Yes, I am familiar with this belief: we gave Osama Bin Laden stinger missiles in the 1980s, therefore we are responsible for everything he does. It's an interesting take on how responsibility and accountability works.
I don't know what the hell you're paranoid schizophrenic notions about Robin Cook are, nor do I care to know. But go ahead and pity me for not showing any interest, if you makes you feel better, please, glad to be of service. Although I might be a little more devastated by your opinion of me if I thought I were actually interacting with someone with a grasp on reality.
yes, and it a terrible dynamic. because by the same token as these pissing assholes, so many in the west see what al qaeda does and thinks that stands for islam. so we have a dynamic here where the stupid and the insane are driving world opinion
so how does the great moderate middle, in islam and the west, see themselves as allies against these idiotic and evil extremes?
hey, i heard that holocaust thing was a myth too. and we never went to the moon. 9/11 was an inside job. obama is a secret muslim communist kenyan, etc., etc.
isn't it awesome when you can just totally fucking ignore reality and start ranting stupid insane shit?
It is not my duty to do someone's cognition for them. It is my interest in the name of clarity to point out where someone's cognition fails.
I do not pretend to be able to capture the entirety of understanding in a throwaway comment on Slashdot. But I do know that I can capture in a throwaway comment on Slashdot a common cognitive failure of armchair analysts in the West: that Al Qaeda's motives begin and end with the West. Their quest for a caliphate being ONLY ONE example of a motive that falls outside of anything about the West.
I do not need to build an entire house in order to show where the foundation of someone else's house is rotten. Understand?
thank you for analyzing two pieces of a puzzle with four hundred pieces. please note the present condition of al qaeda's health, and contribute the remaining 398 pieces of thought to arrive at an intelligent commentary
and if you can't refrain from being so patronizing and condescending as to think that what the people do in the middle east is nothing more than the sum of what the west does to them, then you are nothing but a perpetrator of the problem you complain about
who owns the destiny of the middle east?
i think the people of the middle east own it
you think the west owns it. because in your thinking, middle easterners are nothing but empty reflective mirrors of what westerners do. that everything they do begins and ends as a simple reading of the what the west does. as if nothing else is going on in iran except western meddling in your example!
your thinking is insulting to middle easterners; you don't think of them as individuals with their own desires and goals. you think of them as helpless pawns only able to react to what the west does. because you are ignorant and ethnocentric: everything that happens in the world starts in the west. in YOUR thinking, not mine
so congratulations, your mentality is the main contributing factor to the problem you complain about
in your thinking, the middle east will never be the masters of their own destiny. because in your thinking nothing happens in the middle east without the west involved. you are a blind ignorant egocentric fool, and you have nothing intelligent to say on the subject matter
It doesn't matter what you believe about any religion. What matters is what you are willing to do to achieve a theocratic or ideological goal. And if you are happy to murder innocents, including hundreds of thousands of Muslim innocents, then this is enough to label you as someone filled with hate.
But you change the subject. You start with this bullshit notion that this is an argument between Christianity and Islam. Facts for you to consider, idiot: Al Qaeda kills vast numbers of Muslims, orders of magnitude more than Westerners, in pursuit of their hate filled goal. And Al Qaeda does not speak for what the vast majority of what Muslims believe. So you simply do not understand the topic you are commenting on.
Timothy McVeigh had his reasons too. Do you honestly believe that satisfying anything Timothy McVeigh wanted would have stopped his hate? Then why do you think ANYTHING the USA did is somehow the source of Osama Bin Laden's hate?
Hate is its own original transgression. Nothing that comes before an act of hate justifies it. Nothing can be done to stop its creation.
All that can be done in a rational world is to oppose the hate when it makes itself manifest by its vile actions. Mollifying the hate, buying into the hater's justifications: this is a fool's errand that bears no fruit.
as opposed to your sterling sources of information (ie, your prejudices)
i'm not saying i trust the soldiers. i 'm not saying i support the soliders. i'm just saying you are prejudiced idiot, and you don't add anything to the problem here other than more ignorance
everyone's actions interplay into everything, into all rationalizations, valid and contrived, of course
and the usa can behave a lot better than it does, of course
but my point is that it is a form of egocentrism to imagine that ANYTHING the usa does, good or bad, is the deciding influence here in what people really think in the middle east. the middle east is on a path of its own making, and nothing the west or the usa does holds decisive sway. this includes invading iraq and afghanistan. the arab spring last year is far more of a game changer than anything the usa ever did in the middle east, in the entire history of the usa. really
it is simply my point that so much analysis of the middle east begins and ends with western actions. completely and utterly forgetting the motivations and ideas of the people who actually fecking live there
begin with the thoughts and ideas of middle eastern peoples, and imagine the usa is a mild pesky mosquito, and then you can begin to have a better starting point for saying valid things about the motivations al qaeda, or where middle eastern societies go from here (after the arab spring)
meanwhile, any analysis of the middle east that begins and ends with western actions is completely and utterly without merit, and is simply a form of obnoxious egocentrism
theoretically, you want to be able to say that the cause you are fighting for is morally superior to the cause the enemy is fighting for
i said "theoretically"
but pissing on enemy troops tends to put a dent in the concept of moral superiority, no matter how absurd that concept is in the arena of war in the first place
The 19 men who committed the attacks on 9/11/2001 were college-educated individuals who came from professional two-parent middle-class homes. They had plenty of options, if they weren't so filled with hate.
I am rather sick and tired of this ignorant and completely invalid idea you see in so many people's thinking in the West that what motivates something like Al Qaeda is just simple poverty, or broken homes, or whatever empty tropes that a lot of people clumsily use in their minds to try to make sense of the hate that exists in our world.
In thinking about what creates hate, in your words above, you only demonstrate a colossal ignorance of how vicious hate can really be. And most importantly, that hate is its own entity, its own source of injustice, an original sin that is not excused by some action perpetrated on the hater.
Example: can you examine anything in the upbringing of Timothy McVeigh that justifies what he did in Oklahoma City? Then why do you buy the lame excuses so many make for why what the 19 9/11 hijakcers did is justified in some insane loopy attempt at rationalization? Killing innocents is the original vile act, it is the not the product of anything other than the hate filled mind who commit the atrocity.
Hate is not a PRODUCT of some other source of injustice, that you can focus your analysis on instead and thereby push off a painful reckoning in your mind. Reckon with this, and know the reality of the world you live in: some people really are just incredibly vile evil and hate filled. Nothing they do can be explained away, you need to find the ability to condemn them base don their actions, regardless of race, or nationality or ideological goal.
You need to come to grips with how much hate there is in this world, and learn to condemn the hate itself, not buy into the convenient lame excuses of the hatemongers, whom so many in the West buy into! "They killed innocents because of action {xyz} that happened in the Cold War 50 years ago, so they are excused and its all understandable." Bullshit.
The error is with people who see something like Al Qaeda and only see a reflection of what the West does. This is an incredibly blind and egocentric way to think about the world and what motivates people outside the West. Hate does not need a valid premise to exist. Hate is its own creation, and not anyone else's fault except the person filled with hate.
If all of the USA and Europe disappeared into the ocean tomorrow, Al Qaeda would not celebrate and become pastoral goat herders, content their work was done. Because their work has just started. They would go right on with their murderous rampage, killing innocents, as they already have. Until they get their caliphate back.
Incidentally, the greatest number of victims of Al Qaeda are Muslims, not Westerners, by orders if magnitude. We in the West only see glimmers of a much greater struggle going on in the Middle East. And yet, in the blind egocentrism of so many in the West, such as you see in some comments here, and in the story summary, you think the struggle is all about the West! Why this colossal egocentric blindness?
This obnoxious ignorant egocentrism that can only understand and think about Al Qaeda in terms of motivations and interests that only center upon what the West does is a failure of analysis. As if Al Qaeda were born of Western actions and only exists as a reflection of Western actions. If you believe that, if you cannot think about Al Qaeda as its own entity, devoid of anything having to do with the West, you lack the cognitive abilities to comment intelligently on the subject.
You cannot stop the creation and continued existence of something like Al Qaeda by modifying your own actions or correcting past mistakes. Because its not about you. Because something like Al Qaeda will always exist, hate requires any premise, real or imagined, to justify what it does in transgression of simple human decency. And so you must fight something like Al Qaeda, not placate it. That is a fool's errand that does understand how hate works psychologically.
Al Qaeda is its own creation, inspired by its own beliefs, that would still exist no matter what the USA or the West ever did. If you don't understand that, stop talking about Al Qaeda, you don't understand it.
cavemen said pretty much whatever they wanted. the idea that there is a government that can control your type of speech is the modern invention in question here
freedom of speech is the baseline of simple existence
seriously, you're a complete and utter moron, or one very hard working troll
i never understood this point of view. that because we have domestic problems we cannot criticize others. on that basis, no matter how much worse a country is, we can never criticize them
"there is a problem somewhere in my country. therefore i will refrain from critical thinking on international issues"
i just don't understand
is it because you think it is hypocrisy? you do realize the nature of american censorship is far different from that of chinese censorship? the inability to express your politicla opinion: is that the same thing in your mind as media cartels making a desperate bid to remain relevant in the internet age?
"some congresscritters have whored themselves out to support SOPA. this is exactly the same as china not allowing any political dissent."
really? do you lack all critical thinking skills or do you just avoid the skillset?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I am familiar with this belief: we gave Osama Bin Laden stinger missiles in the 1980s, therefore we are responsible for everything he does. It's an interesting take on how responsibility and accountability works.
I don't know what the hell you're paranoid schizophrenic notions about Robin Cook are, nor do I care to know. But go ahead and pity me for not showing any interest, if you makes you feel better, please, glad to be of service. Although I might be a little more devastated by your opinion of me if I thought I were actually interacting with someone with a grasp on reality.
So... Robin Cook was murdered? And because of covert activity in Afghanistan in the 1980s... what exactly?
yes, and it a terrible dynamic. because by the same token as these pissing assholes, so many in the west see what al qaeda does and thinks that stands for islam. so we have a dynamic here where the stupid and the insane are driving world opinion
so how does the great moderate middle, in islam and the west, see themselves as allies against these idiotic and evil extremes?
what?
did you actually read what i read?
i said what you are saying, and you are reacting like i said the opposite
please pay some fucking attention and read, and then respond
thanks
hey, i heard that holocaust thing was a myth too. and we never went to the moon. 9/11 was an inside job. obama is a secret muslim communist kenyan, etc., etc.
isn't it awesome when you can just totally fucking ignore reality and start ranting stupid insane shit?
that would make life so much easier, i envy you
pick a volcano near the coast, capture the steam, and you have electricity AND pure water. another benefit
It is not my duty to do someone's cognition for them. It is my interest in the name of clarity to point out where someone's cognition fails.
I do not pretend to be able to capture the entirety of understanding in a throwaway comment on Slashdot. But I do know that I can capture in a throwaway comment on Slashdot a common cognitive failure of armchair analysts in the West: that Al Qaeda's motives begin and end with the West. Their quest for a caliphate being ONLY ONE example of a motive that falls outside of anything about the West.
I do not need to build an entire house in order to show where the foundation of someone else's house is rotten. Understand?
why do you think anything in that quote refutes anything i have said?
is it your assertion that osama bin laden has no capability for independent thought, and merely exists as a mirror of us policy?
thank you for analyzing two pieces of a puzzle with four hundred pieces. please note the present condition of al qaeda's health, and contribute the remaining 398 pieces of thought to arrive at an intelligent commentary
and if you can't refrain from being so patronizing and condescending as to think that what the people do in the middle east is nothing more than the sum of what the west does to them, then you are nothing but a perpetrator of the problem you complain about
who owns the destiny of the middle east?
i think the people of the middle east own it
you think the west owns it. because in your thinking, middle easterners are nothing but empty reflective mirrors of what westerners do. that everything they do begins and ends as a simple reading of the what the west does. as if nothing else is going on in iran except western meddling in your example!
your thinking is insulting to middle easterners; you don't think of them as individuals with their own desires and goals. you think of them as helpless pawns only able to react to what the west does. because you are ignorant and ethnocentric: everything that happens in the world starts in the west. in YOUR thinking, not mine
so congratulations, your mentality is the main contributing factor to the problem you complain about
in your thinking, the middle east will never be the masters of their own destiny. because in your thinking nothing happens in the middle east without the west involved. you are a blind ignorant egocentric fool, and you have nothing intelligent to say on the subject matter
what are you willing to do to achieve a goal?
on that alone you shall be judged, and not your goal
It doesn't matter what you believe about any religion. What matters is what you are willing to do to achieve a theocratic or ideological goal. And if you are happy to murder innocents, including hundreds of thousands of Muslim innocents, then this is enough to label you as someone filled with hate.
But you change the subject. You start with this bullshit notion that this is an argument between Christianity and Islam. Facts for you to consider, idiot: Al Qaeda kills vast numbers of Muslims, orders of magnitude more than Westerners, in pursuit of their hate filled goal. And Al Qaeda does not speak for what the vast majority of what Muslims believe. So you simply do not understand the topic you are commenting on.
Timothy McVeigh had his reasons too. Do you honestly believe that satisfying anything Timothy McVeigh wanted would have stopped his hate? Then why do you think ANYTHING the USA did is somehow the source of Osama Bin Laden's hate?
Hate is its own original transgression. Nothing that comes before an act of hate justifies it. Nothing can be done to stop its creation.
All that can be done in a rational world is to oppose the hate when it makes itself manifest by its vile actions. Mollifying the hate, buying into the hater's justifications: this is a fool's errand that bears no fruit.
as opposed to your sterling sources of information (ie, your prejudices)
i'm not saying i trust the soldiers. i 'm not saying i support the soliders. i'm just saying you are prejudiced idiot, and you don't add anything to the problem here other than more ignorance
everyone's actions interplay into everything, into all rationalizations, valid and contrived, of course
and the usa can behave a lot better than it does, of course
but my point is that it is a form of egocentrism to imagine that ANYTHING the usa does, good or bad, is the deciding influence here in what people really think in the middle east. the middle east is on a path of its own making, and nothing the west or the usa does holds decisive sway. this includes invading iraq and afghanistan. the arab spring last year is far more of a game changer than anything the usa ever did in the middle east, in the entire history of the usa. really
it is simply my point that so much analysis of the middle east begins and ends with western actions. completely and utterly forgetting the motivations and ideas of the people who actually fecking live there
begin with the thoughts and ideas of middle eastern peoples, and imagine the usa is a mild pesky mosquito, and then you can begin to have a better starting point for saying valid things about the motivations al qaeda, or where middle eastern societies go from here (after the arab spring)
meanwhile, any analysis of the middle east that begins and ends with western actions is completely and utterly without merit, and is simply a form of obnoxious egocentrism
theoretically, you want to be able to say that the cause you are fighting for is morally superior to the cause the enemy is fighting for
i said "theoretically"
but pissing on enemy troops tends to put a dent in the concept of moral superiority, no matter how absurd that concept is in the arena of war in the first place
they were fighting for the taliban. if you knew anything about the taliban, you would be ashamed of what you just wrote
The 19 men who committed the attacks on 9/11/2001 were college-educated individuals who came from professional two-parent middle-class homes. They had plenty of options, if they weren't so filled with hate.
I am rather sick and tired of this ignorant and completely invalid idea you see in so many people's thinking in the West that what motivates something like Al Qaeda is just simple poverty, or broken homes, or whatever empty tropes that a lot of people clumsily use in their minds to try to make sense of the hate that exists in our world.
In thinking about what creates hate, in your words above, you only demonstrate a colossal ignorance of how vicious hate can really be. And most importantly, that hate is its own entity, its own source of injustice, an original sin that is not excused by some action perpetrated on the hater.
Example: can you examine anything in the upbringing of Timothy McVeigh that justifies what he did in Oklahoma City? Then why do you buy the lame excuses so many make for why what the 19 9/11 hijakcers did is justified in some insane loopy attempt at rationalization? Killing innocents is the original vile act, it is the not the product of anything other than the hate filled mind who commit the atrocity.
Hate is not a PRODUCT of some other source of injustice, that you can focus your analysis on instead and thereby push off a painful reckoning in your mind. Reckon with this, and know the reality of the world you live in: some people really are just incredibly vile evil and hate filled. Nothing they do can be explained away, you need to find the ability to condemn them base don their actions, regardless of race, or nationality or ideological goal.
You need to come to grips with how much hate there is in this world, and learn to condemn the hate itself, not buy into the convenient lame excuses of the hatemongers, whom so many in the West buy into! "They killed innocents because of action {xyz} that happened in the Cold War 50 years ago, so they are excused and its all understandable." Bullshit.
Al Qaeda attacked us because we stood in the way of resurrecting the caliphate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate#Views_of_al-Qaeda
The error is with people who see something like Al Qaeda and only see a reflection of what the West does. This is an incredibly blind and egocentric way to think about the world and what motivates people outside the West. Hate does not need a valid premise to exist. Hate is its own creation, and not anyone else's fault except the person filled with hate.
If all of the USA and Europe disappeared into the ocean tomorrow, Al Qaeda would not celebrate and become pastoral goat herders, content their work was done. Because their work has just started. They would go right on with their murderous rampage, killing innocents, as they already have. Until they get their caliphate back.
Incidentally, the greatest number of victims of Al Qaeda are Muslims, not Westerners, by orders if magnitude. We in the West only see glimmers of a much greater struggle going on in the Middle East. And yet, in the blind egocentrism of so many in the West, such as you see in some comments here, and in the story summary, you think the struggle is all about the West! Why this colossal egocentric blindness?
This obnoxious ignorant egocentrism that can only understand and think about Al Qaeda in terms of motivations and interests that only center upon what the West does is a failure of analysis. As if Al Qaeda were born of Western actions and only exists as a reflection of Western actions. If you believe that, if you cannot think about Al Qaeda as its own entity, devoid of anything having to do with the West, you lack the cognitive abilities to comment intelligently on the subject.
You cannot stop the creation and continued existence of something like Al Qaeda by modifying your own actions or correcting past mistakes. Because its not about you. Because something like Al Qaeda will always exist, hate requires any premise, real or imagined, to justify what it does in transgression of simple human decency. And so you must fight something like Al Qaeda, not placate it. That is a fool's errand that does understand how hate works psychologically.
Al Qaeda is its own creation, inspired by its own beliefs, that would still exist no matter what the USA or the West ever did. If you don't understand that, stop talking about Al Qaeda, you don't understand it.
However, we have a new hypothesis to explore:
does homelessness impart an unnatural belief in lamarckism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism
dear hard working troll:
your words do not pass the laugh test. try harder next time
sincerely,
rational thought
hey, genius:
cavemen said pretty much whatever they wanted. the idea that there is a government that can control your type of speech is the modern invention in question here
freedom of speech is the baseline of simple existence
seriously, you're a complete and utter moron, or one very hard working troll
you're an idiot or a clever troll
did newton invent gravity?
the grass mud horse ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse
i never understood this point of view. that because we have domestic problems we cannot criticize others. on that basis, no matter how much worse a country is, we can never criticize them
"there is a problem somewhere in my country. therefore i will refrain from critical thinking on international issues"
i just don't understand
is it because you think it is hypocrisy? you do realize the nature of american censorship is far different from that of chinese censorship? the inability to express your politicla opinion: is that the same thing in your mind as media cartels making a desperate bid to remain relevant in the internet age?
"some congresscritters have whored themselves out to support SOPA. this is exactly the same as china not allowing any political dissent."
really? do you lack all critical thinking skills or do you just avoid the skillset?