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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:51 pm Post subject: Re: Ooops...a final point... |
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| Tarheel13 wrote: |
| Oh, Flottie, please don't get me wrong and misinterpret my words and tone. I do admire your mind at work here. You are not bereft of talent, albeit a nascent talent that will hopefully improve with the years and a fine honing. |
Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope.
I can't win with you: you pick on the Ivies, you pick on the state schools; I am to assume you are an autodidact? (Would explain certain...colorings in your writing.)
First, fair warning: You are beginning to sound decidely less Tarheelian. A little too much clever and you are bound to suffer a drop out of character..
Second, really, you don't seem to have a point up there. Or, you assume those clever enough to grasp it will and, sod the proles! Or, you are intentionally leaving your "toned" fable open to misinterpretation, i.e.: high-brow trolling.
Tsk-tsk. You have so much potential, I hate to see you squander it this way. So let's think of these little exchanges as a form of tutorial for you.
Together, we can accomplish anything.
We my friend, are indeed, the world.
And...no more platitudes are jumping up at me right me now, so:
What exactly was that last post all about then?
Last edited by flotsam on Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tarheel13
Joined: 20 Apr 2006
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Flottie: Fuuuucked if I know? Any ideas from your cerebellum? |
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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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| bigverne wrote: |
| Quote: |
| know dhimmitude has a unique character, but all forms of discrimination do |
The difference is that dhimmitude is a codified, legalized social system, much like apartheid, which still exists in many forms today. This is why it is still illegal in many Muslim countries (and not just the Shariah ones) to convert from Islam to another religion. You cannot compare legalised discrimination to discrimination which exists in all societies, and to do so is to engage in moral equivalence. It's like saying, 'well apartheid is wrong, but discrimination exists in all societies, so who are we to criticise?'. |
Now we're talking! This is, of course right. Especially as legalized remnants of dhimmi statutes are superimposed on societies that already have their fair share of the kinds of "everyday discrimination" that exist everywhere. They institutionalize and normalize inequality or at least "othering" (uh-oh..) in the societies in which they are enforced.
But, did you notice that you did manage to use a fruitful historical comparison to make your point?
| bigverne wrote: |
| Quote: |
| at their base roots, how different are the discriminations faced by peoples under different religious and economic systems? |
In most Western countries religious minorities have legally enshrined rights to practice their religions, to build houses of worship and to seek converts. The same rights do not exist in the Muslim world, and even in so-called 'moderate' Muslim nations, there is legal discrimination against religious minorities. The more Islamic a country, the more oppressed its minorities are. What a coincidence!
In the West, legal codes discriminating against minorities have been done away with (for the most part), and there was a recognition that such practices were morally wrong. When you attempt to draw a parallel between legal discrimination in the Islamic world against women, apostates and religious minorities and the kind of discrimination that exists anyway, in all societies, you reveal yourself to be a moral coward, unable to criticise what is wrong because you are desperate not to be labelled intolerant. For people like yourself, being seen to be 'tolerant' and 'compassionate' trumps any recognition of the truth.
Shariah Law is morally reprehensible, as is the ideology of Jihad against 'infidels', and both are fundamental aspects of Islam. That is why Zarqawi's death will have little effect. The ideology that gives rise to such people will still be very much alive and well. |
And this is wear the wheels come off. Back to blocks and monoliths and big old bugbears that go bump in the night.
Simple stuff really:
1. Too sweeping again: As examples, do Bangaladesh, Turkey and Lebanon, even Indonesia[their laws are bit quirky though], practice legal discrimination against religious minorities? Keep the Kurds and Armenians in mind, but stay on target.
2. You can't get away with a phrase like "The more Islamic a country...". Which country is more Islamic: Brunei, Afghanistan, Turkey or Albania? --And India, with more Muslims than any; where the preferred language of poetry and film is Urdu, not Hindi or Sanskrit: how Islamic is India? More concretely, what makes a country Islamic: culture, law, demographics, or interepretation of the religion? What? Many Muslims would say Taliban-led Afghanistan was one of the least Islamic countries ever.
3. Shariah law in its current form has many faults. Serious faults. However, it is not the fault of the religious base of the law but of the ulema that have maintained a classical chokehold on it for the past ten centuries or so. This is the true major issue--without ijtihad, the law is stagnant, and ironically, it seems that Muslims are often more willing to adapt western secular concepts of law and governance(usually for the benefits the perceive they will, and often do, bring) than go back to their own roots and employ their own well-established tradition of legal interpretation. This has caused a sad and absurd amount of strife in terms of unaddressed cultural and religious incompatability--all of which could most likely be avoided. (For the record, I am a staunch secularist myself, but I think that Muslims the world round have yet to really make an attempt at reconciling Islam and modern law, and I think that no final calls should be made on the feasibility of the project until some serious exploration is realized.)
4. Now, will you people never learn? Keep in the mind the root stem of ijtihad: same as jihad. It's another form of jihad, of which there are many: some say 3, some say 4, some say 5 types--the jury is definitely still out on jihad. Has been since the 7th Century.
But one thing is clear: Holy war against infidels is not an obligation for Muslims.
War itself is not an obligation but in self-defense. But, fighting against injustice, yes. Fighting against oppression, yes. Fighting against temptation, yes. Fighting against immorality, yeseroo. Islam is not a "turn the other cheek" religion in either rhetoric or principle, but there is nothing in the base texts that states holy war against infidels is required. (Although some very poor translations say they do--ahhh...those silly orientalists and their poor language skills. Armchair hate-mongerers.)
From Qur'anic verse, other forms of jihad may be deemed obligatory, most particularly proselytization, but war: no. Just no. And as long as you make statements to the effect that it is, you cannot be taken seriously, and your arguments will glance off. And I have only once been asked by a friend to consider converting to Islam, whereas the Mormons here in Bundang seem to know my daily schedule well enough to somehow be on the same bus as me thrice fortnightly.
Now, can certain verses from the Hadith and the Qur'an be used as propaganda to incite violence and warfare? You bet your ass. But, well...I'll skip the comparisons for your sake BV--you know what they are. And all such propagandizing and inciting is wrong.
5. Which brings me to the bit about me being a moral coward--just off, you have no gound to stand on. Some things are just wrong, and I will be the first to say they are. No PC equivocating on infibulation for flotsam, thank you very much. Though less serious, I even think it is morally wrong for women to be forced to wear the hejab if they don't want to[and there is nothing in the base texts about seclusion or required garb for men or women]. And as for partially beheading a practitioner of a different interpretation of your own faith then jumping up and down on his dying body to spray blood all over the room in order to intensify the terror in your terrorism, well...
But if all the Hindus and Christians and Jews were able to put a stop to fringe elements engaging in that kind of religiously justified institutionalized criminality and barbarity(almost), I bet Muslims can too.
Oooops, I did it again.
But I do enjoy chatting with you when you leave the Vitriol-Spewificator in its sheath, BV. I'm considering promoting you to BV for a probationary period. I'll let you know my final decision a bit later.
Ta. |
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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Tarheel13 wrote: |
| Flottie: Fuuuucked if I know? Any ideas from your cerebellum? |
It's just a bunch of grey matter to me. |
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fiveeagles
Joined: 19 May 2005
Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 6:13 am Post subject: |
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| patchy1 wrote: |
Seems like they've put their plan into action, with other people's troops doing the fighting, of course:
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
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In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates."
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon." |
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A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
by Oded Yinon
This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14--Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.
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At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at home and abroad. This need has ....
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The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel's satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.......
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Right! Great strategy...leak your plan to your enemies so then they can put it on the internet.
Second, what is this garbage?
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The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980's," talks about "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967" that are created by the "very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel." |
Who attacked who first? |
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hermes.trismegistus
Joined: 08 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 10:40 am Post subject: |
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Zarqawi, a staged false flag event?
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| The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003� The timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.) |
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The U.S. military is conducting a campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military-intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with the effort, noting that tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked al-Zarqawi loyalists. (Seattle Times) |
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Is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself a manipulation? As we discussed in a recent post, the Washington Post revealed that the "threat" posed by this alleged Al Qaeda leader was largely the creation of a military PSYOPS unit. The propaganda campaign created by this unit targeted both the foreign press and the U.S. "home audience." Our troops were another target: When they unleashed "Whiskey Pete" on civilians in Fallujah, they did so in the belief that they were fighting Zarqawi.
On the same day the Post story appeared, Bush -- in a speech -- cited as genuine a Zarqawi letter now known to be fake.
Journalist Robert Fisk feels that Zarqawi may have died years ago. The Jordanian has not been seen in years; he did not communicate with his family when his mother died; he has made no attempt to help his wife. (Cannonfire) |
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In an unusual twist, the Washington Post in a recent article, has acknowledged that the role of Zarqawi had been deliberately "magnified" by the Pentagon with a view to galvanizing public support for the US-UK led "war on terrorism":
"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work..." (WP. 10 April 2006)
The military's propaganda program, according to the Washington Post, has "largely been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war." (WP, op cit.) (Global Research) |
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Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader believed to be responsible for the abduction of Kenneth Bigley, is 'more myth than man', according to American military intelligence agents in Iraq.
Several sources said the importance of Zarqawi, blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq, has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration's desire to find "a villain" for the post-invasion mayhem. (Telegraph) |
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| The Washington Post's recent revelation that a Pentagon psyop unit hyped up the Zarqawi threat may turn into the next big scandal, especially since the leaked document specifices that the propaganda campaign targeted the "U.S. Home Audience." (Cannonfire) |
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| Nobody knows if al-Zarqawi actually did it�same as they don�t know anything else about the mercurial terrorist�but it makes sense to blame him the same way he is blamed for poison attacks in Europe, releasing a chemical cloud in Amman, 700 plus murders in Iraq during the occupation, the Canal Hotel bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (killing the UN Secretary-general�s special Iraqi envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello), and various sundry murders, including Laurence Foley, a senior U.S. diplomat working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan, and the beheading of American-Israeli dual citizen Nicholas Berg. It should be noted there is absolutely no evidence al-Zarqawi had anything to do with any of the above incidents and he is associated with them due to the careless use of adjectives such as �purportedly� and �possibly� habitually employed by the corporate media based on nonsense uttered by �anonymous� and �unnamed� administration officials and other such dissimulators and con artists. (Kurt Nimmo) |
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| Dangerous, ruthless and elusive, he is one of the most wanted men in the world. But despite the allegations, little is known about the man himself - and some experts even doubt he is alive. (Al Jazeera) |
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| Over the past months, JUS has been watching a frightening trend of �false flag� operations beening waged by US intelligence. The latest in the series is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who has been accredited with everything from the Ricin attacks (which later turned out to be fake) to the resistance in Fallujah. An amazing enemy in deed for a man who has the staring role in an American �False Flag� operation. (Prison Planet) |
Remember that the first video attributed to Zarqawi included men who wore gold watches and rings, and spoke with strange accents...
Considering the information available, and the negative probablity implicit in accepting anything from such a corrupt administration, accepting the official version of events seems irresponsible; bordering on negligent.
Namaste. |
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WorldWide
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was nowhere near as important as Cheney Inc. /american media made him out to be. The americans just wanted to have a human face to personify their enemy. He was the only link they could find to justify their big lie that Iraq was somehow involved with al-Qaeda. Al-Zarqawi had loose ties to al-Qaeda and was hiding out in Kurdish northern Iraq (out of control of Saddam)... but as far as the liars in the white house were concerned, he was Saddams right hand man. Killing him won't change a thing. There are literally dozens of different Jihad groups in Iraq, all of them independent of each other, some Sunni, some Shi'a, some plain anti-american. Killing the leader of one group means nothing. Its all american lies and propaganda.
I find is hilarious how within one day of the news of al-Zarqawi's death, CNN was already pushing the new lie that Abu Hamza al-Muhajer is the new boogeyman for everyone to fear and hiss at... As if there is one big terrorist hierarchy in Iraq, one big enemy like Nazi Germany. Either the american public is too f**king dumb to understand the situation in Iraq after 3 years and 3 months, or their media has everyone so brainwashed they just don't care because "All Arabs is terrorists and our gas prices is going up cause of them towel head, goat-lickin' bastards". |
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Tarheel13
Joined: 20 Apr 2006
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Worldwide: The last line of your post would appear to be the only intelligent words that you are capable of mustering. Just what we need, another sticky-cigar-chewing Democrat on this forum. |
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hermes.trismegistus
Joined: 08 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Tarheel13 wrote: |
| Worldwide: The last line of your post would appear to be the only intelligent words that you are capable of mustering. Just what we need, another sticky-cigar-chewing Democrat on this forum. |
"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." - Wolfgang von Goethe
One doesn't have to endorse the Democrats to recognize the duplicity and incompetence of this administration.
Namaste. |
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