You don't get to decide what their dream is or whether it's being fulfilled.
Phat writes:
Christian Fundamentalists quite possibly would also become violent were their American Dream Utopia destroyed. If we can't raise our children in a world of opportunity, Nobody Else will succeed either!
Exactly. Christian Fundamentalists ARE violent. They, and the war-on-terror terrorists in general, will stop at nothing.
However you feel about the situation I can assure you that I feel as bad for the victims of the Parisian massacre as I do for the victims of the Mountain Meadows massacre and likewise the Houla massacre.
I'm sure most of us do in that abstract way. It matters to us in the moment. We then go and get a cup of tea and it's forgotten in a day, week month until the next earthquake, train crash, bombing. There's a reason a coach crash in Mexico is only reported here if it contains more than 10 UK citizens. We can't concern ourselves with every tragic death that occurs in the world, we're just not capable of it.
I did not ask 'Why do ISIS use Muslim deaths for propaganda?'.
If they don't value life, why is it that the propaganda that plays on the value of lives is successful?
Part of your answer requires you take into account the fact that they don't value life.
Sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Percy, the owner of this forum, has requested we specifically not talk about "people off the north coast of France who support war criminals." But it seems we are okay to talk about non-white, non-christian peoples who support war criminals. I guess It's best that we just look at "other" peoples' crimes.
Removing my words from the context of the post and of the exchanges between you and Tangle communicates a strong misimpression. I'm just a participant in this conversation, so ignore my laments about the tenor of discussion if you wish, but if you're going to quote me then at least do a good enough job to let people understand my true point.
Would you agree that it would be odd to say that a person who didn't value life might be moved to act by information of lives being lost?
You're just repeating a question I've already said that I don't understand. If you'd like me to answer it, you're going to have to explain it. Even better, why not just make your point?
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
If there's an entire island of sociopathic people off the north coast of France who support war criminals, and if there are racist members of this bulletin board, could we maybe take those discussions and accusations elsewhere? Like to another board entirely?
In other words, could we maybe raise the tenor of discussion?
Percy writes:
Removing my words from the context of the post and of the exchanges between you and Tangle communicates a strong misimpression. I'm just a participant in this conversation, so ignore my laments about the tenor of discussion if you wish, but if you're going to quote me then at least do a good enough job to let people understand my true point.
The topic is about the latest ISIS attacks. Sadly, the nearly concurrent "non-westernized" Lebanon attack (43 non-western people murdered) didn't register ANY mention or concern in this thread:
I think the people in Lebanon matter too, or do we only count westerners? I think it is appropriate for someone to ask on this forum, why don't they matter? And why doesn't the Iraqi invasion, which murdered so many non-whites, which precipitated these attacks, cause an EQUAL outcry? I think recurring criminal apathy and racism are fair theories to explore, especially when supported with ample evidence.
Which leads me to your recent reply. There appears to be a difference between your literal request ("Like to another board entirely?") and your "true" point.
You're just repeating a question I've already said that I don't understand. If you'd like me to answer it, you're going to have to explain it. Even better, why not just make your point?
Jihadist propaganda stands as evidence against your statement that 'they hold life cheap.'
They weren't willingly risking their lives; they were just indulging in risky behaviour, like drug addiction. It's not analogous to two sides in a war.
Ok then......how about Nazis remember those guys. The BADDIES.
They where the ones in Black and Gray wearing skulls on their caps, the ones that wanted to uhmmm....ya know, take over the whole Earth. You know... kill all Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsys, Blacks... Anyone not of Aryan descent.
Suicide bombers, blowing themselves up because they are more committed to their causes is no more laudable than Hitlers cowardly act of shooting himself hunkering in a bunker.
Sick, decrepit ideology is just that. No heros, just dead bastards.
Whether you like it or not there is a right side and a wrong side and ISIL is on the wrong side. Fuck them and anyone who wants to legitimize them.
"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
The fact that the propaganda in question, highlighting the loss of Moslem lives, seems to be so successful as a recruiting tool is the evidence in question.
Why would people unconcerned by loss of life be so motivated by people losing their lives?
Isn't it that you can divide the recruiters who really do hold life as cheap in their murderous reach for totalitarian power from the believers who sign up to blow themselves up for deeply held religious beliefs and hold life so precious that they are willing to die for the greater good of their children's children?
One group holds life cheap, the other does not. The first group as won over the second group by propaganda.
Jihadist propaganda stands as evidence against your statement that 'they hold life cheap.
It's rather hard to successfully argue that someone who kills himself with the stated aim of arriving in heaven early, hold life more dearly than death.
Though I'm sure there are those who will try anyway. Black is, after-all, just a darker shade of white.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Whenever there is an enemy human instinct is to dehumanise and classify those who are against us as some sort of embodiment of pure evil whose motivations are the mirror opposite of our own more noble intentions. Where we hold life dear they deem it to be worthless etc.
But that's too simplistic. In your analysis you have split the enemy into the truly evil and then the deluded followers brainwashed into evil acts by their genuinely evil ring masters. Again too simplistic. More likely is that, with the exception of a few genuine psychopaths, most ISIS members consider themselves to hold human life very dearly indeed and for that to be one of the core reasons for their actions.
No doubt they consider the apparent lack of concern the West holds for Arab lives as a sure sign of our depraved inhumanity and deem this a dehumanising justification for why Western lives matter so little. In their eyes we are the evil 'other' who have little regard for the human lives that they can most about.
No doubt I will be accused of advocating some sort of moral equivalence. But I'm not. It's perfectly possible to take a firm moral position on one side rather than another, to whole heartedly condemn the actions and philosophy of ISIS, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that human motivations and psychological needs are universally human.
In fact I would suggest that NOT dehumanising those we oppose, NOT doing as they do in that respect, is a key part of maintaining a morally superior position.
Are ISIS members motivated to do the things they do by the loss of lives they care about? It certainly seems so. In which case it is not that they hold life cheap so much as they have split the world into the human lives that matter and the dehumanised ones that don't. A very typical human psychological response.
It's rather hard to successfully argue that someone who kills himself with the stated aim of arriving in heaven early, hold life more dearly than death.
Thank you. Would you care to address the evidence after complementing me thusly?
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