Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz

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Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz
Jack Nicholson to Tom Cruise -- “You Can’t Handle The Truth”!!!
Our Author and the American News Media to the American Public -- “You Can’t Handle The Truth”!!!

Question 1

On p 343, our author states that Al Qaeda was “founded in 1988” which, though not noted on or about p. 343, was toward the end of the 1979-1989 Soviet War in Afghanistan -- does our author appear to think that “The Terror Years” (the title of our focus book) began in 1988 with Al Qaeda?

Answer 1

Yes, so it appears.

Question 2

Was long-time (1963-2008) Harvard Political Science Professor Samuel Huntington the co-founder and long-time co-editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, which he sold to The Washington Post upon his retirement?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Did Prof. Huntington write a famous article entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” for the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs (the OTHER pre-eminent foreign policy magazine)?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

Was Prof. Huntington’s article expanded into his classic book entitled “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (Simon & Shuster 1996 – 367 pages)?

Answer 4

Yes.

Question 5

Was Prof. Huntington’s thesis, essentially, that in the wake of the Cold War, Islam would CONTINUE to challenge in deadly earnest both Western and Chinese civilization?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

Did Prof. Huntington’s thesis include the argument that Islam would be far more persistent and intransigent than the Cold War opponents whose enmity for each other had NOT been based on religion?

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Are Prof. Huntington’s Foreign Affairs Article and his “Clash of Civilizations” tome where he first coined the term “Bloody Borders”?

Answer 7

Yes.

Question 8

Was Prof. Huntington referring to national borders invented by European colonial powers, or was he referring to borders between the world’s Islamic areas and non-Islamic areas?

Answer 8

Prof. Huntington was referring to the latter.

Question 9

Did Prof. Huntington cite as the reasons for Islam’s “Bloody Borders” its basic beliefs (A) that all Muslims should wage Holy War (“Jihad”) in order to bring the entire world under Islamic domination, and (B) that each Islamic Martyr (“Holy Warrior” who sacrifices her/his life for the cause of world domination by Islam) will, together with 70 close relatives, by-pass a truly fearsome Judgment Day upon which they would otherwise have been prosecuted by Avenging Angels?

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Did Prof. Huntington note that these basic beliefs had produced “Bloody Borders” throughout the 14 centuries since the founding of Islam?

Answer 10

Yes.

Question 11

So why does Lawrence Wright, our author, think that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are NOT part of Prof. Huntington’s 14-centuries-long “Clash of Civilizations” and that, per our author -- “The conflict that the Islamic State has provoked will ultimately bring about its destruction, but not without much more havoc and heartache”?

Answer 11

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 12

Has Prof. Dario Fernández-Morera of Northwestern U (BA Stanford, PhD Harvard) published several books and many articles on cultural, literary, historical and methodological issues in Spain, Latin America and the United States?

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

Is his most recent book “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain” (Intercollegiate Studies Institute 2/22/2016 – 376 pages including 95 pages of notes)?

Answer 13

Yes.

Question 14

Following Prof. Huntingtons’s “Clash of Civilizations” and his observations about 14 centuries of “Bloody Borders,” have numerous books propagandized for Islam by calling Muslim rule in Spain during the Middle Ages a “Golden Age of Tolerance”?

Answer 14

Yes.

Question 15

In “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise” does Prof. Fernández-Morera use a plethora of primary and secondary sources, many not published in English, to demonstrate “in meticulous detail…that intolerance, segregation, formal inequality, and brutality were the order of the day [in Islamic Spain]”?

Answer 15

Yes.

But even if the Islamic propagandists had been correct about the nature of Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain, their argument is still preposterous!!!

Because why would they have to go all the way back to Medieval Spain to try to find an alleged example of benign Islamic Rule???

Obviously because NONE of the world’s many Islamic nations whose legal systems are based on “Sharia” (Islamic Religious Law) can be held up as any kind of “Age of Tolerance” whether it comes to Sharia’s treatment of women, gays, infidels, etc., etc.

So why do the Islamic propagandists think for a moment that if Islam succeeds in world domination, Islamic Rule would suddenly revert to a “Golden Age of Tolerance” that allegedly existed in Medieval Spain, rather than following the type of behavior that “Sharia” has exhibited everywhere else in the world and in all other ages???

Question 16

So I repeat Q-11 “why does Lawrence Wright, our author, think that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are NOT part of Prof. Huntington’s 14-centuries-long ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and that, per our author – ‘The conflict that the Islamic State has provoked will ultimately bring about its destruction, but not without much more havoc and heartache’”?

Answer 16

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 17

In terms of “Realpolitik” what is (whether we admit it or not) America’s “national interest” vis-à-vis Islam in general and the Islamic countries of the Middle East in particular?

Answer 17

Please read on.

Question 18

Like the American news media of which Lawrence Wright, our author, is a part, does he mention Osama bin Laden’s FIVE fatwās -- including (A) his 1996 fatwā entitled “Declaration of War Against Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” (i.e., Saudi Arabia where we had established military bases for Gulf War I against Saddam), (B) his 1998 fatwā entitled “The Nuclear Bomb of Islam” and (C) his 2002 fatwā (updated in 2005) making it the solemn religious obligation of each of his followers to nuke 10 million Americans about which the Founding Dean of Harvard U’s Kennedy School of Government, Graham Allison, wrote a famous book entitled “Nuclear Terrorism”?

Answer 18

Of course not!!!

Lawrence Wright (and the American news media) to the American public -- "You Can’t Handle The Truth”!!!

[Unless, of course, Lawrence Wright and the American news media are ignorant regarding Osama’s FIVE fatwās!!!]

Question 19

Have Graham Allison’s recommendations been ignored despite the strenuous efforts of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair 1987-1995), former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN and Senate Foreign Relations Chair 2003-2007), Messrs. Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton (Chair and Co-Chair of The 9/11 Commission), Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert?

Answer 19

Unfortunately!!!

Which leads to incredible statements from our politicians that “We can absorb another terrorist attack”!!!

See, for example, p. 363 of Bob Woodward’s book “Obama’s War’s” (Simon & Shuster - © Bob Woodward 2010) which we studied for our 11/10/2010 meeting, where Woodward quotes President Obama as saying in an interview with Woodward --

“I said very early on, as a senator, and continued to believe as a presidential candidate and now as president, that we can absorb a terrorist attack.”

Yes, America MIGHT be able to absorb a nuking of 10 million of its citizens!!!

But does that mean we should NOT care whether 10 million Americans are nuked???

Question 20

Does Lawrence Wright, our author, mention that Osama bin Laden’s fatwā to nuke 10 million Americans can NOT be revoked, now that Osama is dead (a principle that was on prominent display when the Brits negotiated to restore diplomatic relations with Iran following the death in 1989 of Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini who had issued a famous fatwā to assassinate Salmon Rushdie in the wake of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses -- the Brits were told by new Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that the fatwā could NOT be revoked because Ayatollah Khomeini was dead)?

Answer 20

Of course not, since he does NOT even mention Osama's fatwās!!!

Lawrence Wright (and the American news media) to the American public -- "You Can’t Handle The Truth”!!!

[Unless, of course, Lawrence Wright and the American news media are ignorant regarding Osama’s fatwās!!!]

Question 21

Does approximately 50% of the world’s oil production come from the Persian Gulf or downwind from the PG?

Answer 21

Yes.

Question 22

Are virtually all of the world’s agricultural fertilizers manufactured from petrochemicals?

Answer 22

Yes.

Question 23

Accordingly, if there were a nuclear war in the Middle East, would approximately 50% of the world’s population become unsustainable overnight because 50% of the world’s oil production is radioactive?

Answer 23

Presumably. Or so we have concluded on numerous occasions.

Question 24

So, to help answer Q-17, have we often concluded that America’s only “national interest” vis-à-vis the Islamic countries in the Middle East, is to prevent nuclear proliferation?

Answer 24

Yes. But we can re-visit this question.

Question 25

Is this conclusion still valid, since America would become energy self-sufficient in the near future if it develops thorium fission (as well as solving global warming 100% virtually overnight), and since America could easily defend itself militarily against the world’s starving nations that might still be dependent on agricultural fertilizers derived from Middle East oil & gas?

Answer 25

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Including the refusal of our pols to develop thorium fission!!!

Even though, inter alia, thorium reactors are incapable of exploding (which is why President Nixon turned America toward uranium and plutonium, and away from thorium after its successful 12-month-continuous demonstration at the nation’s Oak Ridge nuclear laboratory), thorium-reactor meltdowns are physically impossible, and they have such an incredibly high “burn up” that there is virtually no long-lived radioactive waste (indeed all of the spent fuel rods from our existing uranium reactors that are stored on site in heavily-travelled air corridors in the equivalent of home swimming pools, can be burned up in thorium reactors).

And nuclear energy can solve global warming 100% virtually immediately!!!

Because, inter alia, thorium is so plentiful (India’s “sand” beaches, for example, actually consist of thorium).

And thorium fission would be so much cheaper than any other energy source that it would NOT be necessary to invade China militarily to prevent China from continuing to bring on stream a new monster-size coal-fired electricity-generating plant EVERY WEEK.

[Every time we discuss global warming, I always ask our participants whether anyone would favor invading China militarily to prevent China from continuing to bring on stream a new monster-size coal-fired electricity-generating plant EVERY WEEK -- in all of our discussions focusing on, or dealing tangentially with, global warming over our 11 years of existence, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYONE IN FAVOR OF FORCING MILITARILY OTHER COUNTRIES TO ADOPT UNECONOMIC ENERGY SOURCES!!!]

It has long been recognized that a mere $5 billion or so would be all that is necessary to bring thorium reactors on stream -- in a final development process that would be akin to “now that the 1960’s continuous-demonstration-project proved that thorium reactors are safe and economical” we have been poised for HALF A CENTURY in the same position as having long since invented the Ford Model T and now we need only design the Ford Fusion to bring to market.

But as we have concluded many times, this is just another desirable public policy that our pols will NOT implement because of campaign contributions!!!

Question 26

Even if America disengages from the Middle East because thorium fission has made oil & gas obsolete as an energy source, would it still be impossible to escape Prof. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” in which he argues that the Islamic beliefs of Jihad and Martyrdom for the last 14 centuries in order to achieve world domination, will continue?

Answer 26

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

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