That Poirot has chosen to collaborate with you YEBIGA proves beyond any shadow of a doubt your wrong headedness.
She hasn’t supported a single decent initiative since …since … um ( I’ll have to get back to you on that one).

And Poirot is a graduate of the Pollyanna School of International Politics. Their main claim to fame is the belief that if all us Westerners just could agree to hold hands and sing kumbaya, the mad mullahs of the world would leave us alone.

Might also help if we stop splattering their countries with bombs to get at their resources....now that we've given up usurping their autonomy and their territory under colonialism.

To the Senate and the People of Rome:
It is a little sad that you have chosen to cast aspersions at my supposed goatish lineage.

I shall forebear this cretinous habit of yours and ask you to hold on to something firm whilst you consider whether the Parent or the child is responsible for running the house? The owner or the employee is accountable for obtaining a profit? The general or the soldier for assigning the strategy?

The USA has led our culture into wars with a people far less educated, technologically challenged, superstitious, backward, a people unable to manage their affairs, in short victims of history and religion.

People do not readily choose to kill themselves or others unless there is great reward or great despair and hopelessness. What is undeniable, is that this has ocurred under the stewardship of the USA, supported by a corporate media and a craven political system no longer capable of self reflection, intelligence or diplomacy.

If you have not already guessed, my concern is not essentially with the fate of these poor people or their sad history. My concern is that my Western Culture is bastardised by vermin of our own. Termites have secretly gnawed their way into power and are undermining the principles which enabled us to advance so extraordinarily in a mere 200 years. Principles which were bitterly learnt over a long, long time.

Good economic times are not coming back anytime soon. The world has been terribly mismanaged, all of Europe continues to teeter on the verge of financial ruin. Foreign relations are similarly fractured from Russia, the middle east and china.Throughout the world the divide between rich and poor gapes wider.

The radical goat herder is the eternal other; at other times the witch, the jew, the spy, the wog, the refugee. A diversion from the real crimes happening right in front of you.

YEBIGA,
<< It is a little sad that you have chosen to cast aspersions at my supposed goatish lineage>>
And here I was thinking by suggesting that you might be related to the divine Pan-- that half man half goat personage--that I was currying favor with you! And what gave it great credence, in my mind, was that Pan is “patron of shepherds and flocks” whom you have been so forthrightly defending.

<<The USA has led our culture into wars with a people far less educated, technologically challenged, superstitious, backward, a people unable to manage their affairs…>>
This might be read as quite shoganistic or racist, or something naughty with a “ist” behind it.
And I’m quite sure the people you describe so, would NOT agree with your assessment of them.
(you will no doubt be receiving a visit in a week or two from the all seeing all prying Human Rights Commission about that little gaff)

<<People do not readily choose to kill themselves or others unless there is great reward …>>
But there is a great reward on offer: eternal youth , 72 doe-eyed virgins who'll minister your every need, and rivers of wine for anyone who dies while on Jihad (I might even be tempted if I thought it was a firm offer!) Most Islamic terrorists –outside the Madrassah recruits --are NOT down and outs, but quite well educated and even rich. You might recall that Osama was the scion of a rich merchant.

<< my Western Culture is [being]bastardised ...>>
1) There was NO past golden age. Every war anyone ever fought was the mother of a lot of dastardly deeds. It is rather that the wars/enterprises of previous ages were not subject to same microscopic examination that they currently are , and
2) Islamic terrorists need no such justification. If they can’t point to some recent event that “offended” them , they will dredge-up an old one. You might recall that one of Osama’s gripes was that Spain and Portugal had been lost to Islam and had to be reconquered.

SPQR
Nobody suggested a golden age. Our history is full of many backward stutters and few forward strides. But through sheer persistence we had reached a level of ostensible civility. I am not foolish enough to believe it was ever much more than ostensible.

Yet, in this matter of torture we have ceased to even bother with the facade. Your capacity to laugh at this should give you pause.

There are as many Kangaroos directing traffic in Australia as there martyrs expecting 70 virgins to be waiting at their demise.

It is advisable to expand friends and thoughts outside the narrow circles given to us: cast aside poorly scripted Manichean narratives which have not changed since the dawn of man; and take an uncharted risky journey and maybe discover but once a genuine moment: a thought all your own. Imagine

YEBIGA,

<< But through sheer persistence we had reached a level of ostensible civility>>
But whose civility?
Civility is a cultural construct.
What we might consider civil behavour is not viewed as civil behavior by everyone. For example, some orthodox Muslims will not shake hands with a kaffir. And they consider allowing women to wear anything less than a full abaya to be downright offensive and provocative.

<<Yet, in this matter of torture we have ceased to even bother with the facade>>
The definition of what constitutes torture has been expanding.
I have heard it (seriously!) argued that, talking in a loud voice to prisoners or invading their personal space were aspects of torture!

<<It is advisable to expand friends and thoughts outside the narrow circles given to us: cast aside poorly scripted Manichean narratives which have not changed since the dawn of man; and take an uncharted risky journey>>
It seems to me that our govts & intelligence agencies might be doing just that when they consort with unsavory regimes. But they are invariable ridiculed for thinking outside "narrow circles" by the Mary Poppins-moralists Poirot and the YEBIGA who can't see the big picture.