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For the record not really looking for any debates or I would have created a topic there...

Yesterday there were several sieges on France's capitol. There's been 9 attackers accounted for, 8 suicide bombers and one assailant who has been killed. At the time of writing this, 127 people have died from the attack. I'm sure you guys all know. I found out at a hockey game yesterday from my friend and I couldn't believe the size of the attack. We all had a moment of silence in the arena for the victims.

What concerns me is that David Cameron seems concerned that the UK is going to be the next to be attacked. I really hope that's not the case, and there won't be any more senseless violence. I'll be keeping all of the European members in my thoughts.

(http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/International/ap_paris_shooting_12_kb_150107_1_16x9_992.jpg)

Yeah... I found out about this today on the bus to my volunteering place. It makes me angry and worried both for Parisians and myself. Granted I live in outer London, but it's still worrying when I go visit Central on Sundays, you know? Really hope the attacks don't spread over to England, but after some guy got arrested for holding on to two guns in Gatwick airport today...

 Germany will probably be next.

Britain is unlikely tbh but the other European countries are likely to see some tragedies.

Not being funny, it's actually really annoying to see this happening on our Frenchfam's soil. They target innocent civilians who can't defend themselves too? "For Syria!" was apparently shouted.

Heard about the attacks on the news.
The world has gone mad. Things like this shouldn't be happening as often as they do. My sympathies for the families and those affected by this.

Allegedly a man has been arrested at Gatwick with a firearm. Anywhere could be next, it's all extremely tragic and condolences go out to those affected.

Death toll I heard last was 160+.

You don't wanna hear my views on this unless you really like my rants about white privilege and the messed up culture in the west.  All I know is that there's too much war mongering in the world that this won't be handled rationally.

 Please don't say the Frenchfams were asking to be massacred and executed via explosives whilst trying to enjoy a friendly football game.

I think it's respectful if we don't share our views on "why" given it just happened. It's not going to do anything but make people upset at this point in time.

Quote from: umbreon#100 on November 14, 2015, 23:24
Please don't say the Frenchfams were asking to be massacred and executed via explosives whilst trying to enjoy a friendly football game.

Luckily, that's nothing close to what my view is.  This event is a horrid attack resulting from years of every side mishandling the other.  There is a fairly singular cause but all reactions that followed it have been horrific at best.

The terrorists aren't the only evil here.  That's all I'm going to hint at.  Look at the Islamophobia being plastered all over the news and the Islamophobia that's been plastered all over the news over the years.  In a way, the people who died in France just now were victims of corrupt western media and corrupt eastern extremism, and both of those things have fed off each other.  This has led to many incidents like the one that just occurred.

I can go more into it if you want.  But don't, for even a microsecond, imply that I'm doing any sort of victim blaming or saying people deserved to die.  Nobody deserved to die.


EDIT:  I've also heard ISIS has threatened Russia.

 Man, I'm just glad that you're not one of those Tumblr plebs who spout "SCREW WHITEY" at any chance they get. Yeah, I get you. Islamaphobia has been pushed through our media for years.

I was seriously hoping you weren't going to copy and paste some article from Tumblr lol.

I don't think those people are "tumblr plebs" but I am going to say that white privilege and white superiority is also a factor in all of this.

The idea of Islamophobia basically appeals to a standard white household.  Furthermore, this whole idea of white superiority is another cause of this whole nonsense, and this is pushed by politicians and also felt by minorities who are in majority white areas.  Case in point:  the fact that you were ready to call me a tumblr pleb over bringing up the fact that white privilege is a small part of this.

Also thinking our way of life and government is superior to the east when sometimes they do have a stable government - not necessarily democracy - is another cause of this.  And the idea of Islamophobia is spread among what amounts to white people as well.

I know someone who lives in France and she has seen many tweets from reporters that are basically like "this is all due to the mosqu-ification of France."

You may think that, sure, not all white people are the same.  And this is true.  But the idea is that the entire white "culture" being inherently superior and attempting to "modernize" eastern culture based upon white "culture" is perpetuated quite strongly.  People may not mean it, people may just be ignorant.  There's also a good chunk of white people who are racist and homophobic, the numbers being higher than you are probably aware.  But in general the idea of white privilege and western superiority is a factor in all of this.

If you take a moment to step back and read stuff on tumblr (well, the less acidic stuff, because there is a lot of acidity on tumblr regardless of which side you are on) with an open mind instead of assuming it's all the same crap you'll see the point in there.


EDIT:  I can sense you were very close to using SJW as an insult to label me or something.  I would avoid that if I were you, because the acronym "SJW" perpetuates ignorance.  Some people take things to extremes but that doesn't mean that they don't have a point.

lol muhed go OFF!!!!!
I essentially came here to say the same stuff you were, down to the sjw-as-an-insult and assuming tumblr doesn't know what it's talking about

This, coupled with the white supremacist ideology behind the #jesuischarlie campaign - Charlie hebdo was racist, not a hero or a cornerstone of free speech, don't come near me with that narrative - are heavily based around white privilege. Remember that France is notorious for anti-Islam sentiment and violence, as well as anti-semetic. Europe as a whole is built on the violence towards non white people and colonialism as a whole. I'm not victim blaming either, I'm blaming the media who use these attacks to perpetuate the stereotype of All Brown People Are Bloodthirsty Terrorists. France - Charlie hebdo included - pushed this stereotype through their media, and as a result, attacks like these happen.

I do feel sympathy for France, but I feel stronger sympathy for the Non white people living in France and Europe as a whole as a result of these attacks. The media will be pushing the terrorist stereotype harder than usual in these coming days, or weeks, and the media will barely touch upon the anti-Muslim violence and hate speech, because they are not white.

Keep an eye on the fact the media will sympathise with the Poor White Country being invaded by these BARBARIANS, but speak almost nothing of the fact countries with barely a white population being invaded by white countries and treated the same as the people in France were. The victims here are white, and it's down to the media on how this will hurt non white people in the long run.

I'm not sure i worded any of this right. I'm really tired and on mobile, but I have mixed feelings about this entire thing. Sympathy of course, but dread for the affect it will have on innocent Muslims the media will paint as villains in a very direct way.

rumours of attacks of London, Rome and Washington DC have made me pretty unsettled. I'm actually going to London in two weeks so you can probably see why I'm so freaked out haha

I watched this unfold on the news (even though it was midnight at the time) and I just... I hate the fact humans are like this. I hate the fact we judge each other by skin/religion. I feel for the French - those who witnessed the attack, lost relatives or are just plain French - but also for the billions of innocent Muslims who are being lumped in with 8 complete, utter arseholes who decided to besmirch the name of a peaceful religion for their own gain.

I said to my mum I knew that they some had probably come across as refugees - and that they won't be the last sleeper agents to do this. People are trying to flee war that ISIS/Daesh are fuelling, and they're sending men willing to die for a twisted cause and take out as many people as possible with them? It's messed up.

EDIT: One was identified as a French Muslim, and another supposedly had a Syrian passport that the Greek's had on the refugee system

 Lord Raven, I didn't call you a Tumblr pleb. You know that I didn't call you a Tumblr pleb. What's with the weird aggression? I didn't aim any insult at you until now and that's because you just come off as twisted and bitter because I didn't actually throw any personal insults. You're appear to be looking for a legitimate argument that could potentially turn nasty.

You proceeded to argue with me despite me not actually engaging you seriously until now. Maybe you lost your cool because you (evidently) thought that I was trying to passively insult you and that's understandable. If you thought I was trying to insult you on a Pokemon forum then maybe you should have messaged me personally instead of arguing with someone who wasn't interested in talking to you.

SJW is an insult and for the most part because Tumblr regurgitates the same toxic crap without looking at the actual facts. Like when you (Sylar) thought Elliot Rodgers exclusively killed women because that's what you read on Tumblr. Obviously you'll find less-subjective material on Tumblr but generally it's highly subjective and that's why it should never be used as a news source (the same goes for 4Chan).

France is sympathised with because they're in the EU and they're Britain's allies. It's not some conspiracy. They're receiving coverage and attention because there has been a terrorist attack in a country and that attack specifically targeted unarmed civilians who had no means to defend themselves. There was no possible way for these civilians to defend themselves against guns and explosives. It's not even difficult hard to understand.

The deaths of over 100 civilians shouldn't be used an excuse to argue on the internet. Grow some integrity.

I'm not going to continue arguing with either of you. This is it. If either of you have a problem with me or my opinions then you can message me.

Quote from: umbreon#100 on November 15, 2015, 18:13SJW is an insult

sjw just means u care about ppl and want to help change the world... how dat an insult

also lol quit denying its literally white privilege? thats what it is? u said it yourself; paris is in the eu, the eu is primarily white, paris is primarily white with a history of anti islam violence. were not looking for excuses, were trying to point out that this is an act of white violence. just because you refuse to believe white privilege happens doesnt mean it isnt happening here.

also nice job bringing up stuff i said months ago. i got my info before it came out that hed killed men too. his act of violence was based on misogyny, but that isnt what were debating here.

Quote from: umbreon#100 on November 15, 2015, 18:13Lord Raven, I didn't call you a Tumblr pleb. You know that I didn't call you a Tumblr pleb. What's with the weird aggression? I didn't aim any insult at you until now and that's because you just come off as twisted and bitter because I didn't actually throw any personal insults. You're appear to be looking for a legitimate argument that could potentially turn nasty.

I'm not really looking for an argument nor did I say you called me a tumblr pleb.  I was clarifying my stance on things and clarifying how your post actually sounded close-minded and how presumptuous you were before I made a post.  You already accused me of supporting the Muslims in the terrorist attacks, then you feared that I would make a post that resembles an "SJW" on tumblr.  Yeah, okay.

QuoteYou proceeded to argue with me despite me not actually engaging you seriously until now. Maybe you lost your cool because you (evidently) thought that I was trying to passively insult you and that's understandable. If you thought I was trying to insult you on a Pokemon forum then maybe you should have messaged me personally instead of arguing with someone who wasn't interested in talking to you.

Don't tell me how to conduct myself, especially since you pretty much did insult me.

QuoteSJW is an insult and for the most part because Tumblr regurgitates the same toxic crap without looking at the actual facts. Like when you (Sylar) thought Elliot Rodgers exclusively killed women because that's what you read on Tumblr. Obviously you'll find less-subjective material on Tumblr but generally it's highly subjective and that's why it should never be used as a news source (the same goes for 4Chan).

This is about the Paris attacks, not Elliot Rodgers or that crap.  But I mean, Rodgers was very very misogynistic, so I think you may have been reading it the wrong way.

You will never find non-subjective material no matter what.  I know that SJW is an insult, but it's also clear you were implying it and it's also frustrating when the label is applied to basically anyone that is in favor of anything relating to, well, social justice.  Stuff on minorities, stuff on feminism, etc.

QuoteFrance is sympathised with because they're in the EU and they're Britain's allies. It's not some conspiracy. They're receiving coverage and attention because there has been a terrorist attack in a country and that attack specifically targeted unarmed civilians who had no means to defend themselves. There was no possible way for these civilians to defend themselves against guns and explosives. It's not even difficult hard to understand.

You're missing the point.  Read my post again.  There is coverage that specifically paints Islam in a negative light and you have no problem with this?  I've brought up examples of this too.

Ever seen a white terrorist in the media?  No, you probably haven't seen those words combined.  Because nobody ever calls them white!  It's because they're always mentally ill or something.  They try to garner up sympathy for white people, then they proceed to call an African America/European a thug or a Muslim person a terrorist.  There is a lot wrong with this and this is actually what happens in this world.  Open your eyes.

Let me further clarify that my experiences in Europe were filled with Islamophobia, and I know many Europeans who have told me the same.  I have ever argued with some British people ON THIS VERY FORUM who advocated crap like how immigrants were a pest to their society (despite being half-Pakistani himself!) and who said that Muslims should go back to their own country instead of trying to advocate Sharia Law in the UK when only a small minority of Muslims want that!  France is sympathized with because it's a majority white country that also happens to have more Islamophobia in its culture than the average country (again, look at any French media and you'll see it, and I can tell you about my experiences in Paris if you really want).  It's known for being much more culturally segregated than a ton of things.

Again, this is not victim blaming, these are facts I've heard from actual people living there.  This, in no way, is the fault of those at the concerts and soccer games and all of that.  This is the fault of the way the government has handled past things and how the media has attempted to portray people who aren't the majority.  This is the fault of all of these perpetuating this ass-backwards culture that we should not even see in the modern west!  Yet we still see it, and those who do not wish to acknowledge it try to attack people who do acknowledge it by throwing labels like SJW at them and try to play the pity card where they're like "wow this just happened why are you arguing?"  But I'm not the one using this as a vehicle in the media to advocate war or worse.  I'm not the one exploiting these people for attention and ratings.  Ultimately I am unable to do anything but talk about this and analyze what the hell went on, because I'm just talking about this on a small forum.

QuoteThe deaths of over 100 civilians shouldn't be used an excuse to argue on the internet. Grow some integrity.

I don't understand what integrity is in this instance.  Are you saying integrity is continuing to grieve what happened?  Because over here, we're discussing the issues.  Your entire point seems hinged by the fact that I seem to be coming onto here to look for an argument.  If you honestly think that, then you're being extremely presumptuous which is what led me to post those things to begin with.  You said that I seemed happy or whatever that all those people died, then you were almost expecting me to be an SJW.

You know why I care about how the media portrays Islam?  Because I grew up in a Muslim family, have met many Muslims and have family overseas.  Their lives are going to be affected negatively by the acts of terrorists who do stuff in the name of god when they're only doing it because some crazies came to power and are trying to just see the world burn.  I'm not using this as an excuse to argue.  I'm conveying my thoughts and now is a better time than any to do so.  This will encourage war with middle eastern countries which will further a cycle of hatred and propaganda towards Muslim people.  It's almost as if western countries could use Paris as a jumping point to actually incite a war, because the way the media is portraying it that's exactly what the west wants and that's exactly what the middle east wants.

I'm actually really pissed that you're assuming I'm using this tragedy as an excuse to argue.  No, I am not, and I posted a few rants because quite frankly this whole thing is ludicrous.  It is awful that this tragedy has occurred and it is also awful how the media is dealing with it.  It is also awful how there's gonna be more death and dying because there is some propaganda out there for the need for retribution.  I've seen some absolutely disgusting views - only from white people, in fact - suggesting we go in and eradicate them.  Basically advocating genocide.  You honestly think I have zero integrity here?  I'm just looking at the facts and how all of this started and trying to assess how the situation got so messed up that so many people have died.

QuoteI'm not going to continue arguing with either of you. This is it. If either of you have a problem with me or my opinions then you can message me.

At least take some responsibility for your words and pretend like you've read our points.  You nitpicked one minor point that was a late edit and then you took some shots at me.  Come on.  If you don't wanna take a crap then get off the pot, otherwise you're wasting everyone's time and energy.






Do you now see why I was hesitant to express my views on this?  Literally only like 5 people would have my back on this.  Do not insult my character or insinuate anything about it if you don't want an argument.

I take issue with "islamophobia" when used in the same breath as homophobia, transphobia or racism. Nobody is born Islamic, it is a belief. I'm not excusing Islamic discrimination, but there is a big difference between choosing to believe something and being born a certain way.

If attacks on people with racist beliefs was called "Bigotphobia" I can't imagine there'd be as many people standing up.

Calling Charlie Hebdo 'Islamophobic' is about as meaningless as calling the majority of the internet 'Christianophobic', it's basically putting forward the idea that people's beliefs, no matter how hateful, absurd or comical should not be allowed to be criticized or made fun of, despite the fact that this is done daily in Newspapers globally with political and personal beliefs all the time.

I think if you live in a country that is famous for having no laws against blasphemy you need to accept the fact that your religion isn't sacred there and will be challenged freely. Blatant Islamic (or any religious) discrimination is a bad thing but it's absolutely no different from being brought up with any other kind of belief. We can't be apologetic to delusion just because it's commonplace else we'd still be under Christian rule hanging homosexuals and heretics for some nonsense that doesn't exist.

Quote from: Turner on November 15, 2015, 18:44
I take issue with "islamophobia" when used in the same breath as homophobia, transphobia or racism. Nobody is born Islamic, it is a belief. I'm not excusing Islamic discrimination, but there is a big difference between choosing to believe something and being born a certain way.

Depends on if you view Islam as a culture and religion hybrid or just purely a religion.  Because often times, you're born into a culture and you're told to conform or be treated as an outsider.  Happens a lot to people born into said culture growing up.

It's also much easier to point out Islam because the countries that it developed in tend to have a very similar culture.  But again, young children are often discriminated against in schools before many even have the chance to make the choice and adults who were born into a Muslim family are often treated as no different regardless of views they have now.

At any rate, I'll address this some more later in the post when it is appropriate.

QuoteIf attacks on people with racist beliefs was called "Bigotphobia" I can't imagine there'd be as many people standing up.

Probably because those beliefs are harmful.  The way the majority of Muslims apply their beliefs are not harmful.

QuoteCalling Charlie Hebdo 'Islamophobic' is about as meaningless as calling the majority of the internet 'Christianophobic', it's basically putting forward the idea that people's beliefs, no matter how hateful, absurd or comical should not be allowed to be criticized or made fun of, despite the fact that this is done daily in Newspapers globally with political and personal beliefs all the time.

I don't think talking about Hebdo is a valid argument for Islamophobia, but I never brought him up.  Atrocious and unjustified action of terrorism regardless of whether or not portraying Muhammed is taboo in the east.

QuoteI think if you live in a country that is famous for having no laws against blasphemy you need to accept the fact that your religion isn't sacred there and will be challenged freely. Blatant Islamic (or any religious) discrimination is a bad thing but it's absolutely no different from being brought up with any other kind of belief. We can't be apologetic to delusion just because it's commonplace else we'd still be under Christian rule hanging homosexuals and heretics for some nonsense that doesn't exist.

First off, I expected better from you than to outright deny religion.  I'm not religious myself but I'm not going to call it a delusion because I don't agree with it.  But this isn't what I want to argue.

Christians are significantly less discriminated against in the eyes of media and culture than Muslims and Jews.  I'm going to also posit that it's not necessarily just Christians but white people compared to people growing up in a middle eastern culture/religion are given much more the time of day in terms of sympathy than white people.  In many cases neither of them are pardoned simply for their beliefs.

You can challenge Islam however the goddamn hell you want but do not apply the terrorism label to one group of people and then just posit that another group of people is just mentally ill.  There is much more sympathy out here for school shooters who are white than a black NFL player talking trash after making the play that got his team to the Super Bowl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PH35C7Fhq0).  The latter was portrayed as a thug all over the media.

I'd also like to note that this is strictly a media thing where the majority gets their views.  Our Islamophobia contributes to their phobia of the west, leads to a very "us vs them" mentality that spreads hatred.  Especially since the west armed Afghanistan, the west has lead to the destruction of governments that has allowed ISIS to take over, and the west has continued this string of hatred by further by actually taking a dump on the majority of those country's people.  It's awful propaganda that has led to these tensions.

I'd also like to note that Islam is given a far rougher time in the media than Christianity and Judaism.  Probably because most people who are forced to make these reports are going to vouch for the "white" religion and not the middle eastern one.  That garners more sympathy!

*quietly pushes fingers against skull because i agree with like half of what everyone's saying and disagree with the other half except turner who i really don't agree w at all but let's not go tthere because honestly i don't trsut you*

honestly? the way i see it is best thing to do now if you aren't a politician is to focus on offering solidarity to the french whilst filing away the way that everyone is so quick to offer solidarity to the french yet when the kenyan shooting happened etc etc there was very little jump to change flags etc so that it can be brought up in protest later.  but i do mean later, because at the moment it's still very raw and whilst it obviously is not, to bring up the treatment of others beyond passing acknowledgment does at this point - so soon afterwards - feels something similar to trivialising others' suffering.  presently, it feels like 'we didn't get this treatment so you don't deserve it' as opposed to 'if you're getting this treatment then why can't we??'

it's awful. but it's the act that's awful, not that the act happened in paris.  and that seems to be where the miscommunication is happening

nb: i know im naive u don't have to tell me that i'm naive
edit: solidarity obvs needs to be offered to everyone affected by the shooting and that includes people who are now being bitten against over people's presumptuous and bigoted views

Yeah, Paris weren't the only attacks, but effectively because of the race of the people affected it's easiest to get sympathy for them than like Kenya.

In my own country and home city, the police are crooked as hell and the fact that they needed riots to bring attention to the issues that our city faces due to its corrupt police is ludicrous.  This has been happening for years and there was a TV show made to express this and nobody batted an eye to it until riots broke out.  The riots didn't even break out en masse in the city, it broke out for like a day in a very select region of the city when 90% of it was peaceful protesting, but because black people were protesting over a black person dying due to police brutality it was easy fodder to use the "thug" label.

There are seriously numerous examples of this throughout western media.

(http://i.imgur.com/ZniC4LE.gif)

can i just butt in here and politely (and ironically) point out that the picture in the OP is from the charlie hebdo protests in january

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 15, 2015, 19:12
First off, I expected better from you than to outright deny religion.  I'm not religious myself but I'm not going to call it a delusion because I don't agree with it.  But this isn't what I want to argue.

It is delusional though. It doesn't really matter whether or not you 'agree' with it, the fact is that it simply isn't real. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in what they want, but we're constantly walking on eggshells with this issue because some people 'really believe it' and are willing to cause horrific amounts of destruction based on their beliefs. If you massacred a bunch of people on a train because you believed a magical frog who lives in space told you it was the right thing to do you'd be lobotomized, treated as absolutely clinically insane and not given the time of day by anyone. Yet somehow, when someone commits a terrorist attack in the name of religion suddenly there are apologists crawling out of the woodwork trying to subtly blame the victims for insulting that person's delusion.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 15, 2015, 19:12
Christians are significantly less discriminated against in the eyes of media and culture than Muslims and Jews.  I'm going to also posit that it's not necessarily just Christians but white people compared to people growing up in a middle eastern culture/religion are given much more the time of day in terms of sympathy than white people.  In many cases neither of them are pardoned simply for their beliefs.

You can challenge Islam however the goddamn hell you want but do not apply the terrorism label to one group of people and then just posit that another group of people is just mentally ill.  There is much more sympathy out here for school shooters who are white than a black NFL player talking trash after making the play that got his team to the Super Bowl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PH35C7Fhq0).  The latter was portrayed as a thug all over the media.

I'd also like to note that this is strictly a media thing where the majority gets their views.  Our Islamophobia contributes to their phobia of the west, leads to a very "us vs them" mentality that spreads hatred.  Especially since the west armed Afghanistan, the west has lead to the destruction of governments that has allowed ISIS to take over, and the west has continued this string of hatred by further by actually taking a dump on the majority of those country's people.  It's awful propaganda that has led to these tensions.

I'd say it's military occupation that has led to these tensions more than anything else. There are countries out there with far more blatantly racist or islamophobic propaganda than the West and they don't live under the fear of terrorism because they don't have any military involvement in the tensions of the Middle East.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 15, 2015, 19:12
I'd also like to note that Islam is given a far rougher time in the media than Christianity and Judaism.  Probably because most people who are forced to make these reports are going to vouch for the "white" religion and not the middle eastern one.  That garners more sympathy!

More likely because the overwhelming majority of media empires are owned by Jews with a majority Conservative Christian readership. Of course they'll report stories with an anti-Muslim slant, pick up a left-wing newspaper and you'll see Islamic extremist apologists. Pick up a newspaper in the middle east and you're more likely to see a strong anti-west sentiment. Any media outlet will give its demographic what they want, they're not government owned and they don't have any obligation to tell the complete, unbiased truth. They're just there to make money.

It's like going to a pharmaceutical company to diagnose your illness rather than a doctor or GP and then complaining when they just sell you a bunch of their products that don't work. Yes it sucks and it's immoral, but what are you going to do about it? Sue them because you thought they would be honest? If you're complaining about the media then that's really a different issue altogether.

The simple fact is that there is a thriving, growing culture in the Middle East that champions the motions of carrying out terrorist attacks on Western civilians purely in the name of their religion. These people are not only seen as heroes for doing so, but are supported by an extremely large number of people.

The flipside is that a smattering of people in the West are, as a result, suspicious and hateful towards that religion. Like most people, I think that mentality isn't the right way of looking at things because obviously not everyone who believes in X will behave like Y.

However, to some extent I don't think it's difficult to understand where they're coming from and I equally don't think it's the most pressing issue here. You don't even need the media to reach their train of thought, the facts are overwhelmingly that terrorist attacks happening in the West are driven by specifically Islamic extremists with Anti-Western goals. If there was an unusual number of Red vans exploding in crowded public places around European cities, you could be forgiven for being suspicious or scared of Red vans if you lived in a European city and wanted some kind of action taken against them.

I really struggle to see the debate here. There is definitely a case to be made against Islamophobia and it is true that we shouldn't suddenly become overnight terrorist bigots blowing up mosques and gunning down civilians in Muslim spaces in the West just because of a few violent extremists, but that hasn't happened yet and it definitely shouldn't be the first word on people's lips when an event like this happens.

I would prefer it if we got a solid idea of what the terrorists want and then took appropriate military action that would protect civilians and cause the least amount of terrorist attacks in future. I think that's the most sensible thing to do.

Quote from: Turner on November 15, 2015, 21:33It is delusional though. It doesn't really matter whether or not you 'agree' with it, the fact is that it simply isn't real. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in what they want, but we're constantly walking on eggshells with this issue because some people 'really believe it' and are willing to cause horrific amounts of destruction based on their beliefs. If you massacred a bunch of people on a train because you believed a magical frog who lives in space told you it was the right thing to do you'd be lobotomized, treated as absolutely clinically insane and not given the time of day by anyone. Yet somehow, when someone commits a terrorist attack in the name of religion suddenly there are apologists crawling out of the woodwork trying to subtly blame the victims for insulting that person's delusion.

You're comparing religion to a magical frog thing.  You're already not very credible with this point right now, but this is not the point.  The fact that you think I am victim-blaming here - which I am not doing, and I'm not even doing it subtley because I have definitely watched the way I worded it here - is also a misconception.

Religion is not inherently delusional, and people get touchy because you use incredibly loaded words.  There's a difference between not believing in it and outright declaring it is the incorrect way to do it.

Nobody is acting like an apologist here.  In fact, the apologists are directed towards those who follow the religion who do not conduct such vile actions.  I am not sure what point you are trying to make either other than take a dump on religion, because the validity of religion is not what this discussion is about.

I'd also like to note that this probably would not happen in that instance, and the dude would not actually be reviled by people to the extent that the media is pushing this anti-Islam agenda out.  You're really kidding with that example right?  Because that dude would most likely just be put into trial and sentenced to death without a media stir.  If he were white then it's just a mental illness that is again pushed forward because he was a white male, and if he weren't white then he would be crazy and people would be calling for his head.  This is no different than what is actually happening now with Muslims, except that his "religion" consists of one person and Islam consists of many people.

Regardless of whether or not the dude was Christian or Atheist, he would still only be labeled as mentally ill.  Islam is also given a weird sort of culture-religion hybrid treatment too, so don't forget that.

QuoteI'd say it's military occupation that has led to these tensions more than anything else. There are countries out there with far more blatantly racist or islamophobic propaganda than the West and they don't live under the fear of terrorism because they don't have any military involvement in the tensions of the Middle East.

Yes, and what has spurned the military occupation?  What causes people to join the military to do this kinda stuff?  It's the anti-eastern propaganda.  And that whole viewpoint has spread like wildfire in an atrocious way.

QuoteMore likely because the overwhelming majority of media empires are owned by Jews with a majority Conservative Christian readership. Of course they'll report stories with an anti-Muslim slant, pick up a left-wing newspaper and you'll see Islamic extremist apologists. Pick up a newspaper in the middle east and you're more likely to see a strong anti-west sentiment. Any media outlet will give its demographic what they want, they're not government owned and they don't have any obligation to tell the complete, unbiased truth. They're just there to make money.

You're acting as if I am saying this does not make sense.  It does make sense, but it is completely messed up.

At any rate, it is a pretty messed up idea that "giving their demographic what they want" is what amounts to fear mongering.  The point is that this behavior has led to this stuff.  I'm very well aware of the idea of making money, if you didn't notice the fact that I pointed out someone who accused me of lacking integrity that the media outlets he heard this from are actually profiting off of this.

QuoteIt's like going to a pharmaceutical company to diagnose your illness rather than a doctor or GP and then complaining when they just sell you a bunch of their products that don't work. Yes it sucks and it's immoral, but what are you going to do about it? Sue them because you thought they would be honest? If you're complaining about the media then that's really a different issue altogether.

I am complaining about media, government, and societal attitudes/issues.  All of those have gone hand in hand.

Before you point this out as "subtle victim blaming", I'm going to point out that the views of 150 different people does not constitute the views of the general society.  150 dead people had nothing to do with this; it's more the millions or billions of people out west as a whole.

QuoteThe simple fact is that there is a thriving, growing culture in the Middle East that champions the motions of carrying out terrorist attacks on Western civilians purely in the name of their religion. These people are not only seen as heroes for doing so, but are supported by an extremely large number of people.

I don't think it's an "extremely" large number of people, because they rule by fear and spread their propaganda in ways not unlike us.  The west has indeed given them fodder to work with - ie an endless cycle of hatred.  And the west was given more fodder to work with so the media outlets can milk this incident and inspire fear among the people to fight another pointless war that will result in more and more of this crap.

QuoteThe flipside is that a smattering of people in the West are, as a result, suspicious and hateful towards that religion. Like most people, I think that mentality isn't the right way of looking at things because obviously not everyone who believes in X will behave like Y.

Which is crazy ironic because of the number of religious attacks carried out by Christian groups that are not painted in the same way.  It's dumb as hell because of the mental gymnastics involved in looking at one group of people as tribal, inferior, and violent when their own group has done the same and continues to do the same.

QuoteHowever, to some extent I don't think it's difficult to understand where they're coming from and I equally don't think it's the most pressing issue here. You don't even need the media to reach their train of thought, the facts are overwhelmingly that terrorist attacks happening in the West are driven by specifically Islamic extremists with Anti-Western goals. If there was an unusual number of Red vans exploding in crowded public places around European cities, you could be forgiven for being suspicious or scared of Red vans if you lived in a European city and wanted some kind of action taken against them.

I don't really care to understand it (and I do, I'm not stupid), but I do care that it's a vile mindset to slip into.

There have been shootings everywhere around the US and in the west by the way, and they have taken more lives as a whole than terrorist attacks.  There's no outrage over this unless the victim is not white.  Again, there is far more sympathy for the white male.  I am not saying this is unbelievable or hard to understand, but the fact is that this remains an issue that needs to be fixed.  It doesn't matter what I can do about it, I ultimately cannot, but I'm also gonna call it out when I see it.

QuoteI really struggle to see the debate here. There is definitely a case to be made against Islamophobia and it is true that we shouldn't suddenly become overnight terrorist bigots blowing up mosques and gunning down civilians in Muslim spaces in the West just because of a few violent extremists, but that hasn't happened yet and it definitely shouldn't be the first word on people's lips when an event like this happens.

I never suggested anything of the sort.  I never even tried to imply this.  The discrimination is less violent and more social in nature anyway, but I digress.

The issue is everything to do with how we react and the fact that this is happening.  I also get the idea that umbreon#100 basically doesn't see that this sort of racism and social discrimination isn't a thing, but I'm not sure where he stands on that because I just read 5 paragraphs of what amounts to an ad hominem attack.

QuoteI would prefer it if we got a solid idea of what the terrorists want and then took appropriate military action that would protect civilians and cause the least amount of terrorist attacks in future. I think that's the most sensible thing to do.

That's the other thing.  I simply don't trust people to do this.

The terrorists basically want power anyway and just use propaganda to bring allies against the west.  It's easy.  It's the same stuff we do here.  This is why I keep commenting on the vicious cycle anyway, because one has led to the other and back again.

I love how a topic meant towards mourning the loss of the many innocent lives taken Friday night has turned into one big argument.

This is my stance: Those lives shouldn't have been lost. Nonwhite people in europe are going to catch a lot of hell since the terrorist stereotype is going to be pushed even more than it was already, causing a lot more drama within France as well as throughout the world. Lastly, people need to remember it's one small sect within a group of people who are committing this heinous crimes, not an entire ethnicity or religion, and the fact that people are making blanket generalizations on the entirety of said group of people makes me sick.

I'm not trying to start another argument here, and anyone disagrees with what I have to say, please feel free to take it up with me in PM's instead of arguing about it here, causing everyone (including the admins) an even bigger headache. Thank you.

me in my burqa shocked at all of this terrible arguing itt on our good and green peaceful forum for sharing our love of the Pokémon!©®™ franchise and franchise accessories  ----->  :ph34r:





my 2 cents: its a real shame that civillans get caught up in what is essentially awful and bizarre double standards re: religion/angry religious extremism/war profiteering cos no matter what they're always the ones to suffer and never the ones who made said dumb/inflammatory decisions in the first place. its always a shame and rip to those who died and i really wish society would get over islam as the new boogeyman.

(for historical context about the tragedy of holy war see also: the Crusades)



ps: @echo: fwiw, on behalf of the thread im sorry ur topic turned into a big high moral ground scrabble, no-one read the literal first line of ur post/took the hint

Someone else who's being rational (besides for Kpyna) and not arguing on this topic? I almost spat my food reading that.

Basically, stop the squabbling and take it to pm's if need be. As Kpyna said, if she wanted it to be a debate, she would've made the topic there.

Quote from: LOOK AROUND YOG. on November 15, 2015, 23:05ps: @echo: fwiw, on behalf of the thread im sorry ur topic turned into a big high moral ground scrabble, no-one read the literal first line of ur post/took the hint

Amusingly enough, we talked in private about how she didn't want to incite any sort of debate on a European forum about this.  Sadly I took it there because I wasn't gonna take umbreon's accusation lying down.


I'm not going to tell everyone to chill out, but the only sense of ad hominem here has been from a single poster.  Me and Turner have kept it fairly rational, and a debate over an issue that results from decades of complex social and political crap is natural.  I'm not gonna be the one to say "I feel sorry for those victims" because that goes without saying, and but I feel it's important to actually talk about the cause of this and not talk about just what happened.

Debates happen everywhere and the fact that people are getting a little bit tense about the fact that people are arguing is a little bit...  I'm not sure of the term.  Discouraging?  Like, we get that this was a horrific thing, but let's talk about it beyond the tragedy that it was.  Let's talk about how government, media, and society has failed them and made these people into victims - and they continue to fail them by fear mongering and inciting a necessity for revenge that should not be there.

The fact that I was accused of a) thinking that it was right for these people to die and b) using this as a platform to start a debate is disingenuous and very insulting.  I wanted to clarify my viewpoint without being labeled an SJW and I want people to at least understand where I'm coming from here without someone needlessly attaching that label to us.  It's a loaded word that for whatever reason is used ironically to bring down people who honestly think there is injustice in the world.

It's kinda funny anyway because Turner and I are pretty much in agreement with most of this and pretty much in agreement that the media is all sorts of messed up but we only disagree on one fundamental thing which is not even relevant to this discussion.

Then why not simply take the moral high ground and simply just leave it be, or take it up with him in PM's?

Because it's a public forum and I am allowed to express my opinion.  And my opinion is relevant to the topic at hand.

all these liberals ruining the good debates because touching on the tough subjects makes them feel a bit funny.

this is all worth talking about, somehow i feel people telling the other people trying to discuss the white privilege in action here to "take it elsewhere" or "drop it to look like the bigger person" are just uncomfortable that their blissful ignorance towards oppression so close to home is being challenged.

really awkward but not surprising here.

It's not that i'm telling people to take the entire topic and shove it to PM's, i'm telling people to take their accusations and fighting to PM's. I am also not blind to the oppression that you just brought up (And was brought throughout the debate. Feel free to discuss it here, but if you're going to flat out attack someone else (as Umbreon allegedly did to Raven), take it to pm's and save us all the trouble, as if this was meant to turn into a full on debate, a topic would've been made there.

Than again, i'm apparently bissfully ignorant, so what do I know?

Oppression is the wrong word, read carefully.

I addressed the personal attack as a misconception as well.  I would have rather cleared up the misconceptions in public rather than seeing someone try to call me out like that, because it's relevant.  Not a hard concept.  You don't need to keep dwelling on it.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 00:00
Oppression is the wrong word, read carefully.

I addressed the personal attack as a misconception as well.  I would have rather cleared up the misconceptions in public rather than seeing someone try to call me out like that, because it's relevant.  Not a hard concept.  You don't need to keep dwelling on it.

The part about oppression was referring to what sylar said. Nonetheless that makes more sense than what I thought, thank you for clearing that up. Now we can all carry on this discussion like civilized people, right? Right? might not happen, but I can hope.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 15, 2015, 21:59
You're comparing religion to a magical frog thing.  You're already not very credible with this point right now, but this is not the point.  The fact that you think I am victim-blaming here - which I am not doing, and I'm not even doing it subtley because I have definitely watched the way I worded it here - is also a misconception.

Religion is not inherently delusional, and people get touchy because you use incredibly loaded words.  There's a difference between not believing in it and outright declaring it is the incorrect way to do it.

Whether you like it or not, there is no such thing as God or Allah or anything of the sort. That much is fact and until you can prove otherwise it will remain as fact. If you choose to believe in something, that is your choice but that does not make it real and you can't expect to be treated differently just because you happen to 'really believe it'. Believing in something that is not real is a delusion by definition, you can look that up in the dictionary if you want.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 15, 2015, 21:59
There have been shootings everywhere around the US and in the west by the way, and they have taken more lives as a whole than terrorist attacks.  There's no outrage over this unless the victim is not white.  Again, there is far more sympathy for the white male.

From over here, all the sympathy on the Trayvon Martin case was with Trayvon, Mark Duggan's shooting by a white police officer instigated riots all over London and the rest of the country. When Michael Brown's shooting was reported here there was mass disgust for the American police forces. Jean Charles de Menezes' shooting was seen as a blight on the UK police force too (And that wasn't long after a terrorist attack). I'm not saying the UK is perfect or devoid of racism or islamophobia, but the US is a lot more blatant about it. Some of the sentiments of the US press and political figures would cause public outcry here, and that's because we have a much larger proportion of Islamic immigrants crammed into a much smaller place.

I think there's a bit of a difference between isolated incidences of shootings in the context of racially motivated street violence and outright pre-planned terrorist attacks using military grade weapons and explosives driven by specific political goals. If the driving factor behind terrorist attacks really was Islamophobic propaganda then there would be a lot more ISIS attacks on US home soil than there have been.

The fact is that ISIS and any other extremists will take whatever opportunities they can get to blow up or gun down a bunch of Westerners regardless of their country's political propaganda. Thanks to the Schengen Area, it's easy for terrorists to stay mobile in the EU without raising much suspicion and when you have certain countries being a soft-touch on immigration or otherwise unable to protect their borders adequately due to economic collapse, it's easy as pie to get from Syria to a major Western-European capital without detection.

You say that the ISIS attacks are happening because of Islamophobic sentiment, yet there's simply no way to prove that and all the evidence points to the contrary. ISIS themselves have told the West why they're carrying out attacks:

Quote
"If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way, however it may be,"

"Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-urges-more-attacks-on-western-disbelievers-9749512.html

This is literally a direct quote from an ISIS spokesperson. The two factors here are pretty clear:

1) Military coalition in Syria
2) Disbelieving in Islam

At the very worst, Islamophobic headlines are provocative but as outlined by the ISIS goals they're inconsequential to whether or not they make targets. If you were to remove all Islamophobia from the West it wouldn't make any difference.

We can't suddenly start believing in Islam so I'd prefer to go to the next best thing and pull out of Syria. Unfortunately that is well out of the public's hands, it didn't work with the Iraq war despite the fact that everyone was against it. Defense is big money and the ethics of the public doesn't make bank in post-recession Britain.

Quote from: Turner on November 16, 2015, 00:14
Whether you like it or not, there is no such thing as God or Allah or anything of the sort. That much is fact and until you can prove otherwise it will remain as fact. If you choose to believe in something, that is your choice but that does not make it real and you can't expect to be treated differently just because you happen to 'really believe it'. Believing in something that is not real is a delusion by definition, you can look that up in the dictionary if you want.

You can't prove it wrong either.  You can't prove it either way.  You're, at this point, shoving your views down the throats of the billions of people who worship anything when you haven't given any proof towards the non-existence of god.  There's also no empirical proof towards this either.

You can argue details in the Bible but that's not the only definition of god.  Let's not call an entire group of religious people delusional over your own personal beliefs either way.

Regardless, this has very little to do with anything and it's going to be cyclic as hell.  Can you admit that religion is almost equally synonymous with culture especially in the Middle East?  Because that matters more than what the religion is about.

Quoteblack shootings in the US

These were only attended to when riots occurred.  Until then it was not reported.  These are also not the only incidents, they're just the ones that went viral.

Baltimore shells out millions of dollars every year to cover up this crap in the form of settlements.  The masses still end up siding with the injustice regardless of what you've seen.  BBC may not pick a side but not everyone watches BBC over here, and the way America has handled it is only an example of what I'm talking about.  Differing reactions throughout the rest of the world are not uncommon especially since they probably weren't reported in the same way.

This also fails to fix the social issues that minority neighborhoods feel, which is poverty caused in many, many ways by unstable education facilities.  Shootings make it easy to attach a face to the incident, but they also end up only punishing those in charge instead of actually reforming those areas in disrepair.  It definitely doesn't stop it.

Quotethings about islamophobia

That's not my point.  My point was

- America lends aid to these people then cuts it off
- They attack us back at some point
- We attack back using the pretense of "islam is a religion of terror" and inciting that kind of fear among the masses
- They attack back, propagating a "the west demeans us" kind of viewpoint to their people and gaining support through radicalism
- etc etc etc

This level of vitriol towards Islam itself is what gives ISIS power.  ISIS doesn't care about Islamophobia, basically only about power and they nurture our islamophobia to bring up support.  It's sickening that people back ISIS, but we give them fodder to do it.  And our current media backlash and inevitable crap that we will give islamic nations as a result will further this sentiment.

You can say my reaction is knee-jerk to events that have not happened yet, but neither side is willing to stop giving any sort of -phobic fodder to feed to their people.  I'm not saying these attacks are a direct result of Islamophobia, so much as the fact that the West is generally incredibly arrogant towards the handling of eastern ideals.  This kind of mentality has led to Japan's ass backwards imperialism throughout the 20th century, it's led to things like the Cold War, and it's led to tons of strife throughout the middle east.  At the very least, this is why the people are willing and able to attack, and twist religion into it and bam you have a perfect storm of hatred that allows a cycle of vitriol that has been well controlled by two governments whose aim is ultimately power and nothing to help their people.

That's my point here.  There obviously are much greater powers at work, but I'm talking about the most basic and fundamental ways in which this should not affect public sentiments at all, as well as propaganda that will further this rift between eastern and western nations.  Not condemning them is not a solution because terrorism is not something you take lying down, but spreading fear and war to a populace is not the best way to cope with this either.

I'm mainly arguing that I've seen a myriad of reactions that are sickening from people themselves and media outlets.  Based on precedent I have no hope for this to ever be resolved in a rational way.

It does seem that there is some good coming out of this though, namely the people absolutely blasting the guys trying to push an Islamophobic agenda and things to that extent, and that's what I'd like to see.  As it stands, if there's more of this then I'll gladly eat my words because I'd rather be wrong about this.  You can't really change how people who are already ignorant think over a short period of time anyway, but as it stands that sort of attitude has been basically ingrained in our society which vindicates these wars that ultimately accomplish nothing.

Furthermore, we live in developed countries (though no healthcare here smh) that have seemed to gradually embrace progressive ideals, so in theory it is much easier for the west to stop propagating this nonsense than it is for the east.  Especially since we don't live in fear of a state that takes away our right to free expression.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 00:33
You can't prove it wrong either.  You can't prove it either way.  You're, at this point, shoving your views down the throats of the billions of people who worship anything when you haven't given any proof towards the non-existence of god.  There's also no empirical proof towards this either.

You can argue details in the Bible but that's not the only definition of god.  Let's not call an entire group of religious people delusional over your own personal beliefs either way.

This is just silly though and this very argument has been had around the internet thousands of times with the same outcome every time. You can't 'prove' a negative, you can't prove that I don't have an invisible unicorn that defies the laws of the universe next to me right now.

The fact is though, we make judgements on real life based on proven science. We don't lead our lives making allowances for what 'might' be the case or what we can't prove doesn't exist. If there is a religion that is driving people to kill en masse then it absolutely has to be challenged, it has to be scrutinized and it has to be openly criticized and we have to provide an environment where people can do this freely without fear of their safety.

When people look at Charlie Hebdo or any other satirical publication making fun of religion and call it Islamophobic or any other religion-phobic then they are doing far more damage justifying these kinds of attacks by treating religion like some kind of inherent characteristic akin to race or sexuality. Culture is no different in this respect.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 00:33
- America lends aid to these people then cuts it off
- They attack us back at some point
- We attack back using the pretense of "islam is a religion of terror" and inciting that kind of fear among the masses
- They attack back, propagating a "the west demeans us" kind of viewpoint to their people and gaining support through radicalism
- etc etc etc

This level of vitriol towards Islam itself is what gives ISIS power.  ISIS doesn't care about Islamophobia, basically only about power and they nurture our islamophobia to bring up support.  It's sickening that people back ISIS, but we give them fodder to do it.  And our current media backlash and inevitable crap that we will give islamic nations as a result will further this sentiment.

This isn't about America though. This is an attack on Paris, in Europe. America's anti-islamic media has little to do with this.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 00:33
It does seem that there is some good coming out of this though, namely the people absolutely blasting the guys trying to push an Islamophobic agenda and things to that extent, and that's what I'd like to see.  As it stands, if there's more of this then I'll gladly eat my words because I'd rather be wrong about this. 

I don't think that kind of mentality is doing much good though. On the internet I see most people put off by the ludicrous claims by those extreme apologists who equate religion to race or sexuality and victim blame those murdered in terrorists attacks. In real life I don't think the Islamophobes have had their minds changed, rather that they're unable to voice their opinions without being called racist (Or worse, having their personal details shared publically). Sure, some of these people are absolutely bigots, but you can't say that violence doesn't solve anything and then in the same breath aggressively treat them as lesser human beings, all you do is drive them underground and alienate them from society which just breeds more hate and more extremism.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 00:33
Especially since we don't live in fear of a state that takes away our right to free expression.

Well the Islamic State hasn't officially taken away our right to free expression but given their attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a shooting at a public event literally called "Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression" in Denmark. I'd say that we are definitely living in fear of a state who intends to take away exactly that, no thanks to the people who will subtly excuse those attacks by blaming the victims before addressing the real problem.

we're all in agreement that the biggest issue with these attacks is the lack of media coverage its given missouri right

/imnotserious

Quote from: Turner on November 16, 2015, 01:35This is just silly though and this very argument has been had around the internet thousands of times with the same outcome every time. You can't 'prove' a negative, you can't prove that I don't have an invisible unicorn that defies the laws of the universe next to me right now.

What does it mean "you can't prove a negative"?  This argument has been around the internet thousands of times and I have never seen it reach a reasonable conclusion beyond one side yelling at the other at some point due to being outnumbered.

You're getting the compatibility of science and faith confused with their ability to coexist.  You can't apply scientific principles to faith and vice-versa.

QuoteThe fact is though, we make judgements on real life based on proven science. We don't lead our lives making allowances for what 'might' be the case or what we can't prove doesn't exist.

Billions of people will disagree.

QuoteIf there is a religion that is driving people to kill en masse then it absolutely has to be challenged, it has to be scrutinized and it has to be openly criticized and we have to provide an environment where people can do this freely without fear of their safety.

When people look at Charlie Hebdo or any other satirical publication making fun of religion and call it Islamophobic or any other religion-phobic then they are doing far more damage justifying these kinds of attacks by treating religion like some kind of inherent characteristic akin to race or sexuality. Culture is no different in this respect.

I am not advocating that Islam or any of the major religions are free of criticism.  So this is irrelevant.  Interpretations of these things have led this to happen, but it's also an incredibly small fraction of people who are doing this.

The scripture is to blame as well as the education.  This does not inherently mean the followers of said religion truly actually believe in all of this, considering religion has not been abolished from the world.

QuoteThis isn't about America though. This is an attack on Paris, in Europe. America's anti-islamic media has little to do with this.

The hell it does, unless you're going to say America's influence on things is irrelevant.  Many of these things became viral after their initial reports, and the viral part is what led to Europe reporting it which was inherently sided towards the people defending the victims.

The idea is that nobody cares about "random black person dies due to police brutality" despite it happening at a relatively high rate.  Unless people speak up and there's riots that make it a big deal; by that point it makes it into your news.

QuoteI don't think that kind of mentality is doing much good though. On the internet I see most people put off by the ludicrous claims by those extreme apologists who equate religion to race or sexuality and victim blame those murdered in terrorists attacks. In real life I don't think the Islamophobes have had their minds changed, rather that they're unable to voice their opinions without being called racist (Or worse, having their personal details shared publically). Sure, some of these people are absolutely bigots, but you can't say that violence doesn't solve anything and then in the same breath aggressively treat them as lesser human beings, all you do is drive them underground and alienate them from society which just breeds more hate and more extremism.

Well luckily I'm not calling racists and bigots lesser human beings.  I'm calling them part of the problem.

QuoteWell the Islamic State hasn't officially taken away our right to free expression but given their attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a shooting at a public event literally called "Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression" in Denmark. I'd say that we are definitely living in fear of a state who intends to take away exactly that, no thanks to the people who will subtly excuse those attacks by blaming the victims before addressing the real problem.

You're again bringing up the "subtly" excuse part while ignore the fact that I am not victim blaming in any of this.  Nothing subtly excusing this.  I don't even think it's wrong to portray Mohammed even if it gets backlash from the Islamic community, but the difference is that this one religion isn't the cause of anything.

I'm not sure if you're interpreting things I'm saying as victim blaming because from my understanding the majority of people were on Hebdo's side as well as the Denmark cartoonists.  Being pissed off is one thing which is reasonable, attacking them is completely unreasonable.  We agree here.  We both also agree that the attacks on France were unwarranted.

Just because it's unwarranted doesn't mean they don't make sense, though.  Making sense of the situation allows us to get to the core of the problem which is people utilizing religion for power, creating an "us vs them" mentality to garner support and further send others to a spiral of ignorance.  Which only furthers this mentality.  I'm not really even talking about the political and war side of this; it's basically the media and social side to this, and frankly it's not as bad as what I was expecting given the reaction of many athletes as of late to the tragedy.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein

This sums it up for me.

I know that you're trying to agree with me there, but that's not really an argument.

I wasn't trying to agree, I was just saying how I view it. Agreeing with you is just a bit of a side effect.

The default argument I've seen once again is "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim."

They seem to forget that ISIS (Or whatever they want to be called this week) have killed more Muslims than anybody else; a few months ago they bombed a mosque.

We can't blame an entire religion for this, the same way we can't blame all Germans for WWII.

Quote from: Milsap on November 16, 2015, 08:40
The default argument I've seen once again is "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim."

i legit hate that kind of view. the ira weren't muslim. people who bomb abortion clinics in the usa aren't muslim.

Quote from: Milsap on November 16, 2015, 08:40
The default argument I've seen once again is "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim."

The latter is not true.

French Jets have dropped bombs in Raqqa

Great response well done lads

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 09:49
The latter is not true.

That's what I've been telling them.

QuoteGreat response well done lads

Expect a revenge attack soon.

Quote from: LOOK AROUND YOG. on November 15, 2015, 23:05
ps: @echo: fwiw, on behalf of the thread im sorry ur topic turned into a big high moral ground scrabble, no-one read the literal first line of ur post/took the hint

yeah but i only wrote that first line because i was expecting it. i especially didn't really want anyone arguing in the first 24 hours or so because there's a lot of people who aren't thinking rationally about this kind of stuff, i didn't want it to get super dark, have a whole lot of insults thrown around, etc. i'd say we're like 50% there anyways though haha. not to mention since the french are a stone's throw from england i figured the chances of someone having family/friends that are directly effected by this attack are pretty high and i didn't want blame to get thrown around and actually potentially really hurt someone's feelings.

muhed and i have a pretty similar view on all of this tbh. and i'm not sure if it's entirely accurate or if i'm being too critical of my own country, but sorry for what America essentially started and then roped all of your leaders into being just as dumb about all of this :| definitely part of the minority here in the US that thinks the middle east needs our aid more than missile strikes. situations like this that continuously escalate are what begin wars and ultimately will result in the unnecessary deaths of innocent people. it's my belief that ISIL despite its name is only religiously motivated because its an easy way to separate our cultures. they're just terrible people scrambling for power and will use anything to excuse their violence and get more people on their side who have been harmed by the actions of the west. the content of the book they read is clearly irrelevant here. if these terrorist groups were christian or even totally atheistic, they'd just be finding other excuses for their violence.

and yeah my facebook feed is crawling with americans celebrating the missile strikes. like hey that would be so great if it actually effectively did anything besides poking a sleeping bear. because if you think that's gonna scare them into stopping you have no idea how terrorist organizations work somehow despite the fact that if you're my age you've been hearing about them all your life

You guys should watch Gundam 00 (the first season at least) because I thought it did an excellent job of portraying exactly how terrorism works from all angles.

I don't think ISIS are inherently religiously motivated but it's definitely an easy tool to use especially since we've given them fodder to work with now that there have been missile strikes.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 01:59
What does it mean "you can't prove a negative"?

It pretty much means exactly that. To prove existence of something is to confirm its truth, you can't prove a negative - you can't 'prove' that something 'Doesn't not exist', on a semantic level that's just not how proof works.

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 16, 2015, 01:59
You're getting the compatibility of science and faith confused with their ability to coexist.  You can't apply scientific principles to faith and vice-versa.

First of all, Religion and faith are two very different things. Islam is an organized religion just like Christianity and Scientology. Faith indeed doesn't need factual basis and in fact the very basis of fact contradicts the nature of faith. Kierkegaard has touched on this many times in his writings.

Science and religion can't sensibly coexist because both act as explanations for the world around us. The difference is that Science is culturally neutral and based upon proven fact and logic; it's unbiased to country, culture or creed and it's something that everyone on the most basic human level can follow and understand. It is open to be challenged by anybody and changes to suit new, scientifically proven discoveries. Even animals understand and utilize basic scientific principles even if they don't specifically know it as "science".

The problem isn't with a few people having a 'faith'. It's with millions of people following a set pattern of beliefs and expecting the world to be changed to suit those beliefs, which aside from those beliefs not being not factual in the slightest, are also largely down to arbitrary interpretations of text in a language nobody speaks from a culture greatly different from today's. Religion is not culturally neutral and it is incompatible with anything that challenges it, be it science or another religion. Historically, these disputes are often resolved with the bloodshed of innocents, non-believers or any other minority group unfortunate enough to have their existence considered a crime punishable by death only.

You can believe in (a) god, many gods or even aliens and that's fine - it's faith and there's nothing harmful about that. Faith is personal and has a tendency for change as the person's beliefs naturally change. Having millions of people sit there and believe in the same writings from the same book preaching the same thing is not a huge coincidence of shared faith - that is religion.

When faith becomes organized religion, it becomes problematic because it's no longer about the beliefs of the individual, it's about extracting beliefs from a book or a text and it quickly becomes black and white on which way is the 'right' way to live and which isn't.

The problem with all this ISIS terrorism is radicalization, radicalization is why so-called 'good muslims' are turning into savages and gunning down other Muslim children senselessly. Radicalization is just another form of interpretation of religious text. If you remove religion, you quickly remove radicalization. The root of the problem isn't the Qur'an, it's the mentality that the Qur'an holds all the answers and must be followed religiously. Anyone with a fragile enough mind to be convinced that a holy book is the only way to live your life and that everything else is wrong, is vulnerable to radicalization and that applies to every and all religion out there - Christianity being a prime example which after thousands of years of gradual quoshing is still successfully ruining the lives of millions and still successfully justifying discrimination against women, homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, people of <insert race here>, poor people...just about everyone. Do we really want a repeat of that?

Is banning religion the sensible thing to do? Obviously not, but we're not getting anywhere by making the obvious elephant in the room taboo to talk about. I have Muslim friends, I don't think they're ever going to become radicalized, but I don't know the future and I don't know what their minds are capable of making them believe. Equally, they don't know if I'm going to wake up as a massive racist and go full colonial on them and their family one day. But it's a trade-off and we know it's human instinct to be cautious and we're not offended by it even if we'd hate to be lumped in with either of those negative generalizations. If we walked on eggshells being careful not to say the 'wrong thing' constantly then we'd only create distance between ourselves and we'd lose control over the situation.

In any case, getting back to current events - I think this is only going to end one of two ways, either complete military force against ISIS or withdrawal from Syria. Given that Saudi Arabia supplies us with huge amounts of oil, I'd say its unlikely that we'll be withdrawing anytime soon. If this is going to become a full-fledged war then I can only hope it's finished swiftly, unfortunately destroying an ideology is going to be tougher than destroying a set military target. Maybe if all ISIS strongholds are hit it will slow or cease the spread of their ideology. I think the refugees would be happier to return home if the ISIS threat was removed too.

I'm not going to touch on your religion stuff because that's going to be cyclic.  We're going to go around in circles, but I'm wondering if you've taken a math course because there are a ton of proofs that exist to disprove a concept.  You can indeed "prove a negative" in the way that you are implying.  I took issue with your statement of it being a delusion, rather than any sort of acceptance, but it seems like you accept it and fully want to criticize it.  You're missing the part where I specifically stated that I have no issue with criticism so much as outright declaration of delusion when people express faith in different ways from the religion.  Furthermore, Islamophobia refers to the phobia of the culture and the people hailing from the culture and not necessarily of the religion, given that I've faced Islamophobia despite being an out and out agnostic.

QuoteIn any case, getting back to current events - I think this is only going to end one of two ways, either complete military force against ISIS or withdrawal from Syria. Given that Saudi Arabia supplies us with huge amounts of oil, I'd say its unlikely that we'll be withdrawing anytime soon. If this is going to become a full-fledged war then I can only hope it's finished swiftly, unfortunately destroying an ideology is going to be tougher than destroying a set military target. Maybe if all ISIS strongholds are hit it will slow or cease the spread of their ideology. I think the refugees would be happier to return home if the ISIS threat was removed too.

Sounds about right.  My only point was that we shouldn't give them fodder to round up supporters.  I think just about everyone has failed spectacularly at trying to get rid of ISIS anyway; the US has dumped too much money into a training program that came out with 5 prepared soldiers, and they do not want to support the Kurds against ISIS on the grounds that Turkey is a part of NATO so they don't wanna trample all over that.

 Since you turned down my offer to discuss this privately, I'll post on here  :)

Quote from: Lord Raven on November 15, 2015, 18:41
I'm not really looking for an argument nor did I say you called me a tumblr pleb.  I was clarifying my stance on things and clarifying how your post actually sounded close-minded and how presumptuous you were before I made a post.  You already accused me of supporting the Muslims in the terrorist attacks, then you feared that I would make a post that resembles an "SJW" on tumblr.  Yeah, okay.
Don't tell me how to conduct myself, especially since you pretty much did insult me.
This is about the Paris attacks, not Elliot Rodgers or that crap.  But I mean, Rodgers was very very misogynistic, so I think you may have been reading it the wrong way.

When did I accuse you? Did I actually accuse you or did you see what you wanted to see? I never feared that you would post a "SJW" post on here either. You say that I "pretty much did" insult you when you're putting words in my mouth in order to spark an argument. You also proceed to make accusations that I misread... what exactly?

QuoteYou're missing the point.  Read my post again.  There is coverage that specifically paints Islam in a negative light and you have no problem with this?  I've brought up examples of this too.

Ever seen a white terrorist in the media?  No, you probably haven't seen those words combined.  Because nobody ever calls them white!  It's because they're always mentally ill or something.  They try to garner up sympathy for white people, then they proceed to call an African America/European a thug or a Muslim person a terrorist.  There is a lot wrong with this and this is actually what happens in this world.  Open your eyes.

-anecdotal-

  I understand that this paints Islam in a negative light and that Asian communities will suffer as a whole due to the general ignorance expressed towards Asian culture and religion. I've also had to study the ways in which the media portrays individuals belonging to minority ethnic groups so, obviously, I know how black communities are portrayed as thugs and how Asian communities are generalised as Muslims, especially in a negative light.

QuoteAgain, this is not victim blaming, these are facts I've heard from actual people living there.  This, in no way, is the fault of those at the concerts and soccer games and all of that.  This is the fault of the way the government has handled past things and how the media has attempted to portray people who aren't the majority.  This is the fault of all of these perpetuating this ass-backwards culture that we should not even see in the modern west!  Yet we still see it, and those who do not wish to acknowledge it try to attack people who do acknowledge it by throwing labels like SJW at them and try to play the pity card where they're like "wow this just happened why are you arguing?"  But I'm not the one using this as a vehicle in the media to advocate war or worse.  I'm not the one exploiting these people for attention and ratings.  Ultimately I am unable to do anything but talk about this and analyze what the hell went on, because I'm just talking about this on a small forum.

Whoa, personal attack - didn't you accuse me of the same thing (nice)? What is your argument here? I know that this is happening. I'll admit that I use the label "SJW" in order to imply extreme ignorance and general stupidity. I've seen countless "Social Justice Warriors" use the label in an attempt to push skewed statistics for their own agenda and as an individual who has previously studied sociology, I'm aware the extreme lack of representability, reliability, and generalisability, that is rife amongst those articles. I also simply tried to diffuse the argument for the sake of the topic not being closed, I wasn't asking for sympathy, stop making assumptions.

I'm not sure who you're addressing with your little quip about exploiting the people?

QuoteI don't understand what integrity is in this instance.  Are you saying integrity is continuing to grieve what happened?  Because over here, we're discussing the issues.  Your entire point seems hinged by the fact that I seem to be coming onto here to look for an argument.  If you honestly think that, then you're being extremely presumptuous which is what led me to post those things to begin with.  You said that I seemed happy or whatever that all those people died, then you were almost expecting me to be an SJW.

Is that paragraph one large assumption or what? It was fairly obvious that I wasn't entirely serious by the fact that I addressed the French as "Frenchfams". You really jumped the gun there. Almost expecting you to be a SJW? Almost? Once again, it's fairly obvious that I was joking and you jumped the gun.

Quote-back story-

It's fairly obvious that the West wants another excuse to further destabilise the Middle East. It's fairly obvious that ISIS is using any excuse to attack the West. If you owned a tinfoil hat, then we could argue about why this is happening since that's more interesting than wherever this is going.

QuoteI'm actually really pissed that you're assuming I'm using this tragedy as an excuse to argue.  No, I am not, and I posted a few rants because quite frankly this whole thing is ludicrous.  It is awful that this tragedy has occurred and it is also awful how the media is dealing with it.  It is also awful how there's gonna be more death and dying because there is some propaganda out there for the need for retribution.  I've seen some absolutely disgusting views - only from white people, in fact - suggesting we go in and eradicate them.  Basically advocating genocide.  You honestly think I have zero integrity here?  I'm just looking at the facts and how all of this started and trying to assess how the situation got so messed up that so many people have died.

You're pissed that I made an assumption even though you proceed to make a bunch of assumptions yourself? If a country is attacked by terrorists they're going to fight back. If a large terrorist organisation sends a pack of terrorists into Paris to kill unarmed civilians, they're going to go and retaliate. Are you suggesting that Paris apologises for being attacked and offers to make peace with terrorists? ISIS would just keep attacking until they slowly take land, just like they've done in the Middle East.

You know that ISIS are slaughtering Muslims for being the "wrong kind", they're not just a threat to the West. Would it be best to allow all the Syrians to flee and allow ISIS to take more territory and power? ISIS is a genuine threat, they're not the girl scouts. The West is attacking them (partly) because the West doesn't want to take in refugees which is plain to see by all the propaganda.

QuoteAt least take some responsibility for your words and pretend like you've read our points.  You nitpicked one minor point that was a late edit and then you took some shots at me.  Come on.  If you don't wanna take a crap then get off the pot, otherwise you're wasting everyone's time and energy.

Of course I read your points and I knew that you wanted to argue. To be honest, the amount of assumptions you made pissed me off which is why I didn't want to respond.

You don't want me to to insult your character or insinuate anything. I'm happy to argue with you. Call me a racist. I mean, you don't know my personal opinions on the refugees and Islam and you don't know who I voted for so there's nothing to say that I'm not racist and you sure like making assumptions.

Quote from: umbreon#100 on November 17, 2015, 00:21When did I accuse you? Did I actually accuse you or did you see what you wanted to see? I never feared that you would post a "SJW" post on here either. You say that I "pretty much did" insult you when you're putting words in my mouth in order to spark an argument. You also proceed to make accusations that I misread... what exactly?

QuotePlease don't say the Frenchfams were asking to be massacred and executed via explosives whilst trying to enjoy a friendly football game.

You insinuated something there.  In other words, had preconceptions.

Quote from: umbreon#100 on November 15, 2015, 00:12Man, I'm just glad that you're not one of those Tumblr plebs who spout "SCREW WHITEY" at any chance they get. Yeah, I get you. Islamaphobia has been pushed through our media for years.

I was seriously hoping you weren't going to copy and paste some article from Tumblr lol.

You had some preconception of what I would post.  You're acting like I wanted to start an argument.  I didn't.  I responded to your preconceptions which you clearly had going into this, otherwise you wouldn't be relieved that I didn't post something from tumblr.  The "lol" gave me the impression you weren't gonna take what I was saying seriously.  I've been around the internet a good while and I've heard a lot of similar responses to anyone who argues in favor of social justice stuff.

QuoteWhoa, personal attack - didn't you accuse me of the same thing (nice)? What is your argument here? I know that this is happening. I'll admit that I use the label "SJW" in order to imply extreme ignorance and general stupidity. I've seen countless "Social Justice Warriors" use the label in an attempt to push skewed statistics for their own agenda and as an individual who has previously studied sociology, I'm aware the extreme lack of representability, reliability, and generalisability, that is rife amongst those articles. I also simply tried to diffuse the argument for the sake of the topic not being closed, I wasn't asking for sympathy, stop making assumptions.

I'm not sure of where the personal attack is.  But don't infer things or go into things with preconceptions.

QuoteI'm not sure who you're addressing with your little quip about exploiting the people?

The media?

QuoteIs that paragraph one large assumption or what? It was fairly obvious that I wasn't entirely serious by the fact that I addressed the French as "Frenchfams". You really jumped the gun there. Almost expecting you to be a SJW? Almost? Once again, it's fairly obvious that I was joking and you jumped the gun.

It wasn't.  I really don't know you.  I don't browse the status threads.

QuoteYou're pissed that I made an assumption even though you proceed to make a bunch of assumptions yourself? If a country is attacked by terrorists they're going to fight back. If a large terrorist organisation sends a pack of terrorists into Paris to kill unarmed civilians, they're going to go and retaliate. Are you suggesting that Paris apologises for being attacked and offers to make peace with terrorists? ISIS would just keep attacking until they slowly take land, just like they've done in the Middle East.

No, I'm not.

QuoteYou know that ISIS are slaughtering Muslims for being the "wrong kind", they're not just a threat to the West. Would it be best to allow all the Syrians to flee and allow ISIS to take more territory and power? ISIS is a genuine threat, they're not the girl scouts. The West is attacking them (partly) because the West doesn't want to take in refugees which is plain to see by all the propaganda.

I never suggested anything of the sort, but there's a strawman.

QuoteOf course I read your points and I knew that you wanted to argue. To be honest, the amount of assumptions you made pissed me off which is why I didn't want to respond.

If I wanted to argue, I'd put more detail in my first post, because I really didn't want to talk about it.  If you really want proof of this then ask Kpyna because we talked as soon as I made my first post in this thread and I outright stated I wanted to avoid talking more about this, because I've talked about this in great detail elsewhere.

At any rate, I felt provoked so I went ahead and turned it into one.  I'm not the sole person to blame here and neither are you.  Not a hard concept.

Quoteand yeah my facebook feed is crawling with americans celebrating the missile strikes.

There's Brits at it too. Some of them being as dumb to say "We shud drop bacon sandwiches on em 2!!!!!1111 LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL"

Bacon doesn't make them vapourise like the Wicked Witch of the West you idiots!

Quoteit's my belief that ISIL despite its name is only religiously motivated because its an easy way to separate our cultures. they're just terrible people scrambling for power and will use anything to excuse their violence and get more people on their side who have been harmed by the actions of the west.

These people are not Islamic. At least, not Islamic in the 'proper' sense. By that I mean if Islam truly bred terror, I would have been killed a long time ago as my town has a large Muslim community. They use their religion as an excuse and as justification because they have nothing else to go on. But it is separating cultures. British Muslims are being spat on in the street and it's absolutely disgusting.

My friend shared this 4 minute video and I think it's really on point regarding ISIL (https://www.facebook.com/theprojecttv/videos/10153243154568441/)

Also a bit annoyed my governor isn't letting refugees take shelter in my state. I live in New Hampshire. There's way more deer than people and we're about to get hit by an El Nino and get covered in like 10 feet of snow so I doubt we're gonna be in danger when nobody can even really drive for like 3 months of the year

A YouTube personality called BlueDrake (streams military based first person shooter games) was on about this the other day, saying that this whole 'us' and 'them' thing needs to stop. He has a lot of subscribers from the Middle East and he helped this guy out who loves watching the streams but can't play the games because of his eyesight so Drake set it up for him to be an unarmed VIP that his squad protects while crossing the map. Then he dropped the ball.

This guy wasn't American. He was Iranian, and lives as close to the fighting against ISIS as Portland, OR is to Los Angeles. He was saying that this whole letting the refugees stay thing isn't about religion or politics or anything like that- It was just about being a human being. Because we are all so connected these days the world is a smaller place. For every one Jihadist that slips through that net there are going to be 10,000 or so men women and children that genuinely need somewhere to go. We are not just Britain or Canada or New Zealand anymore. We are one world. If this attack on Paris isn't enough of a reason for us all to get ourselves together then I don't know what is.

you know i do wonder about the westboro baptist church and how much they must all be fuming cos they're tryina be religious extremists but are considered sorta passé loonies while isis is whooaaa the big scary thing wawaooaoow and hooverin up all the attention

additionally while we're on the subject of ~~~~~~muslim terror strikes~~~~~~ does anyone remember when 191 people died in madrid in 11-M? spain never gets a look in in the international "neva 4get" scene anymore......pobre españa..............

Quote from: Kpyna on November 16, 2015, 19:54
muhed and i have a pretty similar view on all of this tbh. and i'm not sure if it's entirely accurate or if i'm being too critical of my own country, but sorry for what America essentially started and then roped all of your leaders into being just as dumb about all of this :|

i mean at this stage with the inordinate amounts of money going to defense and defense accessories (the US has piled so much money into the f-35 but its SUCH a bad plane oh my god) at the moment the conflict is just a giant money laundering mess and Arms Companies rippin off the govt more than anything else. 

this thing has been going on for aaaages and people act as if Oh No The Sudden Muslim Menace but its nothing new. half the reason Christains are so big is cos they were v v v aggressive religiously in the past, ironically, and most people kinda conveniently forgot that. (crusades, missionaries, the weird birth of spain, even the witch hunts) and it can be argued that christianity is just whitewashed islam anyway

like the only reason you don't have fanatical pagans .v. the christians (christainity for the most part stole a LOT of pagan stuff like oestre, yule, etc. etc. and then did weird "don't associate with gross pagans they're the enemy") stuff is cos the pagan religion is p oriented in 'ignore them and do more nature stuff, it'll only come back to haunt u otherwise' thru the threefold rule more or less lmao. i mean pagan/wiccan extremists probably exist but i dunno if you're ever gonna see a bunch of fat goths on the telly going 'imma HEX this guy real good if you dont give in to our demands'

all we've done is be born at a time when one particular country was callin the shots and we also have sensationalist and prevalent media empires to give the more vocal and extremist end of things opponentwise a lot of attention. like honestly as a p cogent example of how incredibly screwed up this all is, remember the british media capitalising on the dead syrian kid on the beach and screeching CAMERON HOW COULD YOU after publishing years of literally 'we hate the moslem'.

but cos people think history is boorrriiingggg they dont look it up and they dont find out stuff like "at one point the western world supported Iran" "we were friends with saddam hussein at one point" and "maybe the middle east is a bit annoyed that the USA and the USSR made it their personal carving ground in the latter end of the last century"

its just so annoying when its swallowed hook line and sinker "cos the man on the telly said so!" w/o going 'maybe i ought to check this out myself' and gettin involved in the local muslim community or w/e (see also: lgbtq issues, feminism issues, mental health issues etc etc) cos thaattss too haaaarrrdddd x factor is gonna be on any minute nooowwwww why should i bother im a white guy with a nice hoooouuuuuse. or the other emerging end of things mostly on the internet, the "im obnoxiously vocal and argumentative but dont/wont actually do a lot of action on it cos of (various bad excuses)" aka The Tumblr/Twitter Brigade which i have been falling into in the past and have been trying to fall back out of. cos goddamn ive spent 2 years grumbling on tumblr about The State Of Things and not actually doing a lot of anything myself lol

also on the subject of fanatical conservative sentiment, they've recently got some emerging theory to believe that the conservative .v. liberal thing may be a neurobiological factor (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/conservative-and-liberal-brains-may-be-wired-differently/2014/11/03/3903c25e-6057-11e4-8b9e-2ccdac31a031_story.html) along with the overtrained fear response in the right wing brain (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds) so who even knows haha


edit for clarity: since this topic kicked off with insinuations im talkin mostly bout the public when im going on bout "people who...." cos the public comandeer a lot more political force than they realise but its squandered by subtle disruption tactics and infighting. aka the sensationalist right wing press and the screechy counterarguments by radical left wing people like the well meaning but ultimately drama-filled occupy movement. its a shame



honestly i do wonder what the world will look like in a good 100 years when another couple of bigname nations step up to strut their stuff around the world. maybe it'll be China v russia? i mean for some weird reason the uk is already cosying up to china so

edit: sorry for typing a lot. tl;dr: beth shrugs and just sorta burbles on about "history doth repeat itself" for several words

Quotedoes anyone remember when 191 people died in madrid

And the bigots forget that it was Basque separatists that carried out that attack and not Muslims.

Quote from: Milsap on November 19, 2015, 10:01
And the bigots forget that it was Basque separatists that carried out that attack and not Muslims.

if im reading you right you're saying it was ETA who did the bombings?

the verdict is actually out on whether it was ETA or not. ETA themselves denied it. the current best theory is that it was a (possibly moroccan) terrorist splinter cell (there were sketchy links to al qaeda at best but anyone can just up and call themselves a jihadist group these days)

the bombing didn't fit ETA style attacks in the least and an attack by basque sepratists woulda just got Aznar even more elected. "hey this is our last gasp,  please be real hard on us when u get elected mr right wing conservative party leader!!!!". also consider that like the IRA, the ETA usually give warning before an attack which they didn't give at all in this case, and even for ETA this was a bit violent. it doesn't fit ETA modus operandi at all.

the current PM at the time, Aznar, of the Popular Party (spanish tories, basically) sent troops to iraq which on the whole the country didn't support like at all. (spain isn't really one for fighting or involving itself in wars much, see Franco and WW2) and th eway the election was going (attacks were ~3 days before elections) it looked like the conservative party were going to get in again and keep spain in iraq cos they were polling ahead

the bombing had the effect of sending a crapton of votes to zapateros socialist party over aznar's party and when zapatero got elected he pulled spain right out of iraq a month earlier than he said. you can see why its Complicated cos if you cut it down to simple factors it appears to have been a protest bombing to sway the opinion of the nation quickly and immediately from getting involved in the middle east. usually you'd expect a load of "no lets bomb them all to bits!!!" from spain but as i mentioned before spain didn't really want to fight in the middle east at all (remember its history, its basically an awkward mishmash of muslim and christian history)

the evidence is sketchy for it being straight up al qaeda and no-one conclusively proved it (intentionally or not) but just sayin it was straight up ETA doesn't take into account the minutae of the situation at the time


i mean i could be wrong but i was living in spain at the time and its how they saw it tbh

Allow me to deliver this news to those of you who don't know yet (everyone probably knows already, but regardless). The mastermind behind the attacks was killed in a police raid.