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VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

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Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#361

Post by tome »

kohanz wrote: post #348
tome wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's a complete cop out. Can you come up with any definition of "terrorist" where significant numbers of the one billion Chinese are commiting terrorist atrocities abroad, for example?

So let's quantify your definitions of "significant" and "terrorism". In the past 5 years, about 2% of terrorist attacks in Europe were found to be religiously motivated [0]. The majority are perpetrated by separatist organizations. There are over 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide [1]. Size estimates for the terrorist groups are: ISIS (52k - 258k [2]), Al Qaeda (19k-27k [3]). There are others, but I believe these are the…

Counting "number of attacks" is extremely misleading (I'm tempted to think, deliberately so). A moment's Googling shows that Islamic terror is responsible for the majority of deaths, by a long way

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7552225/terrorism-europe-chart

(and you can add a big chunk of green for France November 2015 now too)

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#362

Post by powertower »

coldtea wrote: post #301
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40% That statement really doesn't make much sense at all. People are fleeing a war, among them people from the 40% and the 60% group alike. And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Many want the refugees stay somewhere in the region instead of letting them come…

> There is no 40% group of the population in Europe that holds views that are anywhere near as disgusting as that. Well, only 50+ years ago there was an over 40% population in the US that thought that blacks were inferior and shouldn't sit in the same restaurants/hotels/schools with whites. In fact it was even law in some states. Beyond that, there were about all major western countries, France, UK, Belgium, Holland,…

> ... (slavery, murder, and Hitler)

You are using the "someone did some bad things some time ago (and now that I've put things into perspective for you), lets be open minded about another someone doing another something bad right now, because it's only fare!" argument.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#363

Post by lmm »

oblio wrote: post #239
venomsnake wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support freedom of speech - absolute and unrestricted. I don't support freedom of religion, but support freedom from religion - no other human should be able to force religion on other. The religion should be private matter to the individual and individual alone.

> I support freedom of speech - absolute and unrestricted. What if my "free speech" involves drawing masses of people and telling them, persuading them, to kill you, your wife, your kids, your mother and father because you have the wrong skin color, eye color, religion or whatever else I imagine?

Then I disagree with what you say, but will defend your right to say it.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#364

Post by fauigerzigerk »

coldtea wrote: post #360
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There have been over 2 million victims of those interventions in the last 10 years alone I was comparing social attitudes not counting casualties of armed conflict and its repercussions. Comparing these two things quantitatively makes very little sense. The conservative advocates of Sharia who execute people for their sexual orientation are executing people who live right now in those countries. They don't execute E…

> The conservative advocates of Sharia who execute people for their sexual orientation are executing people who live right now in those countries Yes. So other countries should not encourage the tolerant co-patriots of those fanatics to adopt their attitudes -- e.g. by showing a plundering, hypocritical and hateful face of western democracies that destabilize the region, arm dangerous fanatics like ISIS and Laden, me…

I'm completely with you there.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#365

Post by crusso »

coldtea wrote: post #327
crusso wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.

Because these people live in societies that have been colonized, manipulated, held down and bombed for decades on end, forcing them to get radically hateful and fundamentalist as a response and pass that on to others (younger men etc). Why would a white Swedish, Canadian etc. have any reason to do the same? Besides, is it just terrorism that's incompatible with an "open society", or other acts of murder and oppressio…

What's your point? That Islamic terrorism is compatible with open society because of a bunch of things were done to them over the past thousand years?

Or is it that because Western society has had some bad actors/states, that we can never thereafter point to bad behaviors or systems of thought?

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#366

Post by happyscrappy »

wangii wrote: post #133

the thing I never understand: why God/Allah even care if I believe in him or not?

What I've never understood is if these people believe so strongly in their God, and that he will punish them for apostasy, then why the hell do they have to kill them? It undermines their alleged faith.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#367

Post by tim333 »

An interesting video summary of the history of the Syria war/mess (5 mins). You don't know who to blame really. It's a shame both Russia and Turkey said they were sending bombers to attack ISIS and then went after other targets instead (the anti Assad forces, Kurds respectively).

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/14/9735102/syria-isis-history-vid...

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#368

Post by jacquesm »

johnchristopher wrote: post #316
jacquesm wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is…

I don't understand how living in Belgium I missed that (nitpick: s/president/prime-minister). But then again these are just polls. And then there needs to be a majority coalition. But it's a far cry from the Netherlands I knew in the 90's. Back on the topic: there are some really disturbing messages on social networks and in politician mouths regarding the refugees (who are called migrants here).

Thanks for the correction, comment updated, the Dutch term is 'minister president'.

And yes, the coalition is pretty much our hope right now, but Wilders is ex VVD and SP might even join (they have a lot of similar things in their programs even though they're on opposite points of the political spectrum in nl, how that happened is another story). A 'cordon sanitaire' has been discussed but it is also already being broken.

The Netherlands that you knew in the 90's is dead, 25 years of divisive politics have seen to that.

Yes, it is absolutely deplorable how our 'chosen leaders' are positioning themselves and how they use the Paris attacks as a fig leaf cover to do things they nominally would have nothing to do with, except now that it is politically expedient.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#369

Post by alvarosm »

ocean3 wrote: post #187
atmosx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The roots of this mess are political: France wanted Assad ousted at every cost, a policy that suited the US too since Assad was in business with Russia. That's why the ISIS was allowed to grow and receive funding . I know shocking isn't it? Now that France knows that the ISIS, retards as they are, are not easy to control. France will have to decide: Either you leave Syria to the Russians or you leave the ISIS be and…

Why are France interested in ousting Assad?

The long sought pipe dream: socialdemocracy in the middle east. This time in the form of the so-called "Arab spring", a fiasco all EU and US liberals hailed as the panacea for the middle east and which has only caused untold suffering and destruction. Libya is in disarray, Egypt saved by the bell, and so on.

Apparently we're too dumb to realize that the best these countries and their culture can do are kinda-socialist pretenders like Saddam and Assad who rule with an iron fist. Trying to create western democracies in that environment is simply insane.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#370

Post by noufalibrahim »

iamthepieman wrote: post #37

I work with a Muslim and I'm a Christian. Since we are both very conservative, I actually have more in common with him than with my secular coworkers and friends. Unfortunately we both work remotely and live several hundred miles from each other. I think we could be good friends if we lived closer. One thing I have learned talking with my Muslim coworker is that, just like in Christianity, there are many divisions an…

I'm a practising Muslim and can totally relate with this point of view. I had a similar experience which might interest you. My family is fairly observant. We pray regularly and our dress and behaviour clearly suggests that we're Muslim. We stayed in a small apartment about 5 years ago and had two families as neighbours. Both were Hindu but one was very observant - they were Brahmins and very strict in matters of food, worship, dress etc. The others were also Hindus but less observant. They weren't vegetarian and were, atleast apparently, less observant than the Brahmin couple.

We all had young kids at the time and the Brahmin folks were much more comfortable leaving their daughter with us than with the other couple. This was mostly because we were conservative just like them and so could appreciate how strictly they followed their own dietary laws and things like that. They also trusted us to follow the same with their daughter. They weren't so confident with the other couple.

Interacting with people in real life belonging to any group is very transformative and "online" relationships are not really a servicable substitute.

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