Deaths, injuries after reports of explosion at Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena — Page 9

Kad said: "Since qolbinau and Dave are so fond of mocking the idea of coming together after an attack like Manchester, and mocking "religion of peace" (a phrase used in this thread only by people mockingly, by the way), and write it off as doing nothing to prevent such attacks...

...what exactly are you proposing as a practical solution? What is going to stop terrorists in the immediate future, exactly? There are already hundreds of thousands of people who have sworn allegiance to ISIS,."



We are not mocking that idea, we just say that it is sweet but has nothing to do with the cause.

There is no immediate solution. These brainwashed people are a result of years of planting seeds in their mind, which started as young kids.

Colbinau mentions a whole list of things that could be done, so that maybe in 100 years the new generations will slowly come to their senses.

Dave said "Some people may be easier influenced by indoctrination than others. Also, events in (later) life can teach you things, change your though process and wake up a person."

I agree with this point, as I was touching on it in my post about indoctrination. If your mind has developed while living life, you learn right from wrong.

Kad said: "How? How do you educate people in the Middle East, in different cultures in general? Cultures with entirely different social mores and values than you? "

I can name a whole list of suicide bombers who lived in the UK and the USA, going to normal schools. Something in their life-lessons went wrong.

Everyone has. Except the ostrich with the head in the sand and the goldfish with a 5 second memory.

I agree that it's difficult, but knowledge is power. I feel that children must be exposed to much more information about all religions and with much more critical thinking, from various angles, about life and any aspect of it.

For a start we could change laws which make school provide this lessons (about the whole lists posted earlier). Show people that life goes beyond any religion.

"What will happen to people who resist, and people will resist as you are implementing values that they do not hold?"

We are not implementing values, we are teaching them to watch and learn about all values. Only then one can make a well considered choice. The fear of an open mind will eventually disappear if people are not raised narrow-minded.

In a case like this, everyone acts surprised that the bomber did his crime in the name of Allah, while the seeds planted for his conviction that Allah is almighty were planted long ago by his parents when he was a kid. That became his truth, his identity. From there it's only a small step to argue if Allah wants him to do something good or bad, as long as the boy thinks that's what Allah wants, it's true in his mind. Because Allah is almighty, that was taught as a kid and that's what he chanted in the streets months before the attack. We need to make people aware about how minds are formed, what is the cause of this, think from all sides and think critically from a young age.

The first thing every country has to do is to separate state and church.

Updated On: 5/25/17 at 12:40 PM

Kill the gangbangers, kill the terrorists. It's that simple.

Mister Matt said: "Bingo! "We want to do the exact OPPOSITE of indoctrination. We want people to think like us and do things our way because we're obviously smarter and better than they are. We'll present them with OUR 'facts' and either naturally or eventually, they will see things our way.


"

Mister Matt, I can't help but feel there is something very sinister about your response here - and it just leads me to again wonder what your affiliation with religion is. When you say 'facts' you are obviously questioning the truth and legitimacy of what such education what entail - such education would involve non-biased religious education (including the positive and negative outcomes of religion - and information about ALL religions), critical thinking (i.e., an argument is a conclusion supported by premises. What makes a an argument convincing or not), and science (biology - particularly evolution etc.). Thankfully we already have some of these aspects, which hopefully explains to me why religious beliefs in Western countries does seem to be becoming more and more obscure. It would definitely not involve sitting people down and telling them there is no God etc. - all the education would be supported by science or evidence. If you even begin to question the legitimacy of this I just have to shake my head - you are basically saying that giving people a wide education is indoctrination. Very, very sinister.

Will reply to your post Kad in a second - I think you have a good point.

“There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.”
? Molly Ivins

World’s deadliest gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) begins to infiltrate Australia

There are fears the gang, Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, is already here with their graffiti tags spotted around NSW. The gang could be under a different guise and is going by the names “Tiny Devils” and “SPS-13” in Adelaide.

It is understood they’ve been targeting Australia to tap into the booming (and lucrative) drug market here.

More at the link above.

qolbinau said: "I suppose these would be unpopular opinions, but if we think about a continuum from 'personal freedom' to government control/intervention"

You've lost my support entirely here. The amount of freedom or privacy I'm willing to give up because of a small group of assholes is precisely zero.

Even if I thought it would keep us safer, which I don't really think, my answer would be the same: I'll keep every ounce of my freedom and accept the risks of living in the real world.

Every so often I hear someone propose something like putting ignition locks on every car to prevent drunk driving. You know what? It would be just a minor annoyance, it would almost certainly work, and drunk driving is a much bigger problem than terrorism. But I'm not willing to accept it. And if I'm not willing to accept even a slight loss of liberty to prevent three 9/11s worth of deaths every year, I'm sure as **** not willing to accept it in the face of a much more trivial threat.

qolbinau said: "I can tell we do have fundamentally different perspectives here because the idea of an ignition lock for drunk drivers sounds like a good idea to me."

Just to be clear, the notion I'm objecting to is the idea of putting ignition locks on all cars. I have no problem with making such locks a condition of probation for those convicted of a crime. Based on your paraphrase, I'm not sure I was clear about what I was opposing.

But, yes, we come from different perspectives, I'm quite sure. In fact, I oppose pretty much all the examples you list of existing limitations on freedom.

qolbinau said: "Maybe there is a way to compromise having more powers in intercepting communication so that it is not as 1984-esque as I describe, but still more powerful than the current legislation."

A lot of us in the US, including me, think that current government snooping is already far too broad, with the NSA collecting all cell phone metadata and such. As I said, I'll keep my privacy and take the risks of living in a world with some real dangers (though fewer than in previous decades, if you check the statistics).

On the other issues you bring up, I'll just note that I'm pretty much on the opposite side of things across the board. :)

Sadly, many of your fellow democrat friends have forgotten that President Obama was responsible for more civilian causalities in the Middle East than the previous two presidents combined (amazing to learn, I know). The drone strike program saw a major expansion under Obama, and it is believed this program alone was responsible for the deaths of more than 500,000 innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan.