Odd. While Islam certainly is a proselytising religion, I'd say that strain is pretty rare outside of Muslim majority countries. But I'm not sure I understand your point. I haven't at all tried (in this thread or elsewhere on GOG) to "solicit religion".

You haven't because you were looking and didn't find, or because the TV stations/news media you consume doesn't care about it as much?

And then you provide me link after link of youtube videos carefully edited by MemriTV, whose single-minded goal is to show up Arabs (because somehow how arabs behave is OBVIOUSLY emblematic of how all muslims all over the world behave. An interesting comparison to make, considering how they barely make up 20% of Muslims, about the same percentage of Christians Africans make- and we all know of the homophobic laws, oppression of women, FGM, and killings done by people in Africa who claim to be Christian- yet it is never connected to Christianity. A double standard if you ask me) in an attempt to denigrate the case for Palestine, and you tell me you haven't seen? Perhaps you should look harder, and expand your sources of information from such obviously bigotted ones.

Another example of a logical fallacy is thinking that repeating wrong things over and over somehow makes it true.

I'm sorry, you keep saying "I'm not seeing" or "I haven't seen". I again have to point out, perhaps that is your fault, or the fault of the media you follow, or perhaps simply the fault of the way media is set up in general. You think "People say terrorism is bad" is newsworthy enough to sell ad-space? But as you say yourself, that is no excuse, we live in the age of the internet, with easy access to so much information.

I'm sorry, but when people start talking down to me, as if I'm some poor ignorant brainwashed brown person, attacking my background (which again, you have no knowledge of, and besides should be irrelevant to you with regards to the statements I am making) or creating strawman arguments or statements and then putting them in my mouth, instead of addressing directly what I'm saying, I call that "condescension".
I can't even address most of what you're saying, because you've invented it in your own mind and projected it on to me, and then are responding to that, when I never said any such thing, and then pretending to take the higher ground by attacking your imagined construction of my background and pooh-poohing that poor me couldn't know any better.

Odd. I haven't seen you condemning the acts of brutality by Nazis against Jews. Or the incredible amount of time it took the Appenzell Innerrhoden canton to give women the right to vote on local issues. Or the systemic discrimination against the Romani people. OBVIOUSLY (roll eyes) that means you support all that, then. And no point just condeming them now in response to this post here, you'll have to be expected to condemn them every time you speak- that seems to be what you're expecting, anyhow.

Terrorism supporter? Where? Benefit of the doubt? What? Who gave you the moral authority here? I'm sorry, but the only bigotry and prejudice being practised here was being done by you and your ilk. If you've already decided what I am, and how I will presumably react to whatever situation you imagine up, then there's really no point in pretending you're having a discussion with me, is there?

@babark: Before I reply, I still owe you an explanation of what an Islamist/Islamism is - which you so coyly pretended to have no notion of:
An Islamist is a Muslim who is in favor of having Sharia law implemented into the legal system in parts or entirely and making it applicable to everyone whether you’re a follower of Islam or just a lowly kuffar living under Islamic rule as dhimmi.
In plain English, an Islamist doesn’t believe in the separation of the State and religion, thereby making the following of religious rules mandatory instead of a private matter between you and your invisible friend in the sky. And his one true prophet whom you shall not draw or else suffer the consequences which is a lot easier to enforce if the State and religion aren’t so inconveniently separated. Because nothing says my truth has a bigger dick than your truth than if it’s the official law.
Naturally, not every Islamist is a terrorist and not every terrorist is a Muslim but every Islamic terrorist is an Islamist.

Allow me to ask 2 simple questions: (and no, these are not loaded questions, pointing this out in case some libtard imbecile tries to come and "save" you)
1.) Do you, babark, think that there should be a law that prohibits people from drawing Muhammad, e.g. in a cartoon where he's naked and gets sodomized by an elephant god or whoever?
2.) Do you think the two brothers who shot up the Charlie Hebdo office and its staff acted in any way, shape or form justifiably?

How many non Muslim countries have you been to? And how many other Muslim countries have you been to? Da'wah (="calling", in this case meaning invitation of non-Muslims to Isam) is an obligation to any and all Muslims, that much you should now. It's not an option and not only practiced by a strand. I've had people try da'wah on me in all the 7 Muslim countries I visited except for Turkey - but that's because I was in a very touristy place (Istanbul) and only one of thousands of tourists. Unfortunately for those who tired, I'm literally the worst person to try da'wah on because when I'm traveling, I have no time nor patience for irrational crap like religion and I make that unmistakably clear.
Outside Muslim countries, I haven't been approached for da'wah much, and thankfully never in Switzerland, nor have I seen people make da'wah around where I live. Here at home, Jehovah's Witnesses are the worst, already had to kick them out the house a couple times in the past few years. And I was even approached by Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan. But globally, I've been most approached and annoyed with Muslims trying to sell their religion, hence the number one spot on my personal annoyance list. People who don't travel alone don't get approached as much but I've talked to countless fellow travelers and the majority of those who traveled to Muslim countries have encountered da'wah attempts on them. Most people making da'wah do it in a subtle and not overbearing way so one has to be fair, but it's still proselytising and therefor still annoying and highly offensive to any rational thinking person.

You're trying the Rabbinical approach, it won't work (I played The Shivah). Basically, you were either too lazy to go and prove me wrong by proving that Hindu terrorism is somehow just as much of a problem in the world today as Islamic terrorism, or you couldn't find enough evidence. I suspect both, hence you resort to this questioning type of non-answer. As it stands, I still maintain that Islamic terrorism far outclasses any other religious terrorism including Hindu. Unless you're trying to say it's all a conspiracy by the media and I read all the wrong newspapers and read all the wrong sites. And don't bother with trying to paint the US invasions of Muslim countries as "Christian terrorism".
The lame excuse that Muslims are just reacting to Western imperialism doesn't suffice. Do you know that the Muslim Ummah was divided the very day after Muhammad died and they have always been fighting since? There was no cohesion from the very beginning on, so don't go and try to blame the evil West on everything, poor excuses that's all. And the Islamic scriptures are a messy mixture of bits from he Bible and Tora etc, plus stuff written decades after Muhammad died, all full of contradictions. It has something for everybody (not for me, thanks though) but it's rather useless for having a clear program. Which is why when terrorists are interrogated and asked where exactly in the teachings it says it's ok to blow yourself up for jihad, they say "ah well, gee, those kind of things we let the scholars decide, they know how to interpret the scripture and all that jazz. If they say it's ok, I guess it's ok..."

Here's a video that's almost funny if it wasn't real:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYSyoY4cRw4

No point in throwing around useless, powerless and completely overused words like bigotry, "Islamophobia" , and so on. Not impressed, don't care. It's what cowards hide behind and I see it as such.
Those links I shared with you actually improved my view of Muslims (not of Islam, which offers exactly nothing to me). It was refreshing to see Muslim views on these issues, and I respect all the people in those videos more than you.
As for Africa, where is the Christian equivalent to Boko Haram? Or to those Muslims in Niger who torched 45 churches? Where is the Christian terror on par with Islamic terror? Cheap claims from you to even try and compare. Boko Haram just slaughtered 2000 civilians in one massacre, in the name of Islam. "Yeah but wait that's not Islam..." Yeah, ok? Go tell them. Since there is no one official authority that says what exactly goes in Islam and what not, it seems to be up to every country, region, group, mullah, imam and individual member of the religion to figure out how they see things. And some see things in an unacceptable way (beating women= ok, keeping slaves =ok, defending honor of Muhammad with violence=ok and so on )

I stated my argumentation several posts ago, you didn't bring any counter arguments and cheaply trying to turn the tables with pointless one-fits-all statements without addressing what I said isn't making you look smart in any way, just stubborn like a little kid that just found out how to talk back but doesn't yet know how to make much sense. Doesn't matter if you don't come to reason, anyone who's interested in what this is all about can go and read the whole discussion.

Overall, I've shared more articles and sources with you than you have shared with me. If you feel I'm consuming the wrong media, why not build a counter-narrative. So far, all you've pulled up was an FBI statistic to point out that Islamic terrorism isn't the foremost form of terrorism in the US - to which I replied that the US domestic situation isn't representative of the global situation, especially not considering it only has 0,8% Muslims. Most terrorism happens in Muslim countries, with Muslims being the number one victims of other Muslims, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Anyway, you think the media would report less on terror attacks like the one on Charlie Hebdo if the perpetrators were not Muslims? Or what about honor killings in Western Europe, where Muslim families kill their daughters and sisters to restore "honor", do you have any idea how much more the media would be over that crap if it was done by non-Muslims? In general, you're entirely wrong about the media (unless Fox News maybe) because our press is mostly libtarded: Muslims crimes like honor killings not only get slightly swept under the rug by the media for fear of causing "racist" offense, the perpetrators get a legal bonus for being Muslims: For example, 2 years ago in Germany an Afghan German stabbed to death his pregnant girlfriend because she didn't want to get an abortion. The court ruled that his guilt was "not particularly grave" and that he was in a "desperate situation due to cultural and religious"
Fucking bullshit, that's what that is. Things like that happens all too often and believe it or not, this is not acceptable here. In Pakistan, honor killings seem commonplace, though the number 1000 per year as written in the following article seems rather low (warning, evil biased Western media trying to distort wonderful life in Pakistan...)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/28/in-pakistan-honor-killings-claim-1000-womens-lives-annually-why-is-this-still-happening/

Oh, and a couple days ago a young Turkish guy stabbed his girfriend in the woods and then burned her to death, with the help of a friend. Happened in Berlin, in broad daylight. Again, same reason. She was pregnant and the poor guy felt this scratched his honor. Again, all this has "nothing to do with Islam", of course...
Oh, and if you think our Western media is biased against Muslims, they aren't. As I said, they only report when something outrageous happens (which is way too often), and even then most media outlets, being liberal and all, don't make a big verbal crusade against Islam. This guy here does, just to show you the difference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N46mIHEGHN0
(He's got more videos. You'll hate them all though. I can post more)


If you want to be understand correctly, then make yourself clear. And don't beat around the bush, engaging in obtuse apologetics, avoiding to answer clear and simple questions like this one by Klumpen way back in this post:
"So, do you think terrorists have no right to call themselves muslims after killing the authors of Charlie Hebdo or anyone else who likes to make fun of or criticise every religion the same way?"


As for you being bullied as a "poor ignorant brainwashed brown person", I said I thought you were middle class. A poor person in Pakistan surely wouldn't own a PC nor be able to buy any games here, or speak English so well. I guess that leaves "ignorant brainwashed brown person". I do think you're somewhat ignorant and brainwashed, yes I admit it. This conclusion has come through your very own statements so don't blame me. And as for "brown", come on...you really wanna play the race card, gratuitously out of the blue after not one person in the thread ever made any racist comments towards you (Islam is not a race). This is ridiculous. And just for your information, I'm brown, too. And poor, as in living in comparative poverty for where I am. So stick your "you guys are mean because I'm poor and brown" card right up where the sun don't shine, seriously. Next!


Lame attempt at trying to "fire back" and deflect the topic. I'll dissect these quickly:

1.) brutalities of Nazis against Jews:
I'm not a member of the Nazi party, or related to one, or even geographically in the right place to be in any way part of this even indirectly. That being said, the number one people committing acts of intimidation and violence against Jews nowadays are Muslims. Congratulations on shooting yourself in the foot on this one.

2.) Women's right to vote in Appenzell Innerhoden:
You are too late, this topic has already been ridiculed by everyone in Switzerland (including myself) long before you ever googled it in desperate hopes of finding some dirt to fling back. Super small region too with only 15'000 people. The worst discrimination women in Switzerland are supposedly facing is that statistics say they earn 18,9% less on average, and even that is disputed. Men on the other hand have to serve in the army and when there are divorces, in general the woman gets the kids and the man has to pay, forevermore. So one can say men are being discriminated upon, as well.
Now let's compare women's discrimination in Switzerland to Pakistan...seriously, I think I can end right there. Because you're going to tell me that all the honor killings, women terribly burnt by acid and beaten every day are only fringe cases from remote villages, all distorted by Western media to somehow connect it with Islam and make poor brown people look bad.
Here are six stories from Pakistani women, can easily pull up more stuff if you like:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/to-be-a-woman-in-pakistan-six-stories-of-abuse-shame-and-survival/255585/
So, another shot in the foot and again congratulations.

3.) Discrimination of Roma people:
Invalid point, because nowher ein the world are Roma people as safe as in Switzerland. They are even accepted as an official national minority and have according rights. Despite the fact that ever year, an unknown number of Roma send maliciously send their kids out to steal and even to commit burglaries. Teenage girls aged 13 have been caught doing burglaries, and it's not isolated crime but entire gangs of Roma that specialize on various crimes and do nothing but that, quickly moving from one overly nice and rich country to the next. When they get caught, they get away with a proverbial slap on the wrist, in other words they have nothing to fear. The police will take away the loot but lets them go. It's an epidemic. Most Roma aren't a problem but those who do engage in criminal activity do so to such a degree that it's become a serious problem. And yet, the worst that will happen to a Roma is that someone calls them "dirty gypsies". It will then be on the libtard news: "Roma are now being called dirty gypsies, oh news the racism!" Seriously, that's the worst "discrimination" they have to fear, and the news doesn't report on what the Roma who get called slurs have done, often there's a backstory such as someone caught 3 Roma kids stealing in his shop and in the time until the police arrives calls the kids dirty gypsies, in such a case one can't blame the guy. At all.
Now back to Pakistan, and how it treats minorities, especially religious minorities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_discrimination_in_Pakistan
And an interesting lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHTPVDLskHw

Again, you shoot yourself in the foot. You really thought you can build a case around anti-semitism, women's rights, and discrimination of minorities....? While coming from a place where those 3 things are plain awful? Come on, seriously.

With all your talk of my "lame counter-arguments" and "invalid points" and "fighting back", it seems you think we are engaged in a debate of some sort. I'll get to your questions tomorrow (it is a bit late here, and I'm typing from my phone), but what exactly do you think is my side of this debate? What do you think the thesis of my "argument" is, and what exactly is your side and your "opposing argument" or response in this debate that you're trouncing me so badly in?

Just out of curiosity, and so that we can all know where we stand, and where we think the other is standing.
To be clear, I'm not asking you what you think I think, or what you think I am, but what you think I'm saying here that you are arguing against.

Maybe so - but compared to you I make it easy; I hope - I would not snip that first sentence. (I hope!)

If I was wrong about your dislike - go forth, and tell all!

Well... ask away :) I'm quite candid as to my beliefs...

I am very much in favor of humanism, I just think it is often egoistic and hypocritical, used to reinforce privilege rather than to be humane.

And I do think you're hugely idealistic, but not to the point of naivete.

Not in my style to probe, but if u like to state your views, pray do! I am sure there at least others who shall rather love them, lol! ;-)

I meanwhile somewhat resent your view that "humanism" should be an elitist whim or something alike - I see this as a tradition of solidarity and intellectual honesty; and Christian ethics to an extent, in European context.

Breaking through the Middle Ages unto Reform unto Siècle des lumières (French enlightenment) unto Labour movement unto current era.

I regret that we have so much forgotten how admirable those struggles were - in view how much we enjoy each and every day the results.

Well, when I think of farming subsidies or minimum wages in Europe, which are so "humane" to the few, while preventing the many from developing faster...

Humanism must be universal, it's in the name even. In practice it rarely is, which is not necessarily elitist.

And you would have PL to extract itself from EU, or what? Or you would jump the oceans to the US if you could, individually?

I must say, I like personally rather like the sense of belonging in Europe. It may seem naïve, but also I think it is true enough.

I would have the government step out of most economic topics... the U.S. are little better institutionally.

Yup, as broad as potential breakup of the EU and related to it imo, particularly if I'm being asked if I'd consider immigration, which actually, I am an immigrant in PL.

Anyway, to not ignore you completely (because derail) I agree with the information aspect (transparency, game theory, agent's problem) yet would say the fundamental concern is force and who can decide on what.

That said your insight is good as geopolitics is related with government control of welfare, monetary policy, core industries - and I'm not a fundamentalist for central world gov nor isolationism, at least with our world today.

So multinational corps have imo lots of democratic advantages. And capitalism is more political and democratic system than economic one.

And yet, in Western countries, force is very arbitrary.

Americans like to tout their guns as a counterbalance to government, but really, the only thing the general population would need to do to bring their entire society to its knees is to not show up for work.

I think decentralisation of most powers to more manageably sized institutions is definitely part of the solution.

In my experience, multi-national are not democratic at all. They eskew any kind of democratic process that governments at least pay lip service to, they threaten to leave as leverage to get their way (it would be great if the Western world could agree as a whole to limit the mobility of corporations by imposing international sanctions on those who cross borders to save on taxes or labor) and they are even less inclined than governments to show their numbers.

They seem democratic for a while when there is a competition, but without outside control, a mostly free economic system will almost invariably switch to a state of greater equilibrium, which is reached when a single (or handful) of players gain all the leverage.

It could in some ways be compared to the gambler's ruin where the system is in a state of flux until the gambler runs out of money (which probabilistically he is certain to). In the gambler's case, the house holds all the money and in the laissez faire capitalism case, a single or handful of players hold all the leverage.

And invariably, those corps become profit-oriented monsters, because they are driven by remote profit-driven investors. Systematically, they will be driven to profit. Even supposedly good deeds are PR posturing to secure future profits. This is not the mom & pops store across the street. We're already seen it happen with grocery stores (the poster child for the local store) in my province. They a pretty much all controlled by huge corps at this point. Don't count on the local store owner doing the humane thing, because there isn't one.

I'm thinking whether to open a thread on capitalism or carry on here... TStael and I were having a slowburn conversation...

Suffice to say I disagree with enough in your post to make for an interesting discussion, as we are framing our terminology very differently re democracy.

Super synthetic reply, to evaluate your interest:
- Megacorps just another human group
- Capitalist legal framework = risk management of innovation
- Tension between secrecy and openness is transversal to humans = compete vs cooperate in all biology
- Global vs national scale does not change power dynamics
- Scale balances OODA speed vs size via focused priorities
- Competition is essential for democratic process
- Monopoly is an emotional taboo - property accumulation is ultimately irrational
- Coercive violence is the moral lynchpin

And yet, human != humane, it's all a matter of culture as we are very much a product of our environment.

For example, the ancient Romans, while very successful with their military were not particularly humane.

The profits oriented bourgeois class that heads corporation have repeatedly avoided social responsibilities (tax avoidance, exploitation of labour to the extent allowable by employee leverage and labour laws, externalities, especially environmental ones, etc).

Yes, to an extent which there is competition and I'm not arguing for the eradication of capitalism, but it should be managed and it doesn't for all areas of the economy.

Once a monopoly is established, a capitalistic framework becomes far less innovative.

And yet, not long before, you argued for the decentralisation of powers.

In many ways, huge multi-nationals are even more centralised than nation-states.

Personally, I'm more in favour of community-level endeavours (private or otherwise) when possible rather than all this heavy-handedness. People in the local community are more attuned with the particular needs of that community.

It's over-emphasised in our current framework. Let ideas compete more than people. An open democratic system is one where ideas compete all the time, but the process is ultimately a cooperative one.

I don't think that statement as a whole makes a lot of sense, but I'll address the later part.

I'm not a big fan of the new cell phone every year culture (I think consumerism needs to focus more on digital goods and services rather than traditional materialism), but I think everybody is entitled to the basics.

In our day and age, that would be: food on the table, a roof over your head, clothes and other basic necessities (soap, tooth brush, etc, etc), transportation (can be public transit), electricity and arguably a computer (every 5 to 10 years) that is hooked to a global network.

I'd argue that the above require stability which a purely capitalistic system is unable to provide. A large segment of the population in our society has a hard time meeting the above without going into debt as wages and employment stability are waning (this is a phenomenon that has happened all across capitalistic North America).

Quite bluntly, our employment needs will be less and less as machines and other scientific innovations become more and more capable to replace labour. To a large extent, I find that desirable (I'm a big fan of efficiency myself), but the basics still need to be met for the people we have.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that as the relatively small economical elite gets richer (which is inevitable in a monetary profit-oriented culture where the financial elite has most of the leverage), the middle class which actually runs the economy (they are the ones who buy goods and services that corporations sell) has less purchasing power to fuel the economy, leading to a slump (an historically observed phenomenon).

This is a very paradoxal state of affair in our employment-oriented capitalistic framework which has historically been shown to be unable to resolve this paradox without outside measures.