It's a tribal culture, tribal mentality.

In such a culture, one's allegiance lies primarily with one's immediate family and one's tribe. Outside the tribe, allegiance runs to one's sect and one's religion and finally one's country.

The default situation in that part of the world seems to be a diaspora of brutal tribal warlords roaming the country, amassing wealth and armies, killing people and absorbing each other's dominion over the populace until the most brutal motherfucker comes to dominate the entire country.

Religion is commonly used by these assholes in the same way it is here in the West: as a tool to purport authority to oneself, to keep people in line and suppress dissent. People will put up with a lot more inequality, suffering, horror and outrage in their everyday lives if you promise them that they're going to live out the rest of eternity in paradise in exchange for their worldly misery.

The whole world would be better off if we all just admitted that all religion is nothing but a base political power game and just be done with it. All the arrogant charlatans who go around telling everybody else what to believe and making promises they'll never have to deliver, have caused far more suffering than they have ever prevented or alleviated.

Think about it. Religion has produced how many Mother Theresas in the history of the world? Compared to how many Erik Princes? How many lives have been saved by the likes of Mother Theresa, and how many have been destroyed by the likes of Erik Prince?

"Onward, Christian Soldiers" my ass. Fuck religion.

Colonel Panic wrote:Fuck religion.

How dare you call your beliefs better than another? You stuck up liberal sellout!!! Don't you know I know more than you!!!

You should know that your beliefs can only be superior to others if they 100% line up with the Alex Jones spambot of the electrical forum.

You are only intelligent if you believe what the Holy Prophet Alex Jones tells us. Otherwise you are all just sheeple. (Who have no right to call other people sheeple, cause that's just mean spirited amirite?)

Rick Reuben wrote:Can you define 'getting shit together'? Which country with a majority Islamic population has pre-emptively attacked another country recently?
Iran? No. Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Indonesia? No. Malaysia? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Egypt? No. Pakistan? No.

By "getting their shit together" I mean that whoever's in charge, be it religious leaders or goverment leaders, and figure out whatever it is they to do in order to to make sure that acts of terrorism aren't being carried out abroad by their citizens or religious brethren. It's really not my place to figure out exactly how they need to do this. If someone in the position to make these changes, based on my own personal experience, I would say to Afghanistan, "Afghanistan, you really need to not let Al Qaeda set up their basic training camps in your backyard." Then I'd tell Iraq, "Iraq, it's probably not a good idea to have all those PLO camps in your backyard." Other than that, I really have no idea. I'm not a statesman. I am neither a political nor religious leader. It would be presumptious of me, of any one of us, to sit here and think we know exactly how they need to fix their problems. And honestly, I'm tired of their problems. If they don't want to keep their yards tended to, that's fine. I have a problem with their shit spilling into our own.

Rick Reuben wrote:When do Muslims start getting some credit for living in countries that aren't always bombing people?

I don't really understand this. I said that a minority of their group is ruining it for the majority. People from muslim countries sometimes do bomb people.

Rick Reuben wrote:It looks like the vast majority of Muslims reside in countries without much recent history of aggression against neighbors.

1967 Egypt, Jordan, and Syria attack Israel
1973 Egypt and Syria attack Israel
2006 PLO in Lebanon shell northern Israel, Israel invades Lebanon

1980 Iraq invades Iran
1990 Iraq invades Kuwait
1991 Saudi Arabia asks the UN to come fight Iraq for them

Rick Reuben wrote:Says the guy relaxing comfortably on top of an economy propped up by a debt matrix and petrodollars protected by Judeo-Christian soldiers.

High-five, dude!

I trust you're comfy enough sitting in your chair there, typing on your nice electronic 50.5% fossil-fuel-powered computer which was designed and built by the great American military-industrial complex?

Rick Reuben wrote:
What does that mean, though? It looks like you're saying that state-sponsored violence is ethical, and renegade violence that is not sanctioned by a government breaks some rule. Why is either acceptable? And since you know the casualty count from state-sponsored violence is much higher, why is it not condemned more strenuously? Do Hiroshima or Nagasaki or the firebombong of Tokyo or Dresden reflect a general madness that has infected Christian-controlled countries? I don't hear that much, but if some rogue muslim ( allegedly ) blows up some train in London, then the whole muslim world is accused of harboring lunatics? Who's the bigger religious lunatic? The guy with the backpack bomb or the guy with the nuclear arsenal? Why does 'al Qaeda' tarnish Islam more than psycho no WMD's war criminal George Bush tarnishes Christianity? Because he wears a suit and speaks english and is 'elected', so therefore, he can commit state-sponsored violence without representing Christians?

It doesn't look like that at all. I never said that I condone everything our government does. Sometimes I even hate our government for lying to me so I'd go do shit that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise. I have no opinion on religion so long as it's not negatively affecting me. I don't believe that religion is the driving force behind the actions of our government. What I said was that the countries of the Middle East should get their shit together enough that their citizens or people living in their country aren't able to start wars with other countries on their behalf. I said that there shouldn't be Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and PLO camps in Iraq.

*Edited: forgot the word "start"

You're a boring dope, odm

I was only trying to help you out.

You have to post the same things so many times directed to so many of the same people, I figured I'd try and respond for you, thereby saving you some time to go get some of that $3.75 falafel.

You try and help someone out and they just can't appreciate your services.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:I trust you're comfy enough sitting in your chair there, typing on your nice electronic 50.5% fossil-fuel-powered computer which was designed and built by the great American military-industrial complex?

Big difference. I tell the truth about who owns my country and about the violence and lies they use to maintain the class structure. You just smile and giggle.

Regardless, quit slagging me for benefiting from the system you revile, while you're benefiting just the same.

My attitude towards your posts has nothing at all to do with the reprehensible actions of both our country's government, or how much of the world's finite energy resources we both consume while trading insults over the 'net.

I have to admit you've got a point there.

However, I'd also posit that humanity as a whole needs to wake up from the bullshit fantasy spun by those who seek to control us and profit from our suffering and destruction. We need to stop living the lies of religion and nationalism that get in the way of the progress of all mankind.

That's a bit much to hope for at this time, so I'd settle for the short-term goal of impeaching Bush and all his cronies, the corporate warmongers, the Religious Right et al and ridding ourselves forever of their power-hungry, deceitful and morally bankrupt ilk.

But I don't lie about the system. Just because I perceive it differently than you do does not mean I'm lying about it.

The problem is, most people are terrified by change. They can only accept it in small doses. So change has to be made somewhat gradually, or else it will spin out of control, the greedy and power-crazed will sieze upon that opportunity once again, and we'll end up pinned beneath the thumb again.

I never said you're a liar. I have said that I believe you're wrong and that you have no real evidence to support many of the allegations you make, but I never seriously called you a liar (though I may have done so in mockery of the way you brazenly label everyone else a liar).

To lie is to knowingly ignore or misrepresent the truth. I trust that you believe at least the general gist of your message, even if you don't have all the substantial evidence to prove each individual allegation.

You may believe me to be a liar, but I consider that to be a distortion of perception caused by your extremely biased point of view.