Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes • Hacker News Board

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#191

Post by RocketSyntax » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:14 AM UTC

salmon30salmon wrote: post #43

RocketSyntax wrote: post #20

Has there, will there ever be peace in the middle east? feels wrong to say middle east... arab world... don't want to box them in by religion either.

Just to educate, “Arab” isn’t a religion, it is an ethnic group. A majority of Arabs are Muslims, which is the religious designation. The Middle East is no more warlike than the west. Remember is only been a couple generations since World War 2, and sectarian violence has been around within the last two decades in the west.

ah, yeah. duh. sorry, haven't contemplated the region much lately.

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#192

Post by RocketSyntax » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:15 AM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #88

salmon30salmon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to educate, “Arab” isn’t a religion, it is an ethnic group. A majority of Arabs are Muslims, which is the religious designation. The Middle East is no more warlike than the west. Remember is only been a couple generations since World War 2, and sectarian violence has been around within the last two decades in the west.

You don’t refute “the Middle East is a violent place” with “there has been violence in the west in the last 20 years”. Violence is a spectrum, not a binary, and there is a chasm between the Middle East and the West with respect to how violent each place is. We can find non-racist explanations for the violence disparity without forsaking reason.

hasn't the region been consistently violent compared to the rest of the world for the last 2,000 years?

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#193

Post by weberc2 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

RocketSyntax wrote: post #192

weberc2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t refute “the Middle East is a violent place” with “there has been violence in the west in the last 20 years”. Violence is a spectrum, not a binary, and there is a chasm between the Middle East and the West with respect to how violent each place is. We can find non-racist explanations for the violence disparity without forsaking reason.

hasn't the region been consistently violent compared to the rest of the world for the last 2,000 years?

I'm not a historian, but I doubt it. My understanding is that the middle east was quite a lot more civilized (for some conventional definition of the term, anyway) than most/all of Europe throughout most of the middle ages. I'm of the impression that the middle east only became appreciably more violent in the last century (oil-related conflicts in the middle east amid rising quality of life all over the world). I'm only speculating though; I'd be interested to hear from someone more knowledgable on the subject.