World Affairs

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

"Play it, Sam".

[Ocram's Razr 963]

A demographic known for the highest rates of violence and destruction despite claiming the opposite decided to commit acts of terrorism against the peaceful peoples (who welcomed them with open arms and lifted their standard of living) instead of assimilating.

http://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-attacks-terrorism-europe-muslims-brussels-attacks-airport-metro/

 

I cannot logically hold any ill will towards PEGIDA or oppose their beliefs.

[igotthis 12]

2 hours ago, OcramsRzr said:

I cannot logically hold any ill will towards PEGIDA or oppose their beliefs.

I can see the temptation, but I could not, in good conscience, condone the rhetoric and suppressed hate. I think that processes are broken and that is causing the problem, along with broken countries (Greece) and overwhelmed ones (Turkey) that simply cannot handle one of the greatest migrations in recent memory. There are a lot of issues that should be addressed, but not from a stance of no-sympathy. Just my two cents.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

9 hours ago, OcramsRzr said:

A demographic known for the highest rates of violence and destruction despite claiming the opposite decided to commit acts of terrorism against the peaceful peoples (who welcomed them with open arms and lifted their standard of living) instead of assimilating.

http://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-attacks-terrorism-europe-muslims-brussels-attacks-airport-metro/

 

I cannot logically hold any ill will towards PEGIDA or oppose their beliefs.

If one is not there and I don't think one is entitled to that kind of rigid opinion.  The fact that anyone could hold such a belief is an indication that the terrorists are winning.

[LexusInfernus 908]

13 hours ago, OcramsRzr said:

A demographic known for the highest rates of violence and destruction despite claiming the opposite decided to commit acts of terrorism against the peaceful peoples (who welcomed them with open arms and lifted their standard of living) instead of assimilating.

http://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-attacks-terrorism-europe-muslims-brussels-attacks-airport-metro/

 

I cannot logically hold any ill will towards PEGIDA or oppose their beliefs.

No? No you can't find any reason why a bunch of Neo Nazis might be wrong? You can't find any reason for opposing their beliefs? Well, thats your business really.

As for the article, lets take a moment to dissect it. First, lets go over the arguments it makes. First it claims that there are two arguments for why this happens. One is that Muslims have more trouble moving up the social ladder, they are more likely to be employed and the reasons for that are supposedly racism on our side. But, as the author points out, there is more unemployment in Spain, more unemployment in Morocco and no one over there is blowing themselves up. So logically this argument shouldn't hold any water. 

The other argument is basically that a significant portion of Muslims is just still incredibly backward and stupid, mentally undeveloped and that causes them to hate our superior secular society. 

Right.........and somehow the author expects me to buy the second argument. Okay, fine, lets take a closer look at the first argument. Firs, the writer is utterly wrong when he says no one has blown themselves up in Spain. Remember Madrid 2004? Sure, that was just one attack, but then again, there has only been one attack in Belgium so far as well. And frankly it took much longer in Belgium before one decided to blow himself up than in Spain. Furthermore, this argument also kinda ignores the whole point of terrorism. Terrorist want spectacle, they want attention, they want to cause an as big of an impact as possible. Frankly, not enough people give a damn about Spain to care for to long if they decided to blow up an airport there, especially not outside tourism season. Brussels on the other hand? The seat of the EU? The seat of NATO? Capital of Belgium? A North-Western European nation? Close to the Netherlands, close to Germany? Yeah that will get peoples attention and will keep their attention for a while. Don't believe me? Well, the fact that both you and the author have apparently forgotten that in 2004 Al Qaeda set off bombs on a commuter train that killed 192 people. Everyone remembers 9/11, everyone remembers the London bombings, but Spain? ehh, not as much. 

But the real problem of the first argument, or at least the way the first argument is presented, is its gross oversimplification of the problem of racism. Sure, it causes Muslim men more trouble when looking for a job, that is certainly one aspect of it. But the far more problematic aspect is the way the racism manifests itself into the political and public discourse of Belgium. The far right parties who gain a significant portion of the vote and who literally have been copying Nazi slogans for their own use. The constant hammering on 'Muslims' as an entire group of people who are all supposedly criminals, terrorists, homophobic and welfare queens. Or groups like Pegida in Germany, who make similar claims. Or in the Netherlands where we have Geert Wilders, and before him Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, who have all claimed, or are still claiming, that Muslims as a group are inherently stupid and dangerous. Basically what Donald Trump does with Mexicans right now, European far right politicians have been doing for over a decade or longer with Muslims.

A nice example of this racist discourse is basically this article, which dismisses racism as a problem, and instead comes up with an incredibly racist counter argument, namely that most Muslims are basically to backward to live in our society peacefully, like they are a bunch of barbarians. And that the only way forward is if Muslims just shed their 'barbarism' and all will be fine. Or if not, they should be deported or something. And Islam should be banned. 

But, I shouldn't be surprised, this was written by Leon De Winter, a radical zionist who has been making these types of arguments for quite some time now. 

In any case, this constant pressure from far right politicians and opinion makers has resulted in a polarized we vs them type of situation. At the one hand we have 'normal' Europeans and at the other hand we have 'The Muslims'. We pressure them to look inward towards other Muslims, because we make it more difficult for them to be both Muslims and functioning members of society. And it is within this us vs them situation that it becomes possible that at the one hand people are radicalizing because they feel they are under constant attack and because they have retreated into their own little echo chambers, while at the other hand it becomes difficult for us to spot who is radicalizing because we turned the Muslim community into a relatively insular community. 

Mind you though, that the same is happening at 'our' side, with Anders Breivik being the most famous example, but given the amount of hostility that is caused by the idea of settling refugees near where people live and the arson attacks on refugee centers we can safely say that there are plenty of 'normal' Europeans who have become radicalized terrorists as well. 

 

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I do not support PEGIDA but I can no longer "armchair activist" oppose their core tenets. I must admit that I do not oppose Eugenics either and the NAZI argument holds no water because they committed genocide while using good PR(opaganda).

I have seen the statistics, the rate of violence overall is extremely low these days but Muslims commit statistically significantly more violence. The world is messed up because of wars and resource depletion so I see no future for this society/civilization other than destruction. I hope a better one will replace it before the population decreases below 900 billion.

[Linoa06 1,374]

25 minutes ago, OcramsRzr said:

I do not support PEGIDA but I can no longer "armchair activist" oppose their core tenets. I must admit that I do not oppose Eugenics either and the NAZI argument holds no water because they committed genocide while using good PR(opaganda).

I have seen the statistics, the rate of violence overall is extremely low these days but Muslims commit statistically significant more violence. The world is messed up because of wars and resource depletion so I see no future for this society/civilization other than destruction. I hope a better one will replace it before the population decreases below 900 billion.

Interesting view on life. I would love to see the statistics on Muslims though. Keep in mind correlation does not mean causation either. :>

Do we have any stats on the presumably Christian population that slaughters people in America on a daily basis? Surely (no matter one's opinion on gun control) no one believes mass shootings happen because of their religion? So why blaming the other side solely on their religion? 

I'm fairly certain there are other factors, such as cultural or economic ones...but I'm not taking any side (I do not blindly defend anyone), and I'll sit here, and wait for the statistics. =)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There are billions of Muslims.  Most of them live in peace wherever they are in the world.  Just south of me there is a large city with a fairly significant Muslim population that has been there for many years.  It is like any other Canadian city: polyglot, polytheistic, and quiet.  There happens to be a university of wide international reputation there and it attracts all peoples as both students and faculty.  There is no "campus unrest" seen by the public.

All this flap about "Muslim violence" is mostly BS dreamed up by the media for sales purposes.  Yes, there are cultural differences, and Islam is at about the same stage of development at the Catholic Church was at that stage of its development.  Many Muslims live in poor countries where life is short, dark and ugly.  And thanks to some more rabid Christian missionaries they have a Christian community along side.  Most of these people live in peace.

Terrorists of any stripe are doing their level best to disturb all this and cause disruptions for their private advantage.  The more fear they spread the more effective their operations.  They are not a great deal different from the anarchists of the 1920s, who were also against the established social order.  The fourth estate doesn't help this by giving them fancy monikers like 'terrorist', 'insurgent', 'freedom fighters' (an oxymoron if there ever was one).  What these people should be called are criminals and murderers.  Just because they cherry pick some religious texts is no reason to emphasize their 'belief'.  Perhaps a better moniker for them might be 'apostate' or 'heretic'.  Using a people's religious beliefs to cause strife is not new.  It is also reprehensible and should be decried with the loudest voices.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I don't want to use statistics to try to prove causation. Causation of violence is a complicated issue and boils down to mentality, which itself is a complicated function of standard of living, culture, beliefs, and illness. The article I posted ruled put standard of living and mental illness is random (not concentrated in any religious group or ethnicity). Culture and religion shape internal beliefs but great variation exists. That explains why most muslims are peaceful because most humans prefer nonviolence. However, violent criminals often seek justification for their acts the best justifications are self-defense, material needs, and systems (such as government, religion, or company/cartel/syndicate) that condone violence. Most violence perpetrated within the USA is caused by self-defense, material needs, or mental illness. Most violence perpetrated in parts of Africa is caused by country borders that cut through tribes and join different tribes. We only call it "Civil War" because the colonial powers divided up Africa to conquer with this method of political borders dissonent with national (tribal) borders.

Currently, Islam is the system being used by with the greatest number of violent criminals for justification. Many violent criminals have converted to Islam (I will provide statistics for conversion within prisons). Catholicism was in the same position during the Dark Ages. State-sponsored violence in the PRC and USSR both caused more deaths.

The teachings of Jeshua of Nazareth and the Buddha are both pacifist in nature. The Old Testament is full of violence and religious justification for it, as is the Koran. I prefer coexistence and conservation but devout Christians and devout Muslims disagree with each other because Mohammed waged war to separate his people from the Jewish and Christian hegemonies. War is un-Christ-like and the empires at the time were oppressive to Arabs.

 

In short, I believe the statistics for violence overall reflect violent criminals seeking Islam as justification for their aggression, nothing more, nothing less. The acts of terrorism in civilized nations arose from insular cultures and inadequate checks on preventing the few terrorists from entering along with the tide of peaceful refugees.

 

I will post statistics when I get onto my laptop.

[igotthis 12]

11 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

There are billions of Muslims.

I think the last count said there are 1.6 billion muslims. I wouldn't say their are billions.

IGT

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A quibble.  More than 1 billion is like counting sheep.   You know, one, two, many sheep.  A billion, by the way, is a physically imperceivable number.  If one has a billion of anything with any mass, it is impossible to grasp what you would be seeing.  Just try it on a thousand, then square the number and see how you feel.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Paris/Brussels attacks suspects taken.

Maybe it's my perspective, but almost all of these suspect appear to be very young.  I guess the inexperienced are the most susceptible to the radicalism that seems to abound in these cases.  How people so young can be filled with such violent hate is astonishing in some degree.  It is always the youth that rushes to war.

"Where have all the flowers gone?".

[Ocram's Razr 963]

As promised, sources in the shallow web

http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/02/vox-sets-out-to-prove-all-religions-are-equally-violent-and-fails/   evidence that statistics are unreliable outside fully developed, civilized nations

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/14/religious-violence-pew-survey_n_4596169.html   religious violence and government restrictions on religion

http://www.pewforum.org/2012/03/22/prison-chaplains-exec/    slightly outdated figures on religious conversion

 

Do you want me to cite (APA style) the sources requiring subscriptions. I'm sure you can find them on that Russian site.

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The UN-supported government of Libya makes an amphibious landing.

Hundreds(?) of rebel(?) factions (opportunists?) are running out of moolah, so a legitimate government may have a chance here.  Arab spring?  Turned out to be another dry hole in the Tatooine desert.

[Dreadnought 8,226]

I keep seeing the news from Greece --

Where they turn away refugees on the east cost and keep the ones they already have penned up along the northern border.

My high school geography teacher once told us that the world was divided into "those that have -- and those that have not".  And he predicted what we see now.  He was merely repeating a "popular" social theory of the day -- to a bunch of teenagers only worried about getting to the drive-in on Friday night with their date.

Fifty years on I have lived long enough to see and fully comprehend what he already knew. 

And it is only the beginning...

[LexusInfernus 908]

What you are seeing in Greece is just the result of bad policy planning. This could all have been avoided so easily, if Europe had made some work of its immigration and asylum policies. 

As for pretending that those people should stick around in the region, well most do. Even so, its ridiculous that one of the richest places on the planet, with over 500 million citizens, can't make place for a few million refugees fleeing war, and yet expect a bunch of relatively weak and poor nations around Syria with only a few million citizens take on the vast majority. Aside the fact that such a division of labor is obviously unfair, its also bad for our long term objectives in both the region and for ourselves. Whats gonna happen to countries where suddenly the second biggest city is going to be a refugee camp? To places where the infrastructure was designed around for the normal population, and suddenly has to take in almost twice that number? When there aren't enough teachers or doctors and schools or hospitals to help people? Its another conflict just waiting to happen. And then what? Are we going to demand that the refugees from that conflict will again stay in the region so we can pledge money to the UN and pretend we are part of the solution? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The infrastructure problems that are now emerging in the "refugee crisis" is the result of neglecting infrastructure funding in favour of favourite and more visible projects which enhance the "reputation" of politicians.  The decaying natural gas distribution systems in various countries that have been in place for a century or so with nearly no maintenance is a prime example of "it can wait until the next budget" attitude on infrastructure funding.  I expect there will be more catastrophic gas explosions in urban neighbourhoods as the neglect continues.

[Dreadnought 8,226]

Have you checked the real estate values in Flint, Michigan lately?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

1 hour ago, Dreadnought said:

Have you checked the real estate values in Flint, Michigan lately?

No, but I'll bet they have taken a big plunge.  Lead in the water probably makes most places unsellable.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Not sure if this has been posted here before, but this sums up the infrastructure issue pretty concisely:

 

Disclaimer:  This is basically my career field.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Satire might just work if nothing else does.  How about a nice juicy disaster flick featuring the natural failure of the Hoover Dam.  It could be called "Lights out in Sin City" with an alternate title "How Los Angeles Was Washed into the Pacific Ocean".  Just imagine what would happen if the remaining contents of Lake Meade went roaring down the Colorado River.

Much of the infrastructure on this continent is well past its best before date even if the original contractor was on the up and up.  Some have been found with too high a sand ratio in their concrete (bridges in Montreal).

What kind of public disaster do you suppose it will take for people to wake up and discover that:

1. The governments don't have money;
2. The only place they get any money is through taxes; and
3. If people and corporations cheat on taxes, don't expect to get any services.

And this is only with respect to power dams.  What do you suppose would happen if a major gas trunk that is probably 100 years or more old should break and someone should drop a lighted cigarette near the leak?  Ka-BOOM! 

Can't blame that one on terrorists unless you consider governments part of that crowd.

[LexusInfernus 908]

9 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

The infrastructure problems that are now emerging in the "refugee crisis" is the result of neglecting infrastructure funding in favour of favourite and more visible projects which enhance the "reputation" of politicians.  The decaying natural gas distribution systems in various countries that have been in place for a century or so with nearly no maintenance is a prime example of "it can wait until the next budget" attitude on infrastructure funding.  I expect there will be more catastrophic gas explosions in urban neighbourhoods as the neglect continues.

What infrastructure problems? Or more precisely, what infrastructure problems are arising specifically from the refugee crisis, and are a direct result of political neglect of politicians? In Europe? Our infrastructure is generally just fine. Depends on the country. And is any of it the result of political neglect? Well maybe in a place like Greece, but in other European countries? Not really. 

In cases where the infrastructure is getting taxed due to the refugee crisis, we are talking about countries in the region. Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan. And thats not due to neglect, that due to those countries suddenly having to deal with millions of refugees each. I mean, Jordan takes in about 1.4 million refugees on a population of 9 million. Their population effectively increased with over 15% in the course of a few years. There isn't a lot you can do to prepare for that. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Syria: Air strikes on urban areas are fraught with risks like this.

Somebody in the intelligence community who picks targets has a thing for MSF facilities.  Whoever it is needs to be ferreted out and removed with extreme prejudice.

[LexusInfernus 908]

People are bombing cities, of course they are gonna hit hospitals and schools and other 'forbidden' targets at some point. No weapon is 100% accurate, no intelligence is 100% accurate, and if you are using bombs, be they barrel bombs or JDAM's mistakes like this have very deadly consequences for the people you hit. 

But hey, thats just 'collateral damage'. No wonder that jihadists have such ease recruiting people to their cause.  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Accident, smacksident.  Four separate targeted strikes on a single facility is no accident.  Bombing urban areas is a war crime no matter what you might like to call collateral damage.  Not even Scrooge would reduce the excess population this way.

[Dreadnought 8,226]

It's called "strategy" --

And if you WIN the war , it's called "brilliant" --

If you lose -- it's called a "war crime".

And -- sadly -- too many people view it that way.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The people of Syria are the losers.  There will be no winners.

[Dreadnought 8,226]

I was thinking more of the Nurnberg Trials, actually.

"The People" as we are wont to call them -- rarely, if ever, win. 

The rich and powerful that control nations and events hardly ever give a thought to them.  If they had ever "been" to a war -- they might not be so quick to "loose the dogs of war".

But, on the other hand, there are those that choose political and financial gain regardless of the human suffering.

It was that way long before history was even recorded -- and will be that way long after we are unable to record our own history.

[LexusInfernus 908]

19 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

Bombing urban areas is a war crime no matter what you might like to call collateral damage.  

Yeah well that are New Wars for you. Its warfare designed to be waged against the civilian population of an area. 

Of course they are war crimes, but what are you going to do about it? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Personally, I am not going to do anything except to continue to support the existence of the International Court of Justice whose job it is to redress such things.