[geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 01:19:47PM +0100, Mike Meredith wrote:

> I *think* that most of the moslem immigrants are from outside Europe.
> There's *some* neighbourhoods in some towns that are mostly populated
> by moslem immigrants[0]; I somehow doubt the *majority* want to impose
> sharia law. That's not to say that they wouldn't live by sharia law,
> but that's a whole different thing.

There are a lot of moslems in southeastern Europe. Bosnia/Serbia, the southern
part of the former Soviet Union, etc was heavily populated by them.

> 
> I know quite a few (and work alongside) quite a few moslem immigrants.
> The majority are pretty relaxed about their religion; the only one who
> is obviously deeply religious (to the extent he won't socialise in
> places that sell alcohol) shows no signs of being an extremist in the
> sense of insisting that the rest of us should live by sharia law.

I knew a many in the U.S. and have met a few here. You can't generalize,
moslem sects range from spirtualistic vegetarians all the way to the Wahabiist
sect which runs Saudi Arabia and pays for a lot of terror in the world.
It includes the much persecuted Bahai (who left Saudi Arabia and moved here),
the current Iranians, and so on.

Most of the world's moslems are not ethnicly Arabs and don't speak a word
of Arabic. On the other hand Bin Laden was a Saudi of the Wahabi sect.

> There's a certain amount of FUD floating around fed by racists and the
> occasional nutter. Incidentally the latest nutter to set off a bomb was
> a native apparently radicalised by extremists; perhaps because they
> couldn't find an moslem immigrant to radicalise!

They can find plenty. Look at the Scottish airport (almost) bombing.
Not only were they moslem immigrants, they were thirtysomething, married
medical doctors. So much for the NHS. :-)

Converts and children are easier to radicalize. 


> I'd left the US by that time and anyway wasn't paying too much
> attention to interest rates (being 8 at the time). But I remember 15%
> mortgage rates over here ... 'negate equity', widespread house
> re-possession, falling house prices, etc. It only lasted 2-3 years.

Still 2-3 years of people loosing their homes was a disater. Then there
was all the layoffs, business closings, etc due to "Reganomics", or
in plain English paying up when the bill came.

> > care.
> 
> I'm not so pessimistic about the housing situation here. There has been
> some adjustment ... no 100% mortgages and probably a reluctance to give
> large mortgages. That will have an impact on house prices, and some
> people will lose their homes. But not in the numbers seen in the
> 1990s ... the mortgage rates are still far too low for that, and the
> UK mortgage market never reached the levels of insanity as it
> apparently reached in the US.

True, but the one bank to almost close in the U.K. failed because of
bad investments in the U.S. housing market. It was "rescued", but as
things go down, how will the rest both in the U.K. and the U.S. fare?

> 
> Currently the islamic terrorism (with certain exceptions) in the UK is
> at a rather amateurish level with the vast majority being stopped in
> the planning stages. It doesn't compare with the efforts of the IRA
> (although they weren't quite so enthusiastic on inflicting mass
> casualties). I'm sure that will change, but we're currently doing more
> harm to our way of life with over the top security restrictions.

The IRA was a joke. They were the worst terrorists in the world until
they started to talk peace. Then the ones who did not want to give up
went to the Arabs for training and came back. The premise for Patriot
Games was correct, they were getting training in Lybia, but it was not
mentioned directly where they were.

When they came back and actually had ONE successfull terrorist attack (Omagh), 
the U.K. rolled over and played dead. Captitulation, total utter
capitulation. The IRA got everything they wanted. 



> Purely in terms of being free to move to where the jobs are available,
> there really isn't a difference between a legal and illegal immigrant.
> Well except the illegal immigrant (in the US at least) finds it
> _slightly_ more difficult to enter the country.

Illegal immigrants don't pay taxes, don't pay for medical care (and in some
places no longer get any), send their kids to the local schools. Most don't
have driver's licenses (and therefore any insurance) and so on. A VERY
different thing. 


> Given where England was 20 years ago (industrial decline, mass
> unemployment, an exceptionally divisive government) I somehow doubt the
> changes England has seen are a bad thing. I'm not sure what places you
> think are unrecognisable as England.

Change is good, moslemization (ouch, bad word), radicalization (even
worse) is bad. At one time if you moved to England you had to fit in to
the social system, follow English law, etc. My ancesestors did it in the
U.S. and Canada, and I did it here. 

 
> As to crime, well that's two-fold ... firstly the apparently
> uncontrolled youth which is found across the native and immigrant
> population. And the changes in organised crime ... drugs trafficking
> funding more extreme organised crime such as sex-slaves, and the
> excess profits making criminals more inclined to use violence to hang
> on to their wealth.

See above.

> The UK has always had immigration and problems with an extremist
> minority of those immigrants. The Special Branch (the closest the UK
> has to a political police) was initially setup to deal with the IRB and
> later had dealings with the more extreme of the Russian revolutionaries
> operating in the UK.

But there were never many of them and they kept to themselves. It's nothing
like the problems that you have now.


> Not the kind of shop you can spend time chatting; too many hoodies
> queued up behind with alcopops growling at the delay[1].

You need actual police officers, not TV cameras. Or figure out how to
make them see through hoodies.


> [0]: For example Brick Lane in London which has always been a place for
> immigrants.

Most of those were Indian. Up until recently Indians were considered
(usually by themselves, not the English) British. Good place for a curry,
but it's obivously changed if Gordon "F" Ramsay opened his Hell's Kitchen
there. 

> [1]: I don't know, the youth of today just doesn't have the same style
> as in the past. In my day we didn't try to hide behind hoods, and the
> poison of choice was vodka not this wishy-washy alcopop rubbish.

They wear the hoods because no one can identify them. As I just said,
it's in reaction to replacing policemen with TV cameras. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM