[Ayoob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', ' ')you have not addressed a single one of the arguments or questions that I have posed.

[MrBill]

I worked for a few weeks in Milano. I found the N. Italians very hardworking and industrious. I rather think that the stereotypes come from S. Italy where organized crime is a reality, and garbage piles up on the streets uncollected because all the illegal dumps have been quarantined due the dumping of toxic waste.

I would not want to be in Naples right now, much less post peak oil. I can understand the Northern League's frustration of having to pour money into the bottomless pit of regional aid for the south when that money is mispent and misappropriated. It is a tax on the North's productivity, and makes all Italians poorer, except for perhaps the crooked politicians that are owned by the mob.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'I') have addressed your love for criminals and invaders, and your disdain for those who wish to be left alone. Our sympathies are blatant. You prefer those who wish to upset the paid-for and earned apple cart, I prefer the owners of the apple-cart and those whose taxes paid for the street and sidewalk the apple cart sits upon.Correct?

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', 'G')o ahead and hate the Roma, it costs me nothing (but I would think that it does cost you something) but I will choose compassion because that doesn't cost me anything either, nothing worth keeping anyway.

[Ayoob]

I'm glad that was your final word, and I hope you stay quiet now. It's easy to be an accommodating liberal in Wisconsin... nobody's invading Wisconsin. I have compassion for the Italians because I understand being invaded. Los Angeles is LOUSY with illegal aliens who steal my stuff, drive down the quality of education for all Angeleno children, soak up welfare money, and make the lines at the emergency room hours longer than they would be without.

My guess is you have sympathy for them. But not for the woman who lives next door to me who saved up for 30 years to buy a house in a nice school district, only to be displaced by someone who rented a shack with four other families and whose children will only show up at that school sporadically to pick up free glasses and lunches, who will never learn English, who will beg for money on the side of the road, who will steal any metal object that isn't locked down and many that are.

Right? Those are your friends, right?

I bet money you would do what you could to take a gun away from a woman who wants to defend herself against being raped as well. Right? Gun control? That sound like fun to you?

You have compassion for the criminals and the invaders, and none for the people who want to be left alone.

I think that's what happens when the good life is served up for you on a silver platter. You think it's too easy, everybody should have it, the invaders are entitled to whatever they want, including my neighborhood. Well that's really great, I'm glad you're not my neighbor.

[MrBill]

Lets try to keep our articulate emotions in check here. Strawman arguments that try to put words into someone else's mouth are not helpful. It just distorts the argument further.

I really do not see a disconnect between being compassionate and tough on crime. And I think we can deal with illegal immigration while treating those economic migrants as people and not something less.

However, this is a discussion that we need to be having because climate change and resource depletion are going to create more losers than winners. Public policy has to reflect that reality whether the armchair liberals like it or not. Otherwise they will forfeit the debate to the reactionaries on the right. That in turn can make the plight of the poor and disadvantaged worse. That is not compassion. That is short-sightedness.

[TWilliam]

Seems to me that compassion would involve finding means to eliminate the need (or the desire, if you prefer to think of it that way) for one group to 'invade' another's territory.

Unfortunately it seems rather unlikely IMO that such can be accomplished as long as some people believe it's their 'right' to amass as much 'stuff' as they can get their greedy little hands on, regardless of who has to do with less as a result.

And you can scream 'equal opportunity' all you like. We all know that it isn't.

[wisconsin_cur]

Church of England: Gov't Favors Islam $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')The British government's "deep religious illiteracy" is failing society as it discriminates against Christian churches and favors other faiths, including Islam, the Church of England fires off in its strongest attack on the government in decades.

The policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have helped to generate a spiritual, civic and economic crisis, according to a report commissioned for the Church of England and to be published on Monday. It calls for the appointment of a "minister for religion" to be the prime minister’s personal "faith envoy" and who would recognize the contribution of faith communities to Britain across every government department.

The 180-page report describes the government as moral but lacking a "compass" and reflects an attempt by the church to carve out an effective role for itself in the 21st century as a provider of welfare for young and old.The report was commissioned by the bishop of Hulme, the Rev. Stephen Lowe, Bishop for Urban Life and Health, with the support of the archbishops of Canterbury and York, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu.

[culicomorpha]

Wisconsin_cur, thanks for bringing up this topic. For many years I have been perplexed about what some haved called the "pendulum of social tolerance," but I had never considered it in the context of energy availability. This puts things that were previously myterious in a completely different light.

I think it is a foregone conclusion that under conditions of energy (and especially food) scarcity, xenophobia and violence will increase. Like in South Africa, there will be mob actions where privately held fears of difference will be exploited.

As for which groups will be targeted, I don't think we need to look very far. Just look around right now and ask what groups are currently blamed (or could be blamed) for the ills of the society. For some bizarre reason, large numbers with a religious bent seem to find gays and lesbians particularly to blame for the destruction of the country. Given Falwell blamed 9/11 on the atheists and gays and lesbians, it seems the country is very likely to move into a kind of theocracy, where hypocritical preachers are given inordinate power to define "out groups." So that will be a lot of where the xenophobia will come from.

Perhaps a more obvious out class, as was already alluded to, but not explicitly stated already is people of color. Just look at the current prison population. Blacks and Hispanics form a huge segment of that population. Add to them drug users, which are generally seen as 'non-productive members of the society,' even the ones busted for smoking a joint.

Then we get to the economically un-productive. These are the folks on welfare, high-school dropouts, the barely literate high school graduates, and those whose skills are unnecessary in a world of want, like art historians or librarians.

But I suspect that the first big wave of xenophobia will be the traditionally most obvious suspects: foreigners who don't even speak the language. Those folks are pretty much screwed unless they have a highly desirable skill and a translator.

To some extent, I agree with Ayoob. If you are a recent immigrant, have little to no skills, don't speak the language, are parasites on the community, then you should have every expectation of being deported at the very least.

I'd say the big wildcard for the US is how elderly folks will be viewed. Given that most elderly people live off the earnings of current workers, they still require food, heat, water, and all the other things they have come to expect like free drugs and healthcare, and given the demographics of this country, it could get very ugly. There will be increasing hostility from the younger generations, especially as the environmental degradation becomes more visible and there will be a sense that somehow our elders have let down the younger generations. Also, not to be too Dickensian about it, but the term surplus population might come up at some point.

I'm not saying that I think any of these groups *should* be targeted, but it seems likely that some of these groups will.

The ignorant masses will be very pliable when things get bad, and the US has a very effective propaganda machine. Since most people can't think for themselves, someone will come along and tell them what to think and then they'll act on those thoughts. They'll need someone to blame for their misfortune, not knowing that larger systemic forces are at work, that we are reaching the limits of the Earth's capacity. This is an idea that most Americans simply cannot comprehend, and so they'll just look for someone nearby to blame instead.

[Revi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('culicomorpha', 'A')s for which groups will be targeted, ... Then we get to the economically un-productive. These are the folks on welfare, high-school dropouts, the barely literate high school graduates, and those whose skills are unnecessary in a world of want, like art historians or librarians.

[MrBill]

Cur, I think the Church of England is just trying to carve out a role for itself in a modern, secular world, where its rights and privileges seem oddly out of place. Their solution to hold onto their rights and privileges is to dole them out to other religions as well. Whereas the real solution is to simply abolish those rights and privileges in the first place.

There is absolutely nothing stopping any not-for-profit charity from helping out the working poor including the CoE. That right does not need to be codified. And certainly a government Minister of Belief would not only be a waste of taxpayer money, but would be affront to citizens that choose to be agnostic or atheist. It is their right to believe that God either does not exist or does not care.

My own feeling is that we destroy the fabric of our society when we pander to the 'western-apologists' that would trade away our rights and freedoms to those that do not share our common values in the name of political correctness. They would have us respect everyone else's culture and religion, while denying us our right to promote our own culture and religion for fear of offending those foreigners and economic migrants that choose to live amoung us. Often because their own belief structures have been utter economic failures at providing the basics for their own people.

For many of us our European-Christian values have defined who and what we are for better or for worse. Those values are enshrined in our laws and customs. They may not be perfect, but they have served us well. So well that now we can afford to be a secular society or even refute those values without fear of reprisal. Once society loses its sense of community and its belief structure it is headed for nothingness. Post peak oil resource depletion may just be the catalyst, but strong communities are the answer, not part of the problem. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;Japan has entered a period of selfishness. People have the feeling that they can do anything," said Jinsuke Kageyama, a criminal psychologist at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
"But when these people fail to fulfill themselves in socially acceptable ways, they are treated as losers and their frustration builds up," he added. "A series of disappointments can lead them to try to regain their sense of self through crime."

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'M')ay we explore this point? --snip-- So - first point. Are you sure compassion doesn't have a cost, in terms of constraint of actions?
Second point. Is the underlying reason for compassion some set of religious beliefs and standards?

[wisconsin_cur]

Mr. Bill,

I think you are right but is that the end of it? Once you start a ball rolling by trying to secure your own dissolving signifigance by defining yourself against an "other," how do you make it stop? Maybe it won't gain any momentum but if it does gain momentum the lay leadership will take things a lot farther than Father Rowen or most other clerical leaders.

It can become a religious justification for hate with just a little fanning of the flames. C of E maybe naive but only future events will let us know if they are culpable

[wisconsin_cur]

Higher Oil Prices Threaten Globalization

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')roximity is suddenly more profitable and local solutions begin to look less like the expensive option. It would be rash to predict a revival of the Yorkshire textile mill and the demise of the Guangdong sweatshop, but you have to ask whether it makes sense to ship stuff from China when the price of a sea voyage from Shanghai represents half of the value of the product.

The economics of long-distance supply chains are being rewritten; if it is small and expensive - drugs and sophisticated electronics, for example - fuel costs have little impact, but bulky goods are under the cosh. Furniture, footwear, basic machinery, building materials - this is the stuff that China exports in vast quantities to America and it was very cheap, until now.

[vetusfirma]

figured you'd jump in on the compassion stuff here TEX. But I notice you have changed your play, what happened to the soup. And reaching the happy place, just doing things that make you feel good. If you want to be believed, you need a consistent rant.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vetusfirma', 'f')igured you'd jump in on the compassion stuff here TEX. --snip-- If you want to be believed, you need a consistent rant.

[wisconsin_cur]

Sometimes the developing intolerance will be political in nature as one group is scapegoated so that others can hang on to power. Thugs shout, "Lets kill the baby"$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councillor in Zimbabwe. Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother, Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her.

She heard one of them say, “Let’s kill the baby”, before Blessing was hurled on to a bare concrete floor. Blessing, who may never be able to walk properly, was one of the youngest victims of atrocities against the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change in the run-up to last Friday’s sham presidential election.

[Jack]

BigTex, I still don't see exactly where this whole compassion thing is headed. Let us say we have "Us" and "Them".

Some of "Us" have compassion. Some of "Us" do not.

I suppose that the ones without compassion could set up concentration camps easily enough.

If those with compassion can do so, then compassion IS NOT a constraint.

If those with compassion cannot do so, then compassion IS a constraint.

So, then - does compassion argue against setting up concentration camps to deal with "Them"?

Wisconsin - I noticed the religious aspect of one of your posts. It appears to me that if your views are at least partially driven by a particular faith, then it would be quite difficult to be truly neutral about the concentration camps in my example above. But perhaps I misunderstand the connection between faith and compassion?

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'B')igTex, I still don't see exactly where this whole compassion thing is headed. Let us say we have "Us" and "Them".
--snip-- But perhaps I misunderstand the connection between faith and compassion?

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '1'). Do you mean "death camp" or something like the concentration camp used against Japanese Americans during WW2?