I don't think Assad's government was stable. The civil war itself would suggest otherwise. But Assad has also historically been an "enemy" of the US a bit like Gaddafi only much less annoying. Assad supported Hamas and Hezbollah which put the administration against Israel and thus us. They supported for a time AQI in Iraq when they were fighting US occupation, the regime itself was very meddlesome in regional politics (particularly in Lebanon), and it was highly undemocratic and abusive. It was more of a threat to us and our allies than Saddam had been in Iraq; especially with their chemical weapons program and contacts with the North Koreans in uranium enrichment.

Someone is obviously unaware that the first Palestinian Congress was held long before Israel was even a state and aligned culturally more more closely with Syria and Lebanon than Egypt.

Do you believe that the U.S. is immune to a situation a la Argentina in 2001?
The Fourth Circuit also issued an opinion today on the same exact issue, but found that the statute was ambiguous and sided with the Obama administration, saying that the statute can be interpreted to authorize subsidies for insurance purchased on federal exchanges. Finding ambiguity in the statute is not a pretty big stretch; it's an outright sham.

Here's the language:

So, In order to end the war, the USA/ISREAL Judeo-Christian's should trade guns for virgins, if you can't find any, then start a auction for the least used vaginas. I bet that would do it.

I'm pretty sure that the people are actually real; if not Israel is bombing a bunch of empty land for no reason. That's like saying Hashemites aren't Hashemites because they are Arab. Or that Omar Bashir isn't Bedouin because he is Arab. that's a pretty shallow way of looking at Middle Eastern and North African identity structures.

No, he is wrong. If anything upsets the delicate balance we have right now, all of the debt will immediately be a huge problem. The fact that central banks have kept interest rates at zero or negative rates, and have continued massive bond buying programs, hides the problem. In no rational world should Italy and France be able to borrow at their current rates. But what else can Krugman say? He has unclean hands. He advocated for this interest rate environment. So now every column he writes is designed to hide the issues it is creating. Just last week he argued the rich are the only ones clamoring for higher inflation and rates as they are being punished by lower rates because of their large bond holdings. He wrote this column two months after saying that the stock market boom is disproportionately benefiting the rich. The man has no credibility.

I rarely resort to ad hominem, but I make an exception for Paul Krugman. He is worst kind of "intellectual." The only remarkable thing about him is how he paints his failures as successes and hoodwinks adoring, uncritical liberals with his columns.

I don't see the need to negotiate with Hamas. I feel that Israel can negotiate with Fatah, but not with Hamas.

Also, in addition to their being differences in the Middle Eastern ethnic groups, there are even differences within countries. For example, Iraq has Arabs and Kurds. Iran has Armenians, Arabs, Kurds, Persians, etc. Israel has Ashkenazi European Jews, Sephardic and Mizrahi Middle Eastern Jews, and Ethiopian Jews. About half of Israel's Jews are non-European and are Middle Eastern and Ethiopian.

Both of you bring up interesting points.

Ancient Jews, Canaanites, and Phoenicians had their own culture and language until they were Arabized by the Arab Muslims who migrated North and spread their religion. All of those groups can be considered Middle Eastern but I do not consider all Middle Easterners Arabs. There are Arabs, Kurds, Phoenicians, Palestinians, Jews, Turks, Berbers, and other groups. If you are Middle Eastern, then you are obviously Middle Eastern, but you are not necessarily an Arab. Pan-Arab nationalism did not really take hold until Islam conquered much of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Then a pan-Arab identity took hold of the region.

West of Eden:

In the parallel universe of this novel, Earth was not struck by an asteroid 65 million years before the present. Consequently, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs and other reptiles never happened, leaving the way clear for an intelligent species to eventually evolve from mosasaurs, a family of Late Cretaceous marine lizards closely related to the modern monitor lizards. This relationship would mean that the intelligent species are not dinosaurs but lizard-people.

The lizard-people are known as the Yilanè, and are the dominant life form on most of the planet. However, during the evolutionary process, the species became non-viable on the two American continents, leaving them free of Yilanè for millions of years and opening an ecological niche for a top predator. A human-like species, the Tanu, evolved to fill the niche in North America, but are only found on that continent. Unlike humans, which evolved from African primates, the Tanu have evolved from a lineage of New World monkey. By the time the novel begins, the humanoids have reached a late stone age level of technology and culture, with a number of societies having developed farming skills.

The Yilanè, having had millions of years of civilization, have a very advanced society primarily based on a mastery of the biological sciences, especially genetic engineering, so much so that almost every tool and artifact they use is a modified lifeform. Their boats were originally squids, their submarines are enhanced ichthyosaurs (here called uruketos), and their guns are evolved monitor lizards which eject projectiles using pressurised gas.

The Yilanè are a matriarchal society. The females control all political, military, and scientific aspects of the culture and keep the males segregated. Males are primarily poets and artisans, and enjoy dull, pampered lifestyles. Repeated matings will kill males, so they are generally very wary of the females. The Yilanè language is incredibly complex, based on sounds, colour (The Yilanè are able to alter the skin colour on parts of their body, notably the hands, akin to Chameleons) and body movements, and a key factor in social status among females is how well the language is mastered. As their emotions are directly and immediately translated into the movement of their bodies, Yilanè cannot lie. In order to deceive others they may only restrict their movements or go into a state of immobility until the emotion or thought has passed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden

So, has anyone ever read Harry Harrison's "Eden" series? One of my favorites. Eden's books open on the assumption that the meteor which is claimed as the killer of the sauroids never hit. Thousands of years after that time, as simians are just reaching sentience, and the Ice Ages are starting, man, expanding southward on the American continent, meets up with another intelligent species, the cold-blooded lizardlike Yilané, who are expanding westward, and founding a new city of their own, Alpeasak, under their fiercesome Eistaa Vainté. (Eistaa means She Who Walks Straight--meaning anyone in her path who doesn't get out of it dies!)

Really just a superb series, but even just reading the first, West of Eden, which is where all the meat on the Yilané in terms of culture, technology, cities, leadership etc., is located is fun enough in its own right.


Anyway, the end of the series is foreordained, from Sea-Girt Ilkhamanets off the west coast of Africa, the Yilané cam see the snows cresting Kilimanjaro...simply by our knowledge that a new Ice-Age is coming, but, that brings me to  point above.

The key to the end of the human/Yilané struggle is in fact that ice-ages do come, and the Yilané, being cold-blooded, cannot survive, cannot maintain their civilization.

But what if the Yilané survive, weak, paltry, brought down from their once great might as a few scattered efenburus survive to pass on the genes and diluted forms of their culture and their organic, as opposed to human mineral, technologies. (efenburus are schools, think minnow, of young Yilané, who are born of eggs on land, but, like the turtles and other amphibious species, go into the ocean to grow. For an intelligent species, that development and growth would be more than just physical, for the Yilané efenburus represent their social form for developing young, and the members of an efenburu hold the same sort of loyalties to each other that children of kibbutzim hold).

And of course, even as the ice-ages brought the Yilané low, what would bring them back again?

lol. Global warming of course. So, combining all three--the idea about the struggle between two species, in this case one with at least a form of punctuated equilibrium--Harry Harrison's own wonderful world which remains one of my favorites, and global warming, we have the next chapter of the Eden series--"Eden Reborn", in which the Yilané, now waxing strong once again, start struggling with the humans in the remains of now flooded coastal cities to establish their own cities.

Oh, trust me, I already have the first chapter written: folks on this board are hardly enough to keep my overly fertile imagination satisfied. I even have a little theological twist to it as the Yilané are split, theologically, between their adherence to organic technologies, and the desire of some to adapt to new, mineral, technologies like the human. But between SK's knowledge of marine life, and my imagination, it's a blockbuster on par with my historical epic, "Nike!" (for another thread!)

Where the article is going seems to revolve around these three ideas :
1.With humans around, it's very difficult for another superintelligent species to evolve, said Jan Zalasiewicz, a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester.
"Humans have been quite good at removing the competition," Zalasiewicz told Live Science
2.But assuming humans had managed to kill themselves off with famine, plague, war or climate change, it could take many millions of years for a new species to evolve the intelligence and abilities to dominate the Earth
3.On some level, humans don't dominate the Earth now

Rats and pigs were the suggestions, given #2, as well as AI.
Bacteria and ants were brought up given #3.

Shelling kills four boys on Gaza beach; Israel, Hamas set five-hour truce
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...source=twitter   Part of me wanted to think the violation of the cease fire was done by outliers to stoke the fire..but 100+ rockets...come on. They kind of asked for it.

Israel does everything in their power to only strike militant targets, while Hamas does everything in their power to strike civilian targets. Hamas is committing a double war crime by hiding behind civilians and attacking civilians.

Opportunistic, like a shark - im always looking to make money with my money, made nice gains in stock through the dot com run then bought houses in 2009 at the absolute bottom

im very undiversified now, holding only RE & PM's. actually i have never been really diversified, this might be the most diversified i've ever been

i did read somewhere to put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket closely, i didn't plan it that way, it just evolved itself

Why do those women even bother to have children? This is not "mothering." This is "eating your young."
Bring the child to our Southern border. She's got more right to claim refugee status than any of those interlopers down there.

So you are claiming this was appropriate and successful. Wow, you really are a Regime sycophant.

So you don't want to Bring Back "Our" Girls or Stop Koney?

All to make the Bush look better than he ever could be in real life. This is a real scandal, not a made up ones like the GOP is doing to Obama.

This is tyranny.