2010-09-04
Marx Brothers
One thing that dumbass Americans never get their head around is this quaint concept of "right to be an enemy". ie they attempt to secure their borders with technology and then say "ha, mission accomplished!" - you can't harm me! Fortress America.
The obvious problems with this "approach" are:
1. Maybe there's a technological flaw you aren't aware of. That's basically what happened on 9/11.
2. It's expensive to do things like that - why should you have to waste your money on this sort of nonsense in the first place? Why not beat the money out of whoever it is that is hostile towards you in the first place? And then kill him.
3. The very act of being hostile against a nice country like America is a sign of pure evil, and evil should be vanquished, not ignored. (hint for WWII latecomers).
4. When Americans travel overseas, they are subject to being singled out.
5. There is a scientific question to be answered too - why would someone be hostile towards America in the first place? I can show you Muslims who are pro-American (try Kurdistan). I can show you Arabs who are pro-American (take a look at Big Pharoah). And I can show you Arab Muslims who are pro-American (take a look at Mitha Al-Alusi).
Anyway, unlike dumbass Americans who don't know how to protect themselves, even after every man, woman and child has been issued with a bazooka and 1000 rounds of ammunition each, Blair seems to have his head on straight. I'm normally suspicious of left-wing types, but perhaps like Obama he's better than the morons who elected him. It doesn't come any clearer than this:
"Tony Blair has described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today"
Yes Tony. Hole in one.
Well, we could quibble a little bit. Perhaps instead of "radical" it should say "literal".
If we had Christians reading about City Rape in the bible, and then saying that God's word (which they say is the bible) is more important than man's word (ie the laws of the US), and then literally finding out who the rape victims were in New York and then abducting and stoning them to death (as commanded by the bible), we'd have a big problem too.
We'd have a tough choice on what to do with Christians. Most Christians reject such teachings. I have spent a lot of time trying to convince Christians to stop eating pork, as per Leviticus 11. I have yet to meet one who was persuaded to give it up. The most they will do is scurry around the bible looking for a verse that says "oh, this one can be spun to counter that one". The one thing you can guarantee they won't do is give up their underlying assumption that their book is right in the first place. Oh, and also you can guarantee that they won't stop doing what they wanted to do in the first place, ie Bacon Burgers are Best.
Regardless, the end result is that there are literally 0 Christians in the world, as in, people who truly believe that the bible is the word of God and that they should follow it as it is currently written. As for Muslims. Well, I have also tried to get them to do things like give up their Christian friends (Quran 5:51). They will generally deny what it says, or use some other excuse. They don't ever say "wow, thanks for letting me know, let me ring up all my (now-ex-) friends and tell them goodbye".
In the case of both Christians and Muslims, it's whatever bigotry etc they've managed to internalize in their youth. Not what is now shown to them when they are adults.
So simply reforming the teachings is probably enough to do the trick. We won't know for sure until we've got more data after a concerted campaign. That includes teaching in America (and Australia!) - to make it look more like Khazakstan or Kurdistan or Iraq or what Iran will most likely look like as soon as we get an opportunity to look under the hood (ie in an environment of freedom).
And as I've said, it's not just Islam.
The thing that is common between Marx, Mao and Mohammed, is that they all have bad ideologies, born of dogma, or bigotry of some form. As I've said before, this stuff exists everywhere. I've heard outrageous anti-American lies from people like Michael Moore too. You can't just go up to the guy and show him around America and ask him to see the real America where he can see that he's full of shit. It's a waste of resources to even try.
We can do something about his government fan-base overseas though.
Bombs away, Blair!
And most importantly - the fact that we have a ready solution to problems is why we should care about those problems as priority. Actually, you can care about all problems, e.g. Australian muggers (ie you can help protect my human rights - I'd love that), but it's not a good use of resources. The Australian government is already trying to protect my rights, and as much as I would like the number of Australian police to be multiplied 10-fold, there will basically never be enough to ensure that I am never mugged. Better to help people who are effectively being mugged by their own government. We know where they are, and we have the technology to directly stop them, instead of piss-farting around in Sydney hoping for a mugger to make his presence known.
So yes. Care about me. Really really care. But don't act with any more resources than are already deployed, unless you see an opportunity to make a difference. The juciest opportunities are places like Iran, where you get to eliminate nukes before they're deployed, pick up an allied country (most likely) or at worst, neutral, and free 70 million people. Cool or what?
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The obvious problems with this "approach" are:
1. Maybe there's a technological flaw you aren't aware of. That's basically what happened on 9/11.
2. It's expensive to do things like that - why should you have to waste your money on this sort of nonsense in the first place? Why not beat the money out of whoever it is that is hostile towards you in the first place? And then kill him.
3. The very act of being hostile against a nice country like America is a sign of pure evil, and evil should be vanquished, not ignored. (hint for WWII latecomers).
4. When Americans travel overseas, they are subject to being singled out.
5. There is a scientific question to be answered too - why would someone be hostile towards America in the first place? I can show you Muslims who are pro-American (try Kurdistan). I can show you Arabs who are pro-American (take a look at Big Pharoah). And I can show you Arab Muslims who are pro-American (take a look at Mitha Al-Alusi).
Anyway, unlike dumbass Americans who don't know how to protect themselves, even after every man, woman and child has been issued with a bazooka and 1000 rounds of ammunition each, Blair seems to have his head on straight. I'm normally suspicious of left-wing types, but perhaps like Obama he's better than the morons who elected him. It doesn't come any clearer than this:
"Tony Blair has described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today"
Yes Tony. Hole in one.
Well, we could quibble a little bit. Perhaps instead of "radical" it should say "literal".
If we had Christians reading about City Rape in the bible, and then saying that God's word (which they say is the bible) is more important than man's word (ie the laws of the US), and then literally finding out who the rape victims were in New York and then abducting and stoning them to death (as commanded by the bible), we'd have a big problem too.
We'd have a tough choice on what to do with Christians. Most Christians reject such teachings. I have spent a lot of time trying to convince Christians to stop eating pork, as per Leviticus 11. I have yet to meet one who was persuaded to give it up. The most they will do is scurry around the bible looking for a verse that says "oh, this one can be spun to counter that one". The one thing you can guarantee they won't do is give up their underlying assumption that their book is right in the first place. Oh, and also you can guarantee that they won't stop doing what they wanted to do in the first place, ie Bacon Burgers are Best.
Regardless, the end result is that there are literally 0 Christians in the world, as in, people who truly believe that the bible is the word of God and that they should follow it as it is currently written. As for Muslims. Well, I have also tried to get them to do things like give up their Christian friends (Quran 5:51). They will generally deny what it says, or use some other excuse. They don't ever say "wow, thanks for letting me know, let me ring up all my (now-ex-) friends and tell them goodbye".
In the case of both Christians and Muslims, it's whatever bigotry etc they've managed to internalize in their youth. Not what is now shown to them when they are adults.
So simply reforming the teachings is probably enough to do the trick. We won't know for sure until we've got more data after a concerted campaign. That includes teaching in America (and Australia!) - to make it look more like Khazakstan or Kurdistan or Iraq or what Iran will most likely look like as soon as we get an opportunity to look under the hood (ie in an environment of freedom).
And as I've said, it's not just Islam.
The thing that is common between Marx, Mao and Mohammed, is that they all have bad ideologies, born of dogma, or bigotry of some form. As I've said before, this stuff exists everywhere. I've heard outrageous anti-American lies from people like Michael Moore too. You can't just go up to the guy and show him around America and ask him to see the real America where he can see that he's full of shit. It's a waste of resources to even try.
We can do something about his government fan-base overseas though.
Bombs away, Blair!
And most importantly - the fact that we have a ready solution to problems is why we should care about those problems as priority. Actually, you can care about all problems, e.g. Australian muggers (ie you can help protect my human rights - I'd love that), but it's not a good use of resources. The Australian government is already trying to protect my rights, and as much as I would like the number of Australian police to be multiplied 10-fold, there will basically never be enough to ensure that I am never mugged. Better to help people who are effectively being mugged by their own government. We know where they are, and we have the technology to directly stop them, instead of piss-farting around in Sydney hoping for a mugger to make his presence known.
So yes. Care about me. Really really care. But don't act with any more resources than are already deployed, unless you see an opportunity to make a difference. The juciest opportunities are places like Iran, where you get to eliminate nukes before they're deployed, pick up an allied country (most likely) or at worst, neutral, and free 70 million people. Cool or what?
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 15:29 
