Not just the schools or the funding but the leverage fundamentalist areas have because they don't need to learn just pump out oil.

I bet that the most Christian fundamentalists areas in the U.S. on average have more oil fields and minerals then the less fundamentalist ones. Even within a state that's probably true too.

Oil allows fundamentalism to grow because their is no need for STEM to create an open idea knowledge based economy that runs counter to close minded fundamentalists of whatever flavour is local.

The box is open, it's burning, time to think our ways out of the problems.

So we could make like the Romans and crush them, we could remove their financial clout, we could better integrate those that come to our societies, we could stop allying with the ones funding the majority of the terrorists. I'm sure there is more we can do that won't just target the enemies of the nation foremost in funding this problem.

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What is engineering no longer counted as a STEM field?

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Most of those engineers are ex pats or go overseas to get their training. Either way they are a social minority and not the norm.

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You were so close, and then you had to bring STEM into it.

STEM has nothing to do with fundamentalism at all - many of the European born terrorists are intelligent and well educated with backgrounds in medicine and IT.

It's all well and good to blame the Saudis but seeds only grow in fertile soil - you have to accept that there was and is an underlying current of hostility that just doesn't approve of the way we do things in the West and has no problem slaughtering Westeners for God.

These Muslims (not all Muslims) see us as sub-human, which is clear in the way they kill us indiscriminately man woman and child.

Slaughter under "justified" circumstances is built into the bedrock of Islam, just look at that argument I just finished with Hit - when it came down to it he felt it behove him to justify the genocide carried out by his Muslim forefathers. You can't excise that from the religion because it's there right at the beginning - sometimes you just have to kill the Unbelievers to protect the Faithful.

Anyway, what's happening in Paris is both horrific and mind boggling - if this turns out to have been carried out by Syrian or Afghan nationals then I forecast reprisal killings and you can expect the entire tone of the refugee crisis to change regardless of the origin of the terrorists.

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The exact opposite is true. Oilmen in the US are known for being the antithesis of any sort of zealotry. Next time it would be easier just to insult Texas rather than have a paragraph to nowhere.

I don't really know what to say to this other than you are making science a religion in itself. By your own admission these men are quite apt at gaining STEM degrees. I would argue that STEM rewards the rigid thinking that most fundamentalists follow. Although, I don't ascribe any special qualities to STEM as a whole.

Crush the myth of multiculturalism. Follow an assimilation model or severely limit the number of immigrants taken in.

The whabbis have spoken and the madrasas have been built. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. Its also rather myopic to think the whabbis have more influence than any other kind Islamist.

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Right because only Texas has oil. It is known as having a huge influence over school education books and that is normally noted as adding Creationist ideas to biological text. It is also known that Texas has some of the more easier juries for patent troll approval.

But it is also seen in Western Australia and Queensland which are mineral rich but more religious and paranoid about the other ie One Nation in Queensland vs Western Sydney.


Science is only one of the parts. Rigid thinking isn't part of science it is the antithesis of it. I'll leave absolute answers to those who need the security blanket of fairy tales.

That's what the extremists want on both sides. It doesn't help the moderates one bit.

And cutting the funding is a much better to do now then wait for the next generation of mindless drones.

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It's kinda funny, people who used to be be upset of things I said are now much harsher than I ever was

Warning, not fun to watch http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/foto/201...oomt_leeg.html

No death but total panic

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Islamists operate on a different paradigm to us "westerners". There is no moderation where there is no common form of communication. The best we can do is control radicalisation. Stop anyone who's been to the radicalisation centres (countrywise) from returning. And restrict who can preach here. If that outrages our ingrained liberal values, so be it. Liberalism cannot function when a group antithetical to liberal understanding or even the roots of liberalism uses liberal loopholes to further their case. As I said a couple of years ago, the USSR was never the same kind of threat that Islamists are because, by and large, we communicated in the same cultural and diplomatic language. They were opponents, but they were never aliens in the same way that Islamists are. And unlike cultural aliens, who are simply different, Islamists seek to impose their state on us.

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Bullshit. Once again, you add nothing of value to the discussion.

I don't disagree with any of that but that evangelical streak is found mostly among the poor and has its roots in British immigration that made its way west across the old south and eventually settled in East Texas. The Germans in Central Texas and The Mexicans in South Texas have always found east Texans to be a strange breed.

An oilmans religion is capitalism. The megachurches make their money mostly off of poor whites and recent minority converts, it is one of the reasons why they are pushing Spanish services so hard. The presence of evangelical Christianity and mineral resources does not necessarily go hand in hand.

I find Australian accents grating. #TeamDingo.

Science is very analytical and very rigid relative to other subjects. If this then that easily resonates with a rigid thinker. Once again most terrorists have turned out to be highly educated in STEM fields.

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I could do without the 18 year edgy teenager skipping mass
Cutting the funding won't step any of this. It's a contagion and it's already spread.

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