Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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1. Last Saturday (Feb. 14) as part of its Live in HD series, the Metropolitan Opera transmitted live into more than 2,000 movie theaters in 66 countries Peter Tchaikovsky’s 12th and last opera Iolanta which tells the story of the 15th-century Princess of Provence who is cured of her blindness by a Moorish physician, presumably from nearby Moorish Spain. Why did King René of Provence hire a Moorish physician?

2. If beginning with the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century for the next 1,000 years, the Arab Empire was the center of civilization and learning while Europe was a very backward place (causing European Kings to hire Moorish aka Islamic physicians), was there nonetheless a Dark Side to Islam? In other words, why do we never hear about Radical Buddhism or Radical Hinduism, for example?

3. Is this the basis for the famous thesis of Harvard’s long-time (1963-2008) Political Science Professor Samuel Huntington who was the co-founder and co-editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, that Islam has “bloody borders”?

4. Did Prof. Huntington’s “bloody borders” refer to national “borders” invented by European colonial powers, or did they refer to “borders” between Islamic areas and non-Islamic areas?

5. If it were not for Osama bin Laden’s fatwā to nuke 10 million Americans (about which the Founding Dean of Harvard U’s Kennedy School of Government wrote a famous book about how to deal with it but whose recommendations have been ignored), would/should the U.S. be particularly concerned about Radical Islam?

6. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

7. When the Obama Administration launched a war to overthrow Libya’s Muammar el Qaddafi who claimed to have panicked after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and, as a result, gave up a nuclear weapons program that the CIA did not even know he had, didn’t this teach a lesson to all of the other third-world governments in general, and Iran in particular, that you should never give up your nukes or America will not hesitate to “cut you off at the knees” if it wants?

8. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

9. When the Obama Administration continues to treat North Korea “with kid gloves” because they were smart enough NOT to give up their nukes, doesn’t this teach a lesson to all of the other third-world governments in general, and Iran in particular, that you should never give up your nukes?

10. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

11. In view of President Obama re-affirmation in 2009 of The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 signed by President Clinton, Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin and U.K. Prime Minister John Major guaranteeing the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine if it would surrender the 1900 multiple-warhead nuclear missiles that it had following the implosion of the old Soviet Union, doesn’t President Obama’s refusal to honor that guarantee teach a lesson to all of the other third-world governments in general, and Iran in particular, that you should never give up your nukes?

12. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

13. Doesn’t President Obama’s failure to stop the Iranian nuclear program almost certainly mean that 50% of the world’s 7 billion human population will starve in short order?

14. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

15. Isn’t The Islamic State (aka ISIL, aka ISIS, formerly AQI or Al Qaeda in Iraq) nothing more than a creation of The Gulf State Six (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman) for following Military Theory 101 by “securing their rear” for their coming nuclear confrontation with Iran?

16. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

17. Isn’t the fact that The Islamic State is a creation of The Gulf State Six the reason why they (except for occasional air sorties by the U.A.E. whose motivation may be to provide intelligence of American operations to TIS) and Turkey have refused to cooperate militarily with President Obama’s war against The Islamic State? And why other governments opposed to Iran such as Egypt will not fight against The Islamic State unless their own citizens are attacked (and then only as a limited retaliation as if to warn TIS to focus on the real enemy)?

18. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

19. In fighting The Islamic State, isn’t President Obama simply acting as Iran’s Air Force in fighting the creation of American allies (Turkey and The Gulf State Six) in order to preserve Iran’s allies (Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Shiite Baghdad)?

20. What does Leon Panetta say about this?

21. What is really in America’s best interests?