Terrorists hit London -- Bombs in Underground and a Bus

[Morgeruat]

lol, fair enough Timber I should have seperated the two thoughts a little better, Iraq of course did not go after us (aside from a few assassination attempts on our presidents ~part of my theory on the real reason for the invasion), but when we went after Iraq, we targetted military and militias, rather than civilians.

[Gangrell]

Originally posted by Jaradu: While I'm angry at the terrorists for this event, and I'm annoyed that they had to subject our beloved island to an attack, I can't help feeling we had it coming our way. I mean, get into their skin; we bombed the living hell out of Eastern countries, and I'm sure there were many civilian casualties in the process. Did we really think we could get away with it without a reaction? If anything, we deserve more of this bombing treatment. Not that I want any of course; it would be idyllic if it could all stop relatively soon.

[img]graemlins/jawdrop.gif[/img]

I'm sorry, so you would've liked to have lost your cousin in the attack since you know, people deserve more of this? Do you understand how much of a half-assed statement that was? Would you rather live in a world made of constant fear, families enduring months of torture through electro-shock therapy, and loved ones dying for a cause that only exists in the mind of the insane?

Lavi is right, these people, they live in holes, caves, they are the epitome of filth and can live in the same environment so we cannot find them. I honestly believe that when their reach becomes so dangerous towards other countries, when they keep opposing those who won't roll over for them, a world war will be declared and then those armies will wipe them off the face of the earth.

[Timber Loftis]

Damn straight -- there are no homes in Syria, only caves. Syria is, notably, the inspiration for The Flintstones. But I digress. If you go through life knowing a large group of people detest you, you owe it to yourself to at least ask why. If they happen to be people who have suffered generations of war and loss and poverty due to your shenanigans running amok in their territory, the answer may be right in front of you.

If our societies had spent more time asking questions like Jaradu's and less time dreaming up ways to rape and pillage from the lesser peoples of the Earth, we may not have such a bipolar world right now.

And, if you consider his statement half-assed, please consider this one full-assed. Thanks.

[ 07-08-2005, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Morgeruat]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Damn straight -- there are no homes in Syria, only caves. Syria is, notably, the inspiration for The Flintstones. But I digress. If you go through life knowing a large group of people detest you, you owe it to yourself to at least ask why. If they happen to be people who have suffered generations of war and loss and poverty due to your shenanigans running amok in their territory, the answer may be right in front of you. If our societies had spent more time asking questions like Jaradu's and less time dreaming up ways to rape and pillage from the lesser peoples of the Earth, we may not have such a bipolar world right now. And, if you consider his statement half-assed, please consider this one full-assed. Thanks.

2/3rds of the worlds poorest people live in Islamic countries. Despite their oil wealth not one of the top 30 wealthy countries are Muslim.
All Arab countries combined, factoring out oil exports, produce less exports than tiny Finland.
Egypt prior to the Muslim conquest was the breadbasket of Europe.
Algeria before De Gaule caved into the FLN was a net exporter of food and the breadbasket of France, now it is a net importer of food.
This is not a racist rant, but third world countries (including South and Central America) are third world countries because of one thing.. their culture. Their attitudes towards life, others, self and their values and ethics.

and Timber try this one on for size as well

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: [QB]you owe it to yourself to at least ask why. If they happen to be people who have suffered generations of war and loss and poverty due to your shenanigans running amok in their territory, the answer may be right in front of you.

Damn straight Timber:

Islam has had its effect on Africa, all right. In the north, the thriving agriculture, and flourishing civilization of migrants and Phoenician traders and Jews and christianized Berbers,the Other Shore of mediterranean civilization, where among others Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo came from, was destroyed by the Arab Muslim invaders, with the consequences for North Africa that we can all see. It was only in the period of French rule in Algeria, from 1830 to 1962, that agriculture was revived (including that of the vineyards), that the desertification that Arab non-methods of cultivation brought everywhere they conquered, and where universities, museums, and other outward and visible signs of civilization were established and maintained. For that moment, Algeria again possessed something like civilization -- and now it has relapsed, as of course it could be predicted it would, into a scarcely endurable and violent place, where the only hope is to get, as those chanting crowds repeated when they came out to "greet" a visiting Jacques Chirac a year or two ago: "Visa, Visa!" What about black Africa? If you wish to see the traditional Arab Muslim treatment of black Africans, look at the 2 million dead, over the past 20 years of scarcely uninterrupted warfare and genocide, in the southern Sudan. If you wish to see the traditional Arab Muslim treatment of black African Muslims, prompted by the Arab supremacist ideology that Islam carries within it, and that does not admit of non-Arabs being as "fully Muslim" as the Arabs, look at Darfur, through the lenses even of Nicholas Kristof. If you seek other examples, look at the unceasing pressure of Muslims in northern Nigeria on the Christians of southern Nigeria, and read again the Ahiara Declaration of Col. Ojukwu, in 1969, the leader of the Biafran Nation, where advanced Christians, chiefly but not entirely Ibo, sought independence as a way of protecting themselves from the "Jihad" (Col. Ojukwu's carefully-chosen word) being waged against them. If you seek other evidence for what Islam, what Arabs, have meant for black Africa, do take a moment to read Willis on the Arab slavers of Africa, and the Arab slave trade that began earlier, and ended later (where it ended at all) in black Africa. Do read Jan Hogedoorn's article "The Hideous Trade" about the Arab slave trade, which was far more ruthless and genocidal in its effects, for the Arabs liked particularly to seize young boys, who were castrated on the spot, and if they survived the initial primitive surgery, were forced to endure a long trip overland, through the bush, to arrive either by land or by dhow in one of the Muslim slave entrepots, Cairo or Jeddah or Muscat, Damascus or Baghdad or Constantinople or Algiers, or even distant Smyrna. Hogedoorn offers a complicated economic analysis of why the castration was done on the spot, which caused so many, on their subsequent forced march, to die. He estimates that only 10% of those castrated survived the trip in coffle or caravan to be sold in the Arab and Muslim slave-markets. And while we are at it, let us remind ourselves that slavery was never really abolished, except in theory, in many Arab states. Tens of thousands of blacks still are enslaved in the Sudan, in Mali, in Mauritania -- and their masters are exclusively Muslim and Arab. Though slavery was officially abolished in Saudi Arabia, out of a desire to placate those pesky Infidels (before OPEC gave the Saudis the power to ignore them) in 1962, it continues still, as can be deducted from certain advertisements in the Saudi press (a kind of Saudi version of the Yankee Swop, where a Yyoung girl" will be traded for a "late-model American used car." What would a Yard Sale of cast-off slave girls look like?). There never was a Muslim William Wilberforce. Slavery is in the Qur'an, and Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia have expressly reasserted that slavery is right, is just, cannot be ended because it is part of the practice of those, Muhammad and His Companions, whose sayings, acts, attitudes, silences, give Muslim believers the Sunna, not merely a secondary source of Islamic doctrine, but one for many at least as important as the Qur'an. Oh, one could go on all day about what Islam has done to Africa. But don't ask me. Ask a black, non-Muslim African -- one who has some direct experience, possibly by living in an Arab country, of what Islma is all about, and what it has done to black Africa. You might find someone who remembers the slave-trade conducted from Zanzibar and Pemba, now part of Tanzania, where the Arab Muslims are again displaying their wonted master-race attitudes. The Sudan was scarcely 10% Arab in 1900; now it is at least 50%. How do you think this happened?Did the Dinka, did the Nuer, cease to have children? How did this demographic change take place? In West Africa, aside from the Sokoto Jihad, what caused Islam to expand at the expense of Christians? What caused a frightened Nigerian female journalist to suddenly leave her country a year or two ago, when during the Miss World brouhaha (Muslim protests, which caused the event to be moved) she mentioned Muhammad's appreciation for pulchritude, and received for her admittedly silly sally death threats in return? Why was it that it was only the French who ended the slave trade in North Africa? And why was it -- see J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795-1880, that only the British, using naval power (and staying carefully away from the interior of Arabia) managed to suppress the slave trade in East Africa, becuase not a single Muslim Arab had the slightest moral qualms about it -- nor does today. If it was good enough for Muhammad, if it is in the Qur'an, well then who is to object to slavery? There is much more one could write. One could go on, and on. But this is more than enough to provide a little grist, for a little mill, one that grinds exceeding slow -- but it does grind.

[Morgeruat]

Trying to put the blame for the middle east on western society is naive and foolish. You claim "we deserve it because of our colonial pasts" the same standard applies the other way around TL.

{edit} you personally didn't claim it, but it was implied in your response.

[ 07-08-2005, 12:52 PM: Message edited by: Morgeruat ]

[Cloudbringer]

Just a reminder that this is General Conversation and not the Current Events board so let's not turn this into a big politics debate here- there's a thread going over there if you want to do that. Thanks!

[Barry the Sprout]

3rd world countries are poor because of their culture? Oh no, thats not a racist rant at all...

What brute could suggest otherwise.

[Morgeruat]

Originally posted by Barry the Sprout: 3rd world countries are poor because of their culture? Oh no, thats not a racist rant at all... What brute could suggest otherwise.

OK, take a look at Russia, the worlds largest 3rd world country, explain to me how it's culture did not cause them to fall from a superpower to a 3rd world coutry.

And how is it racist when joe average Russion (or would that be Sergei) walking down the street looks no different cosmetically than joe average american, or briton.

[ 07-08-2005, 12:59 PM: Message edited by: Morgeruat ]

[Timber Loftis]

Nice article, Morgie. And Barry, just a wee bit unfair of you to pick out a one-liner from the post and ascribe that to the whole post. The article made good arguments, and is obviously more complex than "3rd World Countries are poor because of their culture."

And, you know, in every 3rd-world instance I've encountered, changing things there DOES IN FACT require a certain change in culture. I know a guy who opened a company in a 3rd World Country, and was taken aback by their behavior regarding money. He noticed that if a person got a 4-lb sack of grain, he would eat 1 lb., trade off the rest for trinkets and booze, and have nothing to eat in the morning. Such is life when you live day-to-day -- you're not accustomed to planning ahead. It takes a perspective shift to get people out of the mindset of poverty.

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Morgeruat: OK, take a look at Russia, the worlds largest 3rd world country, explain to me how it's culture did not cause them to fall from a superpower to a 3rd world coutry.

Culture... or government? And, are you pinning this on the head of Muslims?