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Apologists for ISIS ?
We talk about ISIS having no respect for life but if we're talking actual facts and figures they just don't come close to what the 'civilised world' has achieved in the field of mass slaughter.
I was calling out @TheWizardOfIce for the absurd claim that 'Islam' is Inherantly violent while we in the west are the ultimate protectors of human life and dignity. I was calling it out for what it is - ahistorical, made up bunkum.
Having an awareness of and being able to open my eyes to the actual reality of my own culture and it's history doesn't mean I hate it. It might mean that I don't mindlessly defend its worst aspects. It might also give me insights into why other people around the world don't always necessarily hold us in the highest regard.
Justifying jihadism has got nothing to do with it. On a personal and intellectual level I have little time for Islam - I find it a largely moribund and backward religion. But I can see some of the historical reasons why Islamism has evolved in the way it has and why they can very easily depict the west as morally corrupt and convince angry young men to attack us.
I've always believed understanding something gives you a better chance of defeating it. And knowing your own culture and its weaknesses and strengths is also vital.
As others have pointed out. Free speech, thought etc are all amongst the things I value highly in our culture and I believe they're worth fighting for in every sense. However right now I'm not convinced that Islamism actually represents the biggest threat, despite its ability to grab headlines and attention with its evil, ultimately pathetic acts of grotesque savagery.
From my perspective the increasing ability of our own governments and corporations to track our every movement is a far greater existential threat to our way of life and freedoms. Will the Islamist lunacy still be with us in 100 years? Perhaps? I personally believe it will wither and die. A younger generation over time will react against its inherent madness. But will government surveillance and corporate control of our data and personal info still be there? Of course. Probably x 1000. It might not grab headlines the same way but it's a bigger existential challenge IMO than the Bedouin death cult.
I AM a liberal, in the truest sense of the word, and it's the liberals that made your freedoms possible. At the same time I bet those weapon-lobby and Oil-dealers are much less inclined to think about human rights here in the west, or what happens to the money of their dealings. And I bet they're not the 'liberals' you're talking about. I'm all for freedom of religion, not paid-for-by-the-oil-sheiks religion, but if you want a church/mosque/praying house/temple then you pay for it from your own pocket, not by the grace of some foreign benifificiary. You want to stop these attacks? stop them at the source instead of taking away our core values for those who themselves use them in a way you don't like.
I am against any religious schooling, as science and religion don't mix. period. whatever your personal beliefs, it's a different system. They don't mix.
@Getafix the whole reason why we're superior in our thinking is because our ancestors went through all that shit. You say it wasn't religious? I beg to differ, even Adolf had a religious motive, why else do you think he was blaming the jews for everything? Read Mein Kampf and you can see it there word for word. He was a christian accepting both protestantism and catholicism. Never seen those pictures with the cardinals in the vatican raising their right arm?
Why would we want to go through all that sort of shit again so the other 3/4 of the world can go through the same process? Isn't it our duty to warn/prevent them from making the same mistakes we made? So yes, our thinking is superior, we're the 'experts' they should listen to.
Same goes for the environment: we burned up most of our forests. It would be a good thing for those who haven't yet to understand the results and learn from our mistakes.
So in short: stop international religious money flows, get away from beeing oil dependant and only deal with nice people (yes, Gregory, only nice people). If they want to deal with us they need to be up to par.
All perfectly true.
Don't think Hitler was big on religion. And it's not our job to stop other people going through the same mistakes. That's colonialism. Bush thought he was 'helping' Iraq but Iraq was frankly better off under Saddam - that was certainly true in the 1980s when Iraq was seen as a model of secular progressive development in the Arab world. Women in senior jobs, good hospitals, schools and universities. Yes Saddam was a brutal psychopath but it was better than vigilantism and anarchy. Cultures need to go through their own learning processes and its wrong to believe that other people should necessarily aim to emulate the west.
As you say our history was brutal. Also violent and messy. And we are not 'perfect' either. We had a genocidal civil war underway in Europe as recently as the 1990s, with Muslims as one of the prime targets.
And there is no end point to any of this. Change is continuous as are the threats and risks.
We either believe in a free and open society and defend it or we don't, in which case martial law, internment, extrajudicial killing, government without judicial oversight and targeting of specific religious groups etc is all on the table. That's not a world I want to live in which is why IMO we have no alternative to take the high road, stand up for our values, and dig in for a long struggle.
Basically freedom and democracy have come to the west relatively recently. The US was founded as a slave owning economy - all that 'equality' stuff in the constitution was BS until they ended slavery. It took a bloody civil war for the U.S. to begin to wipe away that original sin.
Spain was a fascist dictatorship until less than forty ears ago. Ditto Portugal. Most of Eastern Europe was under Communism until recently. And none of what we have now is guaranteed to last. The polish and Hungarian governments are busy persecuting journalists and undermining the rule of law.
Our freedoms are precarious. IS gives the totalitarians amongst our own side the perfect excuse to strip away our freedoms in the name of 'security'. But that's a slippery slope.
IMHO , Islam is "behind schedule" but the big difference is, due to our advances, we have become "one World" so what were their growing pains have become our growing pains. Accelerated by well meaning "multi cultural" attititudes that saw only positives from cultural mixes and potential negatives have been branded as racist and Islamophobe.
None of this helps other than being able to call a backward religion backward. We need to get through this barrier. I'm anti all religions but , given the choice, I have more respect for those religions that have been flexible enough to evolve to best integrate into modern norms and values.
PS a couple of days ago, the thread focussed on the security risk re terrorists gaining access to national infrastructure. Today , we find that that one of the London Bridge attackers was employed at London Bridge tube for 6 months - after he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary. Mind boggling
This is quite interesting with regard to Islam and independent thought and enquiry. I hadn't heard of this 'Closing the gates of Ijtihad' before. Helps explain how/why Islamic cultures went from being enquiring, relatively open, and curious, to closed, static and backward looking.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3114/muslims-ijtihad
Sunni Islam seems to be particularly bad in this respect. The Shia are more open to new ideas/debate and on-going interpretation and learning.
However, while there are parallels in what Islam went through, I think it's wrong to assume that other cultures and societies should inevitably 'progress' towards a western world view.
Regrettably, if this analysis is correct, the future does not look able to be transformed for the Muslim world or its adherents in the near future. Until Muslim countries and communities in the West allow their people to express themselves freely -- without fear of reprisal -- it is unlikely that the Muslim world will be able to reopen the Gates of Ijtihad and again become a center of science and creativity as it used to be in the early centuries of Islam.
Above all we've managed to put together human rights which were subscribed to not only by Western powers, but by almost all. This makes it more then just Western arrogance, it makes it superior to those who prefer to conduct medieval practises. And yes, it is fair of us to warn others not to make the same mistakes, for the earth is not capable of sustaining 7 billion people making the same mistakes! One of our unique characters as a human spiecies is to learn from other's mistakes. So let's be that unique species. (In casu China, which isn't a Western country but is definatley trying to avoid our mistakes).
I wonder if she's still threatening to withdraw security cooperation from our EU allies if they don't give her what she wants from Brexit.
Another truth is that liberalists in general cannot abide criticism. Your way or the highway, is what we have been force fed all these years. That the liberals grip on power is on the wane is entirely the fault of the liberals. A bitter pill to swallow but true nonetheless.
One thing the liberals and indeed most others fail to grasp, is that liberal agendas - especially when it comes to subjects surrounding terrorism as evidenced here in this very discussion - simply serves to radicalise the indigenous populations of the countries where it is practiced. Radicalisation - not in the context of terrorist or religious extremism - but a new and different form of radicalisation which manifests itself in attitudes and at the ballot box. The liberals choose to call this populism and tar anyone who rails against their agenda as being seduced by the simple politics of Trump/Farage etc (take a look a few pages back)
The reason Trump is sitting in the Whitehouse and the British voted for Brexit is not because - as the liberalists like to say - all those who voted are all drooling backwoods racists - but because people are sick to the back teeth of being dictated to by the liberalists (and globalists).
The further things are allowed to go, the further ordinary folks will feel marginalised, there will then be a time when the real racists will appear in the mainstream political arena, pitching their own ideologies to an electorate who will sit up and listen. Because of the continued subservience to political correctness and other liberalist social programmes, programmes which conspire to constrain our ability to defend ourselves, that time is not far away, and the seeds of it have been laid by the liberalists. When that time comes we all need to be really scared.
Let's face it the various liberal social and economic experiments conducted over the past couple of decades have failed miserably, indeed they have failed to such an extent that they have merely served to marginalise and fragment our society.
That's the world you are going to get once ISIS or whoever takes their place, wins this war.
Yes, war - I know the word upsets the more sensitive souls here - but that's what it is. During WW2 many personal freedoms were sacrificed. Those same freedoms were re-established once the war had been won. BTW it wasn't the liberals who won our freedom, but people like my father and the parents/grandparents of many here. They fought against fascism. Todays war is a war against fascism, but a different kid of fascism, religious fascism.
Liberalism once again riding to the defence of our enemies? I'll personally pay the air fare of anyone here who wishes to put their money where their mouth is and fly out to Syria, meet up with ISIS and attempt to broker a peace settlement. Let's see how far you get in your negotiations.
Exactly.
Just like Hess in WWII.
But at least he tried to broker a peace treaty with the British.
These 'creature's are so fanatical and brainwashed that they simply cannot be reasoned with in a normal,peaceful meeting or discussion.
Sorry but this is straightforward nonsense. What are you wittering on about?
Firstly ISIS is simply not the existential threat you make it out to be. I agree we are in a long term conflict - or war - call it whatever you want. But right now ISIS are on the back foot. They're lashing out at the west because their 'caliphate' is crumbling. These attacks, no matter how horrific, aren't about to bring down the west. Look at your history books. The Germans and the IRA tried to bomb and terrorise the British into submission before and it never works. Think what we've witnessed over the last few months is horrendous? Imagine living through the Blitz or the long years of the US-backed IRA campaign in mainland Britain. The Germans had a proper army and airforce - ISIS has an Irish chef with a bread knife. All these sickos have achieved is actually to increase Britain's determination to defeat them. But don't give them the ego boost they want by making out Britain's facing it's biggest threat since 1939.
Secondly, the war against fascism in WW2 wasn't fought and won by specific sections of society, or by those of one political tendency or another, but by the entire populations of actually very diverse countries like the UK, US and USSR. In the UK people of all walks of life, political tendencies etc. fought and worked alongside each other to defeat fascism.
What you're saying is frankly (although I'm sure you don't intend it to be ) deeply disrespectful to the millions of men and women who fought for their country in WW2.
I suggest you also pause for a minute to consider that millions of men from the British colonies who volunteered to fight for Britain during WW2 as well - and tens of thousands of them were Muslims. A lot died for this country, not that anyone ever thought to thank them for it. i don't know what silly little political category you'd put them in. They probably weren't 'liberals' as you'd define it. It wasn't until 2002 we built the Commonwealth Memorial Gates on Constitution Hill, and even that frankly rather disrespectfully just lumps all the 'darkies' in together. The Animals in War memorial opened soon after in 2004 in Hyde Park.
Didn't George W Bush and Tony Blair claim god had told them to invade Iraq?
You mean this in the 'you're either with us or against us' rethorics of the Conservative, Republican former president G.W.? Do I still need to explain that he was anything but liberal?
Sorry, but this is utter nonsense. It's the imams in the mosques that radicalise these people, not their freedoms they're supposedly not capable of handling. It's the videos on youtube that grab these kids, not the chances they get on becoming part of the society.
No, what one calls populism is screaming you have a problem without coming up with a solution. That's what Trump has done and look at how well he's faring. A wall between the US and Mexico? You really think it's a solution for criminality in the US? Stopping people from 7 countries to enter the US, of which none came terrorists?
I never said anyone was a 'drooling backwoods racist'. I think the main reason people voted for Trump is that he was the only one willing to adress the problems, and the only one who wasn't from this particular corrupt system. He himself is as corrupt as can be, but people chose to ignore this, just as you've been ignoring facts above here pointing at a group of people with a political view that have nothing to do with the problems you percieve. And that's exactly why I asked you to stop this nonsense, because it's easy to point a finger and come up with a 'Trump wall' solution, but it won't work. And scaring the living daylights out of everybody with your doomsday scenario's is the Fox News apporach to problems and has never ever solved anything at all.
Again you seem to haqve no grasp of the political landscape. The programmes you're talking of are first and foremost social/ labour programmes.
A true liberal wants three things:
-good education, so everyone get's a fair start in life
- good healthcare, for in a good-working economy workers have to be healthy
- safety for all: not only in the military/police way, but in every way. So global warming is a threat to all and should be stopped.
This all based on the principle that we should all be given a fair chance in life.
You claim liberals no nothing of war, but it was the liberal US President Roosevelt who lead the US into WW2. He wanted to stop the NAZI's earlier but was stopped by the conservative republicans.
It was conservative Churchill who wanted a united Europe.
Your 'choice of the people' Trump has just financed the next twenty years of suicide bombers and terrorist attacks with a 110 billion (!!!!!) military contract with the Saoudi's. But I guess that's the liberal's fault as well.
So you're blaming the innocnt and marching with the culprits.
But the most important fact is that they ARE the worst offenders HERE,and that's all i'm concerned about.
The last sentence says it all. Okay then - just because I don't march to the happy clappy, love thy enemy tune that you people espouse, I am a Trump/Farage (even Le Penn?) supporter? Someone who is seduced by the simplistic message of the 'populists'?
Again, a response which is both typical and predictable. By the way, you never said (out loud anyway) 'drooling backwoods racist', I did. Though you just confirmed your thoughts with that same last sentence.
You people really need to see what is creeping up behind you.
I point which people REFUSE to acknowledge.
Why not also look up about British people who were Pro-Nazi?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Union_of_Fascists
Seeing as you state that I have no grasp of the political landscape, I'd be most interested to learn of your own first hand experience of the matters I raise. Surely, if you have been out and about meeting people, then you would concur on the concerns I raised about how the indigenous population are feeling increasingly marginalised?
Thank you.
Paris's Notre-Dame: Attacker shot outside cathedral
A man has been shot by police outside the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris after he tried to attack an officer using a hammer, police say.
The suspect has been wounded in the chest, French media report. Officials say this is a "terrorist incident".
Some 900 people are still inside the cathedral. Pictures on social media show some holding their hands up.
France is in a state of emergency since attacks by jihadists in Paris left 130 people dead in 2015.
The area around the cathedral has been closed. People have been asked to stay away. Eyewitnesses said tourists fled for cover.
"I was about to come inside [the cathedral] and heard the noise, the gunshots, turned around and saw the assailant on the ground where they had shot him," said Kellyn Gorman, an American tourist.
"It was very safe, very quickly contained."
The Notre-Dame is one of the most visited tourist sites in Paris. Last year, police foiled an attack near the site.
The incident comes just three days after extremists used a van and knives in an attack in London which left seven dead.
Yep.
And apparently yesterday police in Melbourne shot dead a gunman,someone just showed me footage of the Australian President talking on TV.
Daily occurance now...hate crimes are already going through the roof here as people take the law into their own hands.
Just for clarifications sake. I believe that we face a war from a new form of fascism - Islamic extremist fascism, a fascism which is every inch as deplorable as national socialism. If it goes unchecked it will continue to grow like the cancer it is. A while ago I read a very interesting report from a well respected source on this very subject - he made mention of a Saudi inspired doctrine regarding the need to spread Wahhabist Islam across the globe. there is even a name for this policy (I can't remember it offhand though).