Post #408,916
3/23/16 11:54:08 AM
3/23/16 11:54:08 AM
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Another slaughter of innocents in Brussels . . .
. . by Islamic terrorists - but it is not Islam. I know that because you guys tell me so.
Almost every day I read about a slaughter of innocents in the name of Islam - but it is not Islam.
All over the world people are channeling money to terrorists in the name of Islam - but no, it is not Islam.
People sneak off from all over the world to join bands of murderers, in the name of Islam - but Islam has nothing to do with it.
Islam teaches "death to all Infidels (who may be Muslims of slightly different doctrine)- but it is not Islam.
Islam has only two punishments for any offense, death and dismemberment - but no, it is not Islam.
I know it is not, because you guys tell me so.
Islam is a religion of peace. I know that because George Bush told me so.
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Post #408,919
3/23/16 12:57:01 PM
3/23/16 12:57:01 PM
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I've been thinking about this quite a bit.
I do not understand why anyone respects anyone's religious beliefs. I agree with Hitchens who said, "The main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion. ... Religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt." Claiming that anyone who believes in some imaginary person or group of people who control, judge or have anything to do with actual reality deserves to have those beliefs respected in any way is beyond idiotic. It is dangerous. You've probably already seen this, it was 10 years ago, but it is worth watching again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8fjFKAC5k
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Post #408,920
3/23/16 1:27:16 PM
3/23/16 1:27:16 PM
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Re: Another slaughter of innocents in Brussels . . .
NY Times: Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center.
The slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged with their murders, was a particularly savage case.
But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by people espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and theories such as those of the “sovereign citizen” movement, which denies the legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults have taken the lives of police officers, members of racial or religious minorities and random civilians.
Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by Islamic militants have taken place in the same period. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Blaming Islam for Daesh or the attacks we've seen in Europe or the US is nonsensical. It makes more sense to blame the attacks on single men under age 45... My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #408,923
3/23/16 2:43:49 PM
3/23/16 2:43:49 PM
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Statistics for the United States do not reflect the world.
The United States has a particularly low incidence of Muslim extremist events - probably because we have a low percentage of Muslims, and many of them are here to get away from that.
And, I certainly do despise White Supremacists and the like - they are dangerous trash.
So, there are 1.6 Billion Muslims in the world, and these radicals are giving them a very bad reputation, and many of the innocent victims are Muslims. So why do they offer little but lip service, "This isn't Islam", leaving fighting these extremists to non-Muslims? I suspect many feel anything they say or do against Jihad is against Islam, and Jihad is built deeply into the religion. All these radicals claim to be on Jihad.
"Death to the Infidels" is a deeply ingrained principle of the religion.
Also, that large supply of disaffected "single men under 45" is a product of polygamy, encouraged by Islam. Women follow the money, so rich guys have plenty of wives and a large pool of young men have no hope for a normal family life.
China is well aware of this problem, because their one child policy has caused a huge surplus of young men without hope, a very unstable situation. Of course, a young woman in China can now charge whatever the hell she wants. If you don't own significant property, your chances of marriage to a Chinese woman are very poor. Many Chinese men now go to Southeast Asia looking for wives.
All in all, a bad situation.
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Post #408,926
3/23/16 3:51:30 PM
3/23/16 3:51:30 PM
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Re: Women follow the money, so rich guys have plenty of wives
So now you're talking about Trump ?:) Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #408,928
3/23/16 5:09:57 PM
3/23/16 5:09:57 PM
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Yeah, and others. It's bad enough here - even though . . .
. . being legally married to more than one person at a time is not permitted. Of course, serial marriages aren't the same. There the rich are just passing wives around. That still leaves a lot of "unqualified" wives for the guys who aren't so rich.
Of course, even in the lower financial realm, what women really want is a real jerk (it's just a lot better if he has money). This is why you see a lot of nice guys married to fat ugly women - the ones who aren't confident they can land a real jerk.
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Post #408,933
3/23/16 9:17:37 PM
3/23/16 11:27:59 PM
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Ok, how about some statistics for Belgium then.
Berkeley Blog (from 2015): Belgium has a sad record. With some 450 jihadists, it is Europe’s largest contributor per capita of ISIS fighters in Syria. The country has also been mentioned in connection to a series of recent ISIS attacks: In May 2014, a returned jihadist from Syria opened fire at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In January 2015, two suspected jihadists were shot by the police in the city of Verviers. In August 2015, two members of the U.S. military stopped a jihadist attacker who had boarded a train in Brussels. Wikipedia: Islam is the second largest religion in Belgium, accounting for 5 to 7% of the total population. (If all immigrants with Islamic backgrounds are included, Muslims' share of the population rises to 8.1% as of 2011). Muslims are concentrated in certain regions of the country, constituting 23.6% of the population in Brussels, but just 4.0% in Wallonia and 3.9% in Flanders. The entire population of Belgium is about 11 M, so roughly 900,000 Muslims in the country. In this latest event, there were 4 people directly involved. 4/900,000 = 4.4E-6. The Navy Yard shooting was done by one guy. He killed 12 plus himself. Roughly 16,000 people work there. 1/16,000 = 6.3E-5. It looks like it's a lot more likely to come across a crazy coworker in the USA than a jihadist that is willing to blow himself up in Belgium. Like over 10 times more likely. Yeah, I know, the ratios are apples and oranges. But the point is, these events are extremely rare. They have more to do with them being male then than them claiming to be Muslim. Daesh isn't Islamic. Daesh is a cult created by remnants of Saddam's Baathist internal security apparatus. HTH. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #408,937
3/23/16 11:11:46 PM
3/23/16 11:11:46 PM
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So Daesh isn't Islamic . . .
. . . and that they can so easily and effectively manipulate Islam is in no way a weakness in the religion? It is a religion that expanded by violent conquest and "conversion by the sword", with techniques not so sophisticated as those by Daesh, but in the same category. It is so easy to preach romantic notions of Jihad.
News articles often feature guys who declare Daesh is wrong and making excuses, but there is no real structure of authority in Islam. It's many individual "schollars", with authority over their own followers, and little farther. The next schollar down the road has a different interpretation of the Koran, different ideas, perhaps different ambitions, and a different batch of followers. If one becomes too disruptive to another, it's nothing a little assassination can't fix. "Here's your bomb. 71 virgins await you!"
And yes, there's that continuous state of violence between Sunni and Shiite, which Daesh plans to encourage and exploit.
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Post #408,938
3/23/16 11:31:18 PM
3/23/16 11:31:18 PM
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I don't hold Pat Robertson against the Quakers. YMMV.
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Post #408,943
3/24/16 8:05:58 AM
3/24/16 8:05:58 AM
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They're all equally contemptible.
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Post #418,073
5/10/17 8:01:25 AM
5/10/17 8:01:25 AM
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So you know their motivations better than they do themselves?
There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Blaming Islam for Daesh or the attacks we've seen in Europe or the US is nonsensical. It makes more sense to blame the attacks on single men under age 45... I'm not sure how many single men under age 45 there are in the world, but it must be around the same number you quote for Muslims, perhaps more. Just like the overwhelming majority of Muslims, the overwhelming majority of single men under age 45 do not commit terrorist acts. Of the people that do commit terrorist acts, the overwhelming majority are both single men under age 45 and Muslims. How many of them claim to do it in the name of Allah, vs how many in the name of being single and under 45? And how large a proportion of the non-Muslim single men under age 45 in the world do commit terrorist acts -- more, or less, than of the Muslim single men under age 45? --
Christian R. Conrad
Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi(Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
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Post #408,921
3/23/16 1:42:24 PM
3/23/16 1:42:24 PM
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Yes, all hail the Crusaders!
And heil the Hakenkreuz that made it easy to dispose of millions of Jews. (The Hakenkreuz is German for the hooked cross or the swastika.) Onward Christian soldiers! Indeed, terrorism is an evil thing. No argument there. But, none of the Abrahamic religions gets a pass and that includes Jews. The King David Hotel bombing was a terrorist attack carried out on Monday July 22, 1946 by the militant Zionist underground organization Irgun on the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, which was housed in the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 91 people of various nationalities were killed and 46 were injured. And Buddhists are no better. Check out their atrocities against Muslims in Burma. Do you want to talk about Shinto and the Nanking Massacre? Frankly, religion is just a pretense. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #408,924
3/23/16 3:02:30 PM
3/23/16 3:06:48 PM
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I do not give a pass to any of the three "Revealed Religions".
Christianity had a chance, but destroyed it by adopting the Old Testament to justify an authoritarian Church. Many "Christians" simply ignore the New Testament as an inconvenience.
As for the Crusaders, they were a bunch of rabble more interested in looting and fighting each other than in fighting Islam. They were encouraged by the Church, of course. Also the Church's slaughter of the Cathars in southern France over heresy is something that should not be forgiven. "Kill them all, God will know his own".
Religion may be a pretense, but it is a much too convenient pretense, and needs to be brought under control worldwide.
Islam will be perhaps the hardest to bring under control, due to its size, that it has been specifically designed to prevent modernization, and that all Muslims are bound by the religion to kill their friends and neighbors should any stray into "apostasy" (variously defined).
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Post #408,932
3/23/16 9:04:47 PM
3/23/16 9:04:47 PM
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Can't say I'm surprised
I'm amazed it has taken this long for something serious to happen. That segment of the population in Belgium has been treated like shit since they first arrived to do the dirty work in the wake of WWII. Gen 1 lived with it, but as time has moved on nothing has improved.
Discrimination in housing and employment is barred but the laws are written such that it is impossible for the plaintiff to provide evidence. And even if the other side suffers from foot in mouth disease, nothing comes of it. The end result are de-facto ghettos like Molenbeek and Schaarbeek with zero outward mobility and extremely high levels of unemployment among Gen 3/4/5. Daesh didn't have to twist too many arms to find volunteers.
I'm not condoning or excusing yesterday in any way. The situation has to be dealt with, but if nothing changes at the societal level, they'll be playing Whack-a-Mole for a long time to come. Unfortunately, the cynic in me says that is exactly what the political faction in charge desires. (Charles Michel is the PM in name, but nothing moves without the say so of the Mayor of Antwerp, Bart "Das Fuhrerlein" De Wever. His lineage goes straight back to the German collaborators. Somewhere along the line, they decided it was more expedient to cross out "jew" next to "untermensch" and replace it with "musulman".)
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Post #408,934
3/23/16 9:19:08 PM
3/23/16 9:19:08 PM
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Thanks. It's a bad situation. I hope cooler heads prevail.
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Post #408,935
3/23/16 9:41:28 PM
3/23/16 9:41:28 PM
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Dittos!
That corroborates some of what I've read elsewhere. But, your comments are more explicit.
Three official languages for Belgium can't help either. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #408,939
3/24/16 12:16:08 AM
3/24/16 12:16:08 AM
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That is not the half of it
The Germans are along for the ride this time. Unless you go to the East cantons, you will not hear a word of German out of anyone in official capacity. For the rest, it is a now almost absolute refusal to cooperate with the other side that is driving things (sounds familiar?). For some time, nothing moved without tit-for-tat compensation and now, things are almost completely stuck.
Brussels is a mostly French speaking blob squarely inside Flanders. Officially bilingual, on the ground it is hard to find enough qualified Flemish speakers to fill certain positions. That leaves both the local police force and the judiciary with big problems.
Brussels, the district, is perennially cash strapped due to the large contingent of impoverished residents. Flanders is the richest state, but there is a refusal to help out financially beyond what it is obliged to do. The nationalists are in charge and their biggest fear is the expansion of the French speaking "oil slick" beyond its current borders.
(The overall result of 50+ years of this is that Belgian governance structures most closely resemble a plate of spaghetti. The jurisdictional clusterfsck mentioned on the various news shows over the last week or so is also an outcome of this because Brussels is internally divided along language lines as well.)
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Post #408,940
3/24/16 3:09:40 AM
3/24/16 3:09:40 AM
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We should invade and that'd sort it out.
Some speak Flemish, some speak Dutch, some speak French, some speak German, but all those motherfuckers speak English. And then all these daft-arse factions could unite in hating the big bad Englishman.
Plus it'd only take a day or two. Belgium's only about the size of Yorkshire. We've kept the Tykes in line for a thousand years; Johnny Foreigner in La Belgique shouldn't pose a problem.
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Post #408,941
3/24/16 7:57:22 AM
3/24/16 7:57:22 AM
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A day or two?
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Post #408,944
3/24/16 9:00:28 AM
3/24/16 9:00:28 AM
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:-)!
Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #408,949
3/25/16 3:14:29 AM
3/25/16 3:14:29 AM
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We'd have to teach you how to queue.
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Post #408,970
3/26/16 6:40:42 PM
3/26/16 6:40:42 PM
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Brolly's to instep?
always look out for number one and don't step in number two
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Post #408,945
3/24/16 9:25:54 AM
3/24/16 9:25:54 AM
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Reminds me of my last hotel breakfast in Brussels.
Two businessmen were having a conversation in English at an adjoining table. I glanced at them and was spotted doing so. They immediately switched to a Germanic language.
This is where you talk about the meaning of bilingual and polyglot and ask the question "What do you call a person who only speaks one language?" The answer is an American. :)
My Ukrainian, which never developed past a child's level, is extremely rusty. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #409,124
4/3/16 1:01:48 PM
4/3/16 1:01:48 PM
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What ISIS really wants
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #409,126
4/3/16 1:30:21 PM
4/3/16 1:30:21 PM
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17,000 comments??
Someone doesn't know how to prune a discussion section. :-/ Thanks for the pointer. I don't find it persuasive (e.g. counterpoint here, from 2014), but I don't know enough to say it's wrong. Cheers, Scott.
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