Ah I was being facetious, as there is always a conspiracy theory whenever terrorists are mentioned I thought I'd get in first.
On a serious note I wasn't aware of the "terrorists are rich kids" stereotype.
Who becomes a terrorist?
- Thread starter Fraggle Rocker
- Start date
Ah I was being facetious, as there is always a conspiracy theory whenever terrorists are mentioned I thought I'd get in first.
On a serious note I wasn't aware of the "terrorists are rich kids" stereotype.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Do you apply the same in-depth, trenchant analysis to all issues, or was it pure luck you came up with such a penetrating insight in this instance?
I pegged him for an american when he started calling muslims goat fuckers. While europeans can be just as hateful and stupid that kind of sustained shit jsut strikes me as a product of the arrogance a lot of ignorant americans have.
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Thats is almost exactly how they percieve the US.
Its actually quite interesting both think the other is "Satanic, demon-possessed lunatics" at which point both attack eachother and further instill hatred and the previous belief in a "Satanic, demon-possessed lunatic" enemy to inspire more attacks more agression etc.
Its a fire that fuels itself.
Which leads me to my conclusion that the most destructive thing on the planet is not nuclear or biological but rather...Men and their beliefs.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Women don't exactly help the matter, either.
lol true true
Welcome rational commentary Fraggle. Restores my faith in Sci. :m:
The YOU I used was not necessarily you. It was a general reference, because as far as I see in newsnetworks like Cnn and Fox, when they say islamic fundamentalist, they almost always mean a fanatic/lunatic person.
fundamentalism: strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles
so if you strictly adhere to the basic idea that all religions are evil, you, too, are a fundamentalist. Fundamentalism by itself is not a bad thing, as long as it does not start harming others. Contrary to the common understanding, it can make you a better person.
Maybe there is also a problem in people's mentality in this part of the world as well. How can you still believe, after so much evidence and history, that America and its allies are unable of doin evil plots?Do you think they real care about innocent lives in muslim countries!!! I trust Taliban's humanity more than that of the American troops.
So, why did the U.S. attack Afghanistan. Wan't it for revenge? Your words are good for an ideal world, They do not work in our world. Your ideal world can not be reached by human rules. Countries make rules that benefit them even if it harms others, international laws are put there by superpowers without asking the opinion of the weak ones and, despite this, the big powers are the first ones who readily breach them when necessary. Human made laws and rules are not enough to reach your aspired ideal world... And to tell the oppressed that revenge is the most evil thing is simlply wrong.
Has that been ever proved, or it's yet another claim like Saddam's WMDs. By the way, as I argued earlier, Hamas is commits much less acts of terror! in magnitude and frequency than the Israel and the U.S.
But your politicians have been calling Iran an evil state who rejects women their rights. You keep calling muslims backwards goat f**ers who discriminate against women, you attacked Iraq for no apparent reason, you thwarted the democratically elected government in Iran 50 years before there was any "terrorist muslim" attack, you killed Saudi Arabian King Faisal through your CIA agent, you keep supporting dictators whenever it benefits you, you keep trying to convince muslims their religion is evil, etc.. You keep sticking your nose in our damn business, what do you expect in return? Also when you attack my religion, it's like you slendered my most sacred, how come it is not my damn business! explain please. Why can't you simply just shut up and instead try to respect my sacred, even if you thing they are wrong, if you want respect in return.
So you want to be like Saudi Arabia? What about all your boasting about democracy and freedom of belief, blah blah. If that's your choice, good luck with that for you.
Huh, your explanation is quite convincing
huh??
Extremists are everywhere, cause there are extremists on every side of everything! When 2 extremes meet, if no help to mediate is present, fighting is easier then finding a way both sides can agree to!
Terrorists in the eyes of North Americans, are just extremists that are against the way of the West. But terrorists have a different meaning when you ask in a different location, that's why I used the soldiers as an example of what terrorists look like for some.
The fighting, is always blind!
Once violence is used, both sides have already lost.
No one ever wins a fight.
Tunnel vision is the same as blind to me, cause they don't see what's around them if it doesn't fit into what they want to see. Many people only see what they want.
2 extreme sides to every story, but not enough balance between the extremes yet!
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
CNN and Fox News are "The News For People Who Can't Read." They are all idiots. I hope foreigners don't watch those channels and think that they represent America. Those are tiny networks that are only available on cable TV, and their audience size is measured in six figures instead of seven or eight like the big networks. They have small staffs who get to say whatever they want.
In the U.S. when "fundamentalism" is applied to a religion, it means a literal interpretation of the scriptures. I.e., that a supernatural universe full of gods and angels and demons truly exists, and that those gods and angels and demons capriciously interfere with the behavior of the natural universe. It is a direct contradiction of science, whose founding premise is that the natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its past and present behavior. Science is supported by five hundred years of exhaustive testing, whereas religion is supported only by ancient legends, handed down from the days when people had such a poor understanding of the universe that gods and angels and demons seemed plausible.
In America the word "fundamentalist" is used exclusively in the context of religion. This arose in the late 1970s when the Religious Redneck Retard Revival brought back the Christianity we thought we had finally rid ourselves of in the 1960s.
So long as it is not religious fundamentalism, the way we use the word here, I suppose that may be true.
What makes you think we believe that? Apparently you don't understand Americans any better than we understand you. Every time something stupid or evil is done, a lot of people say it must be the government's fault. There are still quite a number of Americans who believe that our government was behind 9/11. I personally am satisifed that it was not, because I live so close to the Pentagon that I was overwhelmed with reports of investigations and testimony for years. But even I believe that it could have been. After all, President Bush lied to us and told us that it was Saddam Hussein's fault, when in fact most of the blame falls on the Saudis. He just didn't want us to be angry at the Saudis because they are his friends in the oil industry. He is a traitor who put his own business interests ahead of patriotism.
Even the Pakistani government admits to its people when it was Pakistani Muslims who killed their friends and families, and they don't believe them.
Most American troops are honorable, but it only takes a few bad ones to give them all a bad reputation. The troops see death every day so they have a much different perspective on it than we civilians do. I think they care more about minimizing Muslim civilian casualties than most American civilians do.
I am not a big fan of the military, to put it mildly, and I hesitate to trust people who have been indoctrinated to believe that violence is ever a satisfactory way to resolve disputes. Nonetheless I know the kind of training those kids go through and I am satisfied that the vast majority of them conduct themselves with as much honor as is possible when fighting a war that is illegal.
The rationale is that they were providing a safe haven for Bin Laden. They were, but trying to capture one guy in a poorly governed country is impossible. Subterfuge was also a big part of it, since Bush wanted to distract our attention from all the evidence that implicated his friends, the Saudis, in 9/11. But yes, revenge was a big part of it. In my previous diatribe I did not mean to imply that Americans don't also feel the emotion of revenge. We're just supposed to have a more rational govenment that doesn't encourage us to act on it. Bush was the worst president we've had in my lifetime (1943) and the damage he did to our country and our world may take many decades to repair.
Nonsense. You have so much faith in your imaginary god but you have none in your real brothers and sisters. Such an insult to them, when it is they who are doing all the work. Civilization has been an eleven-thousand year project to transcend our primitive instincts and build a world that becomes slowly closer to ideal.
Revenge is the most evil human emotion. It always punishes the wrong people and begins a cycle of deadly retribution that works against civilization. It doesn't matter whether you're strong or weak. If you let your instinct for revenge control you, you have gone over to the side of evil and you become a problem that must be solved.
I don't know about the comparison to the U.S., but Hamas has certainly caused less damage to Israel than Israel has caused to Palestine. As I said before, the leaders of both countries should be put in prison.
We get to say anything we want inside our own countries, just as you do. It's called "free speech" and it is a cornerstone of modern civilization.
If you're asking me personally, I pride myself on being a rational, educated man who is well-trained in the scientific method. I cannot possibly be expected to "respect" a religion that is based on the premise that fairytales are real. One of the cornerstones of the scientific method is the Rule of Laplace: "Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat them with respect." There is no assertion more extraordinary than the one regarding the existence of an invisible, illogical supernatural universe whose creatures whimsically interfere in our affairs. There is no extraordinary evidence to support this assertion, and in fact there is not even any ordinary evidence. The only "evidence" is hearsay and ancient fables. So as a scientist, if only an amateur scientist, I refuse to treat it with respect and I am quite justified in doing so.
No we don't. But I think it's disingenuous of Muslims to complain about not being able to walk down the streets of America dressed like bandits, when in Saudi Arabia Christians are not even allowed to have churches, which is a much more important issue. We let you guys build mosques, there's one not far from my house. We just don't trust people who won't look us in the eye. You should understand that. One of the problems our troops have in the Middle East is that they're not adapted to the bright sunlight so they have to wear sunglasses to keep from damaging their eyes. They have to take their sunglasses off before the local people will respect them. Well your women have to take their stupid bandit masks off if they want our respect. In America you can only wear a mask to a Halloween party, while you're skiing, or to rob a bank.
The Hejaz kingdom was set up with arms and moolah supplied by the British, you'll find very few Muslims in the world who consider it representative of Islam, even Osama bin Laden wrote against it. American Presidents however, have always supported the Saudi kingdom with military assistance and looked away when their public demonstrations were violently suppressed [unlike Iran, where even normal riot acts get 24/7 coverage on CNN].
The Saudi kingdom is all yours, I'm afraid, its representative of American established/supported right wing dictatorships around the world, it has nothing to do with Islam.
And to keep it on topic, one of the reasons Osama targeted American embassies is because of American support for the Saudi monarchy and his frustration with US military might enabling the oppression of Arabs by puppet dictators. So who becomes a terrorist? Someone who is against dictators, apparently and is stripped of the option to wait until the next election to change his government.
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So, SAM, in that statement, are you actually justifying terrorism? Blowing up women and children in marketplaces is going to "change his government"?
If an American isn't happy with his government ...say he doesn't like or want the new healthcare bill to pass.... is it okay to blow up some women and kids in, say, Mumbai, India?
Baron Max
And that's why they blow themselves up and kids without concern. My God, did I read that right, that you're a moderator?
And "Many of the prominent ones certainly are, such as the Christmas Underwear Bomber"... Dude, that was a set up lol. How could you not tell that by how easily he got through security lol? It was allll jusssst coincidences. COME ON MAN CONNECT THE DOTS! Didn't you bother reading about what happened before he got on the plane either????
Look: http://www.infowars.com/exclusive-fbi-silent-on-plane-bombers-accomplice/ (and read of course).
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
No, you didn't read it right. I chose those words and typed them because I'm a writer and editor by trade, but they're only my attempt at an accurate, concise summary of someone else's words. They're certainly not my own conclusions and the underlying research was not performed by me.
And for the record, no one said that suicide bombers represent the average terrorist. Only a tiny percentage of them are suicide bombers. Suicide bombers are wackos whose motivation is hardly going to be representative of the entire terrorist movement.
InfoWars is a fucking blog! I don't waste my time on cable news because it doesn't undergo enough editorial reivew. I'm certainly not going to waste my time reading blogs, which undergo ZERO editorial review! Whether they're leftists or rightists, atheists or born-again Southern Baptists, conspiracy theorists or lovers of Big Government, those people can say whatever they want. There's always a gullible crowd out there who believe everything they say, because they agree with their point of view and don't read critically.
Do yourself a favor and find a more respectable source of information. Quoting a blog is not much different from quoting something you read on the wall in a restroom.
Sorry Baron, missed your question.
To answer it, no no, of course not. Blowing up women and children is wrong. What people should do if they get tired of puppet dictators funded by foreign governments is immigrate to the country where that foreign government is from. Like the Mayflower thingy. Flee persecution by immgration. In the US, they can form Wahabi or Salafi communities like the Haredim and Amish and Mormons and do their thingy in peace
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Americans tend to focus on economic prosperity as the key measure of freedom, rather than religious practices, language or other cultural issues, which I suppose is why our criticism of China is so muted these days. After all we don't want to box ourselves into a position that would make us feel guilty about the disappearance of American Indian ethnicity.
The libertarian movement uses that focus to state this truth:
The single factor in a man's life that most strongly correlates with his probability of being poor is the country he lives in.
Therefore we insist that the solution to world poverty is to simply allow all the poor people to migrate to the developed nations, where they can perform honest work and be more-or-less fairly paid for it--and send money home to improve the lives of the people who stayed. Since (unlike me) most American libertarians arrived at their political position from the right, many of them are contriving convoluted excuses to join the currently fashionable immigrant-bashing crusade, but nonetheless one of the pillars of libertarianism is the maxim:
Peaceful people have the right to migrate freely.
Obviously that maxim extends to any form of persecution, including ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc., and in fact most libertarians and most Americans are more sanguine about immigrants who arrive with a positive bank balance and work skills that will put a mouse in their hands instead of a shovel.
Still, we all hew to the definition of America as a Melting Pot, and we expect all immigrant families to "melt in" within a couple of generations. Those who maintain their separateness are viewed by many of my people with suspicion and, eventually, hostility. Of course we're always happy to add an occasional new motif to our otherwise bland culture, such as pizza, feng shui, soccer and Cinco de Mayo.
Religion was never on that list of acceptable new motifs, but the Holocaust (and our competitive desire to be better than the Europeans
) shamed us into making a single exception for the Jews--and throngs of them repay that kindness by distancing themselves from their ancestral religion except on holidays (just like many American Christians) and diving head-first into the Melting Pot.
As I said, most Americans do not take kindly to extreme religious differences in an immigrant community, because empirical evidence over the years indicates that this is a major chunk of gristle that doesn't quickly dissipate in the Melting Pot, like language and style of dress.
Your inclusion of the Mormons in that list is incorrect, because the Latter-Day Saints are a home-grown religion; they didn't immigrate from anywhere to escape persecution, unless of course you're referring to Illinois
. And a century later there is still tremendous ill will toward them among the majority population: many Christians do not even consider them fellow Christians and, unlike any other Christian denomination, they congregate heavily in one state where they comprise a majority. Their influence on politics (anti-gay marriage) is arguably more angrily resented than that of other Christian sects, such as the highly influential Catholics (anti-abortion) and Protestant fundamentalistists (evolution denial).Foreign-borne religions are viewed with even more wariness. The Mennonites (Amish) earned Americans' trust after being watched carefully for a century and establishing an image of respecting many of our core values more zealously than we do, primarily working hard, causing no trouble, being skillful businessmen, and paying their taxes.
I'm not familiar with the extent or impact of the Wahhabi/Salafi movement in America. But their foreign-borne religion is an obstacle to all Muslim immigrants, particularly one that many Americans (and rather many Muslims) regard as at war with America or at least hostile to our way of life, especially since the occupation of the American embassy in Tehran, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and 9/11. Americans are waiting warily to see if the new Muslims from Asia and Africa peacefully blend into the Melting Pot the way other immigrant groups who were once regarded as hopelessly incompatible have done, like the Chinese. This near-total integration into our population will manifest as:
- Living among us rather than in ethnic neighborhoods, as the once-despised Italians did many decades ago
- Intermarrying with us so that there is no identifiable fourth generation, as the once-despised Irish did more than a century ago
- Reducing the dominance of their religion in their lives (Only Christians are free from that restraint and the Jews will get one or two more generations as an apology for the Holocaust before their fundamentalists start being persecuted)
- Completely forsaking religious motifs that outrage the majority population, such as taxis refusing to carry luggage containing liquor, thirty-five prayer calls screamed over loudspeakers every week, wearing masks in public places, and discrimination against blind people because of their guide dogs.
So what recourse do you offer to people who are tired of US funded dictators ruling their lives?
If they cannot live in their own country and you won't take them in yours, what do you propose they do? Clearly you are uncomfortable at the thought of a Salafi community migrating from Saudia to Washington and the horror of walking among women with possible concealed weapons under their ninja robes with full face veils
And yet, they have no recourse against the dictators who won't let them demonstrate or live freely in their own.
So what is the solution?
If they cannot live in their own country and you won't take them in yours, what do you propose they do? Clearly you are uncomfortable at the thought of a Salafi community migrating from Saudia to Washington and the horror of walking among women with possible concealed weapons under their ninja robes with full face veils
And yet, they have no recourse against the dictators who won't let them demonstrate or live freely in their own.
So what is the solution?
Fight.