Je suis Bruxelles.

[irvin66]

Once again occurs horrific tragic terrorist attacks. Why are people so mean to each other? :(




Mes pensées vont à ceux qui ont perdu leur vie et ont été blessés par ces gens cruels....


Nous devons défendre l'égalité liberté et la fraternité........

[Ben in LA]

Yet no one stated they'd stand with Ankara, Istanbul.

[fred41]

Yet no one stated they'd stand with Ankara, Istanbul.

Actually there have been many more terrorist killings since the Paris attack, as shown here: http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-22/paris-there-have-been-hundreds-terrorist-attacks-many-have-gone-unnoticed

They often go unnoticed because, well...the simplistic point of view would be - they simply aren't popular as Facebook tags.
But I think the reality is that a lot of those countries have a history of civil unrest within their own populace - be it ethnic, tribal or religious. Turkey, for example, has had strife with Kurdish militants and now ISIS also (Stavros is usually good for an excellent history lesson on areas such as this)...
You're not entirely correct though in stating no one stands with the victims of some of these attacks...people such as my sister (she and her husband are devout Christians) and my uncle quite often post in unity, on Facebook, against these attacks.
But there also comes a time when these postings are just meaningless ,ubiquitous words.
The original Paris 'Je suis Charlie' meant more than that. People in western society took that as an attack upon Freedom of Speech...because once that is stifled... terror has become completely successful.

[trish]

Coverage of terrorist attacks is like coverage of shootings in the U.S. Which one catches the media’s eye depends not only on the who, where, what, when and how of the event but also on 1) whatever else is getting people’s attention during that news cycle and 2) the history of such events in the region. A shooting in the USA is de rigueur, as is a suicide bombing in Israel, the defacement of a cultural artifact in Iraq or, sadly, an attack by an ISIS operative almost anywhere in the West.

My heart goes out to the victims in Brussels and their families; but I admit, my mind almost immediately skipped over the horror of the unfolding tragedy to its likely consequences. They aren’t good for Syrians seeking asylum, but they’re fucking fantastic for hawks and haters everywhere. I turned off the news and distracted myself with work.

[Stavros]

No need for a history lesson, no need to get lost in moral relativism, or to kill again, and again and again -because all lives matter.

"All I have is a voice
to undo the folded lie..."

[fred41]

all lives matter
but, perhaps it's a matter of size -
...victims too small to matter...and perpetrators too small to understand why they should.

[trish]

It should be the case that all lives matter; i.e. every life matters to every person. But it's not even the case that for every life there exists someone for whom that life matters. Which lives matter to which persons is an issue entangled in religion, tribalism, politics, ideology, geography, business, cost and which lives can be sacrificed for what sorts of profit.

[flabbybody]

I see two major political outcomes impacted by the Brussels attacks:
1) The leave vote becomes the likely winner in The June BREXIT referendum
2) Donald Trump is all but assured his party's nomination for US president
What baffles me is why Isis would think either one of these developments benefit Muslims. Maybe my mistake would be attaching a rational motive to soulless murderers. They fashion their bombs with bags of nails to assure maximum death and agony for their victims. It would be akin to asking Himmler how his nation benefited by waging genocide against civilians.

[irvin66]

Biz de Türkiye'ye destek, masum insanlar da ölüyor, ve başka yerlerde vardır....
We support Turkey, innocent people are dying there, and other places ....

[trish]

I see two major political outcomes impacted by the Brussels attacks:
1) The leave vote becomes the likely winner in The June BREXIT referendum
2) Donald Trump is all but assured his party's nomination for US president ...

I pretty much agree on both of these.


What baffles me is why Isis would think either one of these developments benefit Muslims. Maybe my mistake would be attaching a rational motive to soulless murderers. They fashion their bombs with bags of nails to assure maximum death and agony for their victims. It would be akin to asking Himmler how his nation benefited by waging genocide against civilians.

My uniformed take would be that ISIS doesn’t care all that much about Muslims. My guess is that most Muslims are regarded by ISIS as apostate, insufficiently devout and too westernized to matter all that much. The cause of the Caliphate is (I think) first and foremost a political cause, distinguishable from Islam as a personal faith and certainly distinguishable from the liberty, happiness and safety of Muslims in Europe.

[nitron]

Islam not just a religion , also an ideology.......https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2xtSUCQWLA

[Stavros]

Nitron, I am disappointed that you fell for this drivel, in which 'Sargon of Akkad' reads out a letter from someone in Pakistan whose language and arguments are little more than the same ones 'Sargon of Akkad' uses in his other videos. It even begins with the nonsense that 'the basis of discrimination in the western world has largely been based on race' as if class had not been more important in Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere, not least when race as a concept was not fully articulated until the 19th century. The remark later that Islamic studies in universities in the west is so dominated by Muslims as to make Islamic studies departments little more than Madrasas, is risible and contradicted by his own claim in the same passage that Islamic studies is seen in the west as a theological issue that compares Islam wih Christianity and other faiths doesn't sound like a madrasa to me. I am not sure if you believe this stuff, but the reality is that Islam developed in the same way that Christianity and Judaism developed, out of a founding moment, a text, and so on, and that many of the 'problems' associated with religion, of which is use as a political ideology is the most dangerous apply to almost every religion I can think with the possible exception of Jainism. 'Sargon of Akkad' offers no evidence or explanation for the domineering and violent manner that Christianity was imposed on all of the indignous peoples of America from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego, let alone the massacres of the Cathars in southern France by militants of the Roman Catholic Church. The attempt to make Islam an exception to other faiths is feeble, and for someone motivated by 'objective truth', as he claims in his founding video, he has no attachment to either objectivity or truth.

As for Marxism, the comments 'Sargon of Akkad' make are breathtaking in their ignorance, for just as Muslims do leave their faith, but just don't make a song and dance about it, so in the USSR and China Marxists were murdered for denying the authority of 'the Party' -the denial of Marxism-Leninism and Maoism-, and murdered in their millions. Political ideologies develop for all sorts of reasons, and when they use violence to make their point their attract followers, they attract just as vicious opponents, yet surely anyone with an argument who can only express it through violence has in effect shown that they have lost it. This assumption that violence is power in its purest sense makes the fatal mistake of not seeing how power always works best as a relationship, and that forcing submission at the point of a gun is a weak form of power because it does not last and is more destructive than creative. Young men who are recruited to a cause that involves bullets, bombs and knives have nowhere to go once the killing is done, and that is literally dead-end politics and the reason why most people and most states have rejected it.

[nitron]

Hey, do you agree , Islam poses a threat to our community? (just like Christianity did, or any ideology in the past?). ;)

[nitron]

Dear Trish:

(I hope your right)."There are no upper limits on gullibility. "

Do you agree , Islam poses a threat to our community?

[trish]

Dear Trish:

(I hope your right)."There are no upper limits on gullibility. "

Do you agree , Islam poses a threat to our community?

Was it a Muslim who posted in another thread, “People like you are traitors of western civilization, traitors of the free world, you need to be held accountable.” I’m not sure what “held accountable” means in this context, but one could take it as a vague threat.
But to answer your question,


Hey, do you agree , Islam poses a threat to our community? (just like Christianity did, or any ideology in the past?).

No. Of course not. Ideas can be intriguing or interesting, but I never found an idea (religious, satanic, philosophical, scientific, political, ideological etc.) to be threatening. From our previous exchanges I’m assuming what you mean by community is the LGBT-community. What our community is threatened by is hatred, jealously, bigotry and prejudice. Not Islam. Not Christianity. (Although I do wish the O’Reilly sect wouldn’t be so quick to anger when wished “Happy Holidays” - but that’s just a very small sect, it’s not all Christians by any means.)

Sometimes a passage in a holy text can be used to rationalize someone’s irrational hatred. Leviticus comes to mind. But there are lunatics who also twist the words of Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and others to the aid of their prejudices. And sometimes there are bigots who rally behind their common hatreds and prejudices and call it religion. But the hatred men have of our community is a visceral one, not a intellectual attitude born of religion or philosophy. They do not hate because a religious law tells them to hate. They hate all on their own, because their minds are small and they can think of no way to relate to a person whose sexuality is different than theirs.

I’m always reminded of the Tennessee man who was murdered outside a highway rest stop. He was holding his wife’s purse while she relieved herself inside and he was guiding a blind man -arm in arm- to the building entrance. The perpetrator took them to be a gay couple. It wasn’t a religious killing, even though the perp was Christian. The perp was just disgusted by the very notion of men having sex with one another.

I’m surprised a Satanist is unaware of these things.

[Stavros]

Hey, do you agree , Islam poses a threat to our community? (just like Christianity did, or any ideology in the past?). ;)

No, for the reasons contained in Trish's eloquent post. And religions are not ideologies, though when treated as such they tend to lose contact with whatever it is that gives them theological grace by stripping away that part which attends to the needs of the soul rather than an earthly and often crude political objective. Just as socialism that seeks social and economic justice, loses its sense of equality and fairness when advocating violent revolution as positive change. How can anyone claim to 'fight for freedom' if it involves killing another human that by definition deprives that person of their freedom to live?

[nitron]

Freedom to live, freedom how to live.
Calamities come from all directions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN-GGeNPQEg
, history is the arbiter. We shall see.

[trish]

Anger's energy is quickly spent.
Love vanquishes time.

[hippifried]

Anger's energy is quickly spent.
Love vanquishes time.

So does smashing the alarm clock.

But as a retired hippy, I get the love thing, irrespective of how smart my ass is. So Watersibling Trish, I'm ready to join your cult. How may I serve thee?