Congo in the first half of the 20th century. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/18/congo.andrewosborn
Given this history, does Brussels really deserve its position as the capital of the European Union and that Union’s grand conception of itself as the bastion of human rights law?
Why should there be such current, but certainly justified,outrage about the latest Brussels attacks yet none about Belgium’s dark colonial past?
What’s his point? No “Muslim” terror attacks have happened in the U.S. because of “open borders.” It’s a complex problem but has a lot to do with vast differences between Euro and American cultures regarding immigrants. In the U.S. integration is fostered more so in Europe where Muslims seem to wall themselves off into ghettos…
Um…9/11???
Well yeah, America has its own culture but was based on and by Europeans.
European immigrants intergrant much better than anyone else because we have same cultures, religions and faiths. Muslims have a total different religion and faiths that clash with foreign cultures. Most Africans seem to adapt to white culture quite well apart from the men who were child soldiers. Asians seem to be like Muslims but more pleasant and peaceful people.
I’m not a fan of multicult and understand Trump… That doesn’t mean I’m a Hitler supporter that believes in the Ayran race which I don’t. No such thing exists. And don’t worry I had arguments with people who believed hitlers policies over Ayrans.
Trump doesn’t represents Aryans he represents America and wants majority white America back and to halt Mexican illegal immigrants.