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Overtone, Was getting my snows on today and waited with a guy from Albania. Life is better here for his wife and kids, and he visits his brother and sister in Albania every 3 or 4 years. My mechanic got a mailing from the NRA and complained that they just wanted his money, 1200 for a "Patriot" membership. My point is, that Obama started with a house and senate that was of his party and could do just about wghatever they wanted to do. The American people voted Republican house members in, and then in the next election Republican senate members. Republican governors went from 21 to 31. My point is, that the voter is not happy with doing it the way we have been doing it. I am not for telling my country when to be progressive and when to be conservative. I am satisfied in leaning against the pendulum and trying to dampen the violent swings to the left and right. I would rather people just continually attempt to live up to the spirit of the constitution and to work together to find the proper balance between Federal Power and state power and to find the proper balance between pursuit of happiness and giving up a few of your rights for the happiness of others. It is however important to recognize threats to the American way of life. And it is required to stand against presidential overreach and anarchists, at the same time. We are not just Overtones, and Ten Ozes and TAR that make this country a place where Albanians can come for a good life. We are also the NRA member mechanics that make this place work. Regards, TAR

Thorham, I don't think it is hard to imagine patterns that are not really caused by what you imagine. I do not think that hiring a master to tell me impossible stuff is really the way to go here. One of the hallmarks of science is that if I discover a pattern and understand the cause and effect of it, I can set it up to happen again. Such is something about the world I can then describe to you, how to set it up to happen again. Or at least describe to you where to look to see what I saw. The Sun rises every day in the East...maybe not above the Artic circle, but the position of the Earth, in relation to the Sun is something that is evident to everybody that looks. Paranormal stuff is not normal stuff. It is imaginary stuff applied to reality. Like Thor banging his hammer every time you hear thunder. The thunder is evident, but Thor is made up. This thread is about endless possibilities. But the possible combinations of images in our heads are not, in my estimation, where the endless possibilities should be counted. They are real, in the sense that the synaptic connections really are occurring, but to the extent that reality has to fit together, and every action has to have an equal and opposite reaction, the patterns in the brain do not have to work. Things can work in your mind that can not actually work out in reality. The waking world is very certain in this regard. A thing gets destroyed or dies and it is no longer manifest. In the dream world, you get a second chance and a third and a fourth. You can put things together in odd ways and suffer no consequences. Paranormal stuff, is by definition, not normal stuff. It is not responsive to the rules of the waking world. If it were to actually be real, waking world stuff, then there would be rules by which it went, that we could discover and share with each other, and it would be normal stuff. Regards, TAR

Gee, I have not read Critique of Pure Reason through, but there is plenty in the first chapters that would suggest that Kant thought out, rather systematically and logically, what is required to make a judgement. It is not an assumption that it takes a human brain to have a human thought, or to consider that language has meaning, and that when you talk about a tree or I talk about a tree, we both know what it is we are talking about. I am with you, on believing that a tree "knows" something. It knows very well, how to be a tree. And you and I and 7 billion others know very well how to be human beings. How do you pretend though to know how to be something other than a human being? Trees are very possible to understand as life, that has grabbed form and structure from a universe otherwise tending toward entropy. That is the basis of an epiphany I had on a hill top in Germany some 35 years ago. But such victory, as life represents, even the whole history of treeness from the first example of a species to the stands of trees that now exist on that hilltop in Germany, are but a fleeting thing, a glimpse in the expanse of space and time. When we talk philosophy, I assume we mean to talk person to person, and although trees can be companions in life and reality, they are hard to talk to. I have talked to a tree, I even made and kept a promise to a Chesnut tree outside of Morristown Hospital when my dad had open heart surgery. I asked that tree to watch over my dad and in return I would plant one of its chesnuts in California. He recovered, and I planted the tree's seed as I promised. Everyone is rather sure I am crazy. Regards, TAR to talk to trees

Thorham, Is there a particular avenue of investigation, that you think would be fruitful? Regards, TAR

Gees, If the brain were not functioning, how could it make a comparison? Or remember a sight, sound, feeling, smell, taste or situation? Or make an analogy or comprehend meaning behind a symbol? Awareness does not mean a single thing, unless it is the awareness of something. That something should exist in and of itself, regardless of what we have to say about it. Emotion is possibly a series of chemical responses and synapse connections, that involve the brain/heart/body complex. I doubt there is evidence that emotions can float about without a physical body to be having them. Regards, TAR

Ganz, "Because infinity is real, there's an infinite amount of possibilities after death," When somebody dies, let's say an elderly Aunt or Cousin, that person no longer has any input, in terms of new thoughts and actions, to the world. Certainly memory of this person can affect ones thoughts and actions, and one can converse with this unseen other continually and therefore the "image" of this person remains real and effective in determining future possibilities, but the Aunt no longer senses the world through sight and hearing and feeling and taste and smell and the brain that stored and compared the sensory input, no longer is working. The Aunt is dead. So, when you talk about "after death" are you talking about the Aunt, or are you talking about a survivor? Or a third possibility, are you talking about what remains real when both your Aunt and you are dead, and there is only some third party alive. And then another possibility is to consider that which exists when even the third party is dead. And then even another when you consider the stuff happening now in some other galaxy that nobody around here will know about for a half million years. So who is the holder of these possibilities you are talking about? Whose brain is sensing and remembering and comparing the possibilities you suggest are infinite? Regards, TAR Are you talking about some collective consciousness? Some reality that existed prior your birth and after your death?

Xerxes, The seven planes in the matrix setup stacking the cannon balls as Janus did in #16 of the parent thread are not at nice right angles to each other. So I am not sure how you are using the various plane describers. The three square planes are at right angles to each other but the rows and columns of spheres are not at right angles to the rows and columns on the next square plane. And the four hexagonal planes are not even at right angles to each other. Seems to be more of a 60 degree thing going on. Regards, TAR

about 41,253 square degrees on a sphere each diamond in the spherical rhombic dodecahedron is a segment in two intersecting hexagonal wheels around the sphere that can each therefore be considered as a 60 by 60 degree grid 60x60x12 segments is 43,200 43,200/41,253 is about 1.04719656 Three times that is 3.14158968 which is close enough to 3.14159265 to consider that the exact amount of square degrees instead of about 41,253 would probably yield a ratio of exactly 1/3 pi.

Fred Champion, I revisited the rendering Janus made of the second level build out of the 12 segment configuration and after building it out in clay, realized that in addition to what Janus says, the figure is a cubic octahedron. Not especially predicted that the second level of a sphere you are talking about, would produce a regular polyhedron. The dual of a double tetrahedron is the cube. The dual of a cubic octahedron is a rhombic dodecahedron, but the point is, that the center of the twelve edges of a cube represent 12 points equal distant from the center of the cube, and if you put a ball in the center and surround it exactly with 12 balls of the same size, so that each ball is exactly on the center of each edge of the virtual cube, you would have a sphere like shape, that would have 6 four points and 8 three points. Build it out so that each of the twelve balls touching the center ball contact exactly 12 balls, maintaining the lattice arrangement of 4 hexagonal planes and 3 square planes, you AGAIN have a cubic octahedron, and the 42 resulting outside balls are arranged as Janus shows in # 16 of the parent thread. I am thinking the layout of a spherical rhombic dodecahedron is a natural way that items fit together in 3 d space. No math required. Regards. TAR Several times in several ways, when figuring stuff about how the surface of a sphere can be physically divided up starting with the spherical rhombic dodecahedral configuration, I ran into the number 1.047 and its reciprocal .955. Particularly in reference to the ratio between the amount of square degrees in a sphere and the amount of TARadian divisions in a sphere. Being that 1.047 is a third of Pi, this gives me indication that Pi is a real physical thing. and that there is a reason for the ratio

Perhaps the best analogy to determine what is real and what is a number describing reality is to consider analog to digital conversions. The analog voltage really exists. The digital representation of that voltage, as a base 256 number is math. The analog voltage is the physical reality.

Fred Champion, There is a philosophical, or metaphysical component to deciding what is mathematical and what is physical. Kant describes language in such a way as to consider reality as being something in and of itself, that is different from what we can say about it. Questioning as to whether or not we know the thing as it is, by merely making a judgement about the thing, enough to say something about it. My personal way to parse this situation is to consider that ALL of my perceptions and judgements are like the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. In this light, we each have a model of the world built in the synapses and structure and connections and positions and motions in our brains and body and heart. And to the extent that math is a language, math is simply something that we can say about the world. Like you say, all the math in the world. written on the chalkboard will not "do" anything. A mathematical description of the exact location and motion of every quark in a peanut butter cup, will not taste sweet, creamy, nutty and chocolaty. But when I make a sphere out of clay the ratio of its diameter to its circumference is always Pi. Even when I don't have a calculator to know what that number is. I don't have to say anything about the ratio, it is already there. It already exists as a thing in itself. No matter how big the ball, if I measure the things diameter and I roll it on a table and measure the distance on the table where the same point touches again after rolling it in a straight line, the two distances are at the same ratio to each other. Always Pi. Therefore Pi is a physical reality. The breakdown of Pi, or the figuring of it based on polygons and straight lines and such is the mathematical part, in terms of what we can say about the relationship or how to describe it to each other in common language. But a smooth curve, like you would get if you followed the path of a stone on the end of a string swung around your head, is a smooth curve. Really it is. It is not made up of integrals of arbitrary size, except in analogy taken in our heads. It is actually. physically a smooth curve. Regards, TAR

Ten Oz, I didn't read that thread. I have a rule to not participate in a thread unless I have read the whole thing. But to the extent that I am a white male, I probably have a thought or two on my morality. I was raised not to hit girls. My older sister could hit me, but I could not hit her. Didn't seem quite fair at the time, but it is a central lesson to my morality. Several years ago, I had read a study of playground games played by boys and girls. Girls tended to play cooperative games that had no winners or losers. Boys tended to play games where teams were chosen and where there were winners and losers. Men have testosterone and often act like a stag during rutting season, and will stand in the road and challenge a car in the road, snorting and pawing the pavement in defiance. Men have an understanding with other men, and everybody knows whose territory they are in, and whose team they are on, and who is the leader. Crypts are not going to strut around in Blood territory. I am 62 now, and several years ago I cursed at a clerk at a supermarket for expecting me to pay 8 dollars for a weighed meal I had been getting at the same store for many months for closer to 5 dollars. Low T perhaps, as I never acted that way before in my life. I am more emotional now, than I used to be. The same Testosterone that can be thought of, by a woman, as a problem causing dominant and violent behavior, might also work to moderate behavior, and allow a male to handle stress and submission in a male wa y. But this idea, of submission to your own authority might be a male thing, and not easily understood by a woman. So where I might play an inferior opponent at 80% effort level, because that is all that is required to make the game interesting, I am not going to like it, when I get hamstrung to even the playing field. That is, if I disagree with my boss, I say something, or I keep my mouth shut. I have no interest in somebody else telling me to keep my mouth shut. I would rather take the heat, if its going to get hot. So that is the male part. Be your brother's keeper when your brother has your back. The white part is the European part. Western civilization, the enlightenment, the crusades, the industrial revolution, WWI and WWII and the lessons learned of how to be. Where to stand in front of the steel vehicle with just flesh and blood, and where to protect the weak with your horn.s. In the army I had roomates both black and white. In Germany I had two black roomates, one from California and one from the South and one white Swedish guy from Minnesota. The black guys had german girlfriends that they chatted up for sex and bribed with coffee and cigarettes that the girls would sell on the black market. The white roommate stayed faithful to his girl back home, and I, having lost my girl back home to her former boyfriend fell in love with a german girl, who I lost, when I would NOT provide her with coffee and cigarettes. Regards, TAR

Ten Oz, I don't disagree. We had some service members killed a few days ago in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban. A suicide bomber killed 6 and wounded many more. The province's economy is based on the poppy. We can not bring democracy to an area were the economy is based on illegal drug traffic. Earlier the argument was that our neglect in stemming carbon monoxide emissions was causing global warming that would cause drought and famine and produce hordes of people that would need to come to our shores to survive. That argument completely neglects the fact that we have arranged our reservoirs in such a way as to be able to sustain us through periods of drought, and we have irrigation systems all over the central and west portions of our country that pull water from aquafers to produce food. We have met the problems with dams and wells and they are part of our complex. Others around the world can do the same. Make the choices to protect and develop water supply and desalinization plants and such. The smoke we billowed out in the 60s in our area is MUCH declined with scrubbers and alternate fuel sources and such. We as the U.S. have cleaned up our act to a larger degree than the Chinese and other second and third world nations. Perhaps it is our duty to help reduce emissions, but we do not have control of other people's economies. If a guy somewhere in the world wants to take the chill off at night by throwing a piece of dead wood on a fire, I should not stop him. Not unless I provide him with another way to keep warm. Regards, TAR When I was young we burned our fall leaves in the gutter. We don't do that any more. But taxes had to go up, to buy the equipment and manpower to suck up the leaves and take them to a composting site. We bought our cleaner air. We pay for our clean water. I don't fertilize my lawn because our run off winds up in the Monksville reservoir. I, along with all my neighbors, act as stewards of the land and water, protecting wild life, carbon sequestering trees and the clean drinking water of many in North Jersey. Because I am registered republican, I am viewed as a bigot, greedy industrialist, war mongering, fearful xenophobe, and according to one argument championed by others in this thread, I am the biggest problem in this county, along with everybody that votes republican or leads the republican party. The fear among democrats is that if republicans have their way, the place will look like Nazi Germany. In actuality, the place looks like America, and its due to the hard work and sacrifice of Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, men and women, smart and dumb, rich and poor, straight and gay. We have no reason to fear ourselves. We are doing it right. We have some problems, but so does everyone. The thing to do is to solve the problems together, as if they are our problems. Not consider that the problems are caused by "them". That is, don't be afraid that the country will be either overrun by KKK Nazis or by ISIS fighters. TAR and Ten Oz, and every other American has your back, and will not let either happen.

Ten Oz, The pacifist thread I detected in you, was the same as I see in Sorcerer in the desultion of the military industrial complex. One can learn judo and also use it only as a last resort, in self defense. But if you don't go to self defense class, you don't know how to defend yourself. We went through a large build down of our military forces, closing of bases and shrinking of our active duty personel. Now we don't have the numbers to engage in as many theaters as may be required to protect our way of life, and to protect others around the world that may be threatened by dictators and imans. Many of our military personnel are on their second and third tour of duty around the world. At the place I used to work, one of my friends who was an engineer and reserve member had to go overseas twice for extended periods of times and be away from his wife and daughter. His wife is now dead of cancer. Not the military's fault certainly, but if we had a larger and stronger active duty force, such pulling apart of families and businesses would not be required. If you have ever been to a town where a U.S. military base is near, you would know that the economy of the place is based around the people on ,the base. The car dealerships, the restaurants, the bars, the stores, the churches, the schools, the shoe makers, are all reliant on the service men and women, and their families, for income. When the base closes, the town dies. There are also large towns built up to house the workers at defense plants and ship building facilities. These parts and pieces of the military industrial complex, are part of the fabric of our society. When you take them away you put people out of work. So these things, like having missile sites to protect against ballistic missile attack from Russia or China, serve a dual purpose, one to protect, and the other to engage ourselves in industrial endeavors. One of my main ideas in this thread is to see each other as fellow members of a whole. Our status in the world is a composite result of all of our decisions both personal and political. Our main problem is not that our nose is too long. Our main problem is that we tend to cut off our nose, to spite our face. Regards, TAR I don't see a problem continuing to accept vetted refugees from war torn places. We have a process already in place for that. We do that. That is part of our charter. Nowhere in the contract though, does it say we have to turn over our homes and neighborhoods that we have built, by having only two kids and working for 45 years, to somebody that doesn't like our way of life. I frame the thing like this. I wrote a letter to the editor of Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, when I was in Germany that was published that had two ideas in it. One, that one should not mistake compassion for weakness, and the other, that we should give up a few of our rights for the benefit of others, and 250 million people will give up a few of their rights for our benefit. Or put in terms of this thread, you lose in a few ways so that others will win, and you will win in 300 million ways. You have countrymen and women, that have your back.

Ten Oz, I saw the other day that someone in India was beaten to death for eating a calf. It was obviously an evil, unacceptable act to the group that beat him. A link I posted in the Paris thread, talked about ISIS dropping gays off of tall buildings. People other than those that follow the U.S. constitution, and the laws of the U.S. do things differently than here. There are many contradictions in the bible, and it is a very patriarchal and slavery oriented book. Perhaps we have made some progress since we burned witches and made blacks sit in the back of the bus, and believed that women should be barefoot and pregnant. The new testament was a little better than the old testament, and the Protestants were better than the Catholics (from the "my team" Presbyterian perspective.) I appreciate that areas looking for a better place to be, might want to move to the U.S...but those that are currently here, have fought the Indians for place, fought to get out from under British rule, and put together a way of life that works. We have protected our way of life for a while and built our country from peoples that came from mostly Europe, but from all the continents of the world. We mostly asked people coming from other places, with other rules of behavior to drop their old way, and pledge allegiance to the U.S. and support its constitution, learn our language, and follow our rules. Make themselves Americans. It is a bigger thing than just Christian, or just Jew or just European, it is a core that is the melting pot of all those things. You are picking sides with just pacifists. That is part of us, but not all of us. You can't throw the rest of us out. Especially those of us who sacrificed to protect the American way of life. We eat veal here. Regards, TAR

Ten Oz, You are right, I have reasons to take some "other" groups down a notch. I know I do this, but think it required to pick sides on some issues. There are situations, like the world trade, where somebody else made me their enemy. I have told the story many times in different contexts, that I read the Koran twice after 9/11, once for the just and once for comprehension, to ascertain where such evil as happened that day, could have come from. I still think that Muslims have some issues they have to work out, to coexist with me as a kafir. And I have met personally several blacks whose main way of feeling good, is to "get over" on the man. If I am the man, in this particular conflict, or if I associate with the man, in many ways, my first and lasting impression, is that blacks that feel that way, "don't get it." And they perhaps have chosen not to be on my team. Regards, TAR

Ten Oz, In regards to this thread though, the "we" "they" behavior is evident, from both sides. I am thinking that we feel superior to the other, by taking them down a notch. They of course do not think the degrading is appropriate. Regards, TAR And in regards to the point I am trying to argue in this thread, the "other" is always a human being with judgement, family, friends, company, state, religion, sports team, craft association, club, political party, favorite charity....and it is important to view everybody else on the planet, and everybody else in your country, as a member of one or another of every team you are on, or a potential member of a team you and the other could potentially found. If on the other hand your main way to feel good and superior is to make the other feel bad and inferior, the attempt to make yourself right and the other wrong, is more likely to weaken the country and make you afraid of your fellow countrymen, than to cause a situation where everybody sees it your way, and you are in control. When I was growing up, I was stronger, faster and smarter than most of my peers. I was taught however to not rub it in anybody's face and to not calculate my own advantage, but to work toward the success of the team. And to NOT take advantage of people. In this country we have a large amount of people with incredible skills, and abilities. I think it better to recognize that fact, and accept everybody as team members, in making this place a place where beauty and peace and security, and the pursuit of happiness is a common priority held by all our compatriots. We do not have to fear all whites because there once was a KKK, or all blacks because a slave once killed their master for raping their sister, or all Muslims because some flew planes into the world trade. I will grant that not all citizens of the U.S. are saints, and not all are geniuses and not all are law abiding reasonable people, but it is not scientifically reasonable to fear whole groups, for the actions of a few, when the large portion of the group not only did not do the action, but would not do the action. The majority of us follow the rules, and look out for each other. Look at any intersection. We stop when its red and go when its green. All of us. Regards, TAR Merry Christmas everybody. Or Happy Holidays if you please. It is a time of year when we think of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. Even those daft Chinese.

Fred Champion, Yes I find that working with clay things work out and I have not found pi to more than a couple of decimal places. That is , when a soap bubble takes on a spherical shape, there is not a computer required to figure Pi to a million places. There is something about the configuration that is automatic. That continuous thing, the sine waves and smooth curve of a thrown ball, or the path of a rock tied to a string and swung around your head. The circle, does not require Pi to be. It is a ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. There should be a reason for this ratio. That is all I am suggesting. That this ratio means something. Regards, TAR

Fred Champion, To further this investigation of yours, I would ask you to look at Janus's rendering in #18 of the 12 segments of the sphere thread. The "cannon balls" when stacked in the 12 segment configuration stack out and fill space as Janus shows. There are intersecting hexagonal planes and intersecting square planes, all built into the configuration. Regards, TAR A combination of triangles and squares with unit sides, that spheres happily accommodate.

Fred Champion, I don't quite follow. If an ideal smooth sphere is thought about, and a tiny ant who takes steps that are one Planck's length long is to take a straight route away from a point on the surface and stay on the surface, it will arrive at the starting point after a certain amount of real physical steps. Regards, TAR

iNow, Thank you for the link about the Ottoman empire. I was just generally familiar with the idea that the west divided up the place. That is probably part of our problem here. We, as the West as it said about England in the article can neither resolve the conflicts in the area nor extricate ourselves, from it. We still would like some control of the situation, as would Russia, as would Iran, as would Turkey,as would the Saudis. I don't think that objectively one can say that this or that party, the Zionists or the Arabs, or any of the nations or coalition of nations seeking to bring peace to the area and hold sway over the area are automatically the good guys, and everybody else the bad guys. This thread is about Paris and the Daesh attack that brought the unrest in Syria and Iraq and North Africa onto the streets of Paris and into her cafes and theatre. And for me, this thread is about how I can support France against such attacks. Who do I go after, and how. As an individual, in terms of lobbying my government to take action. And as a fellow NATO member, and former League of Nations, member. What is our role? What should we be doing? How much blood and money should we spend? Who are our friends, who are our enemies, in terms of Iraq, and Sunnis and Shia, and Daesh and Al Queda and the Baathists that used to be Saddam's inner circle. And how much of the struggle is resource related, and how much human rights related, and how much religious and how much ideology and how much psychological need for control, and need to be right. Regards, TAR In the Koran there are believers and then everybody else who is by definition in error. I believe such psychological stance, as in believing you are right and the other party wrong, is a human trait. A trait that none of us here can rise above into some objective judge stance. We need to take sides against Daesh based on a desire to protect our own way of life from those who would take it away.

Ten Oz, Perhaps, but dividing up a Kurdish area and a Shia area and a Sunni area and such would be arbitrary in nature, and there would be winners and losers, and people would lose what they built. Besides, look at the U.S. and the E.U., the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, the Roman Empire and all the other examples where peoples bound by a common idea, or common lord, live together, despite their differences. And look at Texas. They would not mind being their own country...and some in the other 49 would not miss them, but we had a civil war already, and worked the thing out, or are in the process of working the slavery thing out. States rights and federal government overreach are legitimate concerns. Muslims are almost a 1/3 of the population of the planet. Sunnis outnumber Shia like 3 or 4 to 1. By rights there should be a Sunni Caliphate...except the majority of world is kafir and would not enjoy living under that particular Superego. Regards, TAR

Might be good to think about Freud's ideas of the Id, Ego and Superego, and think of the Id as our animal desires, and the Superego as the rules we go by, and the ego as the moderator between. As people have such a setup as individuals, we most probably can figure we have the same setup as groups and analogies can be easily drawn. Important though to remember to resolve the conflicts in your own head, and your own group, before attempting to act as someone else's superego. Except of course in the case of ISIS where it is sorely apparent that the fighters are in need of adult supervision.

Ten Oz, You make a good point. About automatically thinking that removing the oppressive authority, means you are going to have a wonderful situation. Take "Lord of the Flies" for instance. The boys go wild, like the ISIS fighters, and they wind up realizing they need to supervise themselves in an adult fashion. I am thinking though about your "they should not be countries" idea. That is an odd thing to say about an area that birthed our religions, laws, moral values, language, science, medicine, architecture, and otherwise acted as the cradle of civilization. Regards, TAR

Shelagh, I am conflicted. I so little want to forsake the moderate Sunni Syrians that we encouraged to stand against Assad. While I so much want to see Daesh NOT maintain and increase its territory in Syria and Iraq. My country is simultaneously dragged across the coals for forcing regime change in terms of Saddam and now faulted for not doing enough to rid Syria of Assad. Anti Zionist feelings and propaganda some times comes from the same quarters as anti-US feelings. And pacifists sometimes wish they had more power to help. As America we have reasons to back Israel, and to work toward regime change in Syria. Yet all the arguments against regime change that were valid in Iraq are still valid in Syria. And all the arguments for regime change related to Saddam are valid concerning Assad. I do not think it possible to take an objective view here, that would say that either regime change is something an outside nation should undertake in a foreign country, or not. The situation has to be taken as the current one. We want peace, we want democracy, we want human rights, we want women's rights and gay rights and open markets. We disarm to seek peaceful coexistence, and other nations in the world build up to challenge our power (as the US.) And we have this ISIS thing, that is much more of a threat to everything we believe in than even Saddam or Assad was or is. I asked earlier, to try and get a consensus, as to whether we should suspend the Arab Spring, and defeat Daesh first and then pick the Arab Spring back up. If we could defeat Daesh by siding with Assad and Russia and Hezbollah and Iran...should we do it, if it means forsaking our friends in Ukraine and Syria and Lebanon and Israel? Regards, TAR