An interesting view on the Muslims

This lady lays into a cleric.

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul

Interesting, certainly.
Opinionated - definitely.

You could say similar things to a Christian fundie - they wouldn't accept the logic either.

You could have told a member of the IRA just 10 years ago (Omagh - 29 High Street shoppers dead, over 200 injured) that God didn't condone killing in His name - they wouldn't have listened.

Not all Muslims are fundamentalists. Not all people from the Middle East are Muslims. The poorer the people, the fewer their options, the easier they are to provoke into hate.

"Brother you can believe in stones as long as you don't throw them at me."

I like it. And yes, that goes to any religion.

Oops, I should have added:
To me, any group of people (religious or otherwise) that resort to terrorism are morally bankrupt.

I jut try not to tar too many people with the same brush.

Sundae Girl;445372 wrote:

Interesting, certainly.
Opinionated - definitely.

You could say similar things to a Christian fundie - they wouldn't accept the logic either.

Sure, but like she said I don't see who groups of Christian Fundies blowing things and themselves up because they have disagreements.

Ref Omagh

I guess I never considered the IRA to be Christian Fundies like we consider a CF to be a CF in the US. I guess you could make a case for people who bombed abortion clinics, but that is no where near the number of people currently motivated by radical Isalm.

TheMercenary;445377 wrote:

Sure, but like she said I don't see who groups of Christian Fundies blowing things and themselves up because they have disagreements.

No, but you do get the occasional one blowing other people up because of disagreements.

Christian Fundies are not feeling too disenfranchised right now because everyone is telling them that they are the 'base' of the Republican party and every politician has been paying them lip service (applied to ass cheek). They are just beginning to wake up to the fact that:

a) GWB has weakened their credibility by crediting them with his success in being the worst President in 100 years and

b) Using them twice to get to the White House and basically ignoring the key points of their agenda, even when his party controlled 2 branches of government.

They now have a reputation as wing nut suckers who seem willing to transfer blind faith in G-d to blind faith in anyone who claims to carpool with G-d. In the latest primary, this 'base' went for Huckabee and noone followed.

Let's see what a few years in the wilderness does to their demeanor.

Don't get me wrong. Faith is necessary for human existence. But faith tied to rigid dogma and intolerance has no place. At some point, religious faith has been used to:

Justify slavery, segregation, and ban interracial marriage.
Discredit environmentalism.

Most people of faith are good and decent. Unfortunately, the mixture of faith and politics leads to the decay of both. Just as religion and commercialism have led to Santa Clause replacing Jesus, religion and politics have led to to an intolerance in both areas. When no substantive results are possible, playing to the 'base' by disenfranchising gays is an easy win in politics.

This is not new to politics. Racial, ethnic, and other forms of 'outsider' baiting have been used throughout the world in any system where the ruling class needs to placate the lower classes. Religion just becomes another convenient hook for exploitable fear and a desire for easy solutions.

Whether Shiite/Sunni or Protestant/Catholic, power struggles have always led to destruction. The only difference between the Shiite/Sunni violence in the Middle East and the Protestant/Catholic violence in Middle Europe is about 400 years worth of technology.

If Guy Fawkes had access to 30 pounds of modern explosives instead of 1800 pounds of gunpowder, you might have had the world's first Christian suicide bomber 400 years before Iraq.


BTW, Fawkes did have some real cojones.

Fawkes, however, managed to avoid the worst of this execution by jumping from the scaffold where he was supposed to be hanged, breaking his neck before he could be drawn and quartered

Violence against abortion providers is heinous and inexcusable.

Violence against abortion providers in the US has resulted in 7 deaths, total. Every one of those was a tragedy, but this is just not the same thing as an entire culture that glorifies the violent death of their enemies, with particular emphasis on non-military targets.

TheMercenary;445391 wrote:

I guess I never considered the IRA to be Christian Fundies like we consider a CF to be a CF in the US... Sure, but like she said I don't see who groups of Christian Fundies blowing things and themselves up because they have disagreements.

Sundae Girl;445372 wrote:

You could have told a member of the IRA just 10 years ago (Omagh - 29 High Street shoppers dead, over 200 injured)...

smoothmoniker;445397 wrote:

against abortion providers in the US has resulted in 7 deaths, total.

I wasn't trying to align Christian fundamentalists with the IRA. All I wanted to point out was that Christians are quite willing to kill eachother, and non-combatants, when it suits them.

The Peace Talks helped enormously, but the main reason that paramilitary bombings stopped in Northern Ireland/ on the mainland was 9/11. American sympathy for anyone bombing civilians was suddenly too close to home to be accepted as "glory".

smoothmoniker;445397 wrote:

Violence against abortion providers is heinous and inexcusable.

Violence against abortion providers in the US has resulted in 7 deaths, total. Every one of those was a tragedy, but this is just not the same thing as an entire culture that glorifies the violent death of their enemies, with particular emphasis on non-military targets.

True, but the point to be made is whether it's religion driving the violence or culture using religion as an excuse. Terrorism and war are both solutions to a political problem. Where insurgency becomes terrorism is a matter of choosing targets. In Northern Island, the clash was also between cultural groups that identified themselves by religion.

I'm not saying that parts of the Middle East aren't stuck a few hundred years in the past. I am saying that saying that cultural/political violence has not completely disappeared from any major religion in the world.

Civilians killed

Civilians account for the highest death toll at 53% or 1798 fatalities. Loyalist paramilitaries account for a higher proportion of civilian deaths (those with no military or paramilitary connection) according to figures published in Malcolm Sutton’s book, “Bear in Mind These Dead: An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland 1969 - 1993”. According to research undertaken by the CAIN organisation, based on Sutton's work, 85.6% (873) of Loyalist killings, 52.9% (190) by the security forces and 35.9% (738) of all killings by Republican paramilitaries took the lives of civilians between 1969 and 2001. The disparity of a relatively high civilian death toll yet low Republican percentage is explained by the fact that they also had a high combatants' death toll.

richlevy;445393 wrote:

Don't get me wrong. Faith is necessary for human existence.

I really don't think it is. In fact, I think faith is where all the big problems start... Anyway, I don't have faith and I exist.

And bear in mind those killed and wounded in Enniskillen. 11 wounded and 63 injured.
At a Remembrance Day service (Europe wide on 11 November or closest Sunday to it) to remember those fallen in all wars but specifically the two World Wars.

Old men. War survivors. Medals polished and standing to attention.

It was the highest death toll for any attack at its time.
Very little to do with religion, as suicide bombings are very little to do with religion. Some people just don't care who they kill.

I cried. My Mum cried. She was and still is a practicing Catholic.
Jesus never told anyone to kill. I don't know about the big M, but he probably didn't either.
People were practiced in killing long before they came along.

Sundae Girl;445372 wrote:

The poorer the people, the fewer their options, the easier they are to provoke into hate.

Poor -- disconnected from the flow of money; fewer options -- disconnected from the flow of ideas; not able to move to better territory where the economy actually works -- disconnected from mobility or migratory flow of people; in danger -- disconnected from what some call the flow of security.

The freedom of these "flows" to be exported from the places where there is a great sufficiency, or indeed a surplus, to places where there is a deficit, is a working indicator of how well a place or people is connected with the functional part of the world as a whole.

Establish this kind of connectedness in place of disconnectedness, and prosperity results. Prosperity balms the wounds resulting from being disconnected to the rest of the world.

The recent evacuations of children from the west Texas Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints compound is a repair of a problem of acute disconnectedness. Those are some wounded people there. We'll have to show them where the balm is. Tw would no doubt remark that eighty-five percent of the FLDS's problems stemmed from its top management, which quite deliberately mandated complete disconnectedness from motivations that look baser by the day.

Urbane Guerrilla;445453 wrote:

Tw would no doubt remark that eighty-five percent of the FLDS's problems stemmed from its top management, which quite deliberately mandated complete disconnectedness from motivations that look baser by the day.

According to UG, these people were fully informed and chose to fear the world. They had information sources besides what they were told by church leaders? Yes, according to UG. Nonsense, according to reality.

Reality: top management kept them isolated from reality so that the victims did not understand and therefore feared reality. Being sex slave was acceptable. Such is the world that UG loves - a world promoted by fear - the myth of 'good verses evil' where outsiders or muslims or immigrants or non-hetrosexuals are evil. UG will even rewrite the Pentagon Papers - and nobody would notice? Perverting reality is so normal that UG would even claim to be a ... libertarian.

UG is classic of those who love the scumbag George Jr and Cheney. No way around reality. Why would UG not endorse, promote, and praise the west Texas Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints? After all, they only advocate many principles that UG also advocates. But in doing so, UG would contradict well comprehended reality. UG also conceded to a principles called propaganda. One cannot be popular and support what the west Texas Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints have done. So UG must separate himself from what he also defines as a ... 'libertarians'.

Even UG propaganda cannot 'subvert' reality - the details - screwing children to propagate an agenda. Hundreds of victims directly traceable to a world where top management kept their victims isolated and ignorant. UG fears a world where the little people learn - ask embarrassing questions such as 'why'. After all, Hitler also needed people to only believe what they were told. No wonder UG also so admires Cheney.

What makes it so amusing to pick apart UG logic? He has no idea of a world beyond his political agenda. His poltics are, for others, a lesson in what intolerance looks like. UG posts are devoid of reality - and so fully justified by political mantra. UG will never accept that 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. If he admitted to that reality, then a dictatorship that he advocates could not happen.

As Sundae Girl notes, the poorer those people, then the easier it is to provoke them into hate. UG fears to admit this because hate is part of his poltical mantra.

Suicide terrorism doesn't necessarily have to do with religion but other factors.

But why are they prepared to kill themselves rather than conduct "normal" military attacks? A common assumption is that these jihadists must have been "brainwashed" or seized by the fervour of religious fundamentalism and cruelly initiated into a cult of death.

But is that the correct assumption? Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, who has conducted the most in-depth research into the motivations of suicide bombers certainly thinks not.

He has just outlined the findings of his revealing study of 462 suicide bombings across the globe to 50 of the FBI's top counter-terrorist chiefs.

His main conclusion is that suicide bombing is less about religious fundamentalism than secular or political grievances. Let me quote him at length from an interview he gave ABC Television in America:

There's a faulty premise in the current strategy on the war on terrorism. That faulty premise is that suicide terrorism and al- Qaida suicide terrorism in particular is mainly driven by an evil ideology Islamic fundamentalism independent of other circumstances.

However, the facts are that since 1980, suicide terrorist attacks from around the world over half have been secular. What over 95% of suicide attacks around the world [are about] is not religion, but a specific strategic purpose - to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly and this is, in fact, a centrepiece of al-Qaida's strategic logic, which is to compel the United States and western countries to abandon military commitments on the Arabian peninsula.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/08/11/what_really_motivates_suicide_bombers.html

Professor Pape's work is well known. But it has little bearing on the current situation in Iraq and Afganistan if you believe the people who are studying those conflicts.

this kind of sums up my perspective on all violence be it a world power or a back water of the earth.
Those who feel they are justified or never wrong will always speak the truth.


"Of course the people dont want war...that is understood. But voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -
-- Hermann Goering

I have no need to "subvert reality." I merely stay better connected with it than you do, tw. The quote you cite states the opposite of the conclusion you draw. Silly, aren't you?:headshake But it gets better: then you go on to contradict that conclusion and in essence if perhaps not some details, agree with me: these people were kept in an acutely disconnected condition. Which is again nothing more or else than what I already said.

UG will never accept that 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management.

Try running a search on posts by me that allude to the 85%-attributable-etc. idea for the refutation of this idea. The truth is, I accept it as at least plausible, and have made some explicit use of the concept. Tw, you're very reliable at two things: getting it wrong, and misreading others' motives and statements. Thus you disgrace yourself and undermine all your arguments. That's what you do: you are drawn into making yourself look bad like iron filings around a magnet. It is, it seems, a law of nature that the people who frenetically attack me end up with blood and egg on their faces in roughly equal parts.

The rest of your post is such scrambled ranting as to be the product not of a brain, but of a brain tumor. You are very much in a hurry to attribute fear, hate, and so forth to others, aren't you? Ever heard of projection? A man hip deep in denial would do well to worry about the crocodiles there.

. . .hate is part of his poltical mantra.

Let's see: of us two, who is the one ranting, raving, spewing, hating, and generally acting like an angry chimpanzee again? I know the face of hatred, tw, and I know where I am concerned, hatred rules and controls you. Therefore I despise you, yes. And yes, I speak against certain things because I find them unsatisfactory.

TheMercenary;445851 wrote:

Professor Pape's work is well known. But it has little bearing on the current situation in Iraq and Afganistan if you believe the people who are studying those conflicts.

That this is more cultural than religious?

Urbane Guerrilla;445923 wrote:

Let's see: of us two, who is the one ranting, raving, spewing, hating, and generally acting like an angry chimpanzee again? I know the face of hatred, tw, and I know where I am concerned, hatred rules and controls you. Therefore I despise you, yes.

:rolleyes:

This is a little overboard, even for you.

This isn't the only thread this is occuring. I think they need their own thread to duke it out.

Guerilla vs. t-dub

piercehawkeye45;446001 wrote:

That this is more cultural than religious?

Well I think it is both in this conflict as well. But the motivations are much different IMHO. I consider more so the Iraq on Iraq and Afgan on Afgan than I do the attacks on any of the US or NATO forces. Much of the root cause is political as well with attempts to motivate and insite reprisal attacks by waring parties. There is much at play here.

Cicero;446007 wrote:

This isn't the only thread this is occuring.

Just priming a pump. Realize how volatile that ground water is. So easy to ignite a resultant waste that creates so much commotion and yet is not very bright.

Long before I started doing this, insults posted by UG were routine. Somehow, routine UG insults were acceptable whereas others doing less were banned.

So I prime the pump repeatedly waiting for others to note a double standard exists. Usually one post from me results in something like five posts from UG only intended to insult. It is acceptable here for UG to post insults probably for the same reason that Rush Limbaugh can insult - and therefore become popular. A double standard exists.

Become popular? UG? You've got to be kidding.

TheMercenary;446048 wrote:

Well I think it is both in this conflict as well. But the motivations are much different IMHO. I consider more so the Iraq on Iraq and Afgan on Afgan than I do the attacks on any of the US or NATO forces. Much of the root cause is political as well with attempts to motivate and insite reprisal attacks by waring parties. There is much at play here.

I agree. Forcing integration in these countries is not going to end well IMO. But unfortunately, there aren't many other choices.

Now tw's crying, "Poor me." Well, that's something new. A small thing, but a new thing. Being tw, he can't tell refutation from insult, and wouldn't want to if he could.

So we get self-pitying from him now. It's not exactly a shock. Tw's every personal trait ever displayed here seems designed to elicit contempt. I'm not, I think, alone in this perception.

Let's see, while I am on occasion abrasive while attempting to ablate somebody's layers of accreted BS, I retain my self-possession, and am not ruled by my resentments, nor am I petty, obsessive, or a leftover Communist, nor a palpable anti-patriot. I display fairness of mind regularly. I also display a clarity of vision tw lacks. Not bad for a guy who wears bifocals.

In what particulars, Glatt, am I overboard? Do you think I'm somehow unfair here?

And for those who wish to tell me be careful not to dislocate my arm patting myself on the back -- I'm double-jointed, too. :rolleyes:

piercehawkeye45;446136 wrote:

I agree. Forcing integration in these countries is not going to end well IMO. But unfortunately, there aren't many other choices.

I have said it before and will say it again. Partition is the only peaceful solution IMHO. Break it up into three parts and make Bagdad a center of the integrated parts. There is no other peaceful solution in my mind.

I am for Iraqi self-determination so as long as Iraqis make the splits I am for it. I believe this may cause more problems in the short run but be much better over a longer period of time because drawing political lines based on colonialism will not allow peace except in military takeover.

TheMercenary;446615 wrote:

I have said it before and will say it again. Partition is the only peaceful solution IMHO. Break it up into three parts and make Bagdad a center of the integrated parts. There is no other peaceful solution in my mind.

Oh, you mean like the US.

Problem with walling Iraq: Sunnis get shafted, this time totally.

xoxoxoBruce;446835 wrote:

Oh, you mean like the US.

Absolutely not. It could never happen. We cannot and should not try to impose our ideals of western democracy on their society.

TheMercenary;446615 wrote:

Break it up into three parts and make Bagdad a center of the integrated parts.

Break it up into 50 parts and make Washington, DC, a center of the integrated parts.

Oh, and heavy on the state's rights.

xoxoxoBruce;446987 wrote:

Break it up into 50 parts and make Washington, DC, a center of the integrated parts.

Oh, and heavy on the state's rights.

Something like that. The shell only. Let them figure out what they want to do with it.