Admit it and i will forgive you.
Who becomes a terrorist?
- Thread starter Fraggle Rocker
- Start date
Admit it and i will forgive you.
you little punk. I will be in New York and we can talk it over.
I am not in the U.S.
I think it would be interesting to ask civilians in other parts of the world what a terrorist looks like, you'll find many will say it's the brainwashed soldiers wearing the stars and stripes, fighting blindly for their nations political gain!
Not to many civilians feel liberated from the wars that happen supposedly for liberation!
Terrorists, lol. Just extremeists, and they are everywhere, in every country, and on both sides of every fight!
Not to many civilians feel liberated from the wars that happen supposedly for liberation!
Terrorists, lol. Just extremeists, and they are everywhere, in every country, and on both sides of every fight!
If they are everywhere then they are not fighting blindly.
Neither do Europeans.
Any time you see a space before the final punctuation is a personal foible, not a national one.
Neither do Europeans.
Any time you see a space before the final punctuation is a personal foible, not a national one.
most of the time (perhaps every time) i have seen that was from europeans. how about the apostrophe?
Let's test the myths out in relation to Henry Kissenger who policies in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia put him in the upper echelons of terrorists.
Well, he was certainly rich when he was making the policities. I would say he does not provide evidence against the myth.
This focuses on Al Q, but in any case, Kissinger provides a counter example, obviously. Terrorists can come from any culture it seems.
This is focusing on Al Q, but clearly Kissenger is not a religious zealot in the conventional - and poorly worked out - use of the term. He is, however, a neocon and this is a clearly irrational, faith based and very damaging religion.
In relation to Kissinger we can check his writings and he certainly seems to be. But it would be mind reading to assume he is sincere or to apply such an adjective to such a man. He does have a strong desire to acheive his goals.
I would say this is not the case with Kissinger, but any certainty on the issue is a claim to mind reading capabilities.
To make a buck. To add on the millions and the power - now instead of in some afterlife. Yes.
Well, you may have a point there. But actually it is not something I did not think upon. But on the other hand you also can't see another obvious point here (that Afghanistan and Iraq are both located in extremely important jeopolitical locations and any power who has a foot in these two countries will have an almost guaranteed say in the world. Maybe the Americans simply want to create the excuse for being there forever! After all, the American forces have not left Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar even after Saddam threat is over. maybe all these are for creating excuses to stay in such jeopolitcally important places forever).
Sorry, I made a mistake there just because I wrote it hastily at work. According to Islam, all land is Allah's (do not immediately get a guard there, our Allah is same as your God, so no religious implication here). I prefer to use the term "muslim land" and this land belonging to muslims is under constant attack and aggression.
I simply do not agree with you there. The West has its merits and technology, but they are certainly not superior in morals as you imply. Look at the history and tell me who has waged the most bloody wars in recent history.
I wrote the ideological west. It does not necessarily include all people living in the western hemisphere. Those people maybe in Egypt as much as in the U.S. And I respect people with real respect for humanity everywhere.
That's simply not true. You are making another generalization there. Not long ago, many people in muslim countries used to admire and even like the U.S. and many countries in Europe especially France, Italy, Germany, etc. But that respect was responded with contempt, aggression and the continued western support for corrupt regimes. Of course they intervene from time to time to replace some dictators, but nobody here believes in goodwill from the west anymore.
That is a possible "American" (not very many Americans) motivation that I have argued for, in other threads and times, to explain other Anerican actions and propaganda efforts. But it poorly explains terroristic attacks - they are not needed as an excuse, they make keeping the necessary political support lined up more difficult, and they increase the expense.chuush said:
But it isn't "muslim land" either. The land is surely indifferent to whatever religion happens to be dominant among the people who happen to be living there at the moment, no? Especially an Abrahamic monotheism, with its almost complete lack of ecological or other landscape attachments.chuush said:
I don't see any such implication, and your response is puzzling.chuush said:
I am simply pointing to the fact that you choose to identify and oppose as "Western ideology" a subset of the Western ideologies available, some others of which would be natural allies in the cause you claim is yours.
In other words, you appear to be using some Western ideologies as an excuse for an otherwise unjustifiable opposition to others, partly in order to avoid confronting the fact that your own ideology has some serious flaws, and your own morality etc (like everyone's) deserves criticism and needs improvements. The cause you claim is not the cause you advance, in this manner - mutual respect, for example, is not advanced. You are, instead, showing signs of a quite different agenda and implying a threat.
The parallel with the Western imperial bigot's use of "Islamic terrorist" is almost exact, differing mainly in the power backing it - which will not last, we know.
Also not a European thing: we use ' not ` (in fact I had to search my keyboard very hard even find the `).
Again, it's a personal foible.
I found it . Thanks for correcting that. I`ll use it from now on.
I think the aim of this thread is obvious - the government has hacked fraggles account in an attempt to try to get one of us to admit to being a terrorist. After all, if George Bush can catch a terrorist then they MUST be dumb.
Draq, as the resident Ruski/red/commie, I think you should take one for the team to prevent any further invasion of our site. Send us a postcard from guantanamo won't ya?
Draq, as the resident Ruski/red/commie, I think you should take one for the team to prevent any further invasion of our site. Send us a postcard from guantanamo won't ya?
I disagree. Afghanistan is not a dumb Arab state whose greedy rulers willingly accept a foreign presence as long as it guarantees their trown. The people there love freedom more than anything else and that is clear from their history. At the beginning they were ok with the Ameicans because it seemed this will end their 25 year long misery, but then the suspicion of the real intents started and the occupiers had to find other excuses, the best one was to show to people that their country is not safe and there are blood-thirsty guys out there who can easily kill innocent people. (I talked with one Afghan army officer out of chance whil I was there. He told me an interesting story according to which once in an offensive against Taliban, they were shocked to see that the enemy has every equipment the Afghan army also had received from the Americans, and then the American commander was angry with them because they had not coordinated the assault with them.)
You're playing with words, I'm not.
And what cause is that exactly?
Well, you are wrong. Chevron would make a lot more money with no terrorism in Afghanistan. They can't get no pipelines built in this mess.chuush said:
Neither were Panama, Colombia, Haiti, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, etc etc etc. I don't think you understand the program.chuush said:
There are gang leaders, warlords, organized criminals, greedy and power-hungry people with large personal followings, aplenty in Afghanistan as everywhere.
Mutual respect, local autonomy, peace and justice, what you claim to want.chuush said:
REPLY: I am no fan of kissingers. But to understand the Viet Nam war and the Korean War and some smaller actions during the so called COLD WAR period you have to understand there was a very REAL STRUGGLE for WORLD DOMINATION by the SOVIETS and THE RED CHINESE during that era. THIS WAS FOR REAL. Not some paranoid fantasy. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS did happen.
At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union had in my opinion a far stronger LAND ARMY than America and the rest of the Western Allies combined. They had just defeated THE GERMAN ARMY that had defeated all of Western Europe and Britain in 5 short weeks in Spring and early Summer of 1940.
The whole combined effort of the USA, Britain, and the rest of the Western allies AFTER THE NORMANDY INVASION was against only 20% of the German Army. The Soviets had the Germans in retreat at the time of those landings. Stalin had notions of conquering Europe himself.
These were no idle threats. The Western Allies had considerable forces of their own by the end of the war against Germany. Especially Naval and Air Forces the Russians could not match, YET.
And with the advent of NUCLEAR WEAPONS by the USA, well, this put an end to any immediate threat from the Soviet Union. Of course the SOVIETS quickly developed their own NUCLEAR capabilities and the COLD WAR was what resulted. It became a test of wills. If the Soviets and their ALLIES could simply sweep into any Country unopposed such as they tried to do in South Korea and South Viet Nam, they could achieve WORLD DOMINATION without the use of NUCLEAR WEAPONS. IN MY OPINION, that is why these wars had to be fought by the USA and her ALLIES. Laos and Cambodia became part of the Viet Nam War because to allow safe haven for the NVA by some arbitrary border was preposterous to those of us there at that time.
Things worked out the way they did over a long period of time which required a willingness to fight on the part of the USA and her allies. Detente and such between the USA and the Soviets and Red Chinese evolved over this time period. Both sides learned to get along with each other as well as they did. That is the way I see it. That is my opinion and I was there as a young U.S.Marine fighting in those border areas between South Viet Nam, North Viet Nam, and Laos. ...fellowtraveler
Despite all this and with due respect for what you have lived, millions of civilians were killed by the bombing. It was neither a smart nor ethical policy, and significant portion of it was clearly illegal in relation to US law.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
I'm the Linguistics Moderator and I do not define all fundamentalists as fanatics or lunatics. Even though I don't understand how you could have gotten that impression from my post, I apologize for any misunderstanding. A fundamentalist is one who regards the legends in his holy book as factual history, rather than metaphors. Please excuse what you will probably regard as the implicit insult in that definition, but SciForums is, after all, a place of science and religious fundamentalism is not held in high regard here.
Indeed that is a problem in coordinating the antiterrorist campaign with the local people in Muslim nations such as Pakistan. The citizens simply do not believe that a Muslim would kill innocent Muslims, so they assume that it must be a wicked plot by the Americans.
Fanaticism does not automatically imply violence. One can be a fanatic about many things, such as his favorite videogame, without having any desire to kill people.
No, it is not news to me. I understand that the vast majority of Muslims try their best to be honorable people and that their religion does not condone killing innocent people, Muslim or not. Most educated Westerners probably understand that.
Revenge is the most evil of all human emotions and we must surmount it in order for civilization to prosper. The problem with killing in retaliation for killing is that you nearly always end up killing the wrong people, innocent people. So then those deaths must be avenged, and you end up with a war. A culture that condones killing for revenge is sick and needs healing.
A scholarly (as oppposed to "official') definition of terrorism is quite straightforward: Violence of military or paramilitary scope, deliberately targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure, in a desperate (and nearly always futile) attempt to force them to adopt a policy so unpopular among them that there is no other way to get them to adopt it. In other words, terrorism is extortion.
I agree and have said so many times here on SciForums and elsewhere. It is terrorism for Hamas to fire missiles at random locations in Israel where they will almost certainly not hit a valid military target. But it is also terrorism for Israel to send troops into Palestine to destroy civilian housing and kill scores of civilians, while taking only a small number of military targets. "Collateral damage" must be minimized, or else what might be legitimate warfare is nothing more than terrorism.
I have also noted that the the USS Cole, the Marine barracks in Lebanon, and the Pentagon on 9/11 were valid military targets because they were full of enemy warriors and their support staff and other resources, so those attacks may have been true acts of war, insurgency, rebellion, or guerrilla warfare, but they were not terrorism. On the other hand I have also noted that the nuclear annihilation of the populations of two cities in Japan with minimal strategic importance was terrorism. It was an attempt to extort the Japanese civilians to demand a change in their military leaders' no-surrender policy. Unfortunately it succeeded. So every half-assed terrorist for the rest of eternity can say, "Hey, it worked for the United States, maybe it will work for us."
I don't think it's controversial to say that Iran supplies weaponry and other support to Hamas. So if Hamas is a terrorist organization, then so is Iran. And as I noted earlier, even though Israel is arguably more guilty of terrorism than Hamas, that does not change the fact that Hamas also commits acts of terrorism. It's quite possible for both sides in a conflict to have sunk to inexcusable levels of dishonor, and that's what I see in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Someone should go in there and put all of the leaders of both sides in prison.
These are cultural differences. In the West we believe in very few limits on free speech. We can insult our political leaders with impunity and the same goes for religious icons. What we do in our own country is not your damn business so your complaint will not ever be respected. Considering that Saudi Arabia does not even allow Christians to have churches, Muslims are in no position to complain about the way they are treated on our side.
I can't explain why the normally placid Swiss won't allow the construction of minarets. But I can explain why we don't tolerate veils. In the West only criminals wear masks. We expect people to meet us face to face. In addition, the fact that in Muslim society only women are required to hide their faces reinforces our (not incorrect) impression that women are treated as second-class citizens. We have spent a long time sorting that issue out in our countries and we absolutely will not tolerate any immigrants who try to reverse that progress. It is far too important and it is simply not negotiable. If any religion disagrees with it, then that religion has become an impediment to the progress of civilization and our attitude is: Fuck it! Furthermore, there is the practical issue that a man could easily be hiding under one of those ninja costumes, carrying a bomb.
* * * *WARNING FROM A MODERATOR * * * *
Personal insults are a violation of the forum rules. If you do this again you will be subject to banning. This is a place of science so we are all free to insult religions, but not to insult individual members of those religions. Please keep that distinction clearly in mind.
I know we all mouth off once in a while in the spirit of fun or sarcasm, but this insult was clearly meant to be serious.
When a member sets up a second account with a new screen name, in order to post messages that appear to be someone else agreeing with him, the second name is a sock puppet. It comes from the old-fashioned way of putting a sock over your hand, decorating it to look like a head, and opening your hand to make it look like the sock is talking instead of you. Kermit the Frog is a very elaborate sock puppet.
Huh???
There must be an answer; let it be, let it be.
Actually, people generally find fault with your ignorant, machismo-laden chest-beating.
If you were actually European, the issue would be misrepresentation. But not everyone who finds fault with you thinks you're European. Some just think you're, well ... not ... um ... smart? ... credible? Something like that.
Some find your hateful belligerence loathsome. Others find it pathetic. Seems to me, though, that it is suggestive of deep psychological insecurity.
And, as you might have noticed, few will simply do the logical thing, which is ignore you. But that's sort of the nature of virtual communities. You come in here and spray all over our walls like an alley cat, and people will generally have something to say about it.
A note to my Sciforums neighbors:
I think it is a safe conclusion that FellowTraveler is posting from within the United States. Whether or not he is of European origin really isn't a useful line of argument to pursue, as we're not about to send private dicks out to answer the question. My advice to you is to simply run with the ridiculous stereotype he presents, and hold him to account for that.
And think of it this way: If he keeps up this sort of trolling, then his time here is limited. There's no particular reason for anyone else to go down with that sinking ship. So hop in your dinghies and row like hell. And if it makes you feel better to point and laugh at the sad captain stomping blindly around his listing foredeck, go ahead and do so. On your own time. We have better things to do, more entertaining and enlightening discussions to have, than disowning an American simply for being an embarrassment to his nation.
I mean, come on. Americans? Anyone? Anyone? Embarrassing ourselves and our nation is a sacred right in this country.
FellowTraveler said:
Actually, people generally find fault with your ignorant, machismo-laden chest-beating.
If you were actually European, the issue would be misrepresentation. But not everyone who finds fault with you thinks you're European. Some just think you're, well ... not ... um ... smart? ... credible? Something like that.
Some find your hateful belligerence loathsome. Others find it pathetic. Seems to me, though, that it is suggestive of deep psychological insecurity.
And, as you might have noticed, few will simply do the logical thing, which is ignore you. But that's sort of the nature of virtual communities. You come in here and spray all over our walls like an alley cat, and people will generally have something to say about it.
• • •
A note to my Sciforums neighbors:
I think it is a safe conclusion that FellowTraveler is posting from within the United States. Whether or not he is of European origin really isn't a useful line of argument to pursue, as we're not about to send private dicks out to answer the question. My advice to you is to simply run with the ridiculous stereotype he presents, and hold him to account for that.
And think of it this way: If he keeps up this sort of trolling, then his time here is limited. There's no particular reason for anyone else to go down with that sinking ship. So hop in your dinghies and row like hell. And if it makes you feel better to point and laugh at the sad captain stomping blindly around his listing foredeck, go ahead and do so. On your own time. We have better things to do, more entertaining and enlightening discussions to have, than disowning an American simply for being an embarrassment to his nation.
I mean, come on. Americans? Anyone? Anyone? Embarrassing ourselves and our nation is a sacred right in this country.