Gryzemuis on 23/5/2017 at 14:17
Thor is making the mistake that many people make. They mix the cause of terrorism (in this case the (exteme) ideas taken from Islam) with the fix (ban all immigrants). That's no good. It won't help much to ban all immigrants. Someone who wants to cause harm could just get a vacation-visum for 3 months. Or enter illegally via Greece. Or marry a cousin in Europe. Whatever. And, if you want to keep up the appearance of impartiality, you can't say "let's ban all muslim immigrants".
But what to do then ?
I think the first step would be to stop considering religion as something innocent. Stop thinking of it as an individual spiritual experience. We've taken away a lot of the power of the christian churches during the twentieth century. And if you didn't know any better, you'd think that christianity has always been about old people going to church on Sunday morning, singing a few songs to praise their lord, and reading a chapter from their own fairytale-book. But that's not what religion is about. Christianity has not always been like that.
Religion is a political force. It's goal is to acquire power, dominance, wealth, influence. Christianity went out into the world to convert everybody to become a christian. Some forces in Islam are doing the same thing today. Everybody bend for Allah, submit yourself to Islam law. Or else you are a heathen and you deserve no better than to die. This is politics. This is power-play. This is a war. I consider myself left from left. I don't understand why it is exactly the left-wing political parties that keep defending religion. Religion is not a hobby. Religion is the biggest conservative power in the world. Religion is the enemy.
And again, for the majority of followers of religion, it's not like that. They are not aware. They are not responsible for what others do. You can't blame them individually. But the ideas that they get implanted in their heads do matter. Look at Indonesia and what is happening there. Islam forces are trying to turn the country back to the middle ages. Look at Turkey. Look at how Saudi-Arabia is spreading Wahabism in Europe.
This has nothing to do with Islamophobia or xenophobia. It's not about white supremacists or white racists. It's not about whether our own homegrown Christianity is better than other religions. The struggle is between humanitarianism and retarded old backwards religions that want us to turn away from universal human rights, equality, fraternity and liberty. How the fuck can a modern human being support religion in any form ?
Thor on 23/5/2017 at 14:48
I don't really know how to solve a problem that's already matured. I don't care for this issue that much (don't have this problem in my country).
I'm more about not letting problems like that to mature in the first place.
Although I think a ban would still reduce, maybe even neutralize terrorism, because those alternative ways to get in a country could prove to be enough of an obstacle. But who knows. Also maybe there could be alternative methods to a "ban", like an interview with a lie detector. It's a pain in the ass, but probably better than nothing. Have we even seen the results of a ban to know that it won't help?
Religion can be used for good, but yeah it's a political force just like anything else. Btw, media is a religious force too. The narrative and the "side picked" is already predetermined and everything that follows is only to convince your belief of this side and they're not going to flip their narrative. Not most of the media anyway. It's just a less fairy-tale approach, because that shit simply doesn't fly anymore with the technological revolution.
SD on 23/5/2017 at 14:50
If precedent is any indication, this was probably an attack by Islamists, and it was probably perpetrated by someone who was born here, not immigrants.
The solution to things like this will not involve excluding people from the country because they have dark skin, but will include preventing young native Muslims from becoming radicalised.
Someone more cynical than myself may observe that the biggest promoter of radical Islam happens to be that oil rich nation on the Arabian peninsula with whom our leaders are falling over themselves to do multi-billion dollar deals.
Thor on 23/5/2017 at 14:56
Hehe, true that. It's an overwhelming task. For the rest of the countries it's best to just keep to themselves.
Tony_Tarantula on 23/5/2017 at 16:59
At this point I've become somewhat cold to this kind of thing, because the only thing we're going to get out of this is sanctimony as everyone rushes to show off how much they care.
Europe has made their bed, let them enjoy sleeping in it.
Tony_Tarantula on 23/5/2017 at 17:03
Quote:
This has nothing to do with Islamophobia or xenophobia. It's not about white supremacists or white racists. It's not about whether our own homegrown Christianity is better than other religions. The struggle is between humanitarianism and retarded old backwards religions that want us to turn away from universal human rights, equality, fraternity and liberty. How the fuck can a modern human being support religion in any form ?
You're demonstrating a fairly massive ignorance of what is actually in many religions. Do you know why women had property rights in the middle ages and witch burning didn't take off until the Renaissance era? It's because the Church was one of the most progressive institutions in the world at the time. Similarly some of the Eastern religions have promoted peaceful lifestyles.
What you are attributing to "religion" is simply true of
Literalist Abrahamic religion. and now extinct pagan sects that were tied to tribal identities.
Quote:
I don't understand why it is exactly the left-wing political parties that keep defending religion. Religion is not a hobby. Religion is the biggest conservative power in the world. Religion is the enemy.
Because those left-wing political parties hate Christianity more than they do Islam, and on some level see Islam as a useful ally.
But back to the original point...I've linked this a lot, but it is worth repeating: (
http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html)
Quote:
The Myth: Women Were Treated as CattleEurope during the Middle Ages is right up there with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the Top 5 Places It Would Suck to Have a Vagina. Women were horribly oppressed and were treated as second-class citizens -- their only responsibilities were to cook, clean, and squeeze out (male) babies on demand.
The Reality:
Up until about 200 years ago, Europe was a largely agricultural society. And the funny thing about back-breaking and often dehumanizing labor is that it has a weird way of equalizing people -- when literally every member of the family is out busting his or her ass every morning just to fend off the very real threat of starvation, gender roles and sexism suddenly don't seem all that important. Thus, when it came to household responsibilities, women and men were equals by default, since the women had to do all the same bullshit their husbands had to do. So should time travel ever become a thing, never tell a medieval peasant woman to go make her husband a sandwich, because she'll probably cackle her plague-breath all up in your face before snapping you in half like a twig.
And the story wasn't much different in the cities. If dad owned a shop or a tavern, his daughters were the ones helping out.
Sometimes a daughter would actually take over the family business and run it herself if her father became unable to, something that wouldn't really happen until much later in modern society. Women also generally ran the taverns in the Middle Ages -- in fact, women once ran England's entire beer industry. It's not quite clear when that changed, but we have to assume that at some point men realized they had allowed women to become all powerful by letting them be in charge of both beer and vaginas.
Women who weren't busy running taverns or growing crops to survive could join a convent, which may not sound all that impressive until you realize that this gave them access to education in a time when that was extremely rare -- nuns could read and write in an age when the most powerful kings couldn't. And if they stuck with it long enough to become the abbess of a convent, they were in a position of power very similar to a male lord -- only, you know, maybe even a little higher, seeing as how they technically reported directly to the King of Kings and all.
Caveat is that it's fairly clear when that changed: it changed after the Renaissance saw secular nobility become the dominant force over shaping social values and promptly rolled back many of the civil rights that had existed when the church dominated social value.
SD on 23/5/2017 at 17:39
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Europe has made their bed, let them enjoy sleeping in it.
You really are an absolute dick.
Stefan_Key on 23/5/2017 at 18:03
My condolences to the families who have lost their children and parents. :(:(
henke on 23/5/2017 at 18:43
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
"Suspected terrorist attack".
Yup, someone brought a nail-bomb to a children's party by mistake. Too bad it went off. He didn't intend to. Probably an honest mistake. No way we can say if this was a terrorist attack or not.
Also no speculation who is responsible. So many different people and factions who have blown up innocent people with pressure-cookers with nailbombs inside them over the last years. We have absolutely no idea who did it. No idea at all.
Yeah, that's the problem with media these days. Not enough speculation. They shouldn't wait for official word about what the investigation yields, they should just print what they
guess happened!
Seriously, Gryz. :tsktsk:
Trance on 23/5/2017 at 18:47
The best thing to do when crazy things happen is to go crazy right along with it.
