The Killing Joke

[Bismark]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]magick wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
Your history lacks, first of all. Second, what the hell does what Christians did in the middle ages have shit to do with right now?[/quote]

Middle-age history is not my forte. I would be happy if you took the time to educate me on my shortcomings.

And you misunderstood the point. I’m saying the religion doesn’t matter at all. It’s more about threatened your culture appears to be at that point in time.

Many Muslim terrorists turned to terrorism and waging war on the West because they felt that the West is a serious threat to their lands and way of life. I believe people are entirely right when they say we’re at war with Islam. But not necessarily because of violence being fundamental to Islam or anything, but rather because Islam and its culture is radically different from any culture that the West currently espouses or can tolerate.

Essentially, I disagree with the assertions that religion is responsible. Most of the time, geopolitical issues and the pure concept of power explains things much better. People will frequently use religion to achieve power, but claiming religion is responsible is just making a scapegoat out of it and avoiding the real issue at hand- That if you got rid of religion people will just use something else to gain power with.

You can’t get rid of two of the many fundamental realities of being human- Our desire for wealth and our desire to belong.[/quote]

I don’t think there is any point in trying to figure out why they are the way they are. Self preservation has little or nothing to do with it. Hatred is not rational and they operate on pure hatred not for lands, culture or way of life. They kill because they hate. Why they hate, they themselves may not even know.[/quote]

The roots of religious terrorism run deeper than mere enmity. Read Usama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa, in which he declares that it is the duty of Muslims to kill “Americans and their allies - civilians and military . . . in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”

https://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm

"First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."

It’s far more complex than W’s simplistic “They hate our freedoms”. That’s clear to anyone who is familiar with the relevant literature.

[SexMachine]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

That’s a stretch to say the least. Given the offense-defense balance of the era, the geography of Europe, and the characteristics of the Crusaders’ cavalry and infantry vis-a-vis that of their Saracen and Turk counterparts, any invasion of Europe would be an extraordinarily difficult task.

[/quote]

They occupied Spain and were pushed out. They were held at gates of Vienna. But back to the crusades;

There were many, many, many crusades announced for all sorts of reasons and the clergy were using it settle domestic disputes. They were used very much like a “fatwa”. Often they never got off the ground. Often they called for obscure or stupid reasons. The crusades to recapture the Temple Mount from the Muslims quickly became a powerful force and all sorts of people - peasants, knights, artisans, clergy, women and children. It’s obviously a long story as to how the Temple Mount was recaptured and lost again. And the phase for about a hundred years when huge numbers of Western Europeans headed East on the trails.

The religious military orders set up Europe’s first banking system and became very powerful before they were snuffed out by a French King and the Vatican. One of the many reasons for the crusades was to secure access to the holy sites for Christian pilgrims. Pilgrimage was a very important spiritual experience and was widely practiced by all classes of society. The Temple Mount was not considered holy to the crusaders who were more interested in sites related to the New Testament. The crusades were part of a preexisting fault line between the Byzantines, the Holy Roman Empire and the Islamic conquests. It was an ongoing conflict. Spain remained occupied until the last of them removed in the 17th Century. The Ottomans continued the tradition of jihad and expansionism, but it became an old, corrupt, mismanaged empire that succumbed to internal weaknesses. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire laid the seeds for all the sectarianism in the region today.

[quote]

So no, the Crusades did not preserve Western civilization. If anything, they exacerbated West-East relations.[/quote]

No, they did actually preserve Western civilisation. As I said, they conquered Spain and the Byzantine Empire and pushed into Central Europe. They held out in Spain until the 17th Century. The crusades to recapture the holy lands were part of a larger geopolitical and metaphysical struggle between Islam and Christian Europe and Asia.

[Bismark]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]BPCorso wrote:

It is horseshit to immigrate to another country and make no effort to assimilate.

[/quote]

Agreed. I have traveled all over the world and where I went, I respected their laws and their culture. I had no expectation of people in another country where I am a guest to cater to me. I don’t think I am particularly good or wonderful for having that attitude. I think it’s just commonly decent to respect the fact that I am a guest in their country I need to show them respect. And in return, I was treated kindly and respected as well. [/quote]

Why does everyone keep forgetting that the Charlie Hebdo shooters were born and raised in Paris? They are homegrown terrorists.

[DoubleDuce]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]BPCorso wrote:

It is horseshit to immigrate to another country and make no effort to assimilate.

[/quote]

Agreed. I have traveled all over the world and where I went, I respected their laws and their culture. I had no expectation of people in another country where I am a guest to cater to me. I don’t think I am particularly good or wonderful for having that attitude. I think it’s just commonly decent to respect the fact that I am a guest in their country I need to show them respect. And in return, I was treated kindly and respected as well. [/quote]

Why does everyone keep forgetting that the Charlie Hebdo shooters were born and raised in Paris? They are homegrown terrorists.[/quote]

Not possible, all Muslims and mosques in the west are peaceful.

[smh_23]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Brett620 wrote:
The annexation of Crimea is a prime example. I think Putin bullied him.
[/quote]

It just doesn’t work like this. Putin knows that as long as there isn’t a madman in Washington, there is a certain amount of localized misbehavior with which he can get away. He knows that nobody is going to risk total war if he, for example, invades South Ossetia. Note that when that happened, the occupant of the White House was one George W. Bush. Did you know that now, closing in on a decade later, the Russian military continues to occupy an enormous chunk of what everybody else still considers Georgian territory? Most Americans don’t know that. Think about it: this was one of the first times a world power invaded a neighboring country since World War II, and it is still going on today.

Why? Because war between Russia and the West is essentially off the table. Nobody is blocking out the sun over a small-scale border scuffle/military occupation in Eastern Europe. There is very little that can be done. (Here is where somebody pivots to Obama and brings up missile defense in Poland [which was about Iran and would have done nothing vis-a-vis Russian deterrence], and here, also, is where I ask that somebody if he has read, to take one of many examples, Gates’ book – which is happy to criticize Obama whenever and wherever it sees fit – on that particular subject.) Hate these realities if you want, but do yourself the favor of thinking hard about them. There were millions of platitudes tossed around the Beltway during the Ukrainian crisis – always gooey, always undefined, always having something vague to do with “weakness” and “toughness.” It is not coincidental that these platitudes almost never became actual criticisms. Their purpose was simply political (see my previous post about Americans being, at heart, bickering old ladies full only of bias and doublethink).

The best response is to tighten sanctions and wait. That’s what happened. The most recent trade sanctions signed by Obama are less than 3 weeks old. The price of oil drops, we alleviate nothing, and Putin faces a series of unenviable choices: that’s what we want. It isn’t perfect, but then neither is the real world.

Edited.[/quote]

A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West. Would the United States tolerate the Russian Federation making overtures to Canada or Mexico to join a Russian led security alliance?

In spite of this, at the April 2008 summit in Bucharest NATO considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine. The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia. In the end, NATO’s members reached a compromise: the alliance did not begin the formal process leading to membership, but it issued a statement endorsing the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine and boldly declaring, ‘These countries will become members of NATO’ This inability to appreciate Russian security interests precipitated the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. [/quote]

Yes indeed – Russia had its reasons. Even if they hadn’t, though, Bush would have had as little recourse as he did in fact. That is what I’m getting at – that the PWI conventional wisdom about Russia is entirely ignorant of even very recent history, and it is purely ideological (as opposed to rational or factual). It is, in short, horseshit. And it also comes a little too close to old Vladimir’s belt buckle for my taste.

Edit: But this is a general observation and not directed at Brett, whose post I found reasonable whether I agreed or not.

[pat]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
I think an honest approach to history itself would be helpful. People like to quip about ‘crusades’ and the ‘inquisition’, without knowing who did what and why… For example were it not for the Crusades, Europe would be under Sharia and bowing 5 times a day to Mecca whether you liked it or not. Western civilization as we know it would not exist…So ‘You’re welcome’.[/quote]

That’s a stretch to say the least. Given the offense-defense balance of the era, the geography of Europe, and the characteristics of the Crusaders’ cavalry and infantry vis-a-vis that of their Saracen and Turk counterparts, any invasion of Europe would be an extraordinarily difficult task. So no, the Crusades did not preserve Western civilization. If anything, they exacerbated West-East relations.[/quote]

Yeah, yeah, the peaceful muslim conquests of the Holy Land (and basically all the other lands) were peaceful and loving, with the local populouses welcoming full of gratitude and the big meany Christians came in killed everybody and kicked them out for no reason, just greedy dicks. I heard it all before. Should have let those peaceful Mohammedans alone and there would have been no problems. Live and let live.

Which totally means that the terrorists are justified in shooting up a satirical news paper and that all religious people are just as evil and bad as the terrorists because their just dumb God believers.

[angry_chicken]

[quote]TheCB wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Instead of being baited by responding to every single poster in this thread who claims I “hate” christianity, I spent some time reading about islam. It seems to me that islam wouldn’t exist without mecca. Two of the five pillars of islam involve worshiping that rock. Today, observant muslims believe that it would be impossible for “infidels” to destroy the “kaaba” which is literally the physical manifestation on earth of their “greatest god”.

Turn mecca into a crater. No mecca, no islam. Problem solved.

Their whole world view would crumble. After fourteen centuries their mantra of, “our god is greater” won’t become, “we USED to think our god was greater”… mecca is simply the glass jaw of islam. We don’t even have to nuke it, conventional warheads would work just fine. Although I think nuking it would lend a nicer touch of “finality” that conventional weapons lack. The mushroom cloud above what was once their holiest of holy sites would be downright picturesque…

Now THAT would certainly get their attention more than a fucking cartoon.

Of course we would give them every opportunity to stand down first. But if those fuckers decided to keep blowing shit up, then they can reap what they have sown.[/quote]

are you 14 years old?[/quote]

You know, one of the rules to be a card carrying member of the FACC* is that you have to CAPITALIZE when you troll my posts…

*Fuck Angry Chicken Club

[smh_23]

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

*Fuck Angry Chicken Club[/quote]

You’re just trying to make alternate-reality female usmccds jealous.

[Bismark]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

*Fuck Angry Chicken Club[/quote]

You’re just trying to make alternate-reality female usmccds jealous.[/quote]

Have dibs already been called for the conductor and caboose positions?

[magick]

[quote]pat wrote:

I don’t think there is any point in trying to figure out why they are the way they are. Self preservation has little or nothing to do with it. Hatred is not rational and they operate on pure hatred not for lands, culture or way of life. They kill because they hate. Why they hate, they themselves may not even know.[/quote]

No. Read what Bismark wrote. At the very least, Al-Qaeda had a clear reason for why they went to war with the U.S.

[angry_chicken]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If we tried this, every Muslim in the world would radicalize.[/quote]

At that point, they wouldn’t be radical. They would be right.[/quote]

It’s called LEVERAGE. I didn’t say bomb it out of the blue. I said THREATEN to bomb it. Put in on the table. Draw a “red line” (and have the balls to back it up).

If the “peace lovin” muslims think their holy site will get bombed if the terrorists bomb our civilians, they might start to think about, I don’t know, TURNING THEM IN.

This shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The imam at the mosque near my house was the crazy fucker that got droned. I’d be willing to bet that there are PLENTY of muslims in my neighborhood who KNEW that he was a radical and chose to keep their filthy treasonous mouths shut. If we gave them ALL a potential consequence, then perhaps a few of them might find a conscience.

[magick]

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
I disagree with much of what you wrote, but you have this part exactly backwards. It’s not the West that can’t tolerate Islam, unless by Islam you mean the wholesale slaughter of innocents simply for practicing a different form of their own religion (see: Boko Haram).

It is Islam as practiced by various theocratic nation-states that can not tolerate the West.
[/quote]

By Islam I mean them wanting to be allowed to stone women to death for whatever reason. Obviously most Western states don’t really like that.

And many of the Muslim terrorists attack the West because the West does things that they consider abhorrent and they believe the West is pushing that onto them.

And yet, Russia and China routinely commit human right violations and the West just leaves them alone. They have to tolerate it even though it goes against their stated beliefs because reality demands it.

You took the most negative interpretation possible of my statement. Not sure why you did that.

[Bismark]

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If we tried this, every Muslim in the world would radicalize.[/quote]

At that point, they wouldn’t be radical. They would be right.[/quote]

It’s called LEVERAGE. I didn’t say bomb it out of the blue. I said THREATEN to bomb it. Put in on the table. Draw a “red line” (and have the balls to back it up).

If the “peace lovin” muslims think their holy site will get bombed if the terrorists bomb our civilians, they might start to think about, I don’t know, TURNING THEM IN.

This shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The imam at the mosque near my house was the crazy fucker that got droned. I’d be willing to bet that there are PLENTY of muslims in my neighborhood who KNEW that he was a radical and chose to keep their filthy treasonous mouths shut. If we gave them ALL a potential consequence, then perhaps a few of them might find a conscience. [/quote]

The irony is that the “leverage” you speak of is definitively identical with terrorism.

[DoubleDuce]

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If we tried this, every Muslim in the world would radicalize.[/quote]

At that point, they wouldn’t be radical. They would be right.[/quote]

It’s called LEVERAGE. I didn’t say bomb it out of the blue. I said THREATEN to bomb it. Put in on the table. Draw a “red line” (and have the balls to back it up).

If the “peace lovin” muslims think their holy site will get bombed if the terrorists bomb our civilians, they might start to think about, I don’t know, TURNING THEM IN.

This shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The imam at the mosque near my house was the crazy fucker that got droned. I’d be willing to bet that there are PLENTY of muslims in my neighborhood who KNEW that he was a radical and chose to keep their filthy treasonous mouths shut. If we gave them ALL a potential consequence, then perhaps a few of them might find a conscience. [/quote]

The major strategic fail is that radical muslims aren’t a unified entity. Whatever city or landmark or whatever you threatened would inevitably have radical parts of Islam that would WANT to see it blown up.

[magick]

[quote]Bismark wrote:
The irony is that the “leverage” you speak of is definitively identical with terrorism. [/quote]

It ain’t terrorism when you support it.

[Bismark]

GIGN (French special operations force tasked with counterterrorism and hostage rescue missions) conducted simultaneous assaults on an industrial site and grocery store where hostages were being held. Three terrorists are confirmed dead. A women suspected of murdering a Parisian policewomen Thursday morning is still at large.

[sufiandy]

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
You can just as easily have people that want murder and write (or don’t write) their secular laws to reflect that. Secularity doesn’t lead to any specific laws. You haven’t added anything to the observation of what already is and isn’t.
[/quote]

How can you just as easily have people who want murder not written in their laws? It goes against the chemical reactions in our brains that help survival. Its not true that you can “just as easily” have something when our natural laws tend to go away from it. [/quote]

The fact that there are countless societies that have and continue to do exactly that would seem to damper your claim.[/quote]

Example?[/quote]

Most of the Middle East.

Lots of old dictatorships.

Nazi Germany.

Soviet Communist Russia.[/quote]

Who makes the laws in these places? And could someone kill them in public without any consequences?[/quote]

Hitler was elected.

And many higher ups in Islam in the middle eastern countries are murdered. And even there, the people are the ones that enforce shira law. To the point that men will murder their own offspring.

Although this doesn’t address things like suicide either.

There are countless people and places that behave in direct opposition to what you are saying is natural.

Though, again, this is all a tangent as you aren’t giving reason or justification. You aren’t making an argument for laws against murder, you are simply stating that there are chemical reactions that sometimes give rise to them. The fact that some exist isn’t in question. Their justification is what is in question for which you have no answer.[/quote]

First you say secular societies must want all laws thrown out now your giving examples of highly non-secular societies without murder laws. It seems secularity has nothing to do with it anymore so I’m sure what your original point was.

“Any person who truly desires a secular society must want laws against everything from murder to rape to robbery thrown out.”

As a secular person I am saying I would want a few laws. It doesn’t matter how many counter examples you give as a person I’m qualified to say that statement is not true for me, therefore its false since your claiming it to be true for any person.

[DoubleDuce]

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
You can just as easily have people that want murder and write (or don’t write) their secular laws to reflect that. Secularity doesn’t lead to any specific laws. You haven’t added anything to the observation of what already is and isn’t.
[/quote]

How can you just as easily have people who want murder not written in their laws? It goes against the chemical reactions in our brains that help survival. Its not true that you can “just as easily” have something when our natural laws tend to go away from it. [/quote]

The fact that there are countless societies that have and continue to do exactly that would seem to damper your claim.[/quote]

Example?[/quote]

Most of the Middle East.

Lots of old dictatorships.

Nazi Germany.

Soviet Communist Russia.[/quote]

Who makes the laws in these places? And could someone kill them in public without any consequences?[/quote]

Hitler was elected.

And many higher ups in Islam in the middle eastern countries are murdered. And even there, the people are the ones that enforce shira law. To the point that men will murder their own offspring.

Although this doesn’t address things like suicide either.

There are countless people and places that behave in direct opposition to what you are saying is natural.

Though, again, this is all a tangent as you aren’t giving reason or justification. You aren’t making an argument for laws against murder, you are simply stating that there are chemical reactions that sometimes give rise to them. The fact that some exist isn’t in question. Their justification is what is in question for which you have no answer.[/quote]

First you say secular societies must want all laws thrown out now your giving examples of highly non-secular societies without murder laws. It seems secularity has nothing to do with it anymore so I’m sure what your original point was.

“Any person who truly desires a secular society must want laws against everything from murder to rape to robbery thrown out.”

As a secular person I am saying I would want a few laws. It doesn’t matter how many counter examples you give as a person I’m qualified to say that statement is not true for me, therefore its false since your claiming it to be true for any person.[/quote]

If secularism is correct, then all societies are secular in function as there is no supernatural influence or knowledge. By your own stance, they are the product of the same chemical reactions your “wants” are.

And no, you don’t actually want (by your own theory) the laws any more than a rock “wants” to fall. According to your view, there is no right or wrong or rationality to advocate any type of law over anything else.

However, I believe you do actually want moral laws, itâ??s just in opposition to your belief that you are secular.

I agree that re-reading my statement I went a bit overboard on what a secularist must want. Technically, secularly, there is no reason to prioritize any one way over another. So, while it is possible to “want” certain laws as a secularist, it is only the result of physics and lacks any rationality to justify any one person’s want over any others.

[smh_23]

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

The major strategic fail is that radical muslims aren’t a unified entity. Whatever city or landmark or whatever you threatened would inevitably have radical parts of Islam that would WANT to see it blown up.[/quote]

Many of them would even love to see Mecca erased. For the same reasons that Palestinian terrorists want to see Israeli bombs fall on civilians in the Gaza Strip.

[anon50325502]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

*Fuck Angry Chicken Club[/quote]

You’re just trying to make alternate-reality female usmccds jealous.[/quote]

Have dibs already been called for the conductor and caboose positions? [/quote]

RAPE!!