Give Me a Urinal or Give Me Death!

#14581

Guest_6c5f82c0 wrote:I don't understand.

We've punched Nazis. We've no platformed Milo. We've sent protestors to Berkely.

And still children are being killed.

We even shamed Lou Reed.

I'm out of ideas.

Ca we give a Guest a Best Post Evah?

#14582

Can. Can. Cancan.

http://www.hotelroomsearch.net/im/hotel ... ncan-1.jpg

#14583

Brive1987 wrote:Yes. And copied the salient point, which was that you claimed defeating ISIS wasn't a priority - that going thru the bombing motions was fine because ... other reasons. That spells fake (ISIS) war to me. Maybe that's fine because of ... the real important reasons. But if that's the case we'll have our planes back please until the job Gets real.

I don't think that, given that fighting ISIS is ostensibly all that's going on, you can get your planes back home so easily, and since there have been no Aussie casualties it's hard to justify pulling out.

Even if most people started to think that there needs to be a change in US strategy, with a narrower and specific focus on taking down ISIS and then getting back home, you're US allies.

If you're lukewarm about supporting the US, especially if you want to get out of what you've gotten into, expect to be treated like the French after they refused to let Dubya have the UN rubber stamp on his idiotic Iraq War in 2003. Lots of grandstanding, boycotts, distrust, and smear campaigns, especially from a Republican administration, and especially from someone as bombastic as the Orangeutan-in-Chief.

If the war was as unpopular as the 2003 intervention in Iraq was you could get away with pulling out. Since the optics for now are good, and the US can blame the slow buildup towards the annihilation of ISIS on Russia still supporting Assad and can avoid getting boots on the ground easily, since it's a very unpopular move, you're stuck in a quagmire along with everyone else.

Anyway Trimp said it was a priority and he would get his generals on it right away. What happened to that report they were writing ?

The Orange Cunt promised to deal with ISIS right away by doing the logical thing, choosing the lesser evil, i.e. scrapping the plans to get rid of Assad and focus only on the Islamic State. It's what he campaigned on. He also claimed that he wanted to reduce the influence of the Saudis over the US foreign policy. Both claims look like bad jokes now: his administration is clamoring for Assad's head on a silver plate, they're obsessed with Iran to an astonishing degree reached previously only by nutjobs like John Bolton, and the Trumpoline has shilled for the Saudis like nobody did before. The war in Syria will likely drag on and on and on, for at least another three to four years, if not longer.

#14584

Trumpoline

Please don't do that. It's insulting to my people.

#14585

Phil_Giordana_FCD wrote:
Trumpoline
Please don't do that. It's insulting to my people.

[youtube][/youtube]

#14586

You people are monsters!

#14587

So you are saying that if we were there to beat ISIS we have to eat a #fakewar shit sandwich .....

Or be accused of being a fromage munching surrender monkey. Mon dieu.

#14588

7.00 am and PZ and his Horde are once again adopting the lying prone position.

They have this one down pat. Lucky for him, he has found a juicy conferedate statue story to obsess about.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/imag ... QolGEN2OFA

#14589

Brive1987 wrote:7.00 am and PZ and his Horde are once again adopting the lying prone position.

They have this one down pat. Lucky for him, he has found a juicy conferedate statue story to obsess about.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/imag ... QolGEN2OFA

Muslim prayer time in, say, Queensland?

#14590

No wait, 40E - 180 = 140W of course, so they would be at the bottom of the Pacific.

#14591

Bhurzum wrote:The first suggestion on how to deal with the latest attack is a doozy!
Swift, decisive and guaranteed to prevent repeat attacks.
Fuck me...

When Britain "carried on" during World War II, they kept functioning, but they also kept fighting and didn't give up. Here, they are trying to pretend to act like the problem does not exist.

#14592

Brive1987 wrote:So you are saying that if we were there to beat ISIS we have to eat a #fakewar shit sandwich .....

Or be accused of being a fromage munching surrender monkey. Mon dieu.

What I'm saying is that this is yet another unwinnable war, at least unless there's a change of strategy.

Unless there's a pragmatic compromise between the Russians and the US to focus on wiping out ISIS and accept that Assad is likely to stay ISIS is going to survive for a few more years.

Then either Assad is toppled and Syria turns into a Salafi theocracy or a state of anarchy like Lybia, or Assad carries on, massacres a few Sunnis, kills and tortures a few rebels and since he's been weakened by the war he loses control of many areas, which go back to tribal or go forth to Salafi rule.

The Kurds might break away and open yet another can of worms with Turkey.

#14593

deLurch wrote:
Bhurzum wrote:The first suggestion on how to deal with the latest attack is a doozy!
Swift, decisive and guaranteed to prevent repeat attacks.
Fuck me...
When Britain "carried on" during World War II, they kept functioning, but they also kept fighting and didn't give up. Here, they are trying to pretend to act like the problem does not exist.

It's peace for our time.

#14594

Piers Morgan was tweeting the names and pics. Of victims ... some people are now denouncing him as a "hate monger".

We should be thinking of the true casualties,the poor muslims who will have to endure sidelong glances and suspicion. That is the real crime here.

Enough with this glorification of fame whoring bomb victims.

#14595

Brive1987 wrote:Can anyone explain why it's so difficult to break ISIS given they are a semi formed armed force mostly sitting in a defined urban location or out in the desert? It's not like they are Viet Cong in the village / paddy field ecosystem.

Helicopter gunships, armed drones, special forces, smart bombs, third world canon fodder .......
What the hell ?

We could easily wipe out the the cities they occupy. But it is a little more difficult to wipe out ISIS without wiping out the relatively more innocent local populations.

Not to mention the main power structures are not in Iraq, but inside countries we are not at war with.

And once you wipe them out, there still exists a power vacuum in those regions and the people there will probably end up hating us with a vengeance.

Best to try a more surgical approach that only gets the bad guys, but we are still left with a power vacuum in the region.

#14596

Brive1987 wrote:Thought this must have been a troll
Nope. It's real
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/20 ... s_and.html

If that is what it takes to wake up the left, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire in psychological war.

#14597

rayshul wrote:I have heard more about the fucking IRA from my lefty friends than I have about fucking Islam.
I am fucking done.

No sense in arguing about it until the facts roll in.

#14598

deLurch wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:Can anyone explain why it's so difficult to break ISIS given they are a semi formed armed force mostly sitting in a defined urban location or out in the desert? It's not like they are Viet Cong in the village / paddy field ecosystem.

Helicopter gunships, armed drones, special forces, smart bombs, third world canon fodder .......
What the hell ?
We could easily wipe out the the cities they occupy. But it is a little more difficult to wipe out ISIS without wiping out the relatively more innocent local populations.

Not to mention the main power structures are not in Iraq, but inside countries we are not at war with.

And once you wipe them out, there still exists a power vacuum in those regions and the people there will probably end up hating us with a vengeance.

Best to try a more surgical approach that only gets the bad guys, but we are still left with a power vacuum in the region.

The best way not to create a power vacuum is to broker a compromise between the Kurds/SDF and Assad, invite the other rebels to join the compromise, if not stop funding them, and gang up on the Salafis, accepting that in order not to create a power vacuum Assad is likely to stay in control of at least some parts of Syria. This would make the GCC and Turkey unhappy, though, so it's never going to happen.

#14599

Robin Williams commits suicide to distract the media from the Michael Brown shooting and everyone is besides themselves with grief. ( displaying his shit lord white privledge)

Meanwhile this poor suicide bomber, um religious martyr ,gets blown up by a nail bomb and everyone is cursing them. Never have I seen such racism and intolerance on open display. This is why we need social justice.

#14600

He was the best Simon Templar. RIP

#14601

Roger Moore now? And to think my wife was sharing an ophthalmologist's waiting room with him just 6 years ago.

#14602

pro-boxing-fan wrote:He was the best Simon Templar. RIP

I had a raised eyebrow when I just saw the news.

;)

#14603

Damn. I preferred Moore as Simon Templar but I'm watching The Persuaders on Blu-ray and he's hilarious.

#14604

Kirbmarc wrote:
gurugeorge wrote:
d4m10n wrote:

As of now, the original PDF remains available. Great stuff.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk
That is ... a thing of beauty. I'd noticed a few quite forthright anti-SJW Tweets from Shermer recently and was wondering what was up.

I hope more big guns get pissed off enough to do more and more of these Poes, it's one of the best ways to deflate pretensions. I'd love to see Dennett doing one of these, I'm sure he'd be great at coining exotic PoMo "deepities."
I've found this article which is critical of the hoax. The author seems to be a libertarian and against no-platforming, so no SJW, and he argues that Boghossian and Lindsay were dishonest because they didn't clarify well enough that the journal was a predatory publication.

It seems to me that the author of the article is missing the point of the hoax, and quibbling about technicalities, but apparently a lot of my Facebook friends are taking this "rebuttal" very seriously and arguing that Boghossian and Lindsay were "dishonest" and "morons".

I think that Boghossian and Lindsay have really stepped into a hornet's nest with their article. I hope this leads to a honest discussion on the lack of rigor into the humanities, but so far the humanities are circling the wagon and attacking the messenger instead of discussing the message.

The relevance of the journal being "predatory" escapes me. Some journals charge $$$ to publish, some charge $$$ to access, some do both, some give you a choice, and very few do neither. And so what? My first peer reviewed article, published ~35 years in the Journal of Chemical Physics, cost $200 to publish, as I recall, and access to the journal was only by (expensive) paper subscription. (These days JCP gives you a choice - free to publish / $$$ to access or $2200 to publish / free to access.) I guess that makes JCP "predatory", but it's nevertheless considered to be a high quality journal, and there would be a real scandal if something remotely like this was published.

The claim that "no reputable humanities journal charges to publish" smells strongly of the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

The more convincing argument is that they only had to get their BS past one set of reviewers (allegedly only one) who may not have had any, uh, expertise in gender studies - whatever that means, so this doesn't really prove there's an overall lack of rigor in gender studies.

In that regard, I think the authors screwed up by going public too soon. Speaking as a falsificationist (so I've been rereading Popper, sue me), the hypothesis here is that gender studies is a legitimate and rigorous branch of science. (I can't believe I just wrote that.) A proper experiment would be to publish a pile of crap like this in one of their journals, and then wait and see how long it took for the bogosity to be detected. If it was detected immediately then there's some rigor there, but if not, and worse, if it was cited, then you've falsified the claim of rigor.

Of course if you did this the ethics weenies would come at you for letting a fraud stand uncorrected, or something along those lines. The counter to that is that it's far more important to detect and reject crap than it is to coddle a bunch of charlatans.

#14605

Brive1987 wrote:
Bhurzum wrote:The first suggestion on how to deal with the latest attack is a doozy!

Swift, decisive and guaranteed to prevent repeat attacks.

Fuck me...

I have been sitting here this morning wondering why things feel different to how they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s when various incarnations of Irish Nationalists were carrying out terror attacks.

For those of you who are not familiar, here is a list of attacks in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... _in_London
I am not too far from London. And I should say that aside from having various train journeys disrupted, I was not too far away from the Harrods bombing, my family was on the way there at the time. And I knew one person who was killed and another who was injured in other bombings. ( Baltic Exchange and Docklands).

Strangely, the 1980s seemed worse than the 1990s, but even then there was no fear and certainly not the level of anger and helplessness that i am seeing today.

Essentially, I think the real difference is that back then we felt that something was being done. Obviously there was acknowledgement of the problem and no argument about who the enemy was. You had raids, arrests, trials. Occasionally there would be a victory such as when the SAS "executed" three terrorists in Gibraltar... it caused some controversy among the lefties, but most of us enjoyed it.
[youtube][/youtube]

I am sure that the security services are just as active now as they were back then. We can reasonably assume they are actually more numerous, better equipped and far more sophisticated but we are hearing nothing about it. This playing down of the whole issue is seriously backfiring. I get the impression that all across Europe, people feel we are just sitting ducks waiting to be attacked while the authorities do nothing but let in more terrorists.

#14606

MarcusAu wrote:When I first googled 'Manchester Bombing' last night this was in one of the links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing

But that was 21 years ago so it does not change the probability that if an explosion happens in the current day we can make a reasonably accurate guess about who is likely to be responsible.

Still it is interesting to compare the methods - the PIRA were more interested in property damage and would give warning first.

In the end the IRA (and subdivisions) seem easier to deal with (though I was not living in Britain in the 70s/80s/90s - so what do I know) - and I've heard that after 9/11 the funding dried up.

I lived in London in the '70s, and the thing that pissed most people off about the IRA attacks was the way they disrupted travel.

#14607

I think my comment from retro-ninja'd by Vicky

#14608

KiwiInOz wrote:
Guest_6c5f82c0 wrote:I don't understand.

We've punched Nazis. We've no platformed Milo. We've sent protestors to Berkely.

And still children are being killed.

We even shamed Lou Reed.

I'm out of ideas.
Ca we give a Guest a Best Post Evah?

Wish we could - that was a doozie...

#14609

Kirbmarc wrote:Humpty Trumpty seemed to walk some more along the Kerry path, what with his hostility towards the Saudi lobby, but recently did a 180 and went on to shill even more than Clinton ever did (and that's saying a lot). His supporters who voted him to deal with muslim terrorism should be furious that he's made a deal with one of the biggest sources of muslim terrorism in the world, they should be absolutely disgusted with his tongue-rimming of the KSA, but I guess that he was able to channel the 'Murican rage towards Iran.

From what I've seen his supporters are furious (I should kind of sort of count myself among their number, even if I didn't vote for him, and I'm livid as well). I'd never seen so much weeping and gnashing of teeth as the day he bombed Syria. I'm in this odd situation where I don't actually know a single non-politician (right or left) who supports Trump's actions, yet we're at each other's throats just the same.

#14610

Kirbmarc wrote:Have you read the rest of my post?

The only group whose priority is to fight ISIS are the Kurds: the US are mostly fighting ISIS through them.

I read the whole post and found it quite interesting.

But, then, in classic internet fashion, I decided to ignore it because you keep using "US" as if it were plural. In this way, I recovered my sense of superiority which was briefly threatened by reading something that made it clear that I have an overly simplistic view of what's going on in the world.

Whew.

That was close.

#14611

Spike13 wrote:Piers Morgan was tweeting the names and pics. Of victims ... some people are now denouncing him as a "hate monger".

We should be thinking of the true casualties,the poor muslims who will have to endure sidelong glances and suspicion. That is the real crime here.

Enough with this glorification of fame whoring bomb victims.

You need to step back a bit more. The true victims are Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift as last night will move Ariana Venti far above them.

Remember when the competition between female celebrities was who could adopt more black babies from Africa? That was child's play.

#14612

No less than six FtB writers have weighed in on the conceptual penis hoax. I left a comment at A Trivial Knot.

“What [Sokal] did instead, was bring public attention to an issue.”

Judging by the six freethought bloggers who responded to B&L, they succeeded in bringing attention to (at least) the issue of Cogent’s review process, which failed to distinguish between genuine poststructuralist discursive analysis and a shoddy knock-off created by authors with zero expertise in the field.

I'd say more, but you never know what is going to make it through moderation.

There are legitimate criticisms to be had here, but it doesn't make much sense to say that Bogo & Lindsay didn't bring public attention to an actual problem.

#14613

Correction: Only three authors at FtB.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

#14614

Aaaaand - it's a [REDACTED]. Salman Abedi, a "known wolf".

#14615

feathers wrote:
CommanderTuvok wrote:I remember when Ophelia Benson had a crying fit when her dog, Cooper, had the cone of shame. I think she then found out you can get alternatives, some kind of doggie hood, and was crying that vets should use them instead.

That might be my imagination making that up, but it is a memory I have. Ophelia suffering tends to get stored in the memory banks.
Ophelia has a dog? I'd reckoned she's more the type to have a cat or fifty.

Indeed. The toxoplasmosis seems strong in that one.

#14616

gurugeorge wrote:Aaaaand - it's a [REDACTED]. Salman Abedi, a "known wolf".

Has this been officially confirmed? Sorry to sound hyper-skeptical but there's a reason why I'm asking. IF this is confirmed I'll write one of my posts with a few speculations (to be taken with a generous dose of salt) about the "known wolf" phenomenon in general (not specifically about this case), based on a few things I've seen and heard about, including a couple of encounters with "suspicious" figures.

But first I want to see if this is confirmed, because I don't want to look like an irresponsible idiot if it turns out that the attacker wasn't a "known wolf".

#14617

Kirbmarc wrote:
gurugeorge wrote:Aaaaand - it's a [REDACTED]. Salman Abedi, a "known wolf".
Has this been officially confirmed? Sorry to sound hyper-skeptical but there's a reason why I'm asking. IF this is confirmed I'll write one of my posts with a few speculations (to be taken with a generous dose of salt) about the "known wolf" phenomenon in general (not specifically about this case), based on a few things I've seen and heard about, including a couple of encounters with "suspicious" figures.

But first I want to see if this is confirmed, because I don't want to look like an irresponsible idiot if it turns out that the attacker wasn't a "known wolf".

You will decide for yourself if naming Abedi is wise, but:

Newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/salman-abedi-ar ... ing-613785

CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ariana-gran ... sis-claim/

USA TOday:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 102044682/

#14618

Lsuoma wrote:
KiwiInOz wrote:
Guest_6c5f82c0 wrote:I don't understand.

We've punched Nazis. We've no platformed Milo. We've sent protestors to Berkely.

And still children are being killed.

We even shamed Lou Reed.

I'm out of ideas.
Ca we give a Guest a Best Post Evah?
Wish we could - that was a doozie...

0x6c5f82c0 should got for the Golden Troll award and post that on FTB, or one of the regressive blogs on Patheos.

#14619

d4m10n wrote:Correction: Only three authors at FtB.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

Damion, can you please turn off that annoying tapathingy sig? Thanks a dozen.

#14620

Bhurzum wrote:The first suggestion on how to deal with the latest attack is a doozy!

Swift, decisive and guaranteed to prevent repeat attacks.

Fuck me...

KEEP CALM
AND
KILL ALL
THE
IMAMS

#14621

feathers wrote:
d4m10n wrote:Correction: Only three authors at FtB.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk
Damion, can you please turn off that annoying tapathingy sig? Thanks a dozen.

Ugh.

#14622

Censorship!

#14623

I'm no Sokal or Boghassian & Lindsay, but turning their nonsense batteries back in their faces is good fun:

https://disqus.com/home/discussion/acco ... 3320842509

#14624

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
KEEP CALM
AND
KILL ALL
THE
IMAMS

Yeah, keep statements like that to the pit. If anyone took you seriously, police might consider that a call for murder.

#14625

Really? wrote:You will decide for yourself if naming Abedi is wise, but:

Newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/salman-abedi-ar ... ing-613785

CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ariana-gran ... sis-claim/

USA TOday:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 102044682/

Thanks, what I wanted to know about was whether the attacker had been known by police/intelligence services before the attack.

Anyway I've reviewed what I was going to write, and I've decided that since the attack seems to be related to islamic terrorism it's not irresponsible to say what I know, what I've heard about, and what I speculate about "known wolves" (terrorists who are said to be known by law enforcement, but not have been considered a threat or at least not a major threat before they attack).

What I know or I've heard about from others.

First, a disclaimer. This is anecdotal evidence, so take it with a pinch of salt. Also I won't name names or places, but just assume that everything I'll write in this paragraph is something I've witnessed or heard about and has happened in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Italy, France, the UK and Germany. I've lived in some of these countries for some time, I've visited all of them and I have friends who live in these countries who have told me things.

1) To start off, something which is just common sense, even though it's rarely admitted in public. Many "officially authorized" mosques, especially big ones in big cities, are bugged by the police or by law enforcement/anti-terrorism agencies. Many people who attend those mosques know or at least suspect this.

Whether this is legal or not, ethical or not, is a complex question, and probably one that needs to be answered on a case by case basis. But laws and ethics aside it's a move that just makes sense. Despite the public denial that terrorism has anything to do with islam law enforcement agencies know that there is a link, and act on their knowledge. It wouldn't really surprise me if it turned out that many law enforcement agencies have a database of muslim-goers, and if they had files on those who look like they might be trouble, even if they're not imminent threats.

2)The bugging of many mosques is kind of an open secret in many muslim communities, actually, so much that some people who have, let's say, "problematic" ideas have created their own "unofficial" mosques. I've been to one of them once (don't ask why): it was in the back of a barber shop (no, I won't tell you where). Another thing which I suspect, and I've heard about, is that many "unofficial" mosques are also more or less known to the police as well, and actually they're kept under even more surveillance than the "official" ones. New people in those places are looked at with suspicion, especially if they come more than once. I'm pretty sure that law enforcement has their men watching them, and others trying to sneak in. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a database of people who have been in those mosques.

3) Websites, forums, blogs, chats where muslim people gather are also often kept under control by the police, who look for signs of people who might fit into the profile of being someone to keep an eye on. (This is known by pretty much everyone I think).

4) Another important thing to know is that there are some people who gravitate around small or "unofficial" mosques who preach, let's say "problematic" ideas, like the idea that western women are sluts, that the west is decadent and will become muslim in the future, that when Allah wants you to fight the kaffir he'll let you know loud and clear, that violence in the name of islam is a good thing when the right people do it for the right reasons, that the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy, that the Jews have made the Christians weak and ripe for muslim conquest, that Bin Laden was framed and the 9/11 attacks were a Jewish conspiracy, that your life is only good if tit's spent fighting for Allah, etc. etc.

These ideas aren't illegal (except Holocaust denial in certain contexts in Germany, but not in private contexts) and they're not quite inciting people to terrorism, but there are some people who tend to preach them to others and act very defensively if asked uncomfortable questions. Some of those people have cliques of yes men and unofficial "bodyguards" who follow them around.

Many of them are active in the community, or hang around together in universities and take part in "Muslim societies", or have networks of charities and of mutual assistance between muslims. Some of them use those charities and groups in a not-so-ethical way, like outing LGBT people, policing other muslims' behavior through guilt and shame, dumping garbage on the doors of those they deem to be "unclean" or harass them, talk to their families, do "interventions" when someone seems to be not so pious, even try to frame others for things they didn't do.

I know for sure that one of those groups deliberately threw around garbage after a gay pride and then took pictures to show to others how filthy gay people are. They also took pictures of those who took part in the pride and didn't look "white", and ran away when confronted by a police officer.

Some of those people frequently change their cell phones, much more frequently than most other people. They also act pretty paranoid towards those they don't know. Some of them have studied in Saudi Arabia, or have friends who have studied in Saudi Arabia. Many of them have a lot of Qu'rans and other books to give to others for free, and some of them write in local, self-published muslim newspapers/magazine. Some of them move around a lot.

Many of them are dressed in white, have long but well-kept beards (which is the Salafi attire), and are fans of people like Zakir Naik. Many of them are obsessed with looking, talking and acting like Mohammed, to the point where they refuse to use toothbrushes and instead use a stick to clean their teeth, like old Mo did.

Again, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those people are closely monitored by law enforcement, along with the people they most frequently interact with.

5) There are also foreign imams who come out of nowhere to preach for a few days, or who take over a new mosque with a lot of money to pay for bills which have no known origins. Those people usually interact with the more "casual" style of preachers of "problematic" ideas, but are even more secretive and paranoid when it comes to strangers.

Again, probably some of them are monitored by law enforcement along with others they come frequently in contact with, yadda yadda yadda.

Speculation time:

1) I think that in some "unofficial" mosques some of the kind of people I've talked about might be doing some recruiting/ brainwashing/ "radicalization" / networking of other muslims, suggesting ideas, discussing plans, etc. etc. I suspect that some of those plans might be tied to terrorism.

2) I suspect that police/law enforcement agencies have many databases, like the "troublemaker" database, the "unofficial mosques" database, the "Salafi-looking people" database, the "foreign imams" database and the "internet radicalization" database. Those databases might contain thousands of names and files.

3) Whenever a terrorist is found to be a "known wolf" (someone who acted more or less on their own, but are known to law enforcement) I suspect that their names was in one of those police/law enforcement databases, that for some reason they might have done or said something that made law enforcement interested in them even though they didn't violate any laws (if they had been found to be planning illegal acts that would have counted as violating laws, so it's more along the lines of "expressed problematic ideas" or "has ties with lots of other suspicious-looking people" more than "they were known terrorists").

4) There are fewer "true lone wolves" (people who radicalized on their own) than you'd expect, and a lot of radicalization happens not online but in "unofficial" mosques. The people who are made to feel guilty by the informal "religious police" are then told to cleanse themselves, to redeem in some way, and some of them might decide that a good way to feel "clean" is to become a martyr.

#14626

deLurch wrote:
Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
KEEP CALM
AND
KILL ALL
THE
IMAMS
Yeah, keep statements like that to the pit. If anyone took you seriously, police might consider that a call for murder.

Kind of unwise, I agree, and also pretty inaccurate. Not only we shouldn't kill imams, not even the shitty ones (of which there is far too many) but some of them are actually not so bad, or might be not so bad, for us to group them with the more cunt-ish ones. I know that statements like these are hyperbolic in nature, like jokes about how all priests are pedophiles, but yeah, not really useful.

#14627

It would appear there is an audience in waiting for a non-hoax, totes sincere version of the conceptual penis theory: http://archive.is/jZQIA

#14628

d4m10n wrote:It would appear there is an audience in waiting for a non-hoax, totes sincere version of the conceptual penis theory: http://archive.is/jZQIA

First law of post-modernism: all parodies of post-modernism will be interpreted as meaningful by people who are into post-modernism. Therefore post-modernism is impossible to make fun of without producing more post-modernism.

#14629

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:I'm no Sokal or Boghassian & Lindsay, but turning their nonsense batteries back in their faces is good fun:

https://disqus.com/home/discussion/acco ... 3320842509

Discussions like that one always make me wonder if people understand the line between "hard" and "soft" sciences. I teach methods and stats to psych majors and they come in with some of the weirdest ideas on this subject.

#14630

d4m10n wrote:It would appear there is an audience in waiting for a non-hoax, totes sincere version of the conceptual penis theory: http://archive.is/jZQIA

IMO, it is not a theory upon which anyone should be well hung.

#14631

The conceptual penis has been around at least as long as Lacan. The 'phallus' he describes is a symbol necessary for the constitution of the self, not an actual penis.

#14632

d4m10n wrote:It would appear there is an audience in waiting for a non-hoax, totes sincere version of the conceptual penis theory: http://archive.is/jZQIA

Jeffrey L Falick
Yesterday I celebrated with pride my daughter's graduation with a B.A. in Women's Studies. The study of gender and sexual orientation is a profoundly important part of the humanities. It is disgraceful that these so-called "skeptics" chose to degrade the humanities in this way, particularly because all they managed to really prove is that there exist unethical "pay-for-play" pseudo-academic journals. It is unfathomable to me that one group of academics would seek to deride an entire field of research, especially at a time when the study of the humanities is in decline. (And, for the record, my daughter found meaningful employment with her women's studies degree.

So which of you guys is 'Falick'?

#14633

Billie from Ockham wrote:
d4m10n wrote:It would appear there is an audience in waiting for a non-hoax, totes sincere version of the conceptual penis theory: http://archive.is/jZQIA
IMO, it is not a theory upon which anyone should be well hung.

Surely, you would need to gather the data before you could come to such a conclusion.

#14634

deLurch wrote:
Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
KEEP CALM
AND
KILL ALL
THE
IMAMS
Yeah, keep statements like that to the pit. If anyone took you seriously, police might consider that a call for murder.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Think I can get away with that one?

#14635

MarcusAu wrote:
Billie from Ockham wrote:
d4m10n wrote:It would appear there is an audience in waiting for a non-hoax, totes sincere version of the conceptual penis theory: http://archive.is/jZQIA
IMO, it is not a theory upon which anyone should be well hung.
Surely, you would need to gather the data before you could come to such a conclusion.

Given that the thrust of my argument has been missed, I now must belabia the point.

#14636

Kirbmarc wrote:
deLurch wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:Can anyone explain why it's so difficult to break ISIS given they are a semi formed armed force mostly sitting in a defined urban location or out in the desert? It's not like they are Viet Cong in the village / paddy field ecosystem.

Helicopter gunships, armed drones, special forces, smart bombs, third world canon fodder .......
What the hell ?
We could easily wipe out the the cities they occupy. But it is a little more difficult to wipe out ISIS without wiping out the relatively more innocent local populations.

Not to mention the main power structures are not in Iraq, but inside countries we are not at war with.

And once you wipe them out, there still exists a power vacuum in those regions and the people there will probably end up hating us with a vengeance.

Best to try a more surgical approach that only gets the bad guys, but we are still left with a power vacuum in the region.
The best way not to create a power vacuum is to broker a compromise between the Kurds/SDF and Assad, invite the other rebels to join the compromise, if not stop funding them, and gang up on the Salafis, accepting that in order not to create a power vacuum Assad is likely to stay in control of at least some parts of Syria. This would make the GCC and Turkey unhappy, though, so it's never going to happen.

The problem with that plan is that getting the millions of displaced Sunnis and especially those who have had family murdered by Assad to do a deal with him is like asking German jews to negotiate with Hitler toward the end of WW2. Also, why should the west trust Assad to negotiate in good faith? He lies constantly and breaks deals even when the benefits to him are questionable. You may as well try and deal with al Qaeda or IS.

#14637

free thoughtpolice wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote:
deLurch wrote: We could easily wipe out the the cities they occupy. But it is a little more difficult to wipe out ISIS without wiping out the relatively more innocent local populations.

Not to mention the main power structures are not in Iraq, but inside countries we are not at war with.

And once you wipe them out, there still exists a power vacuum in those regions and the people there will probably end up hating us with a vengeance.

Best to try a more surgical approach that only gets the bad guys, but we are still left with a power vacuum in the region.
The best way not to create a power vacuum is to broker a compromise between the Kurds/SDF and Assad, invite the other rebels to join the compromise, if not stop funding them, and gang up on the Salafis, accepting that in order not to create a power vacuum Assad is likely to stay in control of at least some parts of Syria. This would make the GCC and Turkey unhappy, though, so it's never going to happen.
The problem with that plan is that getting the millions of displaced Sunnis and especially those who have had family murdered by Assad to do a deal with him is like asking German jews to negotiate with Hitler toward the end of WW2. Also, why should the west trust Assad to negotiate in good faith? He lies constantly and breaks deals even when the benefits to him are questionable. You may as well try and deal with al Qaeda or IS.

My imams plan is more cost-effective.

#14638

Police have confirmed the name Salman Abedi.

#14639

Un. Fucking. Real.

#14640

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
deLurch wrote:
Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
KEEP CALM
AND
KILL ALL
THE
IMAMS
Yeah, keep statements like that to the pit. If anyone took you seriously, police might consider that a call for murder.
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the Sharia lawyers." Think I can get away with that one?

FTFY. A happy compromise?