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The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

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Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not necessarily denying that there are good people who chose to go kill people in iraq, I'm lucky enough to know a few. Many were brainwashed into thinking their choice would be heroic, perhaps some sort of revenge for 9/11, or a mission to find WMDs, instead of a cost to their country. I'm just saying there are a decent amount of soldiers who aren't providing more of a value to society than those who chose to go…

If you want to be educated, you can do it it home.. probably better than listening to average public school teachers. If you want the world to be safe, thats pretty hard to do from home. So I believe the soldier is giving you something you couldn't get without him... Safety.

It sounds like you may be a victim of the same brainwashing that convinced iraq war volunteers that they were heroes for volunteering to go kill people in iraq, or that they were making people safer.

Unfortunately, the decision actually made the world less safe, and also consumed money that could have been used for education or healthcare. Not sure how complaining about teachers and doctors helps make society better, either.

Meanwhile, teaching and medicine still are making the world a better place.

So, if you just want to shoot guns, do it at home or a range or something. If you want to kill people, seek help. Neither make you a hero. But volunteering to teach the future or care for people? More likely does.

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be educated, you can do it it home.. probably better than listening to average public school teachers. If you want the world to be safe, thats pretty hard to do from home. So I believe the soldier is giving you something you couldn't get without him... Safety.

It sounds like you may be a victim of the same brainwashing that convinced iraq war volunteers that they were heroes for volunteering to go kill people in iraq, or that they were making people safer. Unfortunately, the decision actually made the world less safe, and also consumed money that could have been used for education or healthcare. Not sure how complaining about teachers and doctors helps make society better,…

My point is that we glamorize teaching so much, that people that have no place teaching go into it because it's glamorous and pays ok in some places these days (my gf makes $90k and works 8-3, has a prep period she watching TV shows during, and has 2 months off a year.) So I feel she's doing a disservice because she's not good at it, yet will never get fired.

While a kid that goes and tries in the military is helping in one way or another. The military has better systems to extract value than the school districts.

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#163
post #11

This is outrageous to me, especially coming from a news outlet. As an American, though, I'm wondering if there's some UK legal context I'm missing?

> As an American, though, I'm wondering if there's some UK legal context I'm missing?

Plenty. There is now also the Online Safety Act (Bill).

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#165
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. What if it were your children, xwdv? What if your children were the ones being shot and blown up to get those "terrorists"? Would you still think that it's okay since your children "just happened to be in the way"? No wonder those people hold you accountable.

My children would simply not be in the way.

But if they were in the way, you'd be totally ok with it, right?

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#166
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel explicitly pursues collective punishment as a strategy. Always has and it's obviously what's happening in Gaza now.

There’s no alternative, the terrorists hide amongst the civilians.

So you have to kill all the civilians to make sure what all the terrorists die? Otherwise how can we be sure?

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you may be a victim of the same brainwashing that convinced iraq war volunteers that they were heroes for volunteering to go kill people in iraq, or that they were making people safer. Unfortunately, the decision actually made the world less safe, and also consumed money that could have been used for education or healthcare. Not sure how complaining about teachers and doctors helps make society better,…

My point is that we glamorize teaching so much, that people that have no place teaching go into it because it's glamorous and pays ok in some places these days (my gf makes $90k and works 8-3, has a prep period she watching TV shows during, and has 2 months off a year.) So I feel she's doing a disservice because she's not good at it, yet will never get fired. While a kid that goes and tries in the military is helping…

That wasn't your original point, though. You're drifting. Recall that your original point was that those who volunteered to shoot guns and kill people in iraq not only provided value to society in doing so, but did so more than everyone else, including doctors and teachers. You never explained what that value was, other than a deluded, jingoistic "safety" claim which was quickly debunked.

So, let's get back on topic: some individuals glamorize going to iraq to shoot guns and kill random people so much, that they actually believe such killing urges are helpful. So I feel these individuals are doing a disservice because they aren't good at identifying what is helpful and what isn't.

Meanwhile, a kid that goes into teaching or medicine (you keep ignoring medicine. Curious.) is helping in one way or another. You're right that these iraq war volunteers extract value from society (and keep it for themselves). Teaching and medicine, on the other hand, have better systems to give that value back to society.

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#168
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. What if it were your children, xwdv? What if your children were the ones being shot and blown up to get those "terrorists"? Would you still think that it's okay since your children "just happened to be in the way"? No wonder those people hold you accountable.

My children would simply not be in the way.

Unfortunatly, if you live in any large or developed country, then I'm fairly certain that they are.

Thanks to you, I now know how bad people justify killing innocent children. They don't.

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#169
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a shocking amount of hindsight bias with the US war in the middle east which seems to entirely forget 9/11. Including those who remember 9/11.

As someone who was old enough on 9/11 to be able to follow the events in real time (watching CNN while also following discussions on news aggregator websites at the time - yeah, those already were a thing): 9/11 did not justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor the erosion of American civil liberties, nor the mass surveillance against its own allies later uncovered by Snowden. That the evidence used to justi…

> That the evidence used to justify the invasion of Iraq was fabricated was blatantly obvious at the time and foreign heads of state's statements on it were based more on diplomacy than credibility.

It seemed obvious to me at the time when I watched a clip of the discussion in the House of Commons, but in retrospect what I thought was a weakness of the government position shouldn't have been seen that way, as (I learned from Johnson violating it) the standard for all statements in the House to be true.

Otherwise, I think I agree with what you say.

Re: The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'

#170
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this describes the ideological core of Islamist groups like Al Qaeda. But this also ignores the power dynamics they exist and flourish in. The problem with "freedom fighters" is that they can be both: they can be fighting for freedom while also fighting for the right to subjugate others. The latter is often accepted if the desire for the former is strong enough. Dropping bombs on people lowers the threshold for…

I completely agree, however, there's one thing in the core of their ideology that's different than the typical US/western european capitalism - their moral compass is absolute, derived from the Quran. It means basically, that there's very little wiggle room, you can't really negotiate with someone who believes he/she acts on orders from a divine entity. That's why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unsolved for…

I think it's odd to suggest that the Israel-Palestine conflict is perpetuated by Islamism when Israel's own existence hinges on a moral absolute.

There is a small but influential undercurrent among Israeli Zionists who believe in the creation of Greater Israel, ethnically cleansing not only all of the current borders of Israel (including Gaza and the West Bank) but also historical Transjordan and territories all the way to the Nile (i.e. all of Jordan as well as parts of Syria, Saudia Arabia and Egypt): https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions...

Eliminationist rhetoric has repeatedly made its way into statements by government politicians and even programming by the Israeli national broadcaster (Kan) as in the recently broadcasted and immediately de-archived "friendship song" video: https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/national/music-video-of-israe...

The early Zionist project in Palestine was explicitly described as colonialist by key members and the expulsion of the non-Jewish Palestinian population as an explicit aspect of it. The support of Western governments including the UK pre-1945 was based more on antisemitism than genuine goodwill, ranging from the idea that having "all the Jews in one place" made them easier to handle (or eliminate - which was why the Nazi government tolerated Zionist transfers of German Jews to Palestine until WW2 shut down all emigration) to the British idea during WW2 that "giving them what they want" would give you an "in" with "the international bankers" (basically the reverse side of the Jewish conspiracy theories): https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-10-26/ty-article/the-ba...

It's also impossible to mention the Israel-Palestine conflict itself without mentioning how Israel effectively helped bolster (Islamist) Hamas in order to combat the (secular, socialist-leaning) Fatah: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30...

... or how current PM Netanyahu supported the calls for the murder of his more moderate predecessor Rabin that preceded his assassination: https://www.timesofisrael.com/labor-chief-michaeli-rabin-was...

Heck, if you go back to the time Hamas was actually elected in Gaza (and many Gazans alive today weren't alive at the time, let alone old enough to participate in the election), their messaging was a lot more ideologically (and religously) moderate and closer to that of Fatah, even if they already were Islamists and eliminationist antisemites internally. Note that Palestinians in Gaza haven't had another election since and public opinion among Gazans seems to be very much divided.

In effect, the Zionists through the creation of Israel and the domestic and military conflicts that sprang from it created a Palestinian diaspora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_right_of_return) which is being mistreated in the countries it has sought refuge in. At the same time, Israel's existence in explicit opposition to its neighbors' cultures and ethnicities while in close alliance with Western powers and the US in particular is seen as a geopolitical threat by its neighbors and especially those countries that are aligned opposite to the US - this more than any religious motivations seems the main motivation behind Iran's support of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Islamism definitely plays a part in this and Islamists do lend themselves more towards carrying out the terrorist attacks and missile strikes against Israel as none of its neighbors could risk an all-out war even without direct involvement of the US military. But as always in geopolitics it runs much deeper than one group's religious dogma.

And I haven't even mentioned how certain Evangelical Christians shaped US politics on Israel because the reestablishment of Israel as a "Jewish state" (and the extermination of those same Jews) is an integral part of their mythology of the "end times" (and salvation). There are very unhealthy beliefs about Israel/Palestine present in all three Abrahamic religions, to say the least.

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