ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children

mpicpp sends this news from CNN: In swaths of Syria now controlled by ISIS, children can no longer study math or social studies. Sports are out of the question. And students will be banned from learning about elections and democracy. Instead, they'll be subjected to the teachings of the radical Islamist group. And any teacher who dares to break the rules "will be punished." ISIS revealed its new educational demands in fliers posted on billboards and on street poles. The Sunni militant group has captured a slew of Syrian and Iraqi cities in recent months as it tries to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, spanning Sunni parts of both countries. Books cannot include any reference to evolution. And teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws." Update: 09/18 16:26 GMT by S : CNN has pulled the story over "concerns about the interpretation of the information provided." They promise to update it when they get the facts straight.

Comments

they will defeat themselves

[schlachter]

This certainly will make it difficult for them to pose a long term threat to anyone. A society that doesn't allow math won't last long.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TheCarp]

Well as a closed system maybe but, if your "society" is being propped up via funding and arms, and you have no need to actually produce anything yourself or even produce engineers at all, then it isn't as much of a problem.

That said, what would really make it tough for them is a lack of opposition. Their tactics tend to be very self defeating when the larger powers don't overreact and get drawn into conflict with them.

If we let them provoke us though, then they will likely feed off that and use our involvement to deflect criticism away from their own otherwise self-defeating brutality.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[i kan reed]

I don't know. Violent anti-intellectualism has a tendency to create shitty, miserable societies, but has more than enough historical precedent at lasting at least a few generations at some points in some societies' histories. Ancient China had bouts of it, so did Rome, and neither crashed as a direct result.

(It's obvious and you don't need to point out that ancient societies aren't modern societies, and the requirements for both are different). I'm just contesting the universality of the specific claim "A society that doesn't allow math won't last long."

Re: they will defeat themselves

[O('_')O_Bush]

"Won't last long"

On the decades to hundreds of years scale, sure. Their policy will probably work for their (short) foreseeable future.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[DarkOx]

Which is exactly why we should 'STOP' fighting them. If we want to see an end to militant Islam we ought to let ISIS have their run of things for a while. I am sure after a couple decades of ISIS rule the only holy war any Muslim will ever sign up to fight again will be against these 12th century throw backs!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[BigFire]

This certainly will make it difficult for them to pose a long term threat to anyone. A society that doesn't allow math won't last long.

They can always get slaves to do that. Remember, if you don't follow their creed, you're no better than a potential slave.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Drethon]

Even better, let them take over a couple of states for a while. Once they destroy the population the threat will be neutralized.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cellocgw]

A society that doesn't allow math won't last long.

But on the bright side, they won't know how long they lasted.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[wisnoskij]

Well the vast majority of people make no use of physics or math to begin with, but even if we assume that the entire country is to be devoid of theses things, in a global economy like we have, as long as they have resources they can get any arms they want.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[BravoZuluM]

I'd love to let them have the run of things for a while, except they insist on flying planes into our buildings and beheading children. No, I think the only option is to go in and kill every last one of them, like the vermin infestation that they are.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[zoefff]

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
  Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays 2, 1926-29

To bad the middle ages lasted a few centuries

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Blue Stone]

Here, let me pour some gasoline over your strawman and strike a match.

When have people from Africa appeared at the borders of any country "cap-in-hand [...] demanding their 'rights'"?

People do try to escape violent, torturing, oppressive, corrupt murderous regimes though. We call them asylum seekers; fleeing to escape persecution from their fucked-up governments. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? Or maybe knee-jerk xenophobia is more your cup of tea?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Shortguy881]

Oddly enough, everything you said also applies to the United States.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[meta-monkey]

We can't trade with such people. Hell, if they don't even allow math we can't even keep ledgers. So they would still blame western governments for imposing sanctions.

To be honest, it seems like the best solution, is, as you say, stop fighting them. All we ever wind up doing is accidentally killing a bunch of civilians and breeding more jihadis. You guys want a caliphate? Fine. Knock yourselves out. We'll be over here with our blackjack and hookers.

The only problem is we still need their damn oil. Please, Elon Musk, save us from dependence on these assholes' oil. The sooner we can find a replacement for middle eastern oil and/or their oil runs out, the better.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[operagost]

Seems like they would never be able to use ballistic weapons, because even though they have long used computers to calculate trajectory, you still need to supply information that requires more than total ignorance of mathematics. It helps to be able to use sanity checks so you don't kill your own troops, as well. Hey, maybe we should "accidentally" let them have some hacked weapons...

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a society without science or with a strong dominance of faith over science is doomed. That's basically what happened to the Islamic world, albeit less drastically.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Scottingham]

For every one you kill two will take their place. Your philosophy breeds terrorism instead of extinguishing it.

How has that approach been working out for Israel? Thought so.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Pinky's Brain]

If we didn't need oil it might happen, but we do. So we will do what the Saudi King tells us to do ...

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

if your "society" is being propped up via funding and arms, and you have no need to actually produce anything yourself or even produce engineers at all, then it isn't as much of a problem.

Math isn't just used by engineers; it's also needed to operate pretty much any business -- even low-tech ones. Even a damn goat-herder needs to be able to multiply, assuming he wants to be able to sell X goats for $Y each, and end up with the correct number of $ afterwards!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[geekoid]

I like you assumption that all Muslims want holy wars.
Also, that ISIS rule the mid east and Africa would somehow not impact anyone else.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cyberchondriac]

That said, what would really make it tough for them is a lack of opposition. Their tactics tend to be very self defeating when the larger powers don't overreact and get drawn into conflict with them.

Not from any evidence I've ever seen. No larger power had given them any attention for the past year, and their numbers, financial resources, and power swelled unchecked; they only become a greater threat with time. You cannot ignore them and make them go away, it doesn't work like that. One defector stated their long term goals include taking over the mideast, followed by Europe, and eventually, the entire globe. That obviously can't happen because they've ignorantly shunned the sciences, but it could take a whole 'nother generation or two before that lack of knowledge really takes its toll (if they're left unchecked in the meantime).
Granted, however, that this war will be lose-lose, because no matter what the western powers do, they will be decried in every form imaginable. But there is no choice. There is no logic where such a fanatical religion has taken root.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[geekoid]

Turns out, that's not true.
Arming locals in an unstable environment has been the continuing problem with all modern conflicts in the mid-east.

It kind of made sense in the 50s, when the government was reasonably stable and before religious zealots started getting government power.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

...these 12th century throw backs!

You might want to re-think that characterization, since these ISIS fools are pretty much the polar opposite of 12th century Arabs! In fact, they're much more similar to medieval Europeans, or modern Republicans.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TheCarp]

I take it your "evidence" is watching the news:
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvar...

The key variable for FTO success is a tactical one: target selection. Terrorist groups whose attacks on civilian targets outnumber attacks on military targets do not tend to achieve their policy objectives, regardless of their nature. Contrary to the prevailing view that terrorism is an effective means of political coercion, the universe of cases suggests that, first, contemporary terrorist groups rarely achieve their policy objectives and, second, the poor success rate is inherent to the tactic of terrorism itself.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mandark1967]

Shut up, dude.

I'm getting ready to corner the market on goats and you're gonna blow my plans to hell!

Re: they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

By opposing "moderate" rebels, who are still actually hard-core Muslims (even heard this on NPR this morning, "who are the moderate rebels"), we support ISIS? Are you stupid?

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a bit too simplistic to... ah never mind.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[PvtVoid]

For every one you kill two will take their place. Your philosophy breeds terrorism instead of extinguishing it.

Which is a total win-win:

- We'll have a thriving Defense Industry in the US, and lots of corporate fat-cats will get rich.
- We'll have lots of military employment opportunities for young impoverished rural Americans. The ones that survive can be shunted off into sub-standard medical and psychiatric care, and will end up homeless or dead in a cost-effective way.
- We'll make sure the corrupt, dissolute fucktards in charge of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Kuwait are so scared of the creations of their own madrassas that they don't dare interrupt our oil supply.
- There will be a cheap and easy path to election for bigoted, paranoid demagogues to get elected with rancid Islamophobic propaganda.

I mean, what's not to like?

Re: they will defeat themselves

[TheGavster]

The goat herder shall receive payment for his goats as Allah decrees.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

For the Arabs, the middle ages were great!

Well, at least until the Crusaders showed up and took all the Arabs' discoveries so they could jump-start the Renaissance....

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

I don't think oil is the only problem. Surely you have some compassion for the innocent people being destroyed in this conflict? It would actually be more merciful to nuke the whole area than to leave these poor Yazidis and Christians alive to see their daughters sold off as sex slaves.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[JasonGoatcher]

Actually, that's wrong. There's a difference between having faith in the actual God and pushing an agenda that you want God to support.

God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Unfortunately, His worshippers like to attach labels to Him that aren't warranted.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

That is ignorant. The Islamic Golden Age coincides with Islamic expansion and the taking over of established, advanced cultures. Did you even read the Wikipedia article you linked?

Oh, unless you actually consider Islamic holy war to be a good thing. In that case carry on, but your characterization of ISIS as "the polar opposite of 12th century Arabs" is incorrect. You should be cheering them on, they are marching down the exact same path as expansionist Muslim armies of the past that you seem to esteem so highly.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Sarius64]

I can tell you haven't been to Europe lately.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[pr0fessor]

Well the vast majority of people make no use of physics or math to begin with

I disagree, basic math is used by most people when handling money {which everyone does in some form}. Not to mention labor jobs that we may consider low skill even the kid that got you fries with that needs to balance the cash register at the end of the day.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[PvtVoid]

Has Israel ever resorted to actual genocide/mass expulsions of the population?

Um.

Yes?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[anagama]

Yeah, but how will they know if they get a good deal.

Arms Dealer: Here's your arsenal (hands over 12 AKs).
ISIS: Great, here's the oil (hands over oil tanker).

Re: they will defeat themselves

[haruchai]

That effectively describes much of the "asylum seekers" of the SECOND world as well, since the 50s.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[njnnja]

I'm sure the children^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsons of the ruling class are getting plenty of instruction in disciplines of military value. They will be able to buy weapons from more advanced nations with money obtained from oil sales and ransoms. It is only the ruled who will be kept ignorant so that they are easier to control. Therefore it is likely that they will last a great while, unless a greater military force (most likely external) finds it in its own best interest to overthrow them.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Sarius64]

Maybe they'll only marry 9-year old girls with math degrees?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TubeSteak]

I'd love to let them have the run of things for a while, except they insist on flying planes into our buildings and beheading children.

With that logic, we should go to war with our ally Saudi Arabia as well.
Saudi nationals have flown more planes into buildings than ISIS.
The Saudi Government has beheaded more people than ISIS.
(Though ISIS seems to be trying to catch up)

No, I think the only option is to go in and kill every last one of them, like the vermin infestation that they are.

The language of dehumanization is ugly.
I'm glad that Western governments have abandoned it as a propaganda tool.
I can only hope that some of the less evolved citizens of the West will abandon it as well.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[cyberchondriac]

You're a moron if you think "whitey" wrote that book. You don't know history, period. That stuff is the legacy of the cradle of civilization, from Egypt to Assyria, Babylon, Persia, etc... Mankind has been doing all that since he was able to wield a club, and probably sooner than that.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[klek]

Hey! Let's just ignore history, colonization, the ongoing impacts of the RC Church, and the niggling fact of who developed guns first.
Also, "third world countries" have plenty of culture, they are just not listening to Vivaldi and sipping tea with their pinkies extended.

Careful, your entitlement, ignorance, and racism are showing...

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cyberchondriac]

In a way, I agreed with this. It seems like for the first time, the whole world was appalled, and finally getting fed up with these Islamophages. But now, yeah, attention will turn back to the West.
However, I also believe that if we do nothing, they will only get more powerful, and it could take decades or centuries for their folly to slow them down. In that time, a whole lot of people could die and suffer.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[JeffAtl]

Putin will end up propping them up.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[mjtaylor24601]

"asylum seekers"

You mean, greedy Third World swine with nothing to contribute, who think that they're "entitled" to live in a rich country because Whitey is rich and they are poor?

As opposed to the greedy First World swine with nothing to contribute who think they're "entitled" to live in a rich country because of who's uterus they happened to be expelled from?

Aren't sweeping generalizations fun!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between having faith in the actual God and pushing an agenda that you want God to support.

Hear hear! It's like I'm always telling others, Ares has his own agenda, completely separate from whatever agendas you wish to push in His name.

Ares is the actual God to which you were referring, yes? I mean, it's completely obvious to me that He is the one and only God, but since others seem to have different ideas about just who or what God is, I just wanted to make absolutely certain you too were referring to the actual God (and are not simply falling prey to that which you are speaking out against).

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Archangel Michael]

You underestimate the power of radical ideologies. While what they appear to be doing is self defeating, it really isn't. It draws in those people who need an identity. People said similar things about Nazi's (yeah I just Godwined the conversation). The one thing Nazi's had, that ISIS doesn't is government. But in today's age, being nebulous, decentralized is an asset, like Hydra (cut off one head two more takes its place). We killed off OBL, but he wasn't really running things when we did, and Taliban and Al Qaeda still remain. And even if they didn't, the people in those organizations just change their name, and regroup. This is the same tactic used by most counter culture politics.

The only effective tactic we have at this time is to target and kill the leadership, until the organization crumbles from lack of leaders. We don't need a standing army to do this, just Letters of Marque.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Aaden42]

You just get out of the corner with that goat. And pull yer pants back up, dammit!

Re: they will defeat themselves

[benjfowler]

Plenty of ex-colonies are doing just fine. Plenty of shit countries are awash with guns. And there are places that do just fine even with the influence of the RC church -- I know some Irish and Catalans that'd like to have a word with you.

Your sneering attitude to Western culture marks _you_ out as the bigot. Not all cultures are made equal. And I don't care if you think I'm racist (if anything, you're outed yourself as a cultural Marxist). Name-calling your opponents doesn't change reality -- it all boils down to culture, and there's nothing to gain from denying that some cultures are simply better at fostering human wellbeing than others, and you're a fool if you think otherwise.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cowwoc2001]

It turns out you don't need to understand math to kill people. You just need a lot of money (easy when you're sitting on top of oil) and weapons/explosives.

They won't be inventing any new weapons but Russia/China is more than willing to sell them what they want.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[wiredlogic]

their long term goals include taking over the mideast, followed by Europe, and eventually, the entire globe.

How are innumerate people going to operate the machinery needed to produce the necessary weapons for such a task? They are delusional in wanting to return to a pre-industrial society while being dependent on industrialization to fight for that lofty goal.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, everything you said also applies to the United States.

No kidding.

Some US states are more or less doing this now ... what with passing laws which say "science" education must include a discussion that Intelligent Design is actual science, and that sex education must be abstinence only.

America has just as much of a problem of religious idiots trying to define reality as ISIS does.

The difference being, Americans like to think they're better than everybody else, and one of your major political parties is also involved.

So, it's your choice between totalitarian idiots, or democratically elected totalitarian idiots.

Make no mistake about it, America is descending into the exact same kind of crap, and if you don't fix it, in a few decades you'll be really fucked.

Drooling fucking morons.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Princeofcups]

That obviously can't happen because they've ignorantly shunned the sciences, but it could take a whole 'nother generation or two before that lack of knowledge really takes its toll (if they're left unchecked in the meantime).

No silly rabbit. The people they rule are not allowed to have any learning. This is nothing more than a return to society a couple hundred years ago. The leaders will still have "western style" educations. That's how they stay in control.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Lumpy]

The republicans call them damn illegal immigrant children.

We have kids running away from some horrific violence and the fucking scumbag GOP assholes want to turn them away.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[I'm New Around Here]

Rounding is another function of math.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[SuricouRaven]

They are playing a rather dangerous game. Remember that the US or Europe could squish them with ease, militarily - if we had to, it wouldn't be hard to nuke the whole region. There are only two reasons this isn't being done: It'd be expensive, and it's mean very large numbers of civilian deaths which would be politically problematic. This situation persists only because they aren't a major threat: The moment they actually become a danger to the continued existance of the US or any major European power they'd be crushed without regard to how much it costs or how many people would die. Remember that as recently as WWII even the allies - the 'good guys' - considered carpet-bombing cities to be perfectly justifiable. During the cold war the US has missiles poised to kill tens of millions at a moment's notice, if they ever needed to.

ISIS can only survive so long as they are powerful enough to dominate the region, but not powerful enough to invoke an unrestrained defensive action from the western powers. Like North Korea: The crazed dictator can brag all he wants about his military supremacy, but he doesn't have it, and that makes him too expensive to invade. if NK ever managed to actually detonate a nuclear bomb even China wouldn't hestitate to march in and take over. I think they'd be glad of the excuse, really.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Lumpy]

Are you really that retarded?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Your premis is that some people are being killed so an action must be taken, and the action you choose is "kill all the people"?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[SuricouRaven]

Nice idea, but not practical. This isn't an old-fashioned war of country v country. They'll just discard uniforms and blend into the civilian population. Unless you can justify vast numbers of civilian casulties, it'd be impossible to kill them all, and require a continued and expensive presence just to keep them underground.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[DarkOx]

Do you really think if expended even 1/4 the amount of resources we invest in the middle east on controlling our boards they'd have the slightest chance of being able to pull off another attack like that?

I don't.

We could be opening every shipping container unloading , inspecting every truck, doing background checks on every inbound traveler, before admitting them and probably save tons in both blood and treasure. It would be far more effective at controlling the risk and threat of terror.

I'll admit I bought into the "we have to fight them over there..." rhetoric when Bush fed us those lines too. I know better know. I think Obama is probably the worst president of this nation has had post WWII and am still glad we did not elect McCain.

We also need to "get real" about the seriousness of the problem. 9/11 was shocking but it was a one time event they have not been able to repeat. Its hard to say for sure with all the crazy government secrecy but the evidence that is out there suggests it has not been the security apparatus that has prevented a repeat but rather the extremists own inability develop the assets here will the skill sets required to execute a successful attack. Statistically you about as likely to die falling out of bed as you are from some kind of terrorism connected event.

Considering just the lives we have "invested" in this fight we could suffer at least more several 9/11s before it will have made any kind of economic sense.

Considering the dollars, I can't find many good numbers because its hard to separate the economic costs associated with the attack from the costs we incurred in our war runup/execution. I'd be they could crash lots of jets into lots of towers with all the economic knockon effects there in before it come close though to the wealth we have thrown away in the middle east.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Lumpy]

Actually technically he is right if we kill them all very fast.

nuke 80% of the middle east, full on carpet bomb every square mile with overlapping bursts and you will not have 2 more spring up. you will actually wipe them all out for good and not have any problems with middle eastern terrorisim.

The problem is surviving the 60 year nuclear winter afterwards.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[itzly]

All you need to take over Europe are enough wombs.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[itzly]

Aren't sweeping generalizations fun!

Not if they're wrong.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[meta-monkey]

I do, I absolutely do. But what's the US going to do? Re-invade Iraq?

At least maybe this time it would be easier to get a "coalition of the willing." Maybe an international effort that included other Arab nations would make for a more stable country. But seriously, we go in, invade, innocent people die anyway, and a power vacuum is left for even worse motherfuckers to rise up.

It doesn't seem like you can win peace with bombs.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

They won't destroy the population, they'll just subjugate it. That's what authoritarian regimes do. Stalin killed millions of people in his great purge during and after WWII, but it's not like the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed due to lack of people. And the Soviet Union lasted for many decades.

What works in dealing with these things is to wall them off and ignore them, and arming neighboring regions to create a buffer zone.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[DarkOx]

I got news for you a whole lot of people are going to die and suffer no matter what. The only question is where will the blame fall. As long as we are involved in the conflict there will be anti-western propaganda and spin that blames their problems and misery on us and there will be at least some who believe the lies and half truths.

Where as if we let a generation of those folks grow up without seeing a American war plane fly over, without knowing anyone first hand that dies in an American air strike, without watching NATO soldiers walking through their streets; the idea that all their problems are because of the "Great Satin" will ring a little more hollow.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Minwee]

People said similar things about Nazi's (yeah I just Godwined the conversation).

Not only that, you misused an apostrophe at the same time. I think the entire Internet just imploded.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[mjtaylor24601]

Aren't sweeping generalizations fun!

Not if they're wrong.

all sweeping generalizations are wrong....including this one ;-)

Re: they will defeat themselves

[RaccoonBandit]

I wish there were a would-be-funny-if-only-it-weren't-true mod option.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[gregstumph]

I don't see why oil should be a reason for our military involvement. The oil is only worth something if there's someone to buy it, so there's no incentive for them to stop selling it to us. That said, I'm in favor of transitioning away from our oil-based energy infrastructure, for lots of reasons...

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Minwee]

If we didn't need oil it might happen, but we do. So we will do what the Saudi King tells us to do ...

The King called up his jet fighters / He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the Minarets / Down the Casbah way
As soon as the Sharif was chauffeured outta there / The jet pilots tuned to the cockpit radio blare
As soon as the Sharif was outta their hair / The jet pilots wailed...

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference alright, but it's irrelevant. If you dedicate a big portion of your time to faith instead of science, your science won't be good. The christian societies have had their quarrels with science, but in the end a lot of science was done nevertheless. Muslim societies used to be at the forefront of science and technology. Giving that up has made them dependent, not just because they are more easily dominated, but also because they lack the knowledge to control their own fate.

The battle against science is always on, everywhere. When science loses, things go down the drain really fast. Fundamentalist Christianity isn't just a nuisance. Things like teaching creationism are severe threats to this society. The pursuit of knowledge is essential.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[timeOday]

A society that doesn't allow math won't last long.

How often will we fall into trap of taking headlines like this at face value? Islam, not even radical Islam, is anti-math, as far as I have ever heard.

Read further into the (short) article, and you hear actual quotes from the new policy, which are more what you would expect:

Educators cannot teach nationalistic and ethnic ideology and must instead teach "the belonging to Islam ... and to denounce infidelity and infidels."

Books cannot include any reference to evolution. And teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws."

...all of which is still bad, albeit all-too-familiar. But I will be $5 if you asked ISIS director of education if they were "anti-math" he would take it as an accusation.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Solandri]

That said, what would really make it tough for them is a lack of opposition. Their tactics tend to be very self defeating when the larger powers don't overreact and get drawn into conflict with them.

Normally that'd be the case. Their policies cripple their own society while competing societies flourish, until they eventually consign themselves to irrelevance.

However, they're simply executing anyone who opposes them. For their tactic to be self-defeating, there has to be a competing society in the first place. People in the West tend to assume that the only way to "win" (in the democratic sense) is to convince people of the merits of your philosophy and get them to support you until you have a political majority. However, there's another way - simply exterminate those who oppose you, which is what ISIS is doing. Both strategies result in you having the support of the majority of the (remaining) population.

Not opposing them now is going to mean the overwhelming majority of survivors in the region will subscribe to their philosophy. Even if you defeat them later and install a democracy, they're just going to vote for something close to ISIS again because everyone who would've voted differently is dead.. This is one of those cases where failing to stop them quickly is going to result in decades if not a century or more of problems down the road.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[GLMDesigns]

Please give an example (not hyperbole) of modern Republicans being similar to ISIS.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[benjfowler]

The last time people from 'rich' countries moved en masse to 'poor' countries, it was decried as colonialism, and rightly so.

(I suppose the fact that Western colonies full of actual Westerners thrive everywhere they go is awfully inconvenient for the 'blame-white-people-first' crowd. Contrast the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Turkish, Moroccan colonies in Europe, which are invariably dysfunctional and dirt-poor, despite massive amounts of welfare spending.)

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Kernel Kurtz]

Canada has oil we would be happy to sell you.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[meta-monkey]

I'm sure they would want to sell. I'm saying sanctions would probably prevent US companies from buying.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[dskoll]

I don't believe that killing terrorist breeds terrorism. Eventually, even the dumbest of the dumb will realize that it doesn't pay.

In the short term, the only effective answer to ISIS is to kill them.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[theshowmecanuck]

Exactly why I don't go to church. Which I hate. Because now I have to always tell the truth. Tell the truth or go to church. One or the other. Sigh.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Altrag]

Yeah I think there might be a misinterpretation somewhere. I can't see any religious reason to ban math, especially when TFS goes on to state that physics and chem (both of which require a lot of math) are fine as long as the teacher adds on a "praise Allah" every time he (I would assume.. BS like this usually isn't particularly free of gender constraints!) makes a statement that sounds intelligent.

Banning sports is also kind of strange. Perhaps this group really is attempting to make "only" religious nuts rather than religious terrorists. If they were looking for the latter, you'd think that keeping the kids in shape and espousing team>individual would be beneficial in the long run.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

Well, let's see... just a few weeks ago, we discussed how they want to (effectively) ban teaching science by gutting all the actual scientific reasoning from it and doing only rote memorization. (And even then, omitting the rote memorization of certain theories deemed inconvenient to their religion.)

Re:they will defeat themselves

[amicusNYCL]

No, I think the only option is to go in and kill every last one of them, like the vermin infestation that they are.

Congratulations, you thought of the same strategy as them.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[swillden]

That said, what would really make it tough for them is a lack of opposition. Their tactics tend to be very self defeating when the larger powers don't overreact and get drawn into conflict with them.

Not from any evidence I've ever seen. No larger power had given them any attention for the past year, and their numbers, financial resources, and power swelled unchecked; they only become a greater threat with time.

That's only because they're riding the wave created by previous overreactions and conficts, and the (reasonable from their perspective -- and probably correct) that if they keep at it they'll get the reaction that will justify their existence.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[beernutz]

Labels like "Him" and "His"?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[CheshireDragon]

Apparently you don't know what happened in the Arabic world back in the 1100s. They were amazing with math and science. Leaders of the world in that matter. Then came a long Al Ghazali and turned all of that on its head. Now look at the Arabic world. Still looks like they live in the 12th century.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[sexconker]

This certainly will make it difficult for them to pose a long term threat to anyone. A society that doesn't allow math won't last long.

Not when we keep supplying them with weapons.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Scottingham]

You never kill only terrorists. For every innocent person/woman/child that gets killed....(see above)

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Mysticalfruit]

I think you're mistaken here... Odin is clearly the one true God. Not one of your false Greek or christian gods.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[itzly]

Canada doesn't have enough barrels/day.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Altrag]

That only applies in a closed system. Honestly if ISIS or whoever takes over their local region and then plays nice with the rest of the world, we (US/Europe) will likely leave them alone. Maybe a few minor economic sanctions as a slap on the wrist.

But if they take over their local region and then start posturing about taking over things we actually care about (either through direct military action or terrorism,) they'll find very quickly that Allah is more likely to welcome them to heaven than he is to stop the bombs and bullets coming their way.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Scottingham]

Calling Palestine Israel's neighbor is like calling the inmates in the prison down the road my neighbors. Palestinians are in a walled-in open-air jail. Israel certainly can and do make sure they are the more powerful of the two.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[geekoid]

t it. They don't seem bad. But what type of person rises to the top in those events?
The same type of person who won't give up power to a stable government.
Basically,you are arming warlords, and not citizenry of a large single government.

".. because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. I.."
I see.

*Backs out slowly*

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Archangel Michael]

GAHHHH I did! damn you fingers!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Mysticalfruit]

I don't disagree on the first two points.

As for the third point... The US is now a net energy producer. As for oil imports we get most of our oil from CA and are drastically reducing our reliance on oil from the middle east. It dropped to something like 33% of our net need last year. Needless to say this is going to have serious long term consequences for the oil dependent economies in these countries. Their capacity to spread their radical form of Islam is going to be highly curtailed when the money runs out and their own crazies turn on them.

As for the fourth point. The bigoted paranoid demagogues aren't really mass marketable. Someone like that wouldn't get out of a primary here in Massachusetts. Maybe in some other state, but I won't disparage.

However, at some point you need to acknowledge that these people are specifically deranged because of their radicalized religious beliefs. These unhinged beliefs are a direct result of their (mis)education. So many people try to turn this into a political or economic conversation... it isn't.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[LQ]

Nice straw man.

White countries are rich, because they have a large amount of social and cultural capital, which we maintain by having rules and norms that we enforce.

Third world countries are poor because of their lack of culture, lack of law and contract enforcement, lack of morals and respect at street level, and because of general filth, shittiness and decay.

Whitey didn't make you rape and rob each other, or throw rubbish in the streets, or rip each other off. This is readily apparent when you see the filth in Third World areas of major cities like London. The difference is like night and day.

Poor countries are poor _despite_ the influence of evil Whitey, not because of him.

White countries are rich because of geography. Try reading Guns, Germs and Steel.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

Sounds like a good idea: Israel is in sore need of allies in the region, so maybe if they became allies of the Kurds it could work to their mutual benefit.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Kjella]

if NK ever managed to actually detonate a nuclear bomb even China wouldn't hestitate to march in and take over. I think they'd be glad of the excuse, really.

FYI, North Korea has made three underground nuclear detonations in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Very few doubt that they now got a few nukes in the kiloton range - basically 1940s tech - and the means to deliver them to Seoul - a mere 35 miles away from the NK border. China doesn't care. They got a loyal ally, they could crush him at any moment and it'd only create hostility between Koreans and Chinese. And the country is not worth the trouble. I guess if China ever went on the offensive they'd gobble up NK - and probably SK too - but only if they're on the warpath anyway.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[jythie]

I also suspect the elite within their society plan to send their children to schools in other countries since a good education is something leaders benefit from and they would not be so foolish as to stop that part.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

most republicans are not social conservatives

This hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades, especially when you consider which Republicans are capable of actually getting elected (rather than losing the primary due to lack of support from the social conservative faction of their party -- clear evidence that it constitutes a majority).

If you can show me an atheist Republican in Congress, then I'll show you a flying pig. We can hold the show-and-tell in Hell (but make sure you bundle up, because it'll have frozen over)!

The key divides between republicans and democrats is over the size and scope and purpose of the Federal government.

No it isn't; they're both in complete agreement that the Federal government should be huge and authoritarian. They only differ in which departments they prefer the bloat to occur (e.g. war vs. welfare). Even the Tea Partyists who claim to be fiscally conservative hypocritically support Social Security, just like the Democrats.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[jythie]

You are a little out of date, Odin was downgraded during the pantheonic reorganization. Unfortunately due to a clerical error the one true God is now a central park squirrel named Skippy.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Don't worry, after awhile nobodyw ould be be able to even know how to fly a plane since you know that does require some form of mathematics.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[GLMDesigns]

Social Conservatives are less than 25% of Republicans and are probably less than 20% of the total. Being religious does not equal being a social conservative. No there aren't any (that I know of ) declared atheists Republican elected officials. But Gary Johnson and others are/were pretty damn close to "coming out." Republicans are not "in whole" in favor of a "huge and authoritarian" state. Go to Red State and Legal Insurrection and you'll see that many are opposed to the leviathan state.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

No I don't think we need to reinvade Iraq, I think we need to help the Kurds who have shown themselves to be the most moderate and practical force in the north of the country. The Kurds helped us in the 1st Gulf War, and we abandoned them. They were killed by the thousands by a vengeful Saddam. Now they're helping again against ISIS and are the most effective force in the region. And we're like.... ohh geee we don't know about giving them weapons, let's focus on helping the central government, because this artificial state with warring Muslim sects made so much sense on paper when it was drawn up by the British, let's keep it going!

To solve the ISIS problem, what I would do is give automatic weapons to every Christian, Yazidi, Kurd, and other members of religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq. And a few tanks and heavy machine guns to each of their villages. And set up a drone program in those areas. Then let them fight for themselves, with help at a distance from us (airstrikes, etc).

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

Not the same. We only armed the locals after invading and destroying their infrastructure and military, disbanding the army, and then trying to create a puppet government that didn't have any popular support, and didn't have a competent army because all the experienced people were sent packing after we defeated Saddam. Of course they dropped everything and ran: they didn't have anything to fight for or believe in.

The Kurds aren't like this at all: they're well organized and motivated, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

So what? North Korea has been around quite a bit longer than I have, and doesn't show any signs that it'll disappear anytime soon. It's been happily subjugating people since the 1950s, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. You don't need a proper civil government that runs smoothly to have a successful country.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[St.Creed]

Wombs don't produce unthinking slaves. They can create a large amount of children that will turn into discontent youth later on, but if ISIS wants to hold power somewhere, that doesn't work so well for them - it only helps them when it's in someone else's territory where the discontented youth will see them as the solution, not as the problem. The Arab spring is all well and good when you're profiting from it, but not when it happens to yourself.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[butalearner]

The only problem is we still need their damn oil. Please, Elon Musk, save us from dependence on these assholes' oil. The sooner we can find a replacement for middle eastern oil and/or their oil runs out, the better.

Just to give some numbers, here is where we (the U.S.) got our oil in 2013:

U.S.: 2,720 million barrels
Canada: 1,147 million barrels
Saudi Arabia: 485 million barrels (OPEC)
Mexico: 335 million barrels
Venezuela: 294 million barrels (OPEC)
Russia: 168 million barrels
Columbia: 142 million barrels
Iraq: 124 million barrels (OPEC)
Kuwait: 119 million barrels (OPEC)
Nigeria: 103 million barrels (OPEC)
Ecuador: 86 million barrels (OPEC)
Angola: 79 million barrels (OPEC)
Brazil: 55 million barrels
U.K.: 54 million barrels
Other OPEC: 67 million barrels
Other non-OPEC: 338 million barrels

Ignoring the type of oil (pretty sure we're exporting natural gas like a fiend right now due to fracking), we need to cut 21% to get away from OPEC altogether, or 12% just to get away from the Middle East. In the U.S., 47% of oil goes to gasoline, 20% to diesel and other fuel oil, 13% to liquefied petroleum gases like propane and such, and 8% for jet fuel. All this info is from eia.gov, by the way.

So it while it is still an enormous problem, it's not insurmountable. In fact, it's inevitable. We won't go cold turkey, but we will almost certainly keep chipping away at that deficit with continued efficiency improvements on cars and other vehicles, growing emphasis placed on fuel efficiency, and continued improvements in domestic oil production and refining. Ideally the cleaner improvements will come fast enough that we don't have to rely on the latter, but it'll happen sooner or later.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[SuricouRaven]

Not much of a bomb, then.

China tolerates NK, but their alliance is strained. They seek regional stability, while NK is always sabre-rattling at the south and at the world in general, provoking naval skirmishes as a show of force and generally stiring up trouble. You're right, it isn't worth the trouble - the cost of peacekeeping would be huge, and there would be diplomatic trouble with South Korea too. But I've no doubt China has invasion plans drawn up, and if NK ever does something that starts a real war, China will be ready to put a stop to it. They just won't be the ones to shoot first.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[argStyopa]

You link one paper from Harvard on "why terrorism doesn't work".
I'll refute that by pointing to:
1) 8 guys sneaking onto planes with boxcutters and crashing them into buildings is terrorism
2) 15000 psychos taking over chunks of country with astonishing brutality is not terrorism (as referenced in that paper), and 'thousands of psychos taking crap over' HAS worked* repeatedly through human history; from the "Barbarian invasions" of Roman times, to the Huns, the Mongols)

*maybe not in the longest scales, but certainly enough to enmiserate a generation or three.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[frank_adrian314159]

Yeah, but luckily you haven't told him the "2. ???" part of your strategy yet. So STFU quick, unless you want to be poor and not keep the "best" goats for yourself!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TheCarp]

> Their policies cripple their own society while competing societies flourish, until they
> eventually consign themselves to irrelevance.

No I think you even there give them too much credit. The bigger problem for them is....only the most hard core actually like seeing beheadings. Vanishingly few people anywhere actually really support attacking civilian targets.

Most people are willing to overlook civilians targeted by the side they see themselves allied with, but its very hard for anyone to do that when those are the only targets or the most salient ones.

Their strategy alienates them from the society they want to control. It may get them fear, and fear might help them get and maintain some amount of control but, they will alienate themselves from the population they would want to hide amongst.

I mean seriously, when Al Queda feels its a good PR move to distance themselves from you and call you barbaric, you really are not winning points with anyone.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Kjella]

I think you need to distinguish between terrorism and reign of terror. Hit-and-run bombings like the IRA or ETA rarely succeed in people giving in to terror. Taking actual control of areas, waving the flags and killing off all that oppose you has a much better historical record, ask anyone from Pol Pot to Hitler and Lenin and Mao. In case you haven't noticed, they're using their brutal savagery primarily to quell resistance and internal dissent. The story they're selling is that they're too fucking crazy to pick a fight with and so far they seem more than willing to put that reputation to the test and post it on YouTube.

I mean, would you like to be in a resistance movement inside IS territory? Do they care that they can't find you? Heck no, they'll just round up a few civilians and shoot them in retaliation for your sabotage/assassination/sedition. Far more civilized occupants have used that tactic, all those millions of people they control are in practice hostages. You're fighting an enemy willing to overreact to any provocation, give them a push and you won't get a shove back they'll beat you to a bloody pulp. And given their history so far, I don't think they have a problem with human shields. You can not excise them without massive civilian casualties. Sadly I give them much better odds than you predict.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[St.Creed]

You may have Godwined the conversation but it's probably justified. Except it's not nazis, but more likely fascists (though the distinction is probably pretty moot if you live there, but I doubt we're going to see industrial death camps (you need math and chemistry for that)).

Why fascists? Because their social composition is made up from the same type of loser. The people joining ISIS are not, in the main, very successful with their lives. Petty criminals, dropouts, etcetera. And ISIS gives them the chance to become part of something larger, where they can say "Fuck you, I may not be good at math - but you know? We'll just BAN math!".

They can rape and loot and mutilate as much as they want, without sanction. They don't have to listen to all those people who have more power because they are whiter, or smarter, or richer, or all of them combined - they can just grab a gun and feel power in their hand. It's the old attraction of the small worm aspiring to be a big dragon.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[sl3xd]

Also known as the global strategy of how to handle North Korea.

North Korea is resource poor, bankrupt, and starving - it took decades to build up nuclear capabilities, but they did it.

ISIL has oil, and lots of it. Sure, you could make selling their oil 'illegal' like blood diamonds, but the strategy didn't stop DeBeers from trading blood diamonds, and it won't stop the oil companies.

ISIL may not be able to obtain nukes, but they are well funded enough to do other terrible things to nations who would just as soon ignore them.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[davydagger]

I don't think they exist to be a long term threat.

but they can certainly do a lot of damage in the short term.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[dinfinity]

The one thing Nazi's had, that ISIS doesn't is government.

I'm pretty sure the Nazis were also pretty big on science (and technology).

Let's not forget that the Nazis (as terrible as they and their methods were) did a lot of great things for their people. I don't see ISIS constructing a legendary countrywide road network, inventing cutting-edge technology, providing affordable transportation, etc ( http://listverse.com/2011/01/3... ). Considering the extremely (backwards) conservative religiously inspired path ISIS is on, it is hard to see how they would bring any benefits of significance to the table for the populace. Straight indoctrination, instilling terror and offering money looks to be their only way of getting people 'behind them'.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[davydagger]

major problem with that too.

you need math to operate both money and guns correctly.

To zero the sights on a rifle, you need math. When you get into more complicated weapon systems like tanks and artillery, you need lots more math, and to be competative in modern warfare, Fire Control Systems, which require computers to do the math really really quickly.

Militaries in general have always needed engineers to build machines of war.

to keep track of finance, you need math. To run any state, you need advanced college+ math. Even personal finance needs math.

The Islamic State is being set up to fail in the long run which doesn't suprise me. The damage they can do in the short term is horrifying.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[jbmartin6]

Aren't people who tout the benefits of education making the same claim? Although I doubt they would us the world culture to describe the phenomenon.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

What's the alternative? Invade with guns blazing? That didn't work so well for Iraq; it led directly to ISIL. It hasn't worked out well for Afghanistan either. We already tried deposing an Iraqi government we didn't like and setting up a friendly government, and it got us here. How is doing the exact same thing going to work this time?

As for DeBeers, that didn't work because we (western nations) haven't actually done anything to DeBeers to stop the diamond trade. There's a DeBeers store not far from me in Manhattan NYC, even though they should be banned since they violate lots of anti-trust statutes. If we aren't actually going to hold corporations accountable to our laws, then we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.

If we would get off our asses and build SkyTran so we didn't need cars, we wouldn't be very worried about oil, but we're too stupid and shortsighted to free ourselves from our oil dependency, so as far as I'm concerned, we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Required Snark]

So you think this is different then the Christian Republican right trying to suppress the teaching of evolution? Or pretty much the entire Republican party denying climate change? Or all the science illiterate parents who decided that their precious baby isn't going to risk those evil vaccines?

So before you go around using a goat herd as a representative of all Arabs, take a look around. We are actively supporting a lot of extremely stupid thinking right here in the US, much of it under the guise of religious freedom or free speech.

Do we have more to fear from ISIL (note: ISIS does not stand for any organization; it's the stupid press pandering to the stupid public), or are we more at risk from the Koch family deliberately interfering with addressing global warming? ISIL can do a lot of bad things, including attacking in Europe or the US, but they can't really do anything to destroy the West. The Koch brothers/Republican Party and global climate change; that is a real concern, and it could conceivably end western civilization.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[kheldan]

I just have to say: I hope that every last single one of these motherfucking bastards is KILLED as soon as possible.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[jbmartin6]

The Crusaders also learned chivalry from the Arabs, perhaps this was also a contributor to the Renaissance.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[X10]

A society that doesn't allow math won't last long.

They do allow math. Just not for everyone. They keep children stupid, except the ones that work for them using and creating technology to keep them in power. The leaders of the group know that Islam - and religion in general - is bull shit, but - as in our countries - religion keeps people dumb and easy to manipulate. As Dostoevski wrote in his parable about the cardinal great-inquisitor.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[schneidafunk]

I respectfully disagree. The obvious counter-example is Nazi Germany & Imperial Japan. Ignoring them or peace protests would have been pointless, the solution was regime change through violence. And now Germany and Japan are allies with the countries that destroyed them.

As for Israel? The peace treaties that exist have been created through violence, such as Egypt & Jordan. And the current 'peace' in Gaza is because Israel utterly devastated Hamas (and the civilian population) after they continuously launched rockets into Israel (from civilian areas), every single day for months until Israel finally responded.

Do you honestly think a hunger strike or peace protest would dissolve ISIS?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

Every country has border controls. Your argument makes as much sense as calling Mexico a "walled-in open-air jail" because they aren't allowed to freely come to the US.

Israel has a right to control its border, especially when its neighbors harbor and support terrorist groups.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[tinkerghost]

You are a little out of date, Odin was downgraded during the pantheonic reorganization. Unfortunately due to a clerical error the one true God is now a central park squirrel named Skippy.

Foamy - his name is Foamy the Squirel

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

Social Conservatives are less than 25% of Republicans and are probably less than 20% of the total.

Then why do they get more than 50% of the vote in the primaries?

Being religious does not equal being a social conservative.

Sure, some people are religious but not socially conservative... but they're usually Democrats.

But Gary Johnson and others are/were pretty damn close to "coming out."

Sure, Gary Johnson was pretty great (I voted for him)... which is why he lost the Republican primary by a landslide. The Republicans are incapable of electing a reasonable candidate like Johnson precisely because they're overrun with authoritarian theocrats!

It's too bad, too, because unlike the rest of the Republican candidates, he was socially-liberal enough to have a chance of beating Obama in the general election (had he run as a Republican instead of a Libertarian).

Go to Red State and Legal Insurrection and you'll see that many are opposed to the leviathan state.

Maybe some people on those sites say that, but they are either A) a vocal minority, B) fail to actually vote, or C) claim to be for small government, until they realize such a position is a detriment to their pet special interest (usually Social Security or one of the talk-radio "rile up the dumbasses" issues, such as any involving religion, race, evolution or climate change) whereupon they vote for the authoritarian candidate anyway.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[cyber-vandal]

Thou shalt not subject thy God to market forces!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree about "the Arab world". Islam spread through a previously intellectually rich area (by violence). Most of the Arabic named greats of the "Arab" world were not Arabs at all. They were Persians, Greeks, Egyptians, Anatolians, Turks and Balkan peoples. I see the early Islamic enlightenment as an inheritance of the great eastern civilizations. The eventual failure of intellectual life in the Arab conquered regions and Arab regions was inevitable due to the core approach of Islam. For Muslims to wish for a rebirth is for Muslims to wish for conquered wealth and wisdom to squander and destroy.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[tinkerghost]

Trade has existed long before mathematics were formally codified.

Not really. The whole 60 seconds to a minute & minutes to hours is because the Babalonians used a base 60 counting system for trade - that's pushing math in trade back 5K years to when they BUILT THE WHOLE NUMBER SYSTEM AROUND IT.

Individual barter goes back earlier, but pretty much as soon as you get into "Trade", you need math to handle it.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

They want to de-emphasize "scientific processes" (whatever that means) in favor of "scientific knowledge" and to you that means they want to ban the teaching of science like ISIS?

Quite an exaggeration there, don't you think?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Cederic]

Not much of a bomb, then.

No, probably wouldn't kill more than 2-3 million outright and another 4-5 million over the next decade. Barely worth having really.

It's a nuclear fucking weapon parked next to a city of 9 million people. I'd say that's all the fucking bomb you need.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Cederic]

They can call it a religion all they want, but that don't make it so! Their version is really a perversion of religion, twisting things to try to justify their insanity.

So much the same as pretty much every other religion then?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[sumdumass]

I think you both are mistaken, it doesn't matter who you think the one true god is, the statement still holds true and can adequately describe problems within any of those secs.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[PraiseBob]

It must be some magical coincidence that civilizations with better mineral resources, better weather patterns and better access to domesticated animals & crops for centuries of development time, are now in a better position globally. Or you could falsely attribute it to "cultural superiority", and assume that you are by extension, racially superior. However, please note that a lot of people will call you a racist. You are essentially saying there are no geographic differences between different places in the world, that thousands of years of history are meaningless, and that everything boils down to the type of music you listen to. I suspect you've been called racist many many times.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Cederic]

My Indian friends come from India. Or Leicester, but don't open _that_ can of worms..

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mrchaotica]

No, it's not an exaggeration. Rather than rehash arguments from the previous thread, I'll just link to some of them.

(Note that that is far from an exhaustive list of the arguments explaining how that politician is indeed trying to ban teaching science in general. I just can't be bothered to go re-read through and pick out all the good ones.)

Re:they will defeat themselves

[sumdumass]

No, it's a religion, it just isn't the religion they think it is or want you to think it is.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TangoMargarine]

Back before the Politically Correct Brigade flooded into everything, you might recall that we used to use male conjugations to refer to ambiguous gender entities in English.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[steelfood]

Couple hundred? Think six to ten thousand years. Basic arithmetic has been around for at least that long. Basic science too has been around for that long, albeit it was surrounded by the dogma of the times.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[steelfood]

Pretty much it. We want the radicals in power because we want a subjugated people whom we can take advantage of in extracting their natural resources for as cheap as possible, and at the same time, have a leader who we can threaten to remove at any time with the public's full support.

If those Mid East countries had moderate leaders with strong populaces, they might start getting their own ideas. And if they get too smart, they'd end up in control of their own destines. And that's a bad thing for us.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[penguinoid]

It would be far more effective at controlling the risk and threat of terror.

Why would any leader want to do that? It instills unity and patriotism, and gets people to overlook the leaders' flaws.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[sumdumass]

I can see we will need to fund another MRRD kid.

Seriously, we are not the white people. Even if you do have to insist that the Mative American Indians were all peace loving (which they weren't) or they all were wiped out by the white guy (Which they weren't, an awful lot of them integrated with society and became not savage. This is what happened with most the eastern tribes), you cannot seriously be letting a little kid think this shit happened yesterday and she was part of it so she should feel guilty about it. That's beyond cruel and borders child endangerment. When your kid grows up with mental problems, I hope you look back and think about the guilt you unnecessarily put into her only because you wanted to push an fallacious political opinion. It will be your fault for not correcting your wife and setting the record straight. The shit that happened between the Indians and the white people happened generations before any of us were around or even thought of.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[colinrichardday]

When did Rome ever ban teaching math? Also, I suspect that Rome was already an imperial power, a state that ISIS hasn't yet reached.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[penguinoid]

To clarify my point, terrorism still ranks below peanuts on lethality. It's already a drop in the bucket.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Threni]

The Christian Right are just harmless buffoons. ISIS are murderous fucks just need to die, already. That's it - nothing more to talk about. Shitty Muslim death-cult with nothing to offer, going nowhere fast.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[amicusNYCL]

I don't even think it's just the Kurds. The Sunni and Shia populations don't have a great record of getting along either. It sounds like each of them need their own country, instead of the European-drawn borders of Iraq and Syria. Those borders need to be re-drawn along religious lines instead of some arbitrary border. Break up the two countries and replace them with a Shia state, a Sunni state, and a Kurdish state and things might quiet down for a while. Sadly, countries like Iran and Turkey would not be happy about that, because their Kurdish populations would want some Iranian and Turkish territory to become Kurdish. There are a lot of different aspects to this thing, and everyone is looking out for number 1.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Maybe Europe needs an old China-style one child policy . . . ?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[FlyHelicopters]

Nukes of that size aren't as big as you think.

The two we used against Japan killed 50,000 and 80,000 people outright and about that same number over time.

Bad, but not "that bad".

The modern economic conquences are a bigger factor than the number of people killed.

For what it is worth, one hopes that North Korea understands that those nukes are only useful, if never used. If they actually used them, North Korea would be turned into a glass floored, self lighting parking lot in 30 minutes.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Tom]

Americans killed two or so orders of magnitude more civilians in the middle east than arab terrorists killed in the USA. Somewhere on that road, the justification became a cruel joke.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Tom]

[Kurds] but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state,

Also because we already betrayed them once and they're not necessarily our best friends because of it.

If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable,

Mostly by changing allies the way other people change their underwear, yes.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[otopico]

Actually, ISIL hasn't flown planes into anything, that was Al Qaeda (not Iraq). They haven't beheaded children.That story goes to a single source, not in the area ISIL currently controls, is the single person claiming this. The only photo of a beheaded child is from 2013, and was killed by bombs dropped by the Syrian government.

14 of the guys in the planes were Saudis. Why not go hate on them?

But please go on and spread propaganda to lead the US into yet another war in a place we never should have been in the first place. These wars of choice always work out so well in the end.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

As a European (living in NA) I get exactly what he says. Over "here" we look at that religious crap the US is doing in some states with regards to the government/education as total BS. I mean, imagine an openly atheist president of the US!? Unthinkable for most Americans. As a European atheist I'd love that.

In my country I've heard some immigrants speak with their children on the playground. they brought home bad marks because they wouldn't answer science questions with the currently best known explanation for some phenomenon as learned in clsss but answered that god made it so. The parent told their children that the teacher was dumb and didn't know anything and should not be trusted. And they certainly weren't ISIS level. They were actually pretty nice people (until I heard that...)

Now this was a Koran example but in the US I can totally see how some parent might tell their child to listen on Sunday and forget about what was said in Monday's biology and history classes on evolution. I can't see how they'd forbid math though.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

Exactly, other countries don't like the idea of giving different ethnic groups their own states because this interferes with their power.

It's not just them, though: liberals here in the west hate the idea of different ethnic groups having their own countries, because they think we should all be mashed together and be forced to get along somehow. Just look at some of the other comments to my posts here in this thread.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[shihonage]

Just how in the world did this cretinous comment get "4; Insightful"?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[shihonage]

For your own sake, you really should not go on.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Grishnakh]

Actually, my solution so far is just to arm the Kurds and support them, to at least create one decent nation there which isn't a theocracy or a dictatorship. Then take a wait-and-see approach with the rest.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[roca]

Unfortunately the area's an ethnic patchwork, not just of Sunni and Shia but other groups like Yazidi. So just "redrawing along religious lines" isn't practical unless you also carry out mass deportations. And good luck trying to keep the minority groups viable.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[log0n]

No, AC is right. The degrees of US/ISIS ideologies 'wrongness' doesn't really matter, it's the fact that they are both rationalizing the acceptance of wrong. One will just have a much shorter time plummeting than the other.

Science can't hold a candle to someone who can't, or won't, appreciate critical thinking. Faith and religion beheads it.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[GLMDesigns]

Social Conservatives are less than 25% of Republicans and are probably less than 20% of the total.

-- Then why do they get more than 50% of the vote in the primaries?

---- I don't think they do. Example Todd Akins won Missouri in 2012 with like 37% of the vote (and that was the SoCon's best effort of 2012). The Tea Party and the Establishment split the rest.

===

Being religious does not equal being a social conservative.

-- Sure, some people are religious but not socially conservative... but they're usually Democrats.

---- I don't think that's true at all. You do realize that Fred Phelps (Westboro Church) was a Democrat, that in 2010 a majority of NYS Democrats were anti-gay marriage. Republicans keep thinking they will turn Pennsylvannia and Michigan Red because of all the SoCons there. But ... these SoCons vote Dem.

===

It's too bad, too, because unlike the rest of the Republican candidates, he was socially-liberal enough to have a chance of beating Obama in the general election (had he run as a Republican instead of a Libertarian)..

I'm glad you voted for Gary Johnson - I did as well. But where are the non-authoritarian Democrats? Which Democrats are for shrinking the size of government? The ever-more-oppressive-and-ever-more-intrusive Federal and local government is spearheaded by Democrats. Seat belt laws, soda sizes, the rise of the nanny-state and the police powers to enforce it are coming from the Left / Progressive politicians.

How about that law that forces you to buy a product whether you want it or not? What's that called the Affordable Care act or something like that. Which authoritarian party pushed that through?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[davydagger]

there is a gross disproportion of scale between US conservatives and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the MB, and Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[flyneye]

They wouldn't be able to read a Quran without knowing at least some numbers, don't get carried away with yourself.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[crimson tsunami]

Just because they don't want the riff raff learning things, doesn't mean the people they want to know stuff won't know this stuff.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Darinbob]

ISIS leader says "we control this much land now" while hold his hands apart.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Sarius64]

Ah, I see the problem. You frame things as myths until they affect you personally.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Darinbob]

It's ok, the internet rebooted itself shortly after imploding. Whether it is the same internet as before the big bang is still being debated by theoreticians.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Mr.CRC]

This is key. People have to understand that this is a pre-industrial economy. But worst than that, an ignorance society as well. They pose no threat to us, in terms of reasonably being able to attack or invade the continental USA.

That is of course, unless we are profoundly stupid. Basically, at this point, letting any non Us citizens from the countries infested with this religious extremist cancer enter the USA from an international flight, unless they have a damn good basis for coming here, is stupid.

Likewise for Ebola epidemic countries.

Next, we need to just abandon the f*cking middle east, Isreal included.

Humpty Dumpty is broken, and we are never, ever going to put it back together again. It's a FOREIGN CULTURE, nothing like our own.

It's very revealing, just how far "democracy" has progressed to a quasi-religion of its own, that we stupidly assume that if we just force those people to vote for their leaders, then suddenly they will become a liberal democracy, and everyone will be running around becoming social activists for liberal causes.

No No No No a million times no.

We have no idea what we are even doing in our own countries, which are on the brink of near catastrophic lurches downward into an abyss of totalitarianism and economic stagnation for reasons which are far too complex for any politically ideologically identified people to even begin to comprehend.

But if we keep spending our seed corn by attempting to police the world of people that are just not compatible with us, we stand a good chance of precipitating a similarly horrible outcome here, since there are plenty of people here who would be just as happy to implement their little version of hell. And I'm not referring to just one side of the political spectrum.

That is really the problem. How many people understand that if they were subject to certain societal conditions, that they too could act like ISIS, or the secret police of East Germany, or Kim Jong Un's inner cult, or yes, the Nazis? It's in ALL OF US to be like this. No one is enlightened. We just delude ourselves that we are, which is easy, because hardly any of us have ever experienced real stress of the kind that can crack you up, or the absolute need to conform in order to survive, lest you be tortured or have your head rolling down a hill.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Locando]

Ah, yes. What a trenchant explanation!

Re:they will defeat themselves

[mark-t]

I can't see any religious reason to ban math

I was puzzling over this for a while myself, but then I considered that it may be because it includes concepts like infinity... and even merely acknowledging the existence of such a thing, and even though it is purely an abstract concept, it may be considered tantamount to challenging the infinite nature of Allah, and thus not something that should be taught.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Gavagai80]

Pol Pot outlawed education, and lasted long enough to kill a large fraction of the population. Self-defeat is very slow and bloody.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Gavagai80]

Executing your opponents gives you the cooperation of the population, but certainly not their support. If you could conduct a legitimate opinion poll in IS territory, I'm sure the approval rating would be single digit.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[RespekMyAthorati]

you really are not winning points with anyone

ISIS isn't trying to win points with anyone. They just kill anybody who may have more points than they do, which amounts to the same thing.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Gavagai80]

Where's the American blockade of Mexican ports? Where are the American settlements in Mexico? Where's the regular American annexation of more Mexican land? Where's the regular American army incursions? Is America refusing to allow Mexico to declare independence and become a country, instead keeping it as an occupied territory? Are American politicians calling Mexico "the greater United States" and claiming a god-given right to take annex it completely as soon as we figure out how to get rid of the people there?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[chthon]

People will need to realize how the second world war was won.

The Japanese did horrible things, the SS did horrible things. In that regards, ISIL is not that much different.

Actually, ISIL make the same error as the Japanese. The Japanese thought that they could terrorise the opposing armies by acting brutally and barbaric. That did not work out for them (look what happened on Guadalcanal).

The main problem is that current opposing political forces in the Middle East will have to work together to crush ISIL.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[XPACT]

I second that. How this is different than any of the square shaped states filled with rednecks Kansas style? I have seen a lot of religious zealots across the whole US. A lot of Americans regularly go to church. And being an atheist is considered probably worse than being radical muslim. Evolution theory is considered as bogus in the US

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Eunuchswear]

I'm pretty sure the Nazis were also pretty big on science (and technology).

Had a few problems with some physics however. "Jewish Science". May have been one of the things that slowed down their bomb projects.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Keyboard Rage]

"Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Turkish, Moroccan colonies in Europe"

Except one specific enclave in Spain, I didn't know we had remotely administered Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Turkish, and Moroccan colonies in Europe. Also, Turkey is part of the European continent, partially. Furthermore, although some communities of immigrants of the mentioned nationalities indeed do have serious issues, they are not all 'dysfunctional and dirt-poor'. Especially the Pakistani and Turkish are generally quite economically prosperous, in some areas even replacing the native people who prefer to behave like xenophobic pigs (like you) and don't wish to do certain jobs.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Eunuchswear]

Please, start describing the contributions to civilization and world culture that came from North America,

Celine Dion?

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Keyboard Rage]

Your last sentence is so rife with irony with regards to your own post that it should be used as an example of "racist shooting himself in the foot". Also, if the "culture" you stem from is superior to others, frankly, how do you explain the arrogant and bigoted tone of your posts combined with the severe lack of historical knowledge you display?

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Eunuchswear]

Ug, have you seen his pasty fat smelly kids. Rather you than me.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[dave420]

But usually not capitalised, at least not since the late 1700s.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Keyboard Rage]

I hear that solution worked out really well for the Germans. They successfully exterminated over 6 million of those pesky Jews and also tons of other unwanted vermin. Perhaps their concentration camps could be reopened, to start processing all those Muslim creeps who want to rape our women, behead our men, and devour our children (up to about 9 years old for the girls, then they're of age to be raped)? I mean, they clearly have some excellent experience in killing people, they'll love sharing them with our freedom-loving armies.

Don't pay any attention to all of that revisionist history that says Germany and the other Axis countries were the cause of World War II, had to be beaten into a pulp in an ugly and painful air and ground war with huge casualties, and were the target of various types of punishment. I mean, obviously Hitler had the right idea, and all of this ISIS crap could have been avoided if he had been a bit more thorough. There, it's all Hitler's fault. He should have developed the German atomic bomb much faster, nuked London and all other British major cities, blasted the Soviet Union and the Middle East and Africa to scrap, and claimed the Germans' rightful superior society as the only one allowed. Maybe then he would also have been awarded the Nobel Peace prize. He clearly deserved it.

So you better speed to Germania, the Great-German-Empire's capital, ask Cyborg-Hitler's help, and start destroying all those Untermensch creeps (Muslims, communists, left-wing hippies, socialists, homosexuals, animists, atheists, Roma, minor races you don't like, mentally deficients, terminally ill, handicapped, HIV-positives, intellectuals, philosophers not adhering to state censure, rebellious writers and other artists not interested in depicting our superior society, anyone not willing to convert to the superior Christian religion (must be burned at the stake alive), non-Aryans, and anyone guilty of thought-crime (determined by specially appointed inquisitors - recruited from the finest specimens of violent football hooligans)). Africa, that inferior continent by excellence, must be cordoned off, have all its hospitals destroyed, and Ebola can take care of the rest. China? Nuke it into submission. Japan? Same. Pedophile priests? Burn their accusers at the stake, they are witches falsely incriminating our finest religious leaders! The Vatican? Replace that peace-loving South American hippie by someone who knows how to rule and impose the superior Christian religion using sawblade-equipped drone-armies piloted by drugged up religious fanatics willing to put in some time behind their X-Box/PS4/PC to kill off some real sickos! It's time for CRUSADES, RIVERS OF BLOOD FLOWING THROUGH THE STREETS OF TEHERAN, ATOMIC WARFARE!!! All in the name of the SUPERIOR Western Christian White Society that loves uncontrolled capitalism, watching talk shows on the telly with some booze and fast food, kids standing at attention for their religious teacher, ill people dying in the street, ethnically-prejudiced police raids, reading right-wing propaganda in the local scandal rag, homeless hobos getting their skull kicked in by glorious redneck skinheads, slaves from the inferior races (anything not Aryan, white or USain) licking their master's feet and doing household chores 18/24h 7/7 including sexytimes, criminals getting pretty little headshots for minor crimes (not at all comparable to thieves getting their hands hacked off, honest!), etc., etc., etc. Woooohoooo, awesome!

Please get a clue.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[dave420]

Of course they're not as bad as ISIS, but to call the Christian Right "harmless" is not very accurate. The sheer number of people dying from back-alley abortions is a testament to that, and that's just one of their areas of "expertise".

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

It has to be more than that. They also hate America because we support Israel. If we stop supporting Israel, they'll still hate us because of our valuation of freedom of speech as greater than religion protection, thus we have youtube videos of people burning the Koran and using it as toilet paper. If we ban free speech, they'll still hate us because of our "cultural imperialism" -- you know, stuff like McDonalds and Coke. If we ban American exports, they'll still hate us because we're infidels... but they might leave us alone at that point because we'll be a worthless shithole.

Personally I'd rather just keep bombing them and carrying on our normal lives back here.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

Everything you said has happened. You are describing "Manifest Destiny" -- look it up. We did take over and occupy as much of their land as we wanted. We said we have a right to expand all the way to the other side of the continent and we did it. If there are parts we didn't take, it's because we didn't want them.

What happened over the past 150 years, though, is that Mexico accepted their submissive position on the continent, and stopped fighting. If Palestine submitted, Israel would stop fighting them as well. The only reason ports are controlled is because terrorists in Palestine use them to smuggle in weapons... and btw, controlling the ports is not a blockade, check your facts. Ships can come in, ships can go out, fishing is done, etc... it's just monitored and controlled.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[stdarg]

Looking through some of the comments you've linked, it seems the issue boils down to your interpretation of "scientific processes" as meaning the scientific method. But that doesn't make sense because learning about the scientific method is indeed part of scientific knowledge, which the law wants them to focus on.

The only reasonable interpretation is that "scientific processes" refers to actually doing science, like experiments and stuff, and "scientific knowledge" refers to learning facts about science, including stuff like "what is the scientific method."

If they wanted to ban the teaching of science, then the proposed bill would not talk about teaching science and having higher standards than international peers etc.

If you can equate Republicans with ISIS in your head then you are not being very scientific in your analysis either. Hypothesis: Republicans are like ISIS. Prediction: Republicans will go around beheading people they don't like. Observation: Republicans aren't doing that, oops, I was completely hyperbolic.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TangoMargarine]

I would think that's probably a question of who you ask. The NIV (1973) still uses small-caps for "Lord" when referring to God last I saw, which is in the same ballpark.

Today there is no widely accepted rule in English on whether or not to use reverential capitalization. Different house styles have different rules given by their style manuals. Reverential capitalization is not to be used, for example, according to the style guidelines set by the Chicago Manual of Style[2] or the Associated Press Stylebook. It is prescribed, for example, by the US Government Printing Office Style Manual (2008).[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... ...which in any case wasn't why beernutz was bringing it up, I don't think, but rather because of the genderization.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[currently_awake]

When the oil runs out (or we stop buying) the money will run out as well (over there). At that point their economy will collapse, and the poor will end up on our borders as refugees. So make sure we build the walls and guard towers before we stop buying their oil.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[whistlingtony]

I'd like to bump up this idea that they're not a long term threat. Everyone is waving ISIS Around like they're scary... They're not. They took some land, they took some villages, they even took some cities. I get it. They're scary.... But taking territory is not RULING territory.

I'm not scared of 10,000 guys with AKs, rocket launchers, and pickup trucks... Not when they're on the other side of the world. I'm not scared of them, and I don't think they're a threat. I don't think they'll be able to hold the territory they have. I think planting a flag and actually governing are VERY different, and they have yet to actually govern the territory they hold.

Lets see how good they are at providing the functions of a government. Hospitals, trade, rule of law, schools..... Oh wait....

The American people are being whipped into a fear frenzy of nothing, to justify a continuation of war, which will continue the problem of terrorism, not solve it. Why? Because it makes money to continually bomb people....

Re:they will defeat themselves

[whistlingtony]

long term goals... whoopdie do! They can have all the long term goals written on a napkin that they want. I want to rule the world too, you don't see us bombing my house.

There is an alternative. Bombing them only continues the cycles. Why do they exist? American and Russia meddled in the middle east. We've gone back and forth for decades now. This is just another cycle...

The alternative is to break the cycle. Lets go to the Kurds in Northern Iraq and help them create Kurdistan. Lets build roads, schools, hospitals, etc. Lets Marshal Plan the shit out of them. Do the same thing in the South. Do the same thing all over, and those people will love us. Look at this from the villager on the ground's perspective... A drone drops a bomb and kills your son. You hate America. Your son gets sick and he's treated at a hospital made by the Americans... Yay America!

We need to go back to winning hearts and minds. You do that by building instead of destroying. It seems like a longer process, and maybe the school that we build gets blown up... Good. Let the villager see that we built the school and THEY blew it up. It's not actually a longer process. I think it's a shorter process... How long have we been entangled in the Middle East?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[meta-monkey]

What'll be really interesting to watch is what happens in Saudi Arabia. The entire country is run by oil money. Every citizen gets paid by the government in accordance with their family standing. Nobody actually works. Even the poor have servants imported from Africa that they pay with their oil money. Once that runs out...holy shit that's going to be messy.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[MargueriteChippMatth]

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Even propped up from the outside this can only last so long. Also if I remember right, Muhammad was a proponent of mathematics.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

Yeah, a lack of (internal) opposition has really helped the N Koreans, the Somalies and a few others, do freemen owe freedom and protections to societies and tribes who's oppressed are unable or unwilling to fight back? That is what we should decide first, then the rest is just strategy and tactics. But modern democratic institutions just do not do that discussion well in the presence of radical pacifists and war-hawks, who tend to see the world in black and white (sort of like the old TRS-80s did, due to its similarly limited capacity).

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cyberchondriac]

Our equipment we left for the IRAQIs, that ISIS *stole*. The US didn't GIVE that shit to ISIS. If someone steals your sister's car while you've borrowed it and parked it outside to go into a store, did you "give" her car to the thieves? Put a bow on it maybe? No.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cyberchondriac]

That will not be anywhere nearly enough. Not even. There's not enough logic in that region for that to happen. It won't stop conspiracy theories, lies, and blame. Propaganda needs little evidence when you can just shout Allah Ackbar and blame the infidel. Not to mention, Israel. The mere fact we support them is enough for most.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[cyberchondriac]

Isolationism just isn't a realistic option. The world is too small. Global economies, trade, energy, technology, transportation.. all that.
I would love nothing more to be able to live on a separate planet from them, but we can never return to those days.. short of an armageddon type scenario.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[dywolf]

and why was that? where were female versions not the societally acceptable generic words to use? or why were their no gender neutral ones?
could it be because society was patriarchal for the longest time and that fact colored a lot of cultural norms....

nah. couldnt be that.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[athenaprime]

You underestimate the power of radical ideologies. [...snippage of Godwin-y-ness (shut up, it's a word if I say it is)...] We killed off OBL, but he wasn't really running things when we did, and Taliban and Al Qaeda still remain. And even if they didn't, the people in those organizations just change their name, and regroup. This is the same tactic used by most counter culture politics.

The only effective tactic we have at this time is to target and kill the leadership, until the organization crumbles from lack of leaders. We don't need a standing army to do this, just Letters of Marque.

You might be overestimating the life-cycle of radical ideologies. The thing that makes them radical gives them "teeth" - they need to constantly gin up an immediate threat to "rebel" against. And while they can do that with whatever actions western powers take, people can only be on high-alert or militant-zealot mode for so long before the adrenaline rush slows down and they crash into either outrage fatigue or terror fatigue. Al Qaeda now seems most concerned with managing its public image, and the Taliban doesn't appear to be getting nearly as much mileage over their activities. ISIL is new and scary and has done abominable, shocking things that we haven't seen since...oh, the last bunch of radical militants who did pretty much the same thing. People will notice and be scared for awhile (rightly so, because these are awful people), but the lack of clean water or stability will eventually wear away the enthusiasm. Rebels rarely make good Establishment. If they get bigger, they'll have to go more into strategy and less into just doing abominable things for shock value and recruitment, and strategy takes time and planning and coordination, and that's boring. Radicals want action.

The problem is, of course, that many innocent people will be hurt in the meantime, and the lives that will be wasted between now and the time when the leaders will get too used to the attention and/or money and start tearing each other apart.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Rakarra]

Really? Seriously? Have you paid any attention to the rhetoric coming from any of the Middle Eastern countries more conservative than Jordan or UAE? The fault for all problems is always the United States's and Israel's. Granted, for some of those countries the fault for many of those troubles can be laid at the feet of the US, but this has always been a popular and successful rhetorical tactic worldwide -- deflect blame from yourself by turning it into an US vs THEM argument. Amazing how isolationist Israel is somehow responsible for the crappy economies and every other problem under the sun for so many Middle Eastern countries... or amazing how Californians can't find good jobs because of all the "illegal immigrants." It goes on and on. As long as humans feel tribal (and state/country borders are just another mechanism for separating people into tribes), this tactic will work.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Rakarra]

For every one you kill two will take their place. Your philosophy breeds terrorism instead of extinguishing it.

Yeah, I'll take having two stupid, uneducated 15-year-old kids taking up arms instead of the senior tactician designing the best IEDs to plant along roads and send to market squares. I'll take that trade any day of the week. It's worked pretty damned well for us so far.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Rakarra]

The only thing stopping Israel from finishing the issue is their association with America and Europe. Otherwise, Arabia would simply be a collection of grease spots.

No? You don't think Israel would completely collapse without the US and Europe propping it up as they have been for 50 years?
IF Israel's great allies dropped support (military and financial) and Arab countries invaded, Israel's citizens would flee the country to become a wandering people yet again. At least the smart ones would.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Rakarra]

Does ethnic cleansing count? It's the true evil of the settlements. The settlements are for Jews, and Palastinians are, one family at a time, forced out of their homes as the Jewish areas grow. It's a calculated strategy of replacing the current residents of the land with occupiers, whole-cloth. Just slowly, and without the mass shootings.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Rakarra]

nuke 80% of the middle east, full on carpet bomb every square mile with overlapping bursts and you will not have 2 more spring up. you will actually wipe them all out for good and not have any problems with middle eastern terrorisim.

Are you trying to wipe out the Middle East or Muslims? If the latter, you'd have to take out vast areas of SE Asia and smaller parts of Europe. Neighborhood bombs for parts of France. Because they wouldn't take kindly to enormous groups of their religion being massacred, or all of their religion's holy sites being destroyed. Like.. the holy sites that their religion claim are absolutely mandatory to visit.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Rakarra]

The only question is where will the blame fall

Clearly, America.

If we don't do anything, then we're undercutting our allies by refusing to support them, and helping the terrorists by cowardly refusing to take them on.
If we go in guns blazing, then we haven't learned from history, think our military might can solve all problems, indiscriminant killings will breed more jihadis, and clearly are just trying to prop up Israel against everyone else.
If we take a moderate approach, then obviously we don't have the resolve to do either of the above, are weak and ineffectual, probably kick puppies, and are just trying to keep the situation going so we can profit on their oil. Or something.

The US can't win no matter what it chooses, too many people have too much investment in blaming the US so they don't have to blame themselves. I think that gives the US the option to do whatever it feels is best.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TangoMargarine]

Yes, I've heard of the word "patriarchy" ever. You don't have to keep fucking bringing it up when it's totally irrelevant to the conversation.

We could always take the German approach and give everything a random gender. "Girl" neuter, "mountain" male, "stream" female. Would that be better?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TangoMargarine]

The Greeks and Vikings never claimed there was "one true god." They were polytheists.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TangoMargarine]

Feel free to show me where in the Bible it says God is male. Titles like "father" refer to the family position traditionally held by males in their society, not their specific gender. The whole idea of a deity having a human-analogous gender sounds ridiculous.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[atownsley]

Your missing the point...The education restrictions are for the "fodder" that will take the brunt of the attack. Sorry to be blunt, but there is no need to teach advanced concepts to these people in the minds of ISIS, all the "fodder" needs to do is be fanatical and follow orders until death do them part.

Long term the social elite will still be educated to a very high level, most with post graduate degrees from western universities. So the society will last. Restricting education is just a means of keeping the poor in their place and making it easier to use them as tools.

Again sorry to be blunt, but that is how I see it...

Re:they will defeat themselves

[bbsalem]

True enough, for now. The radicals are going to wake the giant, who doesn't want to put boots on the ground against them, maybe the other Arab states will see the threat as too close to home and go in and clean the radicals out. If not, the U.S. has engineering not according to the fundie Islam which can easily decimate ISIL.. And we can make life very hard for them without putting our people on the ground. We could do a Putin on them and mention that we could use nuclear weapons on them, and even if we don't do that we could theoretically make large parts of Eastern Syria and Western Iraq uninhabital for decades. We should have done this in Eastern Afghanistan to the Pashtoon homeland where most of the Taliban insurgants who have fought us there come from. So, we have placed ourselves at a temporary disadvantage because of poor leadership from Obama; he had failed on the international stage too, but we don't have to continue in that vein and because we allow for creative solutions to problems that religious fundies don't use, we can defeat them. After all it could be said that Hitler lost his war because he didn't believe in science, especially Jewish science, and we developed the bomb because of the threat that he might get it; he didn't, and it was because of his racist and religious beliefs. In similar fashion if it came to direct conflict with ISIL we could clobber them with a engineering hammer, either a high energy or particle beam or just unloading our nuclear waste in the middle of the Syrian dessert. We could cook them man by man or en-mass if we have to. We are playing nice-nice trying to pick off individual terrorists with drones and avoiding taking out innocents with them, we don't have to continue with that restraint. So these guys in their Islamic state are going to under estimate us, and we in turn are going to learn how to be leaders and why sometimes it takes a hammer to drive a nail home.

By the way this mess started when American and European businessmen set out to steal the wealth of the Middle East by dividing the factions that exist there. Evey nation that was devised by the Western Powers after WWI in 1921 at the end of the Ottoman Empire was conceived by Brittan and France and later the U.S. as a way to allow for Western businesses to steal from the region or to set up puppet states, the Monarchies of the modern states, including Iraq and Egypt, that allow for foreign companies to garner resources at minimal benefit to the population. we did this by splitting religious sects and ethnicities that have considerable hatred for one another. That is how WE created bin Lauden, who was radicalized by contact with Western businessmen. We sowed dragon's teeth for profits, and we pay the price in terrorism. It looks like Crusades to Islam and even though moderates don't blame us as much, it is rich soil for anyone with a grudge. The point is that if you do not forget history, you can see why these threats arrise, and now it is out of hand and we have to get nasty to address it. We are paying for bad leadership in the past. We are paying for the two Bushes and Clinton using Oil politics to drive our policy in the area. We are paying for how we were set up for 9-11 by ignoring the hatred we had come to invite, because we placed corporation profits and our oil supply above human dignity. About the best thing that could happen in the post-peak-oil era is to find an energy source, invent fusion, that depreciates the value of the oil reserves in the world, but especially those under Iran and Iraq. Then we can gracefully back out of the region. Until then, our options become increasingly distasteful.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Sciath]

One major political party? That's too limited of scope. You'd be more accurate to include ALL the elite (which is a larger group than merely the 1%).

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Sciath]

Why shouldnt they be turned away? If youre a proponent of letting everyone who wants to escape deplorable conditions in their native country, we may as well not have ANY immigration administration or emigration policies. Your attitude betrays the fact you seem to think anyone who wants to should have the freedom to do so (come to America). That kind of approach is completely unrealistic and perhaps even disastrous. When in fact they should make the personal investment of time, effort, even sacrifice life and limb to "free" their own countries to emulate "free" countries rather than running away. It's become the standard approach in the modern world to run away to other countries rather than fixing what they already have. And if that entails civil war then so be it. After all the U.S. has had its share of internal armed conflicts to get where it is. Why shouldnt other cultures an nations if they want a better life? An immigration philosophy such as yours also ignores the fact than the immigration policies of 100 years ago are outdated and archaic, in need of rational evaluation in light of certain social, economic and environmental realities. NO country can withstand unlimited growth including growth via immigration. Every single European country has strict immigration policies for the very rational reasons alluded to above. The world (including the U.S.) has changed dramatically in the past 100 years. And those changes demand a re-evaluation of past philosophies and policies. Especially in the U.S. The world NEEDS to know they have to solve their own problems rather than escape to North America.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[sumdumass]

NO, AC and you both are wrong.

The degrees of US/ISIS ideologies 'wrongness' doesn't really matter, it's the fact that they are both rationalizing the acceptance of wrong.

And that's just your opinion but it is based on nonsense so lets explore this nonsense some more. What makes abstinence sex education wrong? Is it the fact that children will have limited exposure to sex and be encouraged not to participate until some magical date in the future? It is wrong because they cannot ever get any other education about sexual protection from anywhere else like the internet, friends, family, or their doctors?

So, now that we got the easy one out of the way, why is it wrong to include additional information in a specific context concerning science? I mean ID co-discussions do not come right out and say science is wrong, they actually say some other people think this may be true. Is it wrong because it encroached on scientific dogma or challenges science in ways it cannot answer other than doing more science and showing where it fails? Is it wrong because even though evolution is a logical process, there really are gaps that are interpretative and expanded from what we know to be true to explain what we have no empirical evidence for? It just seems to me that any honest exploration of intelligent design would lead to more science proving it's limitations.

But mostly you and the AC are wrong because neither of the listed ideas or concepts are outright bans on anything. You do understand that banning someone from ever learning something is a lot different than saying our tax dollars will include extra or only support a specific concept when spent on the public- right?

Science can't hold a candle to someone who can't, or won't, appreciate critical thinking. Faith and religion beheads it.

Unfortunately, it seems that you have beheaded critical thinking. Critical thinking is not rejecting something for the sake of rejecting it, It is not blindly following something either (which I'm suggesting you are doing from this short analysis of your post).

Critical thinking is

the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Now, do you see the words belief, reasoning, applying, conceptualizing in there? This means that two identical people can apply critical thinking skills to the very same set of circumstances and come up with two completely separate beliefs about it and both be correct even if they are polar opposites. What's that you say, how can A!=B and A=B at the same time? That's critical thinking for you. Because you can logically look at the wonders of nature and both understand the science behind it and thank god for creating it.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[sumdumass]

As a European (living in NA) I get exactly what he says. Over "here" we look at that religious crap the US is doing in some states with regards to the government/education as total BS. I mean, imagine an openly atheist president of the US!? Unthinkable for most Americans. As a European atheist I'd love that.

Why would you expect there to be an openly atheist president in the US? The total number of atheist in the US compromises only about 6% of the population. A president would have to represent at least 50% of the population and the 6% number is less than the number of people who voted for Ross Pero in the 90s when he was one of the most popular independent candidates.

Hell, even in Europe, only 20% or so of the population identify as atheist. Quite a few Europeans would have issues with openly atheist heads of state in European countries as there seems to have been only one.

In my country I've heard some immigrants speak with their children on the playground. they brought home bad marks because they wouldn't answer science questions with the currently best known explanation for some phenomenon as learned in clsss but answered that god made it so. The parent told their children that the teacher was dumb and didn't know anything and should not be trusted. And they certainly weren't ISIS level. They were actually pretty nice people (until I heard that...)

That's utter rubbish. The schools do not use currently best known explanation for some phenomenon in classroom instruction. Most of it is 5-10 years old and vetted before it even hits the school books
(k12) and then they stay in circulation a number of years before being replaced. That being said, your immigrants are idiots and I would say so are you. ."They were actually pretty nice people (until I heard that...)" Are you really that shallow that nice people become evil people because they do not believe the way you want them to? I'm glad I'm not in Europe if that is the general trend.

Now this was a Koran example but in the US I can totally see how some parent might tell their child to listen on Sunday and forget about what was said in Monday's biology and history classes on evolution. I can't see how they'd forbid math though.

Almost every parent- even the devoutly religious in America wants their kids to do well in school if only because of how much emphasis society places on the earning potential of educated kids. I seriously doubt anyone would be saying ignore biology classes unless the teacher was saying that their religion was fake or something. But that's a different scenario than teaching biology. Most of the people pushing for ID in the classroom seem to be without children of learning age or without children altogether. There are those with kids but the main reason they want ID
(intelligent design) discussed in the classroom is only so the biology teacher doesn't end up saying there is no god or your god is fake. Just as a school in the US cannot say you must believe in this god, they also cannot say you cannot believe in that god or ridicule someone who might.

But in the ends, what difference does it make. If Junior gets bad grades in biology, all that means is that Junior will not become a biologists. You do not need to be a biologist to practice law, to roof a house or hang drywall or work in the factor like paw did. The vast majority of people in the US will never need the information outside of a casual understanding of the birds and the bees once they leave school.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[ComputersKai]

On the bright side they won't be calculating projectile trajectories any time soon....

Re:they will defeat themselves

[ComputersKai]

Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.

Unfortunately, there are always going to be radicals, and eventually, some extremist is going to get the wrong idea and decide to start their own "terrorist state". Even the most peaceful religions, like Buddhism, have their radicals that go around pillaging.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[ComputersKai]

Killing them won't help; see reasons above.
The thing is, we're dealing with fanaticists here; they just wouldn't care enough. In fact, ISIS will probably just turn it into some propaganda over how many of their fighters have gone onto paradise or something.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Sarius64]

History would disagree with you. Also, if Israel had been unleashed there wouldn't be a modern Arab country; thereby giving those resources to Israel instead of the Arabs.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[stealth_finger]

"asylum seekers"

You mean, greedy Third World swine with nothing to contribute, who think that they're "entitled" to live in a rich country because Whitey is rich and they are poor?

As opposed to the greedy First World swine with nothing to contribute who think they're "entitled" to live in a rich country because of who's uterus they happened to be expelled from?

Aren't sweeping generalizations fun!

Well to be fair, the location of that uterus is what entitles you to live in your country. You are of that country, it's luck of the draw if its rich or poor, good or bad. I'm entitled to live in the UK because I was born here but we have people travelling across up to the entirety of Europe/Asia to get here passing many many places where asylum could be applied for but no, they meet up in Calais and try again and again to cross the channel while France just sits there and let's them.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[stealth_finger]

Hey! Let's just ignore history, colonization, the ongoing impacts of the RC Church, and the niggling fact of who developed guns first. Also, "third world countries" have plenty of culture, they are just not listening to Vivaldi and sipping tea with their pinkies extended.

Careful, your entitlement, ignorance, and racism are showing...

Colonisation brought technology, the RC church impacts only those who let it. Who developed guns first might matter if they weren't available to all. A couple hundred years ago you might have had a point but none of those things have any kind of hold on keeping the third world down now. So keep looking on from your tower of smug superiority.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Marxist Hacker 42]

How much math does it take to use a slingshot?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I was going to respond only to your first paragraph, but your last paragraph proves what I'm about to say.

Abstinence education can work, when you encourage critical thinking along with it and do not try to use ignorance to protect innocence. I took what I learned after I was married in Catholic NFP classes, and am using it to teach my special needs son about sex. Being well aware that his body will outpace his mind and critical thinking skills on this issue, I started early with my form of abstinence education- about age 5. Now at 11, he is both protective of his own eyes (hiding during certain scenes in Big Bang Theory, a show he otherwise enjoys) and protective of other people's modesty (necessary, since mommy runs a daycare) . He's already run into homosexuality at school, and handled it by coming to adults with the issue rather than attempting to dissuade a rather aggressive same-age predator on his own.

I have no doubt whatsoever that by high school, he'll be a leader, not a follower, when it comes to sex, and will be armed with the ability to make the correct decision when it comes to abstinence before marriage.

But only because we've talked about it, and because I've been honest.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Scottingham]

It has? We must be getting our news from two vastly different sources.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Scottingham]

...or if it didn't get billions of dollars of US aid....

Re:they will defeat themselves

[lsatenstein]

Maybe we should let it (Ebola) get exported to ISIS. They want no doctors, except for the powerful leaders, and they want stupidity in their population. Does that remind you of cattle?

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Anonymice]

Colonialism heavily relied on slavery &/or being bank-rolled by the home land.
The pittance received by the these disenfranchised communities, many of whom not lucky enough to have been able to dedicate their youth to our high quality education (much of which is funded by the government, you filthy scrounger), is hardly a comparable situation.

How has this post been modded +4 Insightful?!
Kindly go fuck yourself, you racist xenophobe.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TheCarp]

Then they will never amount to anything and are of no actual concern.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[schlachter]

obviously he was talking about the spaghetti monster, praise his noodliness. those old gods are so not real. do not try to impose your agenda on the spaghetti monster. people can see through this clear manipulation of the true intentions of his noodliness.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Hognoxious]

The total number of atheist[s] in the US [wikipedia.org] compromises[comprises] only about 6% of the population. A president would have to represent at least 50% of the population and the 6% number is less than the number of people who voted for Ross Pero[t] in the 90s when he was one of the most popular independent candidates.

One, you're assuming they'd vote based solely on religion. God help us if everyone was as dumb as you, or as dumb as that, if there's a difference.

Two, you're assuming that there's only one religion.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Patent Lover]

Kind of like Kansas.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[DexterIsADog]

I think you vastly underestimate the moral revulsion of the western nations to use nuclear weapons on civilians (again). The threat would have to include an organized government (perhaps in the control of a group like ISIS) which has nukes of their own, and a likelihood that they will use them. Even then, the western nations would only use tactical nukes on weapon sites.

Despite how it appears to many (including you), the past hundred years has seen a huge reduction in human violence. I still believe that the next country to use nuclear weapons on civilians is likely to make the civilized nations decide, "we don't think you should be a country any more". Also, people are still basically decent.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[SuricouRaven]

I only gave that as an extreme example of what would happen in the highly unlikely event that ISIS actually succeded in their ambitions. They simply can't win: The more powerful they get, the more force becomes acceptable to use against them. Right now they are at the level where they aren't even worth the cost of a proper invasion. If they pulled off a major terrorist attack on the US or significent European power, they bump up to 'Invasion ready' level, just as Al Quida did after 9/11 - and you can see what happened to them.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[DexterIsADog]

Right, land war in the middle east. What could go wrong?

It may be that they could provoke an invasion, but which side do you think will suffer most? The side that deliberately kills civilians, or the side that accidentally kills civilians, and pretends to care about it?

Never mind, I answered my own question. It's the civilians, always the civilians. These assholes, they'll just melt away and do it again.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Zontar The Mindless]

You, SirMa'amOrFido, have just earned yourself a gold star.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[Zontar The Mindless]

God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Correct--there was no Big Daddy In The Sky yesterday, there isn't one today, and I'm willing to bet there won't be one tomorrow, either.

Re:they will defeat themselves

[TrollingForHostFiles]

Or a bullet. Depends on where he/she/it lives.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Zontar The Mindless]

When have people from Africa appeared at the borders of any country "cap-in-hand [...] demanding their 'rights'"?

You've not read much news from Europe lately, have you?

Re:they will defeat themselves

[SuricouRaven]

Depends how much the US holes back. The refusal to inflict massive civilian casualties is the only thing keeping them from wiping out IS - as mentioned, there are nukes. But in the event that by some miracle IS actually realised their dream and became an existential threat to the US... if it comes down to 'them or me,' there wouldn't be such holding-back. The best IS could realistically hope to achieve is becoming a regional power.

Re: they will defeat themselves

[Zontar The Mindless]

Imagine what Europe would be like if some foreign powers came in, colonised big chunks of it for a century or three, then drew borders for new countries that had nothing to do with ethnicity or language. So Milan is now the capital of the Styrian Republic, which comprises Lombardy, Styria, and most of Slovenia; the mix of languages shouldn't be a problem since we're going to educate all their kids in Korean, anyway, right? Then let's draw a nice straight line at an angle across France, and combine the part to the south of that with Catalonia. Let's call it "Franconia"--nevermind the locals already using that name for a different region of the continent--what do they know? And wouldn't it make things more convenient for us to administer if the Rhineland, the Netherlands, and peninsular Denmark were a single entity? And so on... and so on...

Now you know where the most of the national borders in the Mideast and Africa came from. And now maybe you're beginning to see why most if not all of these states are doomed to failure.

Anti-math and anti-science ...

[damn_registrars]

... sounds like the GOP in the US.

Yeah, I know that slashdot's overwhelming conservative majority will mod this comment down into oblivion in retaliation, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[O('_')O_Bush]

PSH, more than a little exaggeration. If they banned math, how would they know how to evade taxes?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because it's fundamentally the same thing which motivates both: Religious Fundamentalism.

Let us not forget that there's nothing inherent to either Christianity or Islam when it comes to fundamentalism. Christianity generated the Crusades, after all...

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

but that doesn't make it untrue.

No, it being untrue is what makes it untrue.

Remind me again which party is pushing "new math" and repeatedly thinks it can spend more than it makes by creating money out of nothing?

Let me guess, you're one of the people who thinks that religious freedom and supporting life is "anti-science." So I suppose you've got me there.

Although it isn't the GOP that wants to rush head-long and destroy our economy based on half-sciences and disputed findings instead of waiting for actual conclusive evidence...

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[i kan reed]

1. As a liberal-as-fuck liberalite, libby lib, there is no malevolent conservative slashdot majority. This exists in your head and in your head alone. I post my totally correct liberal positions all the time, and only get modded down when I overly challenge people on specific subjects like misogyny.
2. While anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of the modern republican party, don't they don't even remotely compare in severity to paramilitary mostly uneducated third world anti-intellectuals.
3. Whether you're modded down or not, your statement is untrue on its own merits.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[manu144x]

Christianity generated the crusades? Did you like attend a history class ever?

I do not condone the behaviour of some dumb idiots in the army who started killing any people who they didn't like and used the crusades as an excuse for their personal profit, but the crusades were primarily caused by something very similar to ISIS.

Islam started taking over more and more, slaughtering and robbing villages wherever they could. It took 400 years of farcry to the pope to do something about the islams who were killing everyone who wasn't islamic when the final drop was the conquering of Jerusalem, when they finally decided to take action. Get your facts straight. Yes, I agree there were people among those soldiers/generals who used it as an excuse for their own purposes (aka get rich quick) but believe me, if we won't do something about these ISIS people, they will not stop until they reach the borders of the western world, and by then it will be too late.

Just one of the many sources stating that the crusades were just a reponse, a reaction to Islam agression. http://gatesofvienna.blogspot....

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[the eric conspiracy]

Obviously not the Abbasid Caliphate that funded the Baghdad House of Wisdom, home of Muhammed ibn musa al Kwarizmi.

(the words algorithm and algebra are taken from his name and the titles of books he wrote).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's sickening to see these nutters rejecting the thought and culture that once lead the civilizations of the middle east to a true Golden Age.

Now all we can do is hope that there will somehow be an Islamic Enlightenment. Perhaps in reaction to ISIS? It's hard to see it happening though.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... sounds like the GOP in the US.

The GOP is (stereotypically) anti-evolution and anti-climate change but saying they are anti-math and anti-science is a huge stretch.
The GOP is much more likely to favor hard science and math over the liberal arts. Heck, liberal arts and liberal democrats although
I believe the words originated separately are completely intertwined today. The members of the republican party also tend to be
very pragmatic and much more likely to teach their kids practical skills like balancing checkbooks and interest rates. Most of the
ones I know also think the hard sciences are alot more important than the soft sciences. Basically, if you remove the areas that
are anti-religion (evolution) and anti-business (climate change) then I think you would find that the GOP is very pro-science and
pro-math probably to the detriment of other school subjects.

Yeah, I know that slashdot's overwhelming conservative majority will mod this comment down into oblivion in retaliation, but that doesn't make it untrue

I'm not sure where you get this either. I see more anti-republican stuff on slashdot than anti-democrat stuff. My guess though
is that slashdot probably is a much higher percentage libertarian and independents than the general population.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

but that doesn't make it untrue.

No, it being untrue is what makes it untrue.

Remind me again which party is pushing "new math" and repeatedly thinks it can spend more than it makes by creating money out of nothing?

Let me guess, you're one of the people who thinks that religious freedom and supporting life is "anti-science." So I suppose you've got me there.

Although it isn't the GOP that wants to rush head-long and destroy our economy based on half-sciences and disputed findings instead of waiting for actual conclusive evidence...

too wrong; didn't read

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll find the democrats can be just as anti science and math.

Anti Vaxxers
Anti GMO
Anti Nuclear

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Fwipp]

Slashdot isn't conservative so much as it is libertarian. Which is basically conservatism that wants to maintain the quo socially, (except with fewer rules for them to follow, because freedom) instead of returning to the 1950's. Which is why you still see the misogynists and racists pop out on any thread that mentions women or anyone who's not white.

They share tenets with conservatives, mostly financially, but hate the way mainstream conservatives act (on account of GOP hypocrisy and their regressive social values).

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

>And yet, Your Democrat President does nothing to stop ISIS. Looks like we will have to wait until the next Republican President before we can bring Math and Science back to the middle east.

Is that what killing people and destroying infrastructure does? Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[MitchDev]

Thought and logic is the death of religion.

Can't have people able to think logically or critically...

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[marsu_k]

Gates of Vienna? Really?

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[mrlinux11]

They will all die out in one generation, if they do not teach them how to multiply :)

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Shortguy881]

Don't forget about English. We are not allowed to learn that as well, apparently.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Regardless of its other content, any poster that says "I'm gonna get modded down for TELLLIN' IT LIKE IT IS, MAN!" deserves all the downmods they get, and they know it.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is made up of mostly liberals actually. Besides there really is no differrence between Democrats and Republicans. With them it is always the same song just a different tune.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[fermion]

Really it is true. The GOP in the US base most of their policy on religious and military views. For instance, GWBush used an expansion of the military to employ the unskilled and uneducated. He then used Homeland Security. If you are not actually basing your economy on a educated workforce, and maintaining control through religion, then any kind of secular education is a bad thing.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[i kan reed]

You're right that libertarians are more common than conservatives, and that they're loud enough to always be visible, and blindly ideological enough to mod people +1 agree or -1 disagree.

But even they, even combined with the paleoconservatives, don't seem to add up to a majority of users. The GP's post was pretty much just paranoid delusion and gross simplification.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is basically conservatism that wants to maintain the quo socially

Thanks for confirming you know nothing about libertarianism.

Libertarians tend to be quite liberal socially - get government out of banning abortions, get government out of licensing marriages, get government out of the business of spying on citizens. These are all quite clearly outlined in the libertarian party's platform. Most of their policies stem from the fundamental precept that government is not the solution to all problems, and government should stay out of the business of solving problems unless there is a pressing need for protection of somebody's individual rights - e.g., most libertarians will agree that a police force and court systems are necessary to provide people redress when their rights are infringed upon by another.

This often leads them to the conclusion that government spending needs to be dramatically reduced, because government itself is too big, and has insinuated itself into too many areas of our lives.

Libertarians are NOT about "maintaining the social status quo" - if you had to describe them in terms of conservative and liberal, the most accurate description would be "socially quite liberal, generally fiscally conservative."

They share tenets with conservatives (government is too big, and should be reduced in size), and liberals (government needs to get out of the personal affairs of its citizens to the largest extent possible, and let them just live their lives and do their thing, regardless of whether they're straight, gay, bi, trans, black, white, yellow, red, christian, muslim, jewish, atheist, or anything else.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[biptoe]

Keep calm and don't feed the troll.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[clarkkent09]

Let us not forget that there's nothing inherent to either Christianity or Islam when it comes to fundamentalism. Christianity generated the Crusades, after all...

I think that's an example of cultural relativism that is as dangerous to the West as the people who are anti-math or anti-science. It is part of the deluded unscientific mythology of the left just as intelligent design is on the right.

There are obvious differences between Christianity and Islam that make Christianity able to coexist with a modern secular state while Islam is showing all over the world that it can't. For example Sharia is a comprehensive legal framework that observant Muslims are supposed to put above the secular laws (you know the ones brought about by a democratic process). There is no such thing in Christianity.

Also, Jesus mythology beats Muhammad mythology hands down as an example to follow (regardless of how much if any of it is true). Jesus' teachings were generally peaceful and kind and never attempted to spread Christianity by force, preferring to suffer himself instead. Muhammad slaughtered and enslaved thousands, explicitly permitted murder, stealing and lying (as long as directed against non-Muslims), kept 13 wives, including a 9 year old one, in addition to sex slaves.

Yes, there are obvious differences in the implementation at the present time which can possibly change: can you imagine the Pope leading a frenzied crowd in the St. Peters square in chants of "death to infidels" the way legitimate Muslim leaders do, rather than urging them to love and respect their neighbor? But there are also many doctrinal differences that make Islam more dangerous which is why in literally every place in the world where Islam is in contact with another civilization there is conflict. Just look at the map.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[operagost]

The problem with your oversimplification is that the holy book of Christianity encourages pacifism, while the holy book of Islam encourages the subjugation of unbelievers.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[i kan reed]

I can't really endorse this either, because it basically falls into the general category of "tone argument". If the post has credibility, it should stand regardless of tone and ancillary statements about what other posters/mods might do.

This one fails on it's own merits. And that's all that should matter.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[hondo77]

...can you imagine the Pope leading a frenzied crowd in the St. Peters square in chants of "death to infidels" the way legitimate Muslim leaders do...

So, what you're saying is that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[operagost]

slashdot's overwhelming conservative majority

Needed a sarcasm tag there.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[i kan reed]

Regarding anti-vaccination: The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science

Nonetheless, it must be reiterated that we found limited evidence for the rejection of vaccinations based on liberal or “left-wing” political leanings: When free-market worldviews are parceled out (and only then), people on the political left were less likely to endorse childhood vaccinations than people on the political right.

You gotta take the free market types out of the right wing to make it into a "left" phenomenon. This is a misconception that(as the study notes) derives from the fact that the most prominent public proponents come from the fringe left. But when it comes to the general population, rather than the promulgators, it's the conspiratorially minded, regardless of affiliation causing that particular problem.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[SoCalChris]

The problem with your oversimplification is that the holy book of Christianity encourages pacifism

Have you actually read the Bible?

Matthew 15:3-7

John 15:5-6

Genesis 6:6-7

Numbers 31:15-41

As a side note, the Awkward Moments (Not found in your average) Children's Bible that these illustrations came from are great books.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[stdarg]

The so-called Golden Age of Islam was still marked by harsh caliphate rule and Islamic expansion. Your example of al-Kwarizmi is someone in an area that had been taken over by the Muslims for 150 years. Do you think DURING the conflict that resulted in Muslim rule there was a lot of stability and promotion of the arts? That's the stage ISIS sees themselves at.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[halivar]

Libertarians often take the same positions conservatives do, but are much more dogmatic about it, which is why libertarians hate conservatives so much, whom they see as unprincipled. I, myself, dislike dogmatic philosophies, so some might call me a RINO or something. Yes, I generally want smaller government; no, I don't want to shut down the police or fire department. So, I figure I can be a pariah to at least 80% of Slashdot readership.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[stdarg]

You do realize that "gates of Vienna" is a reference to the Islamic expansion into Europe which was only halted at... Vienna?

Seriously the lack of education about Islamic history is astounding. It's an important religion and culture and you'd think people in this day and age would at least know the basics, like what the crusades were about!

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Shortguy881]

Lol, I thought the same thing. Revisionist history much?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[WrongMonkey]

final drop was the conquering of Jerusalem

You need to check your own history. Muslims had ruled Jerusalem for 400 years before the First Crusade. It was a prosperous city of Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The Crusades stand as one of the great atrocities of European history. The massacre of Jerusalem. Documented cannibalism at Antioch. The betrayal and sacking of Constantinople. And they accomplished NOTHING. All of the Crusader states fell in less than two hundred years.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[clarkkent09]

Typos are not interesting. A wannabe grammar pedant who confuses "as well" and "either" is ... well, not interesting either (or is it "as well", genius?)

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Sarius64]

It does more than bending over and letting ISIS drive the foreign policy of America. Let me guess, soldiers are what the peasants become?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[marsu_k]

I know what it references. I also know the blog.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[cyberchondriac]

... sounds like the GOP in the US. Yeah, I know that slashdot's overwhelming conservative majority will mod this comment down into oblivion in retaliation, but that doesn't make it untrue.

You really are out of touch with reality if you think slashdot has an overwhelming conservative majority. Plus, you can't label the whole GOP for the actions of a few dipshits anymore than you would label all muslims as terrorists.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[cyberchondriac]

Finally, somebody gets it. I'm so sick and tired of hearing people bring up the Crusades as though the Muslims/Moors that swept through the mideast and southern Europe did it with an olive branch, and were poor, peaceful victims. Funny how the history there always seems to begin at the year 1095, and ignores the previous 400 years of islamic conquest.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Rob Riggs]

You do realize that "gates of Vienna" is a reference to the Islamic expansion into Europe which was only halted at... Vienna?

If you want to know why people are a bit dismissive of the OP's post, please read this critique of the website the OP linked to. Trust me when I say that you don't want to get your history lessons from that site.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Shortguy881]

Don't mind me. I'm just feeding the trolls. Anyone who uses "You are stupid" as an argument isn't worth talking to.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[the eric conspiracy]

ISIS is fighting in an area already under Muslim rule. It has nothing to do with Islamic expansion and everything to do with war between sects.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[halivar]

I gotta pick a nit with this. The Christian Dark Ages were NOT a period of scientific and cultural regression. Far from it, we now know that society advanced pretty linearly from the beginning of the Dark Ages on through the Renaissance. What makes it "dark" is that for the longest time we simply didn't know a whole lot about it; it was a lost period in history. Modern scholarship has largely debunked the traditional, mythical view of the so-called "Dark" Ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[SuricouRaven]

Neither if which matters, because few believers actually do what their holy book says. They do what they want, then look to their holy book to justify it.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[halivar]

I stopped reading after the first one. Jesus is quoting the priests' law and calling them hypocrites. So obviously the creator didn't read the passages he/she cited, either.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Lumpy]

"if we won't do something about these ISIS people, they will not stop until they reach the borders of the western world, and by then it will be too late. "

Only if dipshits vote for and pass laws disarming the american citizens.

You want to know why Japan never tried an attack on the US mainland? They knew the citizens outgunned their army 40 to 1.

You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." - Soroku Yamamoto.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[dskoll]

No, Islam is fundamentally different from other religions. It's a fascist ideology whose goal is world domination; read any of the Islamic writings to see Islams attitude towards non-Muslims. This fascist ideology is cloaked in religion in order to call those who criticize it bigoted.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[WrongMonkey]

What history are you talking about? The only Muslims in Europe before 1095 were on the Iberian Peninsula, where they were practically invited to take over because the Visigoths were so bad.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[I'm New Around Here]

As someone who disagrees with your posts from time to time, I thank and commend you for pointing out the obvious truth.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[swillden]

There are obvious differences between Christianity and Islam that make Christianity able to coexist with a modern secular state while Islam is showing all over the world that it can't.

This is only because Christianity has changed. Christianity as it was during the era of the crusades, and for hundreds of years after them, not only could not coexist with a secular government, it couldn't even coexist with an ostensibly Christian government which espoused a slightly different form of Christianity.

Note that I'm not bashing Christianity here... I am a Christian. But let's not whitewash the history of Christianity.

can you imagine the Pope leading a frenzied crowd in the St. Peters square in chants of "death to infidels"

Well, historically, the Pope doesn't lead chants. Instead he just issues orders to root out and forcibly "convert" infidels via torture, to save their souls. Of course, popes haven't done that for centuries because it has become unacceptable to Christians.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[SigmundFloyd]

we will have to wait until the next Republican President before we can bring Math and Science back to the middle east.

And out of the US!

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[amicusNYCL]

Jesus is quoting the priests' law and calling them hypocrites.

You sure about that? To me, it sounds a whole lot like Jesus is quoting God's law.

Jesus replied, "And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? For instance, God says, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.' But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, 'Sorry, I can't help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.' In this way, you say they don't need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. You hypocrites!"

That looks a whole lot to me like Jesus, the literal Son of God and Savior of all humanity, is quoting God, his father, the creator of everything, as saying "Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death." Are you reading that differently than I am? You're pretty quick to dismiss the criticism, so what do you know that I don't?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Xphile101361]

believe me, if we won't do something about these ISIS people, they will not stop until they reach the borders of the western world, and by then it will be too late.

It scares me to no end that you got modded "Informative" for that post. Too late? Too late for what? You honestly think ISIS is going to march into Europe and plant their flag in Paris?

ISIS exists because both Syria and Iraq have had their own internal struggles. Using the chaos of those struggles, they managed to seize military equipment and take control of land. The people they are a threat to are the civilians in the region that have no way of fighting back against them. They'll never manage to take on Isreal, Iran or Turkey

Nothing good will happen when Western Nations fight ISIS. The only good that will happen is if nations in the region actually stand up to them and deal with the problem

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[stdarg]

I read the critique you posted, but really it's a critique of just one article posted on that blog, not the blog itself. I'm not even sure the critique makes sense for that article. I haven't read the article it's referring to, but the excerpts in the critique don't support the points its trying to make. For instance, look at the first claim, that the article is calling for a holocaust against Muslims. The author quotes another blog, not Gates of Vienna but Little Green Footballs, saying "At Gates of Vienna, an author referred to as “thoughtful” has a piece that lovingly describes the coming genocide of Muslims in Europe."

Note, not calls for, but describes.

And the critique has this quote from LGF (not from Gates of Vienna):

‘If violence does erupt in European countries between natives and Muslims, I consider it highly likely that people who had never done anything more violent than beat eggs will prove incapable of managing the psychological transition to controlled violence and start killing anything that looks remotely Muslim. Our unspoken conviction that we, in 21st-century Europe, ‘

[emphasis in the source, not mine... also, the abrupt end of the quote is as in the source, not because of me... also the extraneous single quotes are in the source... what I'm trying to say is this source is poorly written]

It seems pretty clear that this moronic author bolded that line and said oh look, they're calling for people to kill anything that looks Muslim, that's a holocaust.

Clearly that's incorrect.

That being said, I'm not familiar with the Gates of Vienna blog, so perhaps it's true they post radical viewpoints. That does not mean that everything they post is incorrect, and having looked at the article about the crusades, it's pretty accurate. Do you disagree? If so, I think it's more fruitful for you to share that disagreement directly, not link to a 3rd party blog filled with vague criticisms that hardly even make sense.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[stdarg]

What you're not considering is that where you and I see sects, ISIS sees false Muslims and illegitimate rule. The area is not ruled by good Muslims, thus they are establishing a caliphate.

I'm not making this up, that is their stated aim. That's why I said "That's the stage ISIS sees themselves at" -- not because I see it that way.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Bruce Perens]

Hm. The covenant of Noah is about two paragraphs before this part (King James Version) which is used for various justifications of slavery and discrimination against all sorts of people because they are said to bear the Curse of Ham. If folks wanted to use the Bible to justify anything ISIS says is justified by God's words in the Koran, they could easily do so.

18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Sri Ramkrishna]

The irony is, given my exposure to open source/free software developers they tend to be progressive/liberal. After all, you are giving away for free, your hard work and expertise. Devops/sysadmin/unix gray beards tend to be libertarians, and generally consume open source/free software. Which totally fits libertarian mindset of freedom to do what you want. The problem of course is that it took a liberal mindset to actually make open source happen. Otherwise, they are probably just as happy with a number of proprietary unix solutions since they are free to use the underlying technology anyway they want.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Sri Ramkrishna]

The current plight of Islam is a directly attributed to the poor economies of the Middle East and a prevalent culture where men must find jobs before they can continue on with life. The poor economy comes from the fact that the middle east isn't diversified, and are not investing in new sectors. The oil they possess is a curse not a blessing. An all corrupting influence that is the seed of everything that has gone wrong in the middle east. Oil is what is killing Islam.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[geekoid]

"You want to know why Japan never tried an attack on the US mainland? They knew the citizens outgunned their army 40 to 1."
Bullshit. It was a logistic issue. Admiral Yamamoto noted that they lost the war the moment they attacked Pearl Harbor. Why? Logistics.

Nice quote from someone who never existed. Oh, do you mean Isoroku Yamamoto? He did exist, but he never said that quote.

Just like every other made up fact by the pro gun morons.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[geekoid]

Nope.

  Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? 4 For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’[b] 5 But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ 6 In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents.[c] And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition.

He is calling them hypocrites becasue they found a way around killing kids for not respecting their parents.
Think about that.

Because you seem simple:
He was calling them hypocrites for NOT KILLING CHILDREN.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[geekoid]

That is the exact same thing about Christianity.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[geekoid]

2. They are worse, because it's intentional. To not know better is one thing, to know better and ignore it is just insidious.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Reservoir Penguin]

Straw man. Most islamic/muslim majority states are not 'fundamentalist'. Even in Iran elements of secular state and democracy coexist with Sharia law and religious authority, similarly in Iran studying math and science is encouraged month both genders. I anything Islamic fundamentalist states and quasi-state entities are in the extreme minority pointing to Islam's ability to adopt to the modern world.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[BradMajors]

I thought Slashdot was a technology news website for nerds and not a political website.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[clarkkent09]

Iran is not a democracy. Iran is a theocratic dictatorship run by the Ayatollah and the mullahs surrounded by a ridiculous complicated system designed to superficially resemble a democracy.

I don't know about you personally but I notice a miserable failure of perspective in many people in the west especially on the left. It seems that a lot of the same people who throw a fit and scream fundamentalism when some Christian group in the US pathetically tries to insert a disclaimer in some book about evolution or put up a religious monument on public land will happily give a pass to countries that are frigging controlled by religious clerics at the highest posts in government and with elements of Sharia as the law of the land! Iran has laws on the books right now that cause women to be arrested and whipped for not covering their head. Thieves are still getting amputations as punishment, woman's testimony is legally worth half of man's testimony, and a woman needs a written permission from a male in her family to work outside the house or travel, adultery and homosexuality is punishable by death etc etc. A lot of Iranian legal system is straight from Sharia. Apparently stoning to death (using small stones to prolong the suffering) was on the books until 2010.

Name a major Islamic country other than Turkey which has a meaningful separation of church and state, and even in Turkey that separation is crumbling under assault from the Islamists.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[TangoMargarine]

Calling for the extermination of the group that has already been calling for our own extermination for decades? Yeah, that's crazy talk.

I mean, Islam is a religion of peace. It's just a few bad eggs spoiling it for everybody else.

The West goes in and stirs up shit over there, everybody hates them. They don't, then this happens (ISIS). Or I suppose the argument can be made that this was actually caused by the shit-stirring, huh?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[TangoMargarine]

Documented cannibalism at Antioch.

I don't think cannibalism usually happens just for shits and giggles. Presumably you're talking about a siege where those besieged ran out of all food?

Not that I disagree with any of the rest of your points.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[SoCalChris]

You are also not considering that within the Christian context, the children's lives would actually be better in the afterlife.

This line of thinking is how we end up with people like Andrea Yates, Jim Jones, and countless others. This thought scares rational people.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[TangoMargarine]

"No religion condones the killing of innocents."

The obvious loophole being how you define "innocent." Doesn't Mohammed have a lot to say about how anyone who won't become a Muslim is an enemy of Islam and must be destroyed or something?

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. - John 15:5-6

It's in reference to Judgment Day, not any call to action on humans' part. "Picked up, thrown into the fire and burned" is referring to being thrown into hell, which is doctrinally something God does and humans have no control over (the physical punishment part, that is).

Matthew 15

The entire story is about how he is pointing out that the Pharisees are hypocrites, as noted in the other comment. There's a recurring thread in the Gospels about how the Pharisees were always trying to trip up Jesus by coming up with ways where he would technically be violating the ceremonial law. In context here, Jesus is basically telling them to STFU.

Genesis 6:6-7

Again, talking about God causing the flood. Not a call to any sort of action on our part.

Numbers 31

Okay, you actually managed to find one argument that wasn't totally uninformed. Yes, in the Old Testament, there was a lot of razing of cities that resisted the Israelites or were labelled "obstinate" or what-have-you, which is rather hard to justify. I'll just say, sidestepping that issue somewhat, that this falls under "Christians say not to do that anymore...Muslim imams are currently endorsing this very thing so they should grow up like we did."

I find it a bit funny that the first 3 links are all to a facebook image. But go figure.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[WrongMonkey]

Vienna wouldn't have even been attacked if the Crusaders hadn't sacked Constantinople and left it weakened enough for the Turks to take over.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[irrational_design]

You are ignorant. "to do something about the islams who were killing everyone" Islam is the religion, Muslim are the practitioners of that religion.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[shihonage]

Such comments are made by modern equivalents of Eloi, who have never seen the Murlocs up close. In fact, they haven't seen any true hardship up close. And other Eloi upvote them.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[shihonage]

If it's all the same to you, please go live in the Middle East. Oh... wait... it's... not really the same, is it. Oh...

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[shihonage]

Finally a voice of sanity in this thread. I was starting to lose hope.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[penguinoid]

They share tenets with conservatives (government is too big, and should be reduced in size),

That's a conservative talking point, not a conservative tenet. (at least if by "conservative" you mean "Republican" like most people do)

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[roca]

The 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, mostly well-educated and from relatively wealthy families.

Meanwhile there's desperate poverty all over Africa and Asia and not a whole lot of terrorism (except where Islam is introducing it).

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[roca]

Malaysia and Indonesia aren't too bad.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[roca]

The Protestant reformers would have objected violently to your characterization. To them, rejecting the human authority of the Pope in favour of 'sola scriptura' was a move *away* from secularism. You're right that ironically it provided room for true secularism to grow.

But the grandparent post is right nevertheless. The Christianity of the New Testament is fundamentally compatible with secularism and pluralism because it grew up as a minority faith in the Roman Empire and took hold through mostly-peaceful implementation of the teachings of Jesus. There have been a lot of deviations from that course but those deviations can be corrected/stripped away without doing violence to the core, and in the modern era have been.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[roca]

Christians throughout history have understood that the laws God prescribed for Israel in the Old Testament are not mandatory outside that context, and in particular are not to be applied wholesale to gentiles (i.e. almost everybody). This isn't some modern opportunistic innovation, it's explicit in the New Testament (e.g. Acts 10-11,15).

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Fwipp]

You're kinda illustrating what I meant by my parenthetical, but I guess I didn't explain it very clearly - Libertarians often focus on keeping the government from restricting your rights, rather than focusing on ensuring that the government protects your rights.

For example, their platform reads "Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association they deem appropriate," which means that businesses should be free to openly discriminate against employees of a certain race, sexuality, gender, etc, in order to protect the business owner's freedom of association. Liberals generally believe that the government should be in the business of ensuring that people get a fair shot, in order to protect the employees' ability to earn a wage.

(Also, they want to entirely privatize schools, because nothing says "land of opportunity" quite like being too poor to afford first grade.)

Saying basically that "It's fine, as long as it's not government doing it" doesn't really seem "socially quite liberal" to me - it seems, frankly, like an anarchic appeal to the state of nature, in which only the strongest is secure in their rights.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[the eric conspiracy]

Conflicts between sects is not unknown in other religions too.

For example look at the European wars between Christian sects just prior to the Enlightenment.

I think the key thing here is that Islamic countries for one reason or another never went through a similar transition towards rationalism and individualism. They are still ruled by a way of thought that western culture started abandoning 350 years ago.

I hope we don't get dragged back that way. Fundamentalism is ultimately I think the greatest enemy of human progress.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[towermac]

"God doesn't want people to have knowledge"

You missed the point of the lesson...

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Anybody can be radicalized, but the barriers to radicalization are lowered when you have nothing to lose. These guys also have nothing to lose, so there could be other factors that leads to radicalization.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[cyberchondriac]

Exactly. Does what is now Spain and part of France not count as "Southern Europe", which is what I said? That's the path the warring Moors were taking before stopped by Charles Martel.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[WrongMonkey]

But they really did sweep through Iberian with an olive branch. The Visigoths were hated foreign conquerors. Tariq was practically invited to replace Roderic. You characterize the Muslims as being "warring Moors"but the Franks and Visigoths weren't exactly "poor, peaceful victims" either. Charles Martel was just as much of a brutal, warmongering conquer as the Muslims he fought at Tours. Then, for the next four centuries, France suffered under brutal feudalism and a neolithic economy, while Al-Andalus become a rich, prosperous trading empire. If you were a non-noble in 1000 AD Europe, Cordoba was by far the best place you could hope to live.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Rakarra]

Now all we can do is hope that there will somehow be an Islamic Enlightenment

This is my greatest hope -- the Enlightenment is possibly the best thing that has ever happened to Europe, and is what, above everything else, responsible for the success of Europe and former European colonies. In this day and age, it's hard to imagine another Enlightenment taking hold.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Rakarra]

I agree, the islamic community made sure that their version of history remains only. One full of victimization and excuses, where always other civilizations/countries are responsible for their lack of development.

This is what happens when you think that God ordains your people to expand by the sword, but for others to do so is a travesty against God's people. It's what happens when your religion is right, full stop, and others are wrong, so you have the moral authority to do whatever to advance it.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[cyberchondriac]

Sorry, I can't buy the bit about the olive branch. The difference is, the Franks at that point were mostly a united set of tribes, under one religion, native to their lands (Gaul). The Moors were invaders. The Franks had converted to Christianity willfully when Clovis converted, and the Romans didn't force him at sword point, it was a political decision. The Goths were nomadic, but within context, native to Europe too, at least. Though brutal, yes.
The one famous case I know of where Christianity was brutally spread was when Charlemagene launched his massacre of pagans at Verden. That was equivalent to what ISIS is doing now with everybody: shia, sunni, christian, yazidi, etc... One thing the pagans always had over monotheist religions, they rarely tried to convert a defeated foe to their own gods; they might mock them, but freedom of religion seems far more prevalent under polytheism.

In any case, I disagree that Cordoba was some kind of utopian melting pot. Non-muslims, if not slain in battle (because they'd surrendered) were deemed "dhimmi" and had to pay the jizya, a tax. They were essentially made into second class citizens, in once was they're own land. Same as in Jerusalem.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[cyberchondriac]

If the original Native American tribes gathered up strength and started launching attacks on the US government, would you condemn them ? The mere fact that you bring them up suggests you justify the resentment and anger of a people overtaken.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Rakarra]

You want to know why Japan never tried an attack on the US mainland? They knew the citizens outgunned their army 40 to 1.

So why didn't they land in Canada? Seems like it would have been an easier conquest, eh?
The Japanese never invaded any North American country because they never got that far in the war. They had a hard enough time keeping Asia under control.

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[Rakarra]

4. Regardless of its other content, any poster that says "I'm gonna get modded down for TELLLIN' IT LIKE IT IS, MAN!" deserves all the downmods they get, and they know it.

I don't think they 'know' that they deserve it, but lots of people LOVE being martyrs for their cause. They like to get up on the cross before anyone else can put them there.

Re: Anti-math and anti-science ...

[stealth_finger]

Which is basically conservatism that wants to maintain the quo socially

Thanks for confirming you know nothing about libertarianism.

Libertarians tend to be quite liberal socially - get government out of banning abortions, get government out of licensing marriages, get government out of the business of spying on citizens. These are all quite clearly outlined in the libertarian party's platform. Most of their policies stem from the fundamental precept that government is not the solution to all problems, and government should stay out of the business of solving problems unless there is a pressing need for protection of somebody's individual rights - e.g., most libertarians will agree that a police force and court systems are necessary to provide people redress when their rights are infringed upon by another.

This often leads them to the conclusion that government spending needs to be dramatically reduced, because government itself is too big, and has insinuated itself into too many areas of our lives.

As a foreign observer, isn't that pretty much why America came to be? To get government and other interfering types to leave them the fuck alone?

Re:Anti-math and anti-science ...

[stealth_finger]

>And yet, Your Democrat President does nothing to stop ISIS. Looks like we will have to wait until the next Republican President before we can bring Math and Science back to the middle east.

Is that what killing people and destroying infrastructure does? Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

If those people and that infrastructure is holding all that and more down then yes.

Also math?

[Anonymous Coward]

On other news sites I read that they banned teaching history, biology, music, literature and chemistry. If you add maths... then what's left?

Re:Also math?

[The Grim Reefer]

On other news sites I read that they banned teaching history, biology, music, literature and chemistry. If you add maths... then what's left?

Why the Quran, of course. So by literature, I assume that reading is still permissible. Although maybe not. That way they can tell the masses what ever they want to say about the Quran.

You still have marksmanship, physical fitness (at least as it relates to fighting), suicide bombing,

Of course without math and physics, I'm not sure how you can make bombs, or manufacture rifles and bullets. So that leaves you with acquiring ones made by the supposed enemy. You'd think using the product of infidels would be some kind of sin too.

Re:Also math?

[dowsell]

What's left? The Koran, the whole Koran and nothing but the Koran. It sounds like they've never heard of George Satayana and the expression, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Instead, they are taking the route trodden by Ne Win, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and other dictators. Soon they will be teaching their own version of history and killing each other in gruesome ways. I wonder what percentage of the population will need to die before this regime falls apart.

Why math?

[sinij]

I could understand (from radical fundamentalist point of view) other bans, but why math? Even Koran (I think?) has writings on commerce (math), tithe (math) and so on.

Re:Why math?

[PlastikMissle]

Yeah that had me puzzled as well. There was a good reason that Islamic scholars during the golden age contributed so much to math. Math was heavily used by the Muslims for matters of faith like calculating prayer times, religious taxes and inheritance shares.

Re:Why math?

[rasmusbr]

I could understand (from radical fundamentalist point of view) other bans, but why math? Even Koran (I think?) has writings on commerce (math), tithe (math) and so on.

Some possible explanations in order of highest likelihood:

The media got it wrong and they're not banning math.

The media got it wrong and they're only banning math for girls.

The great leader... or.. uh.. caliph? Well, the guy in charge doesn't like math.

It's not possible for practical reasons. Maybe the math teachers have all fled the country or something.

Re:Why math?

[wisnoskij]

Particularly strange since most of our current understanding of mathematics was discovered in Allah worshipping countries. Hell they are called Arabic Numerals for a reason.

Re:Why math?

[Opportunist]

Because ISIS doesn't give half a shit more about the Koran than the average politician over here does about the Bible. It's a tool to keep them in power and keep the sheep following them.

Why do you think people in the Middle East would be different from people in other parts of the world?

Re:Why math?

[stdarg]

No. Almost no original mathematics was developed in Islamic countries. There was some, but the vast majority was simply transmitted by Arabic/Muslim scholars from earlier Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, etc sources.

Arabic numerals were developed in India and were called Hindu numerals. The reason we call them Arabic is we learned about them from a book written in Arabic, not because they were invented in Arabia.

Re:Why math?

[Charliemopps]

I could understand (from radical fundamentalist point of view) other bans, but why math? Even Koran (I think?) has writings on commerce (math), tithe (math) and so on.

For most people that view the Koran or the Bible in the most extreme and literal ways, it's generally held that your entire life should be dedicated to serving God. You're supposed to spend your entire life reading the Bible/Koran and serving God. All other activities should be in support of that mission. i.e. you need to be able to read to be able to read the bible so English is ok. Any activity that is not in direct service of God is considered sinful. I suspect that in most rural Iraqi villages the only subjects were Math, social studies and English. So basically they're telling everyone that if they teach anything but the Koran they're getting flogged.

Re:Why math?

[SuricouRaven]

I suspect it might be a translation issue. But to know that we need the oppinion of someone who speaks whatever language the announcement was in, presumably Arabic. Banning math makes no sense, but it might be perhaps banning certain types of math, or preparing for a yet-to-be-finished Islamic Mathematics cirriculum that downplays the role of western mathematicians.

Languages can be tricky. Another Islamist group, widely (Though unofficially) called Boko Haram, literally translates as 'Counterfeits are prohibited' - but it actually means something closer to 'Western education is unislamic.' A translation that wouldn't be at all obvious unless you are familiar with the region's history, and knew that 'Boko' might mean counterfeit or fake, but could also be a contraction for 'ilimin boko' or 'fake education' - a phrase used to describe British schools created when the country was formerly part of the British Empire.

Re:Why math?

[Reservoir Penguin]

Yeah, and how are they gonna study physics and chemistry (which is allowed according to the summary) w/o math?

Re:Why math?

[steelfood]

Basically, they compiled and disseminated all of this knowledge from all over the civilized world to the rest of the civilized world, and then when they finally had it all, they got cold feet and threw it all away.

Re:Why math?

[ComputersKai]

Well, Muslim scholars pioneered quite a few advances in algebraic concepts.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andr...

Re:Why math?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Those numerals originated in India, where the Arabs encountered and adopted them (and later transmitted them to Europe).

Actually against Islam

[Firethorn]

Okay, I'm not a Muslim, nor am I an expert. I've been over in majority Islamic countries a few times though and had a few 'cultural appreciation' lessons.

Isis is violating a good amount of Islamic teachings with this ban.

Though I can't see how they're still allowed to teach chemistry(even if they have to say it's due to Allah's rules and law) if they're not allowed to teach math, so it might be an error in the article. Math may have been de-emphasized against teaching their propaganda.

Re:Actually against Islam

[gnasher719]

Isis is violating a good amount of Islamic teachings with this ban.

Considering that they are not Muslims but f***ing bastards, that doesn't come unexpected. I mean they are so bad that Al'Quaeda calls them barbaric.

Re:Actually against Islam

[tylikcat]

Certainly, when you look at the role of Islamic scholars in developing, say, Algebra, it seems like a pretty awful departure from some aspects of history. Of course, history is full of many things, and the Qoran is full of many things, and can be used to justify many things. (You can, for instance, make a pretty solid argument that the Qoran is a lot more progressive with regard to women's rights than other monotheistic religious texts... but certainly this hasn't been playing out in implementation this century, so much. Of course, I seem to recall some arguments that the rules regarding inheritance laid down in the Qoran necissitated the devlopment of algebra as well, though my own reading is that you can only stretch that argument so far.)

Re:Actually against Islam

[TheCarp]

> I mean they are so bad that Al'Quaeda calls them barbaric.

This is an important point. Now I am not expert but, even I have seen stories, old stories, from back when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were new, even back then there was intelligence chatter showing internal divides within Al Queda, even debates as to whether their own terrorist strategies are even effective in the first place.

and there really is some evidence that they are not, and the more barbaric they are, the less effective they are. In fact, if I remember right, this isn't even the first group Al Queda has thusly criticized.

Re:Actually against Islam

[pspahn]

I know very little about Muhammad and the like, so I don't fully understand the teachings; however, what I do know is that ISIS is intent to cut people's heads off for bringing shoes and beds to children.

I can't imagine that Muhammad would think it's okay to behead people for bringing shoes and beds to kids. If they are the kind of people that would deprive children of basic needs, is it any surprise they are also the kind of people that would deprive children of basic education?

I don't think they have any interest in adhering to teachings of Muhammad, and since their educational backgrounds are likely as limited as the children they intend to suppress, I can only assume that they don't realize how easy it is for the rest of the world to see through their thin veil of Islam.

Re:Actually against Islam

[TheDarkMaster]

"...Though I can't see how they're still allowed to teach chemistry"

Without it they have no way to make fertilizer bombs to spread the religious mumbo-jumbo of them. Seriously, we can not just surround them with barbed wire and shoot any of them that try to go out spreading this cancer for the rest of the world? where are the atomic bombs when you really need them?

Re:Actually against Islam

[Opportunist]

Isis is violating a fair lot of Islam rules. Not just now.

Just like so many radical groups they use religion as a tool to justify their actions. It's hardly a new idea.

Re:Actually against Islam

[stdarg]

Wait, so the group that has taken over large amounts of land and imposed the laws that they want and believe in is LESS EFFECTIVE than the small terrorist group that hides in caves?

Re:Actually against Islam

[SuricouRaven]

Muhammad raised an army, besieged and captured Mecca and went on to take over much of the surrounding area. He wasn't some hippy street-peacher like Jesus - he was a prophet of action, not just words. Given his willingness to use military force to convert rival tribes to his new religion, he may well have been perfectly ok with beheading those who effectively served the enemy by spreading goodwill and thus sapping his side of the will to fight.

Re:Actually against Islam

[dskoll]

Muhammad used beheading to great effect. Google Banu Qurayza

ISIS are in fact faithfully following the 7th-century teachings of Muhammad. Those who sugar-coat things by claiming it's "anti-Islam" are simply deluding themselves.

Re:Actually against Islam

[scsirob]

ISIS is islam in all its gory detail. Muslims all over the world get up in arms, and riot over as much as a pencil drawing of their bloody prophet, but are entirely silent over the atrocities performed by IS in the name of their religion. Therefor I conclude that they all to some degree agree with the methods of IS.

There's a recent video on Youtube, where Brigitte Gabriel puts it plain and simple; The Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant. Look it up.
Islam is the worst cancer ever to come to humanity.

Re:Actually against Islam

[tylikcat]

*grin* Though I believe what we generally call arabic numerals actually originated from the Indian subcontinent... but yeah.

Re:Actually against Islam

[Firethorn]

It's basically a redux of Afghanistan with the Taliban, where a militant group takes over a failed state. Except my understanding is that they're being even more brutal.

The end result of de-emphasis on core education will result in their regressing even more, eventually leading to 'the caliphate' being seen as another North Korea type situation if they're 'lucky', and being invaded like Afghanistan if they're not extremely lucky.

Basically, AQ has been around for decades. ISIS might be mostly gone in a couple years.

Re:Actually against Islam

[penguinoid]

Al Quaeda has lasted for decades, and will continue for the foreseeable future. They're mostly harmless and a useful tool for keeping the population loyal and unified. ISIS is not merely using terror but have become actually dangerous. Guess what comes next?

Re:Actually against Islam

[stdarg]

The Taliban is still alive and well in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan are constantly having "talks" with them. They still control large regions in both countries.

The Taliban's success in controlling territory let them establish revenue sources such as the opium trade, and provide cover and training camps for small groups like al Qaeda.

ISIS will be lucky to accomplish as much as the Taliban, but I guess it's possible. And now that Americans understand Islam and Islamic rule and Muslims living under Islamic rule a little better (i.e. the whole "winning hearts and minds" thing is utter bullshit, they aren't going to like us when we "liberate" them), it's unlikely that we'll be returning to occupy the territory and help them build up again.

Re:Actually against Islam

[DarthVain]

I know you are probably referring to the paradox of teaching Chemistry without using Math being a bit difficult.

However the cynic in me thinks that the morons at least understand that basic chemistry is required in the manufacture of things like bombs and bullets.

Re:Actually against Islam

[Firethorn]

I know you are probably referring to the paradox of teaching Chemistry without using Math being a bit difficult.

Exactly what I was referring to.

However the cynic in me thinks that the morons at least understand that basic chemistry is required in the manufacture of things like bombs and bullets.

My cynicism is that they'd have their bomb & bullet makers run an apprenticeship where they teach the stuff to 'properly vetted', IE fanatic enough to their cause/group, individuals.

Re:Actually against Islam

[Rakarra]

Wait, so the group that has taken over large amounts of land and imposed the laws that they want and believe in is LESS EFFECTIVE than the small terrorist group that hides in caves?

Do you think that ISIS has a long-term future? We're not talking about short-term gains, here, we're talking about whether a philosophy of terrorism is effective in the long term.

US is next?

[guruevi]

This is what happens when you let the religious right run a country. Doesn't matter whether they're Islamic, Christian or something else.

Re:US is next?

[sinij]

Exactly. Opposing scientific principle and results, be it climate science, evolution, or math are all different degrees of the same folly.

Re:US is next?

[benjfowler]

Islam these days is by far the worst offender, as a vehicle for promoting Third World degeneracy of all kinds.

Re:US is next?

[meta-monkey]

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. Muhammad was a military leader and a statesman, and the Koran basically dictates how every aspect of society should operate. Christianity had the benefit of being an outsider religion that eschewed direct temporal power. "Render unto Caesar..." The authors of the New Testament went out of their way to make it clear they were just talking about Jewish religion stuff and posed no threat to the Roman rulers so as to avoid persecution. It is this separation of authority that allows for open thought and independent inquiry. This is why science and democracy were (re)born in western nations. Neither the Islamo-statists nor the god-kings of the far east allowed for dissent or independent thought.

Most all early scientists or natural philosophers were Christians. But the Christianity they practiced is very different from modern Christian fundamentalism. Christian fundamentalism is a recent invention of the United States.

Re:US is next?

[Agares]

Being religious does not make you anti-science.

Re:US is next?

[pr0t0]

Yes, it certainly sucks that a very ignorant but very vocal minority can cast a dark shadow upon a vast but comparatively silent majority. If you don't like the preconceived notions that are hung upon the religious (as perceived by the non-religious), you may want to encourage like-minded individuals to speak up on matters of science and scientific literacy. Right now the media is controlling the message that this is a two-sided debate, mostly because that's an easier sell. But it's also due to the fact that there is a HUGE contingent of people of faith who recognize a place for science in their lives, but are cowering in the corner. ISIS uses threats of violence to get the masses to bow to their whim. It's not a sword, so what is the far-right hanging over your head?

We all get and deserve the world we make.

Re:US is next?

[halivar]

Your equivalency of Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism informs me that you understand neither.

Re:US is next?

[BringsApples]

US is next?

What do you mean next?

Re:US is next?

[blue9steel]

Except for areas which conflict with your religious beliefs, which tend to be many.

Re:US is next?

[mr_mischief]

Unfortunately many people have never learned to deal with cognitive dissonance very well. There have been great scientists who believed one thing as religious truth and who supported the objective evidence within a scientific model at the same time.

Allegory, fable, parable, subjective experience, and unobservable conjecture about spirits and deities is not anti-science or counter to science. The problem is when people try to conflate their by definition subjective, unobservable, untestable beliefs with what by definition must be objective, observable, and testable.

Religion and theology are informed by a wholly different part of philosophy than is science. Science assumes an acceptance of objectivism, which is anathema to most religions (in fact any religion with a supernatural explanation for anything). It's no wonder they are incompatible.

If someone wants to have faith in something, I have no issue with that. If they want everything proven to them, I have no problem with that. If they want to separate one form the other, I even have no problem with that. If, however, they want to bash science because it's not in accords with their scary invisible, inaudible, uncommunicative, unobservable supreme being in another existence then they need to step back and consider that their religion is not at all even germane to the discussion of science.

Re:US is next?

[Agares]

As I said being religious does not mean anti-science. Furthermore I give a lot of things in science a lot of thought, and truthfully I can't say any of them go against what I believe. Religion is an explanation of why I am here and where I will go so to speak. Whereas science is basically just something that explains the world around us. The two do not have to contradict one another.

Re:US is next?

[SuricouRaven]

Fundamentalist Islam today looks very similar to medieval Christianity.

Re:US is next?

[the eric conspiracy]

The two are fundamentally incompatible. You can do both if you ignore this problem, but in the end that simply makes you a hypocrite.

Re:US is next?

[Empiric]

In short:

Unfalsifiable does not mean false.

A standard claim by people who should (and usually do) know better.

Re:US is next?

[halivar]

This sounds about right. But modern fundamentalist Christianity is not very similar to medieval Christianity.

Re:US is next?

[geekoid]

And when science shows some tenants of your religion don't work?

Re:US is next?

[Agares]

I don't see why you all keep making assumptions. If science does not conflict with my beleifs why is it still such a big deal to everyone?

Re:US is next?

[mr_mischief]

Unfalsifiable in fact does not mean false. It also does not mean true. Unfalsifiable does mean unprovable and nonfactual. You can't have a fact unless it's falsifiable. That's part of the definition of a fact: even if it's true there's the possibility to attempt to show it is false.

Science is concerned with hypotheses (testable statements) and repeatable observations (empirical facts). If you can't test it repeatedly and observe it repeatedly then it's not science.

There's a big difference between "not scientific" and "anti-scientific".

You can disingenuously try to put whatever words you like into my mouth to build whatever strawman you like. I'm just tired of hearing the religious anti-science crowd and the science-minded folks baiting and presenting meaningless arguments back and forth. If someone's worldview is completely inconsistent with someone else's, that's no reason for them to try to make idiotic cross-boundary arguments adding noise to public fora.

Re:US is next?

[eneville]

Indeed, anything else results in stone age thinking and caveman mentality. Rejecting the results of those who stood before us is like refusing to use a well vetting API, it'll take you a long time to eventually end up at the same place you could have been if you had stood on the shoulders of giants, if you see what I'm saying. If ISIS have their way, they will eventually end up at the same point as the rest of the world, but 10,000 years later. It's insane. It's so backward. It must be like trying to justify using assembler to reinvent PCRE.

Re:US is next?

[Empiric]

"You can't have a fact unless it's falsifiable."

On this particular point, I disagree...

One of these propositions is true, and therefore a fact:

1. Mozart was a better composer than Bach.
2. Bach was a better composer than Mozart.
3. Either Mozart or Bach was a better composer than a given randomly-selected High School band student.

None of these are falsifiable. There is no objective test for them, as musical taste is (insofar as we are aware) not scientifically resolvable.

To be clear, though, outside of that, my post was -meant- to agree with and summarize the broader content of your post. You apparently understand the difference between "not scientific" and "anti-scientific" better than most "pro-science" people, including scientists, do, or are willing to be honest about. And you also have a much more real-world awareness of the fact that many subject domains aren't addressable by scientific method, yet people still validly hold that there are ultimately ideas that are true within them, regardless of formal testability--politics and economics, to name a couple.

The recent Dawkins/Hitchens/Tyson/etc. movement to cast every human endeavor within the context of scientific method, and judge everything on that basis, is really a rehash of the philosophically-dead Logical Positivism movement. It doesn't work, and it can't work. And I don't think we have any fundamental disagreement.

Re:US is next?

[amicusNYCL]

The two do tend to contradict when religious teachings make incorrect claims about natural phenomena.

Re:US is next?

[mr_mischief]

I would hold that all three of your choices are opinion, although #3 would be the consensus opinion. My disagreement here revolves around the random selection more than anything. If you said "average high school band student" that would be a stronger statement because of course both Mozart and Bach are far beyond average. When you say randomly selected there's the matter of pre-selection probability and post-selection actuality. Some high school band student may actually be better, although it's unlikely.

It would still be subjective until axioms about what makes a good composition and therefore a good composer are agreed upon. Most people, though, would agree. There are some things that are nearly universally agreed that come very close to the weright fact, but are still very widely held opinions.

Now, if you doctored the proposition just a bit to say "Either Mozart or Bach are considered by the vast majority of people to have been a better composer than any given high school band student" that's something upon which data could be collected and therefore factual.

Re:US is next?

[Empiric]

"I would hold that all three of your choices are opinion..."

So, I think the question is, if we take all possible opinions on an issue, is at least one of them fact?

I would say yes.

Of course they do

[Lucas123]

When people learn critical thinking skills, they tend to automatically dismiss ignorant, hate-centered dogmas.

Re:Of course they do

[u38cg]

So why are so many terrorists engineers?

Re:Of course they do

[gnasher719]

So why are so many terrorists engineers?

Citation?

Re:Of course they do

[Drethon]

Just because the bell curve shifts the right direction doesn't eliminate either extreme.

Re:Of course they do

[irrational_design]

Excellent insight.

Re:Of course they do

[EasyTarget]

No; they are FAILED engineers; nothing they create works properly; that's why they are trying to force the world to their will through violence, not intellect.

Re:Of course they do

[phantomfive]

A google search for "terrorists are engineers" turns up a heap of relevant links, but here is one in particular from the IEEE.

My hypothesis is that working as an engineer in Pakistan (for example) is one of the most miserable jobs you can have, with horrible managers and only somewhat better pay to compensate. Having seen how it is, I would rather work as a farmer than an engineer in that situation, it's more satisfying and enjoyable.

Re:Of course they do

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because there is a difference between rational and ethical solutions. Terrorists that aren't engineers don't last. Terrorists that are engineers accomplish their objectives.

Got nothing to do with aggravation, and everything to do with normal expected behavior in unbelievably harsh situations. Which once again shows that you can't dismiss terrorists as "cruel" or "inhuman". They're people that made a decision. Maybe they were brainwashed by the caliphate -- but maybe they have some insane beliefs. But their actions are chosen for a reason, purpose and goal.

To forget that is to underestimate your enemy.

Re:Of course they do

[gnasher719]

No; they are FAILED engineers; nothing they create works properly; that's why they are trying to force the world to their will through violence, not intellect.

I remember an actual medical doctor trying to explode stuff I think at Glasgow Airport. They said he was so incompetent, he would have caused more damage if he had kept working in his profession.

Re:Of course they do

[Opportunist]

Because when people learn critical thinking skills, they automatically dismiss ignorant hate-centered dogmas.

Re:Of course they do

[phantomfive]

That's an interesting hypothesis, but.....

Terrorists that aren't engineers don't last.

I don't think there's much support in the evidence for this idea.

Re:Of course they do

[SuricouRaven]

They probably recruit engineers. Any idiot can be a militia fighter, but an engineer is a valuable asset to any terrorist organisation.

Re:Of course they do

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Working as a farmer is pretty shitty. Working a a farmer anywhere is kind of shitty.

Re:Of course they do

[phantomfive]

Maybe you think so. I enjoy it.

Re:Of course they do

[Major Blud]

Really? Have you tried using systemd?

Re:Of course they do

[geekoid]

engineer in NO WAY equals critical thinking skills.
It mean you can apply math is a specific way, not that you can apply critical thought to issues.

Re:Of course they do

[Yakasha]

That's an interesting hypothesis, but.....

Terrorists that aren't engineers don't last.

I don't think there's much support in the evidence for this idea.

Engineers build the bombs

The plebs wear them.

Re:Of course they do

[TangoMargarine]

In fact, you could argue that terrorists who are poor engineers are more likely to last if they make their suicide bombs wrong.

Re:Of course they do

[steelfood]

Because engineers think in black and white. Right and wrong. Success and failure. There is no middle ground. The engineering discipline itself is about absolutes, and absolute thinking is the precursor to radical thinking.

Re:Of course they do

[Keyboard Rage]

Please do not hate on the ignorant, you senseless clod!

Re:Of course they do

[Keyboard Rage]

Another reason may be that some types of personalities often found in engineering and science are sensitive to social engineering tactics involving strong ideological messages, because they are ignorant, or rather, naive about how parts of the world actually work due to a combination of lesser social skills, lack of personal introspection, insecurity about such things, and a tendency to be very focused on a particular subject while not paying enough attention to the whole picture.

Re:Of course they do

[bluegutang]

I think a more likely hypothesis is that Muslim countries train large numbers of engineers (why that is is a good question - my experience in the US is that Muslims are overrepresented in certain engineering fields too), but Muslim economies are unable to employ all those engineers, so they (the engineers) become bitter and frustrated and susceptible to radical ideologies.

And this is news?

[LWATCDR]

First of all is anyone shocked by this? Really people you think this is news? I mean next you tell me that Sun is hot.
Second this needs to be put under the politics category.

I hide Politics on Slashdot so I do not have too see this kind of story.
It is not that I am not interested in political news, the reason is that the quality of comments and editing on anything political on Slashdot is so bad.

If you disagree on the quality that is fine but Slashdot let's the users hide categories for a reason. Helpful hint editors while it does not apply to this story if the word Republican or Democrat are in the title it is politics.

What Else Is New?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've taught in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Frankly, this is not much worse than what they currently have. Students don't take social studies; they love Hitler(*) because he killed Jews, and know nothing else about him. Their math and sciences skills are abysmal; they learn by rote, rather than understanding. I've seen university medical programs where the "professor" simply designates first one student, and then another to read aloud from the textbook. I watched a local film about a middle school where a student explained that the circumference divided by the diameter was pi, thanks to god's benevolence. I was the only one in 100 who thought it was a joke and laughed. (*Sorry to invoke Godwin's Law).

Re:What Else Is New?

[benjfowler]

Goes to show that "poverty" is nothing to do with lack of money.

Poverty is a deep, complicated, multi-faceted thing, which includes, but isn't limited to having a pig shit-ignorant attitude to learning and innovating, moral turpitude, culturally ingrained ignorance, lack of hygiene, disgusting attitudes to women and foreign cultures; and generally being Third World degenerates.

Cue the Bozos

[CohibaVancouver]

Cue the bozos, who, due to Slashdot hivemind, are now required to post "So, exactly like the USA!"

...and no, I'm not American.

Re:Cue the Bozos

[CohibaVancouver]

The problem is that when the Bozos say that the USA is as bad as (or worse than) North Korea or a region suffering under ISIS or the Taliban, you belittle the suffering that those people are genuinely experiencing.

Could the USA do better? Absolutely, much, much better - But don't insult some teacher or blogger living in fear of torture or death in Syria by suggesting some teacher or blogger at West Beverly High is her peer.

Re:Cue the Bozos

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

I know! The only thing more annoying than those bozos are the other bozos who preemptively call them out, as if their whiny comment will be of use to anyone.

Fortunately, I haven't seen any of the absolute worst scum, who feel the need to point out the faults of the other two bozos. Complains about complainers are the lowest form of comment.

Re:Cue the Bozos

[Prien715]

Cue the bozos, who, due to Slashdot hivemind, are now required to post "So, exactly like the USA!"

Would you like your unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound with or without lube? Or maybe your textbooks without without evolution?

There are some very ignorant people in this country -- as anyone who's visited a WalMart (at least in the south...but that's why I've lived the majority of my life) can attest. You should be glad you don't have to deal with them.

Re:Cue the Bozos

[pscottdv]

Hilarious. I wish I had mod points.

I've never understood this...

[tekrat]

They don't want the kids to learn science or even mention things like evolution... Is their religion on such shaky grounds that it can't stand up to some critical thinking?

Why not then have chemistry class where two potentially explosive chemicals are mixed and the teacher tells the students "Don't worry, if your heart is pure and Allah is with you, it will not explode!"

As Dr. Tyson says -- science is true whether you believe it or not. The explosion will happen no matter what you think of Allah.

Allah doesn't protect *anyone* from a bomb or a bullet. So, what exactly is the point of learning about him/it, instead of learning math, which is actually a useful subject?

The moment you ban teaching something, it's usually because it's pretty easy to prove what bullshit your particular religion is, whether it be Christian or Muslim.

Texas Republicans don't seem to be any better, BTW.

Re:I've never understood this...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about control. Pure and simple. The Soviets try to do it by outlawing Religion.
Fundamentalist Christians/Isis tries to do it by negating science.

Re:I've never understood this...

[Opportunist]

Any religion is afraid of science.

Religion is about faith.
Science is about doubt.

It's fairly easy to see why one is anathema of the other.

Re:I've never understood this...

[jeffmflanagan]

>They don't want the kids to learn science or even mention things like evolution...
>Is their religion on such shaky grounds that it can't stand up to some critical thinking?

Name one religion than isn't on shaky ground and can stand up to critical thinking. Religion is way past its sell-by date, and is obviously pure fantasy.

Re:I've never understood this...

[orgelspieler]

Why you gotta drag Texas Republicans into this? It's not like they're any worse than any other deep red state.

Re:I've never understood this...

[itzly]

The purpose of religion isn't to get a better world view. It's a way to get power over masses of people. In that fashion, it's not past its sell-by date. And it's irrelevant whether it's fantasy or not. People will gladly give their life for fantasy, if you've conditioned them properly.

Re:I've never understood this...

[geekoid]

"Is their religion on such shaky grounds that it can't stand up to some critical thinking?"
yes, just like every other religion.

Re:I've never understood this...

[Kjella]

They don't want the kids to learn science or even mention things like evolution... Is their religion on such shaky grounds that it can't stand up to some critical thinking?

Actually, most religions claim there's an abundance of ways to fall for temptation and sin while the path to God is straight and narrow. You make it sound like making it a challenge and pointing out all the alternatives and benefits would be a good thing, while the religious consider it trying to lead the children astray and trying to put a wedge between them and God. Like say their interpretation of the Bible means sex belongs only in the marriage - bear with me on this one - then pointing out that "if you're going to have sex anyway, use a condom" is kinda upselling a sin. It leaves the impression they don't really think you'll stick with plan A anyway. So a lot of parent don't want their children to know there even is a choice. You think in terms of pros and cons, they think it's one good choice and a lot of bad alternatives they don't need to know about..

Re:I've never understood this...

[rastos1]

Is their religion on such shaky grounds that it can't stand up to some critical thinking?

I live in Europe. In country that bans some forms of hate speech and stuff like denial or minimization of genocides ... I sometimes pose a similar question: is our society on such shaky grounds that we have to be afraid of these forms of speech and ban it by law? Will critical thinking not prevails? As the time passes, I'm more and more leaning to "yes, we are indeed so stupid". It's sad.

Re:I've never understood this...

[Opportunist]

Religion, Ideology... a rose by a different name...

Texas must be pissed...

[Vitriol Angst]

They stole the Texas curriculum plans and implemented them.
I can't wait for the new educational ISIS program to show all students making 110% scores.

Re:Texas must be pissed...

[gman003]

Wait a minute... ISIS are now stealing American intellectual property? Sure, the terrorism and genocide was bad, but now they're *real* criminals. Might have to bring back the nukes for these guys!

Re:Texas must be pissed...

[steelfood]

They violated the copyrights of the Texas curriculum plans and implemented them.

FTFY.

Somehow, it sounds dirtier.

Re:WTF?

[alexander_686]

It is a little unexpected.

Islam, but obviously not this particular splinter, has a long and glorious history of cultivating math and science. Specifically, they invented some aspects of linear algebra to solve inheritance issue – the Koran is very specific on how much the various wives and children get.

Algebra

[Hydrated Wombat]

Guess it's time to rename Algebra (al-jebr in Arabic) since they don't seem to want to be associated with that anymore.

Re:Algebra

[PvtVoid]

Guess it's time to rename Algebra (al-jebr in Arabic) since they don't seem to want to be associated with that anymore.

I know: Freedom Numbers!

In fact, I think we should all boycott Arabic numerals, including the zero. Go back to good old Roman numerals, like we had before the creeping influence of Islam and Sharia Law. That'll show 'em.

Re:Algebra

[Hydrated Wombat]

Oh, to have mod points! We could always go back to Attic numerals

Re:Algebra

[ArcadeMan]

More simple than that, just use binary. Empty square means zero... sorry I mean "off", filled square means "on".

Re:Algebra

[SuricouRaven]

No need, really. Arabic numerals are also called Indian numerals, and predate Islam. They picked up the misleading name because they were introduced via Arabic texts.

Re:Algebra

[PvtVoid]

The Arabic numerals are actually Hindi.

Don't try to confuse the issue. As far as most Americans are concerned, brown people in turbans are brown people in turbans.

and won't be allowed to last long

[jd.schmidt]

Many people in the mid east are actually pretty proud of their history in math and put a high value in it. ISIS is in on the way out already if they try this, if not every parent, MANY parents will now see ISIS for how backwards they really are.

Re:and won't be allowed to last long

[geekoid]

Irrelevant when ISIS will kill you.

Re:and won't be allowed to last long

[jbmartin6]

It seems to me the biggest problem is who do you sign up with to fight them? The US-backed government that is as corrupt as they come? Not to mention the issues of siding with a government imposed at gunpoint by an invading power. The Assad government has a lot of supporters in Syria, in part because Assad is somewhat better than ISIS (at least in the western areas with more non-Sunnis).

Re:and won't be allowed to last long

[stdarg]

Many Muslims in the Middle East are proud of their history in math because they have been fed lies about the Islamic Golden Age.

The funny thing is, if you read about the political tensions in places like Egypt, you'll find that these Muslims have upset stomachs about glorifying pre-Islamic cultures by promoting them as tourist attractions.

They don't realize that the vast majority of the math they are deluded into thinking they invented was invented by pre-Islamic cultures.

Re:propaganda

[benjfowler]

As we should. There are too many useless eaters in the world.

A new dark ages!

[crmanriq]

The Prophet would be proud.

Or not. Depending on which faction you ask.

Re:A new dark ages!

[Opportunist]

I can well see Muhammad and Jesus looking down on the whole mess and going "Dude, if I had known what they turn it into..." "Yeah, yeah, me neither".

Re:A new dark ages!

[reikae]

Jesus's father did know, but didn't care. If god(s) exist, they aren't very nice people.

Re:A new dark ages!

[Opportunist]

Reading Genesis (the book, not the band) alone is sufficient proof thereof.

Cartoon villians

[meta-monkey]

Except for the whole beheading and murdering thing, these guys sound like cartoon villains. I'm just stunned that such a people can rally support. How socially and in every other way clueless must a jihadi be to think signing up with these guys is a good idea and that they will build a stable, functioning government and society?

Re:Cartoon villians

[DocSavage64109]

When your choices are to either join them and get your own kidnapped sex slave, or don't join them and get shot, the choice is rather easy. Actually, after reading about the hundreds of people they have shot, there seem to be a lot of people in Iraq with a lot of integrity.

Re:The Truth about ISIS

[manu144x]

Tell that to the thousands of girls kidnapped from their homes to serve the isis warriors sexually:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/w...

Jesus Horses

[Anonymous Coward]

In swaths of Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, children can no longer study social studies. And students will be banned from learning about elections and democracy. Instead, they'll be subjected to the teachings of radical Christian groups. And any teacher who dares to break the rules "will be punished." Books cannot include any reference to evolution. Teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Jesus's rules and laws." And dinosaurs will be referred to as Jesus Horses.

Re:Jesus Horses

[Sarius64]

Because the fact that higher learning was developed by Christian organizations in America while the Democratic Party pushed a dependency class shouldn't have any influence on your reality.

Ideology vs Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more." Oh wait, maybe we are.

I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It's so much EASIER than THINKING!

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

If I understand your comment correctly, you just want the thought behind my statement.

First in regards to:

Well as a closed system maybe but, if your "society" is being propped up via funding and arms, and you have no need to actually produce anything yourself or even produce engineers at all, then it isn't as much of a problem.

The US spends over half a trillion dollars on the DOD a year. For decades, we have moved away from producing goods to a service providing nation. Granted, this is starting to improve a bit but it's nothing to celebrate, yet.

That said, what would really make it tough for them is a lack of opposition. Their tactics tend to be very self defeating when the larger powers don't overreact and get drawn into conflict with them.

If we let them provoke us though, then they will likely feed off that and use our involvement to deflect criticism away from their own otherwise self-defeating brutality.

The US government has been doing this for decades as well. Every few years we find a new enemy, rally cry and release the hounds of war.

If you want me to do all the work for you and provide specific examples of the above, let me know. There are many.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Cardoor]

glad to know someone else sees it for what all this is. tough to stomach.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[lgw]

For decades, we have moved away from producing goods to a service providing nation. Granted, this is starting to improve a bit but it's nothing to celebrate, yet.

The manufacturing capacity of the US has never dropped decade-over-decade. The manufacturing jobs are all gone, never coming back, but automated manufacturing has been replacing people gradually over the years. Because the economy has grown so much since WWII (recent extended downturn non-withstanding), we've also exported a lot of manufacturing (now coming back as the robots keep getting better), and grown into a primarily service-oriented economy, on top of that consistent manufacturing capability.

The US government has been doing this for decades as well. Every few years we find a new enemy, rally cry and release the hounds of war.

Like most nations in history since the first clan grew large enough to be considered a nation? It's worth remembering that almost every historical nation that doesn't exist today was conquered. The appearance of strength is all-important to continued peace. We've certainly made our share of mistakes as a nation, but there is a legitimate reason to project force around the world even though we're not interested in conquest ourselves: deterrence is morally better than fighting and winning.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[superdave80]

For decades, we have moved away from producing goods to a service providing nation.

Huh? We are still the #2 manufacturing nation in the world, and still a good deal ahead of the #3 producing nation. The only reason we dropped behind China recently is because they ramped up their manufacturing so much.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

Does land mass and population size play into your equation when comparing the US with other nations? Ratios are more meaningful than raw output.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

In 1953 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing was 28%. In 2012 it was at 12%. I'd call that a drop.

In the last decade we have sent troops into Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq. What real threat do any of these nations pose? Additionally, the way those conflicts unfolded wont be a deterrent to anyone. Besides, most of those conflicts are a result of us getting involved there previously. One of the best example of our meddling is what we did to Germany after WWI. It wasn't entirely the US' doing but we definitely played a part. Ultimately "those who do not learn from there mistakes are doomed to repeat them."

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[mopower70]

First in regards to:

Well as a closed system maybe but, if your "society" is being propped up via funding and arms, and you have no need to actually produce anything yourself or even produce engineers at all, then it isn't as much of a problem.

The US spends over half a trillion dollars on the DOD a year. For decades, we have moved away from producing goods to a service providing nation. Granted, this is starting to improve a bit but it's nothing to celebrate, yet.

It's a little disingenuous to refuse the distinction between external funding and funding created from your own economy, don't you think? And the US economy isn't propped up by arms in the sense the OP used it because the use of those arms is not the engine of our economics. Propped up in the sense that we manufacture and sell them to others as well as ourselves, yes, but that's hardly a closed system, is it?

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[es330td]

The only reason we dropped behind China recently is because they ramped up their manufacturing so much.

It also doesn't hurt that they have roughly three times the US population. If everyone there bought 1% more manufactured goods the change in GDP would be greater than the total annual production of some entire countries.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[jythie]

In 1953 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing was 28%. In 2012 it was at 12%. I'd call that a drop.

Between 1953 and 2012 the GDP has gone up by about 600% (adjusted for inflation), so that is still a net increase in manufacturing by a significant margin, just not as large of an increase as other sectors.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[nedlohs]

In 1953 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing was 28%. In 2012 it was at 12%. I'd call that a drop.

Then you're an idiot. Since 28% of 2.54 trillion is significantly smaller than 12% of 15.43 trillion. So the opposite of a drop.

And no "The manufacturing capacity of the US has never dropped decade-over-decade" could never be referring to as a percentage of GDP, capacity is the raw amount and some other amount increasing doesn't matter in the slightest.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Bing Tsher E]

What does 'debt' have to do with manufacturing output?

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[lgw]

In 1953 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing was 28%. In 2012 it was at 12%. I'd call that a drop.

Were you really confused by this, or are you just trolling now?
In 1953 US GDP was ~$2.5 T in 2009 dollars. Today it's ~$16T in 2009 dollars.

Can you see now that US manufacturing has grown significantly? The rest of the economy just grew faster, shifting our focus over the years. Much the same happened with farming before that. Technology is neat that way.

What real threat do any of these nations pose?

Again, appearance of strength is important. People who are a threat seeing the US as weak and starting a war would be a catastrophe from any moral perspective. We do get judged, like it or not, by whether minor player can shake their fists at us without consequence. Was is a surprise to you that Russia is getting froggy again (occasionally hopping across its borders) over the past decade?

Geopolitics aside, some would say that a strong man who sees a horrific crime that he has the strength to stop has the moral responsibility to do so. ISIS has conquered territory by force of arms - do we want to allow that sort of thing to be acceptable on the world stage again? The way ISIS is treating their conquered subjects is horrific and appalling, and we should probably put a stop to it.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

The net increase in dollars generated by manufacturing isn't a relevant statistic for the argument being made. As a percentage of GDP shows that the sector has indeed shrunk compared to other industries in the US.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

You seemed to miss the first part of the parents comment:

Well as a closed system maybe but, ...

So were are not dealing with a closed system.

Propped up in the sense that we manufacture and sell them to others as well as ourselves, yes,

That was my point.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since over 90% of all outstanding national debt is owed to the Federal Reserve I am sure a reasonable payment plan can be negotiated amongst the various parties. If we could just curb the number of people with enormous entitlement complexes we might start moving ahead once more. When todays generation thinks a broadband internet connection is a human right you begin to see how far the "give me" generation has fallen. The same generation who think being able to use Facebook and Twitter are actual technical skills. Waiting around for someone to give you a good life and then complaining about how it's done it is not how a civilization advances it is how it self destructs. This is about the time people will start appreciating all the money spent on the military because it will really be needed and all the practicing and training we have under our belt is going to start paying off big time in the not so distant future. You can sit home and play video games or go outside and experience the real thing. And then hopefully the few survivors will get the chance to start building again with a few less worthless people getting in the way.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

we have moved away from producing goods to a service providing nation
This statement is proved by comparison to other industries within the United States not by total output, as the statement itself is comparative. Percentage allows for a more accurate representation of the data in the context of the statement.

On the second part, now who is trolling? First you justify war as moral, then you use Russia's current involvement in the Ukraine? How is their involvement there any different than any of the examples of the US that I provided?

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[toejam13]

Geopolitics aside, some would say that a strong man who sees a horrific crime that he has the strength to stop has the moral responsibility to do so. ISIS has conquered territory by force of arms - do we want to allow that sort of thing to be acceptable on the world stage again? The way ISIS is treating their conquered subjects is horrific and appalling, and we should probably put a stop to it.

Some would also suggest that the current instability within the Near and Middle East is the result of European colonial powers drawing national borders in such a way to cause instability and invoke inter-racial and inter-religious tension.

Perhaps the better solution is to withdraw from the area and let the regional powers work the issue themselves. If that means a century of warfare, not unlike what Europe experienced after the Protestant Reformation, then so be it.

Sure, such a conflict would result in a spike in the price of oil. But last time oil went above $160/bbl, we saw factories in North America being brought out of mothball, a renewed interest in alternative fuels (methane, nuclear, solar, wind), higher urban growth, an increase in the use of transit and a decrease in the use of petroleum derived fertilizers. Our economy and environment actually benefit in many ways when oil gets expensive.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[lgw]

Life is not black and white. Actions are not ever wholly good nor evil. There is always evil associated with war, or violence in general, which is why deterrence is so much better. But ISIS is pretty damned close to "wholly evil", and military action against them could well be better on balance than giving them free reign.

To quote John Kerry, recently taking Code Pink to task for protesting a military response to ISIS:

âoeyou ought to care about fighting ISIL because ISIL is killing and raping and mutilating women. And they believe women shouldnâ(TM)t have an education ...

Thereâ(TM)s no negotiation with ISIL, thereâ(TM)s nothing to negotiate. And theyâ(TM)re not offering anyone healthcare of any kind. You know, theyâ(TM)re not offering education of any kind. For a whole philosophy or idea or a cult, whatever you want to call it, that frankly comes out of the Stone Age, theyâ(TM)re cold-blooded killers, marauding across the Middle East, making a mockery of a peaceful religion.

And thatâ(TM)s precisely why we are building a coalition to stop them from denying the women and the girls and the people of Iraq the very future that they yearned for.

It would be a great moral flaw for us to simply let ISIS do what it wills. They are the worst sort of theocracy: the sort that's willing to ignore the moral code of their own religion, using it only as a crutch for power.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[MobSwatter]

It is not the people that need to hate, it is the defense industry that requires this to justify big black budgets. And they done sunk this country with it.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[diamondmagic]

GDP measures the growth of the economy as a whole, over time, within a particular geographical area.

If you say that share of GDP of a certain industry to nationwide GDP has changed from 28% to 12%, but overall GDP grew 600% (or whatever), then mathematically, said industry grew -- it wasn't #1 in growth, but it still grew.

Nor does manufacturing need to be #1. The service sector can grow without sucking up other industry's resources, so naturally the GDP-share of other industry is going to shrink.

These are well-defined terms in economics. You're just being obtuse.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[log0n]

You post AC for a reason, right?

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[phantomfive]

For decades, we have moved away from producing goods to a service providing nation.

This isn't as bad as it seems. At one time we were a farming nation, and we moved away from that. Hardly anyone works in farming anymore. A similar thing has happened with manufacturing, manufacturing output has increased in the US as more and more becomes automated.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Aryden]

Please tell that to the steel industry.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[sabbede]

Given that the root causes can not be addressed (we aren't time travelers), and that allowing the situation to play out as you propose will necessarily result in the deaths of millions, it would be unacceptably inhumane to do so.

We have to deal with the situation at hand. Bemoaning its causes is unproductive. We have the capability to change the outcome of the current situation so as to prevent a century of secular infighting and the countless deaths that will result.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

You have the Economics right, however you are still off on your Statistics. GDP growth isn't important here as I'm not looking at the industry by itself. I am looking at it compared to every other industry in the US. When you are looking at pieces of a pie that form a whole, you use percentages.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[mysidia]

What does 'debt' have to do with manufacturing output?

If you go to the bank and borrow $1 million dollars, and put in $400,000 of your own money, to build a home that you will then be able to sell for $900,000 dollars.

Then you have still generated $900,000 in manufacturing output.

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[ravenshrike]

Its called technology fuckface. The internet, without regarding any other differences, added an amazingly large sector alone

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Kabukiwookie]

Adjusting for inflation, one dollar in 1953, would give you the same purchasing power as almost $9 today, with the $9 actually being a lower estimate. So after adjusting for inflation, I'd still say that $16T today is less than $2.5T in 1953.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[diamondmagic]

The metric you're looking for, and the only meaningful one for your point, is called Real GDP Per Capita. And it's up. Subcatagories of durable goods are also up. Up in real terms, per capita.

If you want to say we would be manufacturing more if not due to bad economic policy, fine. I agree.

But don't spread this nonsense that is technically the same thing as saying we're in a recession.

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

Love the enthusiasm, though you should focus it on a better education. Also, the name calling is very unbecoming of you.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

I was most certainly not trying to imply we are in a recession, merely our output as a nation shifted from manufacturing to other forms. I do agree, to be on the same terms that we were in 1953, we should be manufacturing more and even see a flat or growth trend in the manufacturing work force, but neither of these are true.

Also, I have no idea where that idiot above got 600% growth from, but he was off by a bit. Its 300% and that's generously using government calculated inflation from bls.gov. And one last thing, the number of workers in manufacturing went from 16,067,000 to 12,158,000 from 1953 to 2014while the population doubled over the same time period.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Hognoxious]

Percentages of what? The portion of GDP going to industry X could fall if somebody found a way of making X much more cheaply.

But that's a good thing, right, even if you like X?

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Bartles]

In 1953 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing was 28%. In 2012 it was at 12%. I'd call that a drop.

Initially, I was going to disagree with your 'merica sucks statement. Then I noticed your complete lack of math skills completely validates your statement. Well done.

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

Care to elaborate or just fling mud?

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Bartles]

Sure, GDP is not constant. An increase is never a drop.

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Shortguy881]

That is correct except when Im not looking solely at the GDP for the manufacturing industry. My original comment is that we as a nation are shifting away from manufacturing. That means it is comparative to all other industries in the US. For comparing things that are pieces of a whole, statistics dictates we use percentages. Thus, compared to all other industries in the US, manufacturing has gone down.

Showing this another way, the manufacturing workforce has halved from 1953 to today, while the population has doubled. That means fare fewer people total, and as a percentage of jobs per industry, are working in manufacturing.

Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Leave it to motherfucking Jeremiah Cornelius, whose opinions are so fucking important that he just has to barge his fat ass to the front of the line to reply to the post which will get him closest to the top, no matter whether that post has anything to do with what he wishes to say.

What an asshole.

Dankeshon!

Thanks for living in the past.

Re: I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA

[Bartles]

That is correct except when Im not looking solely at the GDP for the manufacturing industry. My original comment is that we as a nation are shifting away from manufacturing. That means it is comparative to all other industries in the US. For comparing things that are pieces of a whole, statistics dictates we use percentages. Thus, compared to all other industries in the US, manufacturing has gone down.

No, manufacturing has not gone down. Manufacturing's share of GDP has gone down. Two entirely different things.

Texas must be pissed...

[francisco3308]

They actually get to implement, what Texas wishes they could implement... sadly..

The fact we are even making these jokes about a state's curriculum is sad to say the least.

What is sad, or funny depending how you look at it, is how many people in states like Texas want anti science curriculum yet people love all the benefits of science... See that shiny new Iphone/Android device in your hand... that is science..

turning their back on their own history

[Lust]

Ancient Mesopotamian astronomers must be turning in their graves...

I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

he's referring to the kinds who come to the UK/US and demand we conform to their religious/social ideals, rather than the other way around.

And it's not just Africans, or Muslims, it's Ukrainian fundamentalists and probably dozens of other groups, the only important factors being their fundamentallst nature and tight knit 'refugee' communities, whether or not they're really refugees, and whether or not their cult-like social structure qualifies for your definition of 'community'.

So 72 virgins in the afterlife... is that a lot?

[kimgkimg]

Seems like they at least need basic math to be a motivator, no?

US Children would be singing in the streets. . .

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

. . . school's out forever!

Education in the US is like media in the digital age. When you have the potential for unlimited consumption, you do not appreciate what you have. Only when it is a scarce commodity does a population appreciate the value of education.

Intelligent Design

[Coffeesloth]

And teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws."

A more extreme example of intelligent design.

Well, they know what this adds up to

[istartedi]

Well, they know what this adds up to. Oh... no they don't.

Muammad ibn Ms al-Khwrizm

[Lew Pitcher]

Mathematician, Astronomer, Geographer
A scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (c. 780 – c. 850)
The source of the western understanding of decimal numbering, algorithms (a word derived from his name, to honour his insight), and algebra.

Even caliphates can encourage enlightened thought, investigation into maths and sciences.

Wow......

[Dega704]

These guys are starting to make the Third Reich look sane and well adjusted.

Re:Wow......

[DarthVain]

Well to be fair, the Germans at least were pretty big on Math and Science, understanding that possession of advanced knowledge can lead to powerful technologies which you can use to your advantage. With possibly the exception of eugenics being sort or sciency, the rest was just political dogma to justify their actions.

I am sure ISIS is doing it for control purposes, keep your people dumb, afraid, and dominated. However as mentioned, long term it will likely just lead to a 3rd world despotic state... Not some new powerful caliphatatic empire they probably imagine.

I wonder how can they shoot their weapons

[cyfer2000]

without math, how can they learn to shoot their weapons?

Re:I wonder how can they shoot their weapons

[Reservoir Penguin]

By pointing them in the general direction of the enemy? ;)

Re:Some of that sounds awfully familiar

[Opportunist]

So I wasn't the only one thinking "replace Allah with God and you should have quite a bit of support with some domestic lunatics"?

Re:So 72 virgins in the afterlife... is that a lot

[Opportunist]

So ... the afterlife is a lot like a 90s LAN party?

You can stop modding it up now

[Tailhook]

-1 Group Think

Guess the "overwhelming conservative majority" took the day off.

Or maybe you're delusional.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Opportunist]

Yeah, but for a different imaginary friend. For some odd reason that's important for them.

Re:My hope...

[Opportunist]

Quite the opposite, I'd expect them to turn green with envy.

The cynic in me would say that's the real reason they hate the Islamist fundies: Envy.

Ironic, isn't it

[sgunhouse]

The name Algebra originally comes from Arabic, and likewise we owe the number zero to them. Fact is, they taught us the math of the ancient Greeks. And now they don't want it?

Re:Ironic, isn't it

[IMightB]

I believe we also owe our entire numbering system to them and the Indians. Otherwise we'd writing out numbers with Roman Numerals.

Re:Ironic, isn't it

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

Thats II true!

Re:Ironic, isn't it

[clarkc3]

guessing you never heard of Arabic Numberals, its cool if you look at how they are derived from the number of angles that make up the symbol that stands for the number it represents

Re:Ironic, isn't it

[Tokolosh]

Alcohol, too!

Re:How ironic...

[Opportunist]

Oh I'm fairly sure, if they thought they'd get away with it they'd cram the crap down your throat with fire and brimstone. It's not like the history of religion has been too peaceful.

I hear ISIS will require testing for Kindergarten

[WillAffleckUW]

Oh, wait, no that's us.

Math?

[jma05]

Evolution and social studies, I get. But math? How is that even remotely against their religion? Wasn't most of school math present or developed during caliphate days? Algebra is an Arabic word. Sure, Geometry was developed adequately before their religion came along and they stopped short of Calculus. But in what conceivable way would math be seen as against their religion? I am almost tempted to smell pre-war propaganda that exaggerates some real findings.

Re:terrorist math

[Opportunist]

About 3000/1000.

And some shrapnel.

Is that a serious question?

[Sycraft-fu]

Because if it is, you need to pull your head out of your ass and go and do some extremely basic, cursory, research on the situation in the US. There are for sure some loud fundy Christian that like to whine about science, evolution in particular. However they have had little and less success in pushing their agenda and the US remains a powerful center of scientific research.

Trying to equate the US to ISIS is beyond stupid.

Re:Is that a serious question?

[steelfood]

Uh, for now this is true. In 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? 100 years? There's a huge anti-scientific movement, anti-education, anti-knowledge movement out there. Is it growing? I'm not sure. But it's there, and it's taken over quite a few prominent education systems.

These things happen on generational timescales. individual people don't get (significantly) stupider if the rest of society around them becomes dumber. But their kids might. And their grandkids definitely.

If you want to prevent this eventual outcome, you need to act now. It kinda like global warming. Sure nothing might is happenig right now, but the science says otherwise for 50, 100 years down the line. Now, the science could be wrong, but are you really willing to take that risk and do nothing?

Re:Is that a serious question?

[crimson tsunami]

every branch of every science was founded by theists.

And all adults were once babies, what is your point?
Eventually it's time to grow up.

Reminds me of Pol Pot in Cambodia

[Anonymous Coward]

I still shake my head over what happened in Cambodia after the Vietnam war. its one of the reason why I was against going into Iraq in the first places. it seems like real craziness can emerge out of the chaos when US pulls out of some places after a major conflict. its also interesting that there is no expertise in the state department or anywhere in the government about what happened in Cambodia after Vietnam. I think the US was so sick and tired of SE Asia after Vietnam, they purposely ignored what was going on.

So...

[TheBilgeRat]

Are they completely forgetting that the original Islamic caliphate was the most scientific state of its day?

The seeds of their undermining are being sown...

[klek]

Nothing like attempting to enforce an ignorant population. It'll work for awhile (viz NORKOREA), but their downfall is written as a palimpsest in their radical pronouncements.
I seriously feel for the people being subjected to this insanity, intolerance, and violence, though, I hope they can get out.

Re:WTF?

[stdarg]

Linear algebra is not required to figure out Islamic inheritance. The primary rule is that sons get twice as much as daughters, because men are worth twice as much as women. Here are some sample problems: http://www.deltacollege.edu/de...

Here's another take on it: http://intermath.coe.uga.edu/t...

It was not groundbreaking mathematics. I think you probably underestimate how advanced mathematics was in ancient times. And people like al-Kwarizmi -- from whom we get the names for "algorithm" and "algebra" -- did very little original mathematics themselves. His book on algebra, called "Calculation by Restoration and Reduction," was talking about a method known to the ancient Babylonians 2000 years before Islam existed.

they will defeat themselves

[xednieht]

The U.S. seems to be doing pretty well while sucking at math. Fact is you don't need everyone to know math. You only need the small group that engineers your weapons and nukes to know math, the rest only need to be able to pull a trigger or press the "Launch" button.

War marketing

[Curunir_wolf]

ISIS == CIA

It's just a marketing ploy to get the American people to go along with war with Syria, taking out Assad, propping up the Petro-Dollar and controlling the pipelines. The whole "Assad regime uses nerve gas" ploy didn't work, so this is the next attempt. And the dumbed-down, media-controlled masses are falling for it.

Ignorance and Lack of Critical Thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on people!

Don't believe every piece of propaganda created to justify US geopolitics in the Middle East.

ISIS is a spawn of US foreign policy, funded and armed by the US.

Here's General Wesley Clark giving the plan away:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/w...

After the US gave up on the Iraqi government (because it has sided with Iran and Russia), they've decided to threaten it with their puppet terrorist group (which was then being used to overthrow the Syrian government and replace IT with a puppet regime). ISIS is a stereotype of everything that the US government would want to be wrong with a terrorist group. The lies spread to make them the boogie man are ridiculous.

It's taken a little bit longer than the original plan, but the plan is obviously still in effect.

Re:terrorist math

[cyberchondriac]

You still have 3 Jihadis worth, only now you have to count them using fractions.

Re:WTF?

[alexander_686]

That is true if the person had only daughters and sons by a single, was widowed, an only child, did not have grandkids, and was an orphan. Parents, siblings, half-siblings, grandchildren, and wives all have a claim. When you have polygamy, with multiple wives and kids over decades, things get crazily complex. It makes the issues of America's "blended families" seem simple.

As a point of reference – though not exactly on point – try to figure out who the next king of Saudi Arabia is. IIRC there are 700 first cousins that are in line for the throne.

not for long

[tacokill]

The only problem is we still need their damn oil.
Not so fast. Perhaps you have read about the recent energy boom in America? If you haven't you should read up. We are rapidly approaching a point where we don't need to import crude oil from anyone and we're actually talking about exporting it.

Early islamic society did well in math/science

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a society without science or with a strong dominance of faith over science is doomed. That's basically what happened to the Islamic world, albeit less drastically.

That depends on the faith. Some faiths, including some islamic believers, believe that science explains the mechanics of God's universe, and that the holy books only explain God's motivations and intentions.The former the "how", the later the "why", two mutually exclusive areas. You might note that early islamic society did quite well in math and science. Their scientific legacy is quite prominent in modern math and science.

Don't confuse the more ancient tribal and pagan customs and beliefs of the people in the region with islam. The former is often falsely attributed to islam. Islam, like christianity, did not completely displace nor eradicate some of the old tribal/pagan stuff. Some, but not all, of the crazier stuff comes from the tribal/pagan days.

Re:Early islamic society did well in math/science

[smaddox]

Don't confuse the more ancient tribal and pagan customs and beliefs of the people in the region with islam. The former is often falsely attributed to islam. Islam, like christianity, did not completely displace nor eradicate some of the old tribal/pagan stuff. Some, but not all, of the crazier stuff comes from the tribal/pagan days.

This seems a bit like a No True Scotsman fallacy. As far as I understand, ISIS is simply implementing their interpretation of the Koran. If that's not Islam, what is? That interpretation just happens to be atrocious to people and societies that value individual freedom.

Re:Early islamic society did well in math/science

[Hognoxious]

Exactly. I don't care if a tiger bites because it's intrinsically violent or because it's been mistreated; in either case I'm not going to poke my fingers through the bars.

Re:Early islamic society did well in math/science

[Hognoxious]

Science is the code. Scripture is the specification (or the marketing brochure).

Problem solvers

[ThatsNotPudding]

So why are so many terrorists engineers?

Because analytical minds can wall-off moral issues and cast murderous tasks as merely problems to be solved, up to and including nuclear weapons and genocide. Oppenhiemer wept and whined about what he was part of, but only after solving the problem.

Like An Episode of Stargate SG-1

[Scot Seese]

.. Where one half of the planets' population lives in floating cities with force fields, flourishing populations, and beam weapons while the other half of the planets' population lives in comparative squalor choked by food scarcity, overpopulation, pollution, health problems and cyclical, endless cycles of warfare and violence, all because an alien parasite in their bloodstream has blunted their intellectual development and retarded human development.

Sorry, replace "alien parasite" with "Radical Extremist Religion."

Re:Some of that sounds awfully familiar

[DNS-and-BIND]

Nice try, however it is the Left that has allied with the Islamists. The GOP is violently allergic to Islamism.

"Over the past year, multiple international conferences have featured leaders of the anti-global left and Islamist groups working together. Go to any anti-war or anti-globalization demonstration in the West and chances are you will see the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas waved by people wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. And at some of these meetings, members of such radical Islamist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah have enjoyed starring roles."

Whooh...the injection of facts is surely inconvenient. Ouch!

Ignorance With Feet

[JimSadler]

ISIS may well be the ultimate as far as creating ignorance and stupidity. Statements such as teaching chemistry without mathematics are so absurd one hardly knows where to start. If there is a sane segment of Islam one would think that the sane Moslems would rise up and slaughter these right wing retards. The right wing in American politics suffers much in common with ISIS such as wanting to ban the teaching of science or put creationism in a science class. Knowledge is the enemy of the right.

ironical: old caliphate had decent science

[peter303]

They invented modern place-numerals, developed (and named) a lot of algebra, supplied names for many of the visible stars. They copied the old Greek philosophers writings and argued how their ideas fit in with The Revelation. I dont recall big conflicts between science and religion then.

Re:WTF?

[Shoten]

It is a little unexpected.

Islam, but obviously not this particular splinter, has a long and glorious history of cultivating math and science. Specifically, they invented some aspects of linear algebra to solve inheritance issue – the Koran is very specific on how much the various wives and children get.

You're confusing past nations that were inhabited by Muslims with Islam itself. This is like saying that Christianity has a long and glorious history of cultivating the Internet, since most of the people at CERN who invented HTTP were Christian.

Re:Oligarchy world

[dskoll]

Canada is a monarchy that's allowed to make some of it's own laws and have meetings but really its an oil emirate for the Brittish Royals

Umm... ? Bullshit. Canada hasn't relied on Britain for "permission" to make laws for over three decades. Read up on your history.

ISIS propaganda

[bussdriver]

ISIS seem like the perfect fit for US propaganda... Given history, one can assume a portion of what we hear is simply US propaganda. We could just ignore them, if they can't learn MATH they will become poor, broke and weak... How about we find an STD we can infect their goats with?

Perhaps for their American cousins, it should be "Fat Ignorance with Feet."

What has always baffled me is the inability to realize similarities. Change a few traits and somehow you can make a pig into a rabbit by adding bunny ears and a puffball tail.

canada is owned by the Queen

[globaljustin]

you are absolutely wrong my friend...you need to accept it...Canadians aren't 'citizens' they're 'subjects' just like the British

it's all right here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Elizabeth II has final say on all important decisions of the Canadian government, foreign and domestic via Royal Perogative...and Canadian Parliament must **ask her permission** to meet

It's true...look at the sources in the wiki above

Re:canada is owned by the Queen

[TangoMargarine]

Even Britain itself doesn't really have to ask the monarch's permission for stuff anymore. Technically the king/queen can refuse to sign any bill they want, but none of them have since 1708. And since the Brits are a bit weird with their unwritten rules it's debatable whether the monarch actually still has the power. I dunno.

Who would want to return to the Dark Ages?

[dixonpete]

I'm thinking these guys don't care much for studying history either.

Please Let the Caliphate Flourish!

[jsepeta]

A stunning tribute to the arabs who came before ISIS, who invented things like the number ZERO, would be for the US and other nations to allow ISIS to "prosper" for the next several years. We could then turn our military budgets into school budgets to increase our own kids' knowledge in math and the sciences. Let facts be our guide.

Re:Please Let the Caliphate Flourish!

[Pseudonym]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed just how unlike the real Caliphate this is.

That's dumb

[davidwr]

You need math to aim your artillery.

Is this were all the liberals scream about Jews

[gelfling]

And how they're the root of all evil in the history of people? I'd hate to be left out of that one.

Re:The Truth about ISIS

[Your.Master]

They are monstrous enough that they deserve real insults.

A made-up insult like this one makes it sound like you don't have any *real* awful things to say about them. To Godwin the argument quickly, it's like saying the problem with Nazi Germany was that Hitler's mustache was ugly.

Re:Yep.

[Merls the Sneaky]

"Obama is gonna cum in my house"

I though Clinton doing that was the bigger danger ?

Re:How ironic...

[Sarius64]

Yes, so many Christians slicing heads off of people, marrying 9-year olds, and committing genocide in America. Oh sorry, you're a dumbass.

Grain of salt

[Unordained]

Can we get verification on this? The CNN story doesn't so much as contain a picture of the flier, let alone corroboration that these were really distributed by ISIS. Is this like how, a few weeks ago, they were incorrectly accused of performing FGM? If this one is accurate, we should be able to get some evidence, if not necessarily proof...

Re:Wow

[Sarius64]

Freeing people? Overthrowing the racist Democratic organizations? Empowering social justice? Which one pisses you off Mr. Racist?

What is really happening here?

[Bruce Perens]

We are in a War on Faith, because Faith justifies anything and ISIS takes it to extremes. But in the end they are just a bigger version of Christian-dominated school boards that mess with the teaching of Evolution, or Mormon sponsors of anti-gay-marriage measures, or my Hebrew school teacher, an adult who slapped me as a 12-year-old for some unremembered offense against his faith.

Re:WTF?

[Sri Ramkrishna]

I'm confused as to why you responded as anonymous coward?

ISIS bans logic

[eruci]

Tomorrow's headline...

Point of comparison

[DrYak]

Eventually, even the dumbest of the dumb will realize that it doesn't pay.

The dumbest of the dumb can only realise things are going badly when they can compare with things going well. To realise that the current government fucks everything up require to be able to realise that some things could be a little bit less fucked up, and the reason they are still so bad is the government's fault.

But if a country is shot down into dark ages, that gets much more difficult. See the reports about fugitive who have escaped extremely isolated dictature like North Korea. These people had probably the vague notion that perhaps here in the west, things are going a bit easier that in their country. (That's why they ran away in the first place)
But having so few information means that these people are just completely amazed by how far off their perception of the outside world has been, they knew that things could go in a different, better way. But they weren't able to realise that outside the totalitarian prison things are SO different.

We are trading with such people

[GPS Pilot]

Not only can the West trade with such people, the West is trading with such people, via black-market oil sales.

Re:WTF?

[alexander_686]

I am not confusing correlation with causation. There are causal links.

For example, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all encourage literacy and abstract though. Without those you can't read the holy book.

It also can promote it indirectly. If you are running off of a lunar calendar, you are going to need astronomy, and if you have astronomy you are going to need math. If you are a proselytizing religion, with plans to run to a global empire, you are going to navigation and accounting – more math.

If you are a pretentious group that wants to conquer the world using the internet and explosive, you are going to need to know math and chemistry – another banned subject.

Or maybe I think radical nut jobs are smarter than I think they are.

So then the plan to deal with ISIS is...

[Yakasha]

Wait a generation.

The next generation will be too dumb to fight anybody.

Sweet

[DMJC]

Awesome, no maths, no advanced weapons targeting control, no ballistics targeting... Should be interesting to see if they can hit the broadside of a barn without maths. Meanwhile we'll continue to precision bomb these idiots.

Nope, Ain't Going to Work, But Thanks!

[Irate Engineer]

So you are going to raise a generation of teenagers with no physical outlets except martyrdom for Allah?

Thanks for providing future targets for Lockheed-Martin products!

Sincerely,

A U.S. Taxpayer.

veto power & soft power

[globaljustin]

the British Royals have veto power on every major decision Canada makes

you agree that Royal Assent is necessary yourself...and it's in that wiki *very well sourced*

so Royal Assent exists...your "what if" scenario about what would happen in a confrontation situation with the Canadian subjects is *Pure Speculation*

also, it is foolish to assume that the Royal Family wouldn't try to push policy in other ways that are not as confrontational

the whole point is to keep their involvement low profile

Re:The Truth about ISIS

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

The "willingly" was implied. My mistake.

Re:The Truth about ISIS

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Right, because calling them pigfuckers when they're adherents of a religion that considers pigs to be unclean is somehow not a real insult? I guess I should stop calling evangelical Christians "sodomites" as well.

how it continues

[globaljustin]

they have soft power...influence...Royals are like the Koch brothers on steroids, because of their family history of despotism

howso?

let's start with BP...British Petroleum

formerly known as "Royal Iranian Petroleum"

it was a deal with the English Crown, who, at the time the deal with Iran was made over 100 years ago, still ran BP outright

BP is a publicly held company now, but the ties are still there financially...the Royal Family still has controlling interest

that's one example...think of it this way, here in America we have no Royals, yet rich people still influence government...now, Royals are rich people *plus* a huge network of dependencies and relationships that go back for centuries

Re:how it continues

[TangoMargarine]

Apparently you have a different definition of "absolutely wrong" than me. "Oh, I said 'the crown is personally in charge of everything' but what I really meant was 'they subtly influence behind the scenes.'" Whiplash much?

Re:terrorist math

[penguinoid]

3 Jihadis are building a bomb and 1 jihadi makes a booboo and blows himself up. How many jihadis do you have left?

Declare it to be an American drone strike and recruit a dozen more?

Read and weep ...

[CaptainDork]

... the radical, rabid, right wing Christian evangelists would eat this shit up in America.

CNN retracted

[manu0601]

From TFA:

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story contained reporting about ISIS and education. CNN has concerns about the interpretation of the information provided and we will update the story when we can verify what is happening.

The original story smelled odd: why would they have anything against maths? Banning history courses make sense when you perform propaganda, but maths?

Re:CNN retracted

[mark-t]

If true, I suspect that it may be because it includes concepts like infinity... and they might be concerned that even merely imagining the existence of such a thing would be tantamount to challenging the infinite nature of Allah.

Re:CNN retracted

[manu0601]

Does it really matters? Humans cannot reach infinity anyway.

Re:CNN retracted

[mark-t]

Of course not.... but II was just offering a conjecture for what their possible problem with it might be... that merely even *imagining* something else being infinite would amount to putting something else as being somehow equal to Allah, which is why they would view it as objectionable.

Re:CNN retracted

[manu0601]

But note the news was fake anyway, hence they probably have nothing against maths and infinity. It was fake just like the fatwa promoting excision was. I wonder who is trying to spread that anti-ISIS propaganda: they could do a batter job by not spreading fake news, we have enough with real ones.

News! Now with American Flair!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

In swaths of America now controlled by Christianity, children can no longer study math or social studies. Sports are out of the question unless they involve flogging. And students will be banned from learning about political parties and democracy. Instead, they'll be subjected to the teachings of the lord and saviour, Jesus Christ. And any teacher who dares to break the rules "will be punished." C.H.U.R.C.H (Come Help Us Reach Christ's Heaven) revealed its new educational demands in fliers posted on billboards and on street poles and through numerous bake sales. The american radical group has captured the hearts and minds of countless cities in the last two decades as it tries to establish a government that is true to it's christian beliefs. Books cannot include any reference to evolution or be burned at the stake as it is considered witchcraft. And teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to god's master plan for every single one of us."

both/and

[globaljustin]

that's a false dichotomy

you're making it out to be a binary when international politics is infinitely more complex

the fact is the legal mechanism exists, but in practice they prefer to not need to use it b/c there are obvious benefits (ex: this conversation) to staying behind the scenes

Re:both/and

[TangoMargarine]

Elizabeth II has final say on all important decisions

...I would interpret to mean "if she approves it, it goes; if she doesn't, it dies." There's no way the Queen has time to personally okay every law in the entire Commonwealth. Hell, she doesn't even bother to okay all the laws in the U.K. itself; they have some guys to stamp all that shit *for* the monarch.

You made this whole distinction in the first place in contrast to whatever people generally perceive the UK to be*, so the onus is on you to prove "Elizabeth controls everything." You can't call someone "absolutely wrong" and then start splitting hairs. That's just not how the language works.

* Wikipedia, under Politics of the U.K., says "The United Kingdom is a unitary democracy governed within the framework of a constitutional monarchy." So it seems like they won't even take a firm stance on whether it's a monarchy or a republic/democracy. And the whole "we may or may not still have that power but we won't exercise it unless we REALLY WANT TO but we haven't in 300 years" is quite Erisian.

a Caliphate eh?

[anomalous3]

Funny, a lot of the caliphates in the history books largely thrived because they encouraged math and social sciences, not to mention chemisty and physics.

We can all relax now

[Nartie]

CNN has retracted the story. When the story first went up they mentioned math in two places and music in one. Crazy people usually ban music before they ban math, so either it was music they banned or the whole story was nonsense.

I wish I had a dalek to send there

[sTERNKERN]

Exterminate..

Wait, what?

[velinion]

Everyone here is arguing politics and history, and I'm just wondering how they expect anyone to teach that "the laws of Chemistry and Physics are due to the laws of Allah" when they aren't allowed to teach Mathematics.

I mean, how, exactly, are you supposed to teach any Chemistry or Physics if you aren't allowed to teach Mathematics? (scratches head)

A note from CNN editors.....

[richieb]

"Editor's note: An earlier version of this story contained reporting about ISIS and education. CNN has concerns about the interpretation of the information provided and we will update the story when we can verify what is happening"

They probably made this up....

72 Virgins

[DarthVain]

On a somewhat unrelated note. I was thinking it probably helps to find people to become suicide bombers if they are uneducated and indoctrinated. I am also vaguely aware that one of the things promised to martyrs of the cause being the whole 72 virgins in the afterlife thing. Is the thinking there that there is this pool of infinite virgins that just exist in the afterlife or is it that God creates them specifically for you? Because if it is just drawing on the pool of those virgins that happen to die and go to the same place, I'm not so sure that is such a fine reward...

Great News!

[The Old One 666]

The only thing I can think of that would be better is if ISIS insisted all their followers were illiterate.

It's sad...

[Meski]

That the country/s that introduced the number system that we all use would do this.

'Crown is regarded as a corporation'

[globaljustin]

wiki, under Canadian Monarchy:

the Crown is regarded as a corporation, with the monarch being the centre of a construct in which the power of the whole is shared by multiple institutions of government[131]—the executive, legislative, and judicial[7]—acting under the sovereign's authority,[87][132] which is entrusted for exercise by the politicians (the elected and appointed parliamentarians and the ministers of the Crown generally drawn from amongst them) and the judges and justices of the peace

the facts are there...well sourced

you're trolling...you're misrepresenting my argument by taking it to the extreme:

the onus is on you to prove "Elizabeth controls everything."

no.

i never said she does that, and that is in no way a burden of proof for what I *actually* claimed...

here's what I actually said

they have soft power...influence...Royals are like the Koch brothers on steroids, because of their family history of despotism

howso?

let's start with BP...British Petroleum

formerly known as "Royal Iranian Petroleum"

so you're shown to be a troll, blatantly misrepresenting my claims

I claimed the royals function now like legal-mandated Koch Brothers...that's what the facts indicate

Re:'Crown is regarded as a corporation'

[TangoMargarine]

the Crown is regarded as a corporation, with the monarch being the centre of a construct in which the power of the whole is shared by multiple institutions of government[131]—the executive, legislative, and judicial[7]—acting under the sovereign's authority

If anything, this blob would seem to indicate the queen doesn't have much of any real power, which I'm sure is the opposite of what you think it says.

"Elizabeth controls everything."

i never said she does that

And I quote:

Elizabeth II has final say on all important decisions of the Canadian government

I'm not misrepresenting your claims; you went all balls-out, then when I called you on your bullshit you started furiously backpedaling and denying everything.

Re:'Crown is regarded as a corporation'

[globaljustin]

slashdot readers will judge

this conversation is over

WHUT

[garote]

Some would suggest that the instability within Europe during the 1940's was "the result of European colonial powers drawing national borders in such a way to cause instability and invoke inter-racial and inter-religious tension."

Those suggestions, however, did not actually constitute a valid argument for staying out of World War II. Barely relevant, actually. No more relevant here.

I think it's rather smart to try and stop a holocaust anywhere you find it. Don't you?