Last word in Extremism

[Von Tonner]

It really is a sad day when a bunch of young girls representing their different countries in the current Miss Universe competition in Florida cannot do so without political, ideological and religious baggage getting in the way.

Miss Israel took a selfie which included Miss Lebanon, Miss Japan and Miss Slovenia and the Arab world went into a tizzy fit, fearing simple civility as one of the many, many issues they have with the free world.

"After an avalanche of criticism from within the Arab world, which often frowns on contact with Israel, Miss Lebanon, Saly Greige, on Friday issued a stunning repudiation of the image and even claimed to have been avoiding Miss Israel throughout the competition."

In a Facebook comment on the incident, Sohrab Ahmari, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal, wrote simply: “The Arab lands are sick.”

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/01/18/miss-israel-responds-after-miss-lebanon-distances-herself-from-joint-photo-it-doesnt-surprise-me-but-it-still-makes-me-sad/

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/673/FZoseO.png (https://imageshack.com/i/ipFZoseOp)

[Oberon]

http://www.skateboardingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/radical.jpeg

[Betonov]

No wonder we have so many chemical plants for a small country.
Look at ALL THE PEROXIDE on our miss :nope:

[Jimbuna]

Such are the crazy times we all live in today.

[Skybird]

Not more crazy than past times. We just were lucky to have been living in a bubble the past 3 or 4 decades or so. Now that it bursts, we no longer find ourselves used to the madness that always seems to have been there, just outside that thin bubble that had protected and isolated us.

Personally, I think all this madness we complain about only means the human world switches back to standards of a historical "normality". Due to the pendulum being held and pushed upwards for the past 40 years or so on the one side, it now swings back and impacts on the other side with an equivalent momentum.

By that the fragility of modern civilizational "developments" will be shown. I don't think they have what it takes to digest that backswing. Rome was the superior civilization in its times, still less developed "barbaric" civilizations brought it down, as well as internal overaging and and petrification of internal structures. Those "inferior" rivals challenging Rome may not have been as sophisticated - but they were more sturdy and solid in a more archaic understanding. They were more adaptive, in the end. Evolutons knows no "higher" or "lower", more or less "valuable" status, only surival of those who adapt better than others to present circumstances.

As an example for what I mean, just imagine a solar storm would bring down the most vulnerable basis of the high-developed contemporary human civilization from one day to the other: electricity-based technology. We would be done, and those who have lived in primitive conditions in the past decades and being used to secure their survival without electricity, all of a sudden would be superior to us, and more adapted to the new rules of life.

Maybe it needs the destruction by untamed barbaric power not obeying the rules claimed by that what it destroys, to create opportunity for renewal and renovation, like bush fires help to get rid of old, dead forests and thick underwood, and creating the fertile ground for new plants to grow and ecosphere to form up, growing into the new, younger, stronger forest of the future with a much bigger spectrum of species living in it again, animals and plants alike. So many other natural disaster are as two-faced like this, too. Think of volcanoes.

The truth is, the civilizational rules we live by in the West, have come of age, and its teeth are falling out, the willingness and the ability to defend it, are waning. No doubt that the future is not ours, but somebody else's. And I am not even certain that it will be China. For China repeats too many of our own mistakes, me thinks.

Rome's in flames, and its gates are wide open.

No doubt - it must be a monday today. :arrgh!:

[fireftr18]

No wonder we have so many chemical plants for a small country.
Look at ALL THE PEROXIDE on our miss :nope:

:k_rofl:

[Oberon]

No wonder we have so many chemical plants for a small country.
Look at ALL THE PEROXIDE on our miss :nope:

You do know that is the reason we went into Iraq?

It had nothing to do with chemical weapons, but chemicals to be used in a weapon. Saddam Hussein was preparing the Mother of All Miss Worlds, he was going to use his vast armada of chemical factories disguised as Baby Milk Factories (TM) in order to create the most plastic, blonde, air-headed Miss World that had ever be seen and dominate the world with her.
Naturally, he had to be stopped, and so we invaded Iraq to dismantle the chemical Miss World program. :yep: