Mr. Marc : My comments inline:
Novemberromeo, the fact that you characterize yourself as an atheist doesn’t eliminate any “religious bias” on your part, if I may be so bold. The 20th century’s worst atrocities were committed by atheists: Stalin (nominally Orthodox, of course, but I’ll get to that), Hitler, Pol Pot, for instance.
{NovemberRomeo} : But dear sir, you are pointing out a bias on the part of M/S. Stalin, Hitler and the others !! You cant possibly say that I am of the same opinion. Atheist: One who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being. Stalin and especially Hitler were NOT atheists! I dont endorse/approve/support any religion and therefore dont have a bias for any. (I guess you can say that I DO have a bias against religion!) :dubious:
We have to be careful to distinguish between religion as a spiritual philosophy and religion as an expression of culture and politics. They are not at all the same thing. Example: the well-known gutsy Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (author of “Inshallah” and “the Rage and the Pride” amongst others), is an outspoken anti-cleric, an atheist and a communist (I know that means something milder in Italy than it did in the USSR). But yet for all that she still considers herself Roman Catholic, and this is part of her argument in “the Rage and the Pride” for limiting immigration to Italy – Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands made a similar point. Why is she RC? Because, she writes, she was born within the sounds of the bells of [a small church in a village whose name I can’t remember], in rural Tuscany.
{NovemberRomeo} : I see what you mean, but poor Oriana is confused and her being Italian doesnt help (its a joke!). :rolleyes: Her being communist has nothing to do with atheism and if she considers herself RC she is not aethist!!! But If I understand correcly her endorsement of RC’ism is only to make a point/statement for limiting cross cultural immigration to Italy. (That what I infered from your paragraph… If not the case please correct and explain the relevance of immigration, Rc’ism, atheism AND Oriana) 
It’s like race. When you tell people that race is a sociological construct, many stare at you in disbelief. Naturally race is “biological” they would say – you inherit your race from your parents. But do you? Or do you inherit physical characteristics, a certain ‘scattergram’ of which is defined by society as being a particular race?
{NovemberRomeo} : I agree with you completely but with a point. Race is a sociological construct based on biological charateristics. This was pointed out by Aryan philosophers. (they were scientists but coz they didnt wear white lab coats and bunny suits the scientific community prefers to call them philosophers). They beleived that different ‘races’ had different genetic patterns which required segregation. It was the late 13th century when this segregation was taken a bit too far in the form of slavery. Conquests of europeans in other parts of the world was the main cause of the problem. I may be wrong but I havent heard of Asian rulers invading europe and colonizing an entire region and turning the local population into slaves! (Some Chinese/Moghul kings did have white slaves in their posse, but not an entire country!) :wally:
What few Chinese there were were lumped in with whites. Imagine that: a Chinese and a white having the same race!
{NovemberRomeo} : Not true, the chinese and japanese and more or less all the east asian community (which is included in the ‘Asians’) were lumped in the ‘colored’ section. They were ‘Yellow’! ;j
quote:
How many times do you hear of Hindu militants blowing up buildings or buddhist monks going on suicide missions??
Funny you should use those examples. I’m going to reveal that I must be older than you but 
but India is ruled by a militant Hindu party right now, as it happens – the BHP. Mind you, they have to “open the tent” a bit to ensure national unity, but Hindu nationalists regularly attack trains full of Muslims and set them on fire, and a few years ago they destroyed the Muslim mosque at Ayodhya.
{NovemberRomeo} : Sir, you are definitely older!! Your readiness to jump to conclusion without facts is a common trait in older people. (Late 50’s?). :mad:
- India is not ruled. It is governed. My little island is ruled.
- BJP is not a militant hindu party, though I will admit that BHP probably is.
- Its the BJP and not the BHP that are the primary party in the COALITION that governs India.
- The coaliton contains many parties (does not contain the BHP!!! the BHP sits in the opposition with the national congress!) some of which are from a muslim minority too!!
- The Muslims are a minority in India (polygamy will correct that soon!).
- Please refer to ANY major newspaper from ANYWHERE in the world detailing the Gujrat incident. It was a train carrying Hindu pilgrims home from a religious festival. They were chanting hymns as they pulled into the predominantly Mulsim town of Godhra, where irate muslim fanatics rushed the train and set it on fire. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0228/p07s01-wosc.html)
:smack:
And, here’s where I reveal I’m probably older than you, but I remember when Buddhist monks would regularly self-immolate in public to protest either the right-wing dictatorship of South Vietnam, or the communists who took over after the fall of South Vietnam. Also, the majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, are Buddhists; some of their extremists see the Tamils as unwanted immigrants from India (Tamil Nadu). The Tamils are Hindus, and the Tamil Tigers are, I think, pretty well-known.
{NovemberRomeo} : BUT, dear sir, the sri lankan dispute is territorial and has no religious basis. Nobody claims a religious bias in that conflict. I was, in my article merely bringing to notice the fact that MOST religious conflicts have muslims to one side.
:mad:
In the United States own history anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism runs deep, and at one point even the Mormons had a “massacre order” out from the state of Missouri (it gave them a day, maybe 2, to clear out of the state or they were open targets for anyone who wanted to kill them – it was discovered to be still on the books in I think about 1975 or 1976, and the then-governor of Missouri came to Utah and they had this big ceremony of destroying the old law).
{NovemberRomeo} : It happened in the US of A, where most things have no reason! The people from US of A seem to have their own religion - US of A’ism. :o
Here in Canada, and I think this applies to the US, too, we tried in a deliberate and systematic way to destroy the autochthonous (“First Nations”) culture through boarding schools run by the Anglicans and RCatholics, primarily (although they were actually just subcontractors acting under the Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs). In Quebec, as recently as the 1960s, Jehovah’s Witnesses were systematically discriminated against in provincial law.
{NovemberRomeo} : I dont blame them for the JW’s… personally if another JW shows up at my door… 
In the Iraq war, for the first time since Vietnam, Canada did not officially back the U.S. (although indirectly we did, by relieving some US forces in Afghanistan and some naval units in the Gulf who were supporting them, so the US forces could be relocated to Iraq). The geopolitical reason is that Canada sees itself by nature a multilateralist country (like we have a choice! When’s the last time you heard anyone speak of “Canadian imperialism?”*) and while we agreed that Saddam was not Mr. Nice Guy, to invade a country unilaterally (okay, trilaterally, if you include GB and AUS) was not a “UN” thing to do, and Canada is very big on peace-keeping – our then foreign minister, Lester B. Pearson, won a Nobel Peace Prize for inventing the concept during the Suez Canal crisis in the 50s.
{NovemberRomeo} : Point taken, we went to war in Iraq coz Bush had Blair by the croutons! :dubious:
But when I talked to US friends who supported the war, they were aghast that I didn’t. “Can’t you see how evil this guy is?” “We’re just doing what has to be done” they’d say. In a famous Freudian slip, Pres. Bush early on referred to the need for a “crusade” (a meaning loaded with historical connotations, to be sure!) to “cleanse” Iraq. In other words, USAmericans who supported the war often expressed themselves in quasi-religious or moralistic tones to justify what many in the world saw as simple, naked aggression, implying that the big oil companies were behind it (something I think has a grain of truth, incidentally, but that’s another discussion).
{NovemberRomeo} : I know how you feel cause I have been thru the same. It was a war sponsored by the Oil companies… i almost expected soldiers to have ‘Shell’ arm badges… but they were decent enough… :rolleyes:
By now we know much of the evidence for Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and other evils were if not outright fraudulent, at least “spun” politically for domestic consumption. It turns out that the heroic, dramatic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, who looks like someone you’d take to a high school graduation dance [called “proms” in the US], was “scripted” for maximum effect. The letter supposedly linking Iraq to Niger relating to the purchase of uranium was shown to be a very clumsy forgery. As one cartoon making the rounds of the WWW put it:
Pane 1: Tony Blair says “But how can you be sure that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?” Pane 2: George Bush: “Because we kept the receipts.”
This is an irreverent way of pointing out that from about 1985 until 1989, a company based in Maryland (now they are in Virginia) legally sold anthrax, botulinum, sarin and other such material, to Iraq, under the authority of export permits issued by the US Dept. of Commerce.
During the first Gulf War (Desert Storm), a public relations firm that specializes in working with governments, called Knowlton & Hill, planted a totally fabricated story about Iraqi soldiers throwing prematurely born babies in Kuwait City hospitals onto the floors so the soldiers could steal the incubators and take them back to Iraq.
The U.S. government manufactured the excuse for intervention in Vietnam, too – the Gulf of Tonkin incident – and it even appears that all the way back to the Spanish American War, the U.S. (or, oddly, a newspaper magnate named William Randolph Hearst) manufactured excuses to enter wars.
Why? The Soviets never needed an excuse I tell USAmericans that in a way this is a backhanded compliment to their basic good nature and sense of morality – they need to have a reason to go to war, one they can feel good about.
And when it boils down to it, that describes a lot of wars. Sometimes a religious label is attached to it: “the unity of Ireland” isn’t really about Catholics versus Protestants, it’s about England’s settlement of decommissioned Scottish soldiers and their families in Ulster during the 18th century (iirc). But the Scots happen to be Protestants, so the conflict has been presented as being a religious war, which is strictly speaking incorrect.
Well, enough examples – you get the point.
{NovemberRomeo} : M8, the above is irrelevant! :smack: The Irish conflict was seen as a Christian conflict just because of a silly festival where the barmy protestants walk along this road full of catholics!! Otherwise the whole thing was a territorial dispute! I agree that Ms. Bush and Blair are not saints! But my point was that MOST(not all) conflicts and terrorist activities involve muslims. It takes 2 to tango and while the evil capitalist Anglo-American empire was at work in Iraq, there were, incidently, MUSLIMS on the other side!!! :eek:
*actually, there is a tragi-comic exception. Back in the early 80s a group of businessmen in the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British Caribbean crown colony, approached a Canadian Senator to see if Canada could annex the T&C. I thought this was great, and had a letter published in our largest national paper saying that this would mean Senators could go on vacation for half the year, but still spend their money in Canada. Needless to say, the T&C’s are still a colony, but of Britain.
{NovemberRomeo} : Right, this time I not only DONT see the relevance but also dont get the point. Please explain.
This was a not only a complete digression of the topic (I am partly to blame), but some of it is wrong (as in - ‘not based on facts’). :mad:
:rolleyes: :dubious: