I’m glad you and I seem to agree on the first two issues. As for the third, I don’t think anyone is saying that ISIS are motivated solely by religion. Anyone with a grain of common sense knows that large militant groups can’t sustain themselves if they’re only motivated by one thing. But there are so many people (including President Obama) who have said, and will likely continue to say, that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. This just isn’t true. They may adhere to a particularly militant strain of Islam, but if you remove religion from the equation entirely, none of their actions make any sense.
I completely concur that it is entirely incorrect to interpret the phrase “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam” in a literal sense to imply that ISIS members are not Muslims or that they don’t directly connect their militant violence with their religious faith.
Just as it would be incorrect to interpret it literally when somebody says that, e.g., fanatical abortion clinic bombers are “completely un-Christian”, when in fact those fanatics do identify as Christians and use their Christian faith to justify their acts.
But I think in both cases, the statement is intended more metaphorically to mean something like “these people are so far removed from our ideal of this religion that we reject their claims about it and refuse to view it through their warped perspective”. That’s certainly how I interpret it, and I agree that a more literal reading would just be factually false.
So it may be that we’re not actually disagreeing on anything here. Which is a hell of a situation for two respectable Pit-thread denizens to find themselves in. 
It’s starting to look that way, isn’t it? We may not see exactly eye to eye on the precise extent to which religion informs ISIS’s actions, but I think our positions are an awful lot closer than it may have first appeared.
I’ll have you know I work very hard to avoid being respectable
Doesn’t matter to me if you want to say they are motivated by their religious opinions, just so long as you don’t segue into telling me that all who share any aspect of that faith are suspect. That would make about as much sense as driving out all vegetarians because Hitler was one!
Wait, let me think about that for a moment…no, that’s a bad idea. Never mind.
Of course we don’t want to drive out vegetarians!
Vegetarians are delicious!
That is disgraceful.
Has that actually happened?
Latest annoying trend. You would think how nice it is everyone on Facebook is having the French flag superimposed over their profile photos as a show of support for our friends, and allies in France. How could ANYONE possibly have a problem with THAT?
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Yep you guessed it. There’s always one whiner who has to shit all over a powerful Internet meme:
"How come we don’t use flags of Israel since they get blown up every week? . . . . . . Nigeria lost 1000 people to terror attacks like 2 weeks ago and no one cared . . . . how come we aren’t using Somali flags, 128 people got wiped in a terror attack yesterday, too. blah blah blah
Hmmmm . . . MAYBE because Israel is surrounded by Muslim countries that all hate its guts . . . .Somalia is only slightly more governed than a Mad Max movie . . . . and Nigeria has suffered from civil wars, terrorism, and corruption for live the last 25-30 years?
We don’t expect something like this in Paris. . . . many Americans have visited France . . . they are our NATO ally . . . .they are closer to the US than those other countries . . . should I keep going???:dubious: SHUT THE FUCK UP, and get behind a gesture of unity, for once!
Bingo.
Especially the grass-fed artisanal ones.
Thanks for posting that. Very clear-minded.
His implication seems to be that some level of terrorism is just something we’ll have to live with, which is unsatisfying but strikes me as correct. (Conservatives are very good at taking this stance on mass shootings; for some reason, terrorism is a blind spot for them.) Of course, it’s natural for anger and frustration, after so many of these attacks, to drive a search for some decisive final solution to the problem; but unfortunately the existence of such a solution is a fantasy. And the fantasy is of course being exploited by the administration’s usual detractors for political gain.
The execrable Ralph Peters deserves a mention on this thread for his “take” on things.
Gigo, while I realize you have a hard on about Climate Change ™, so much so in fact that one begins to suspect that you fap one out every time the subject arises while screaming ‘Its gonna get sooo hot! We are all gonna BURN!’ while looking lovingly at your Paul Erhlich videos, give it a fucking rest.
You are a tool whose only skill is parroting a Nazi wannabe with pathetic math skills.
The world isn’t going to end. It will get warmer for a while, then it will get colder. Life will go on.
Slee
Yeah, but who wants to live in the Road Warrior world?
If you are referring to the image of the founder of Skeptical Science in Nazi uniform, that was of dubious origin or a joke that was not supposed to be released as it came from a hacked directory, a hack that BTW allowed the deniers to fool you 100% with some hidden forum posts regarding other “scandal” and your gullibility certified you to be an ass in that thread.
No evidence for your say so, remember, the same ones that have fooled you and continue to do so claimed that cooling was coming and that it has not warmed in x years.
So as we found that your attack here was just based on fantasies one could expect that you will demand that the ones that fooled you to correct their bullshit.
… Not holding my breath for that one, you will be too coward to do so because you would not like to upset the peers you have.
Climate deniers peers, that as it was pointed out by the actions of recent denier posters, are also racists and bigots; it is what takes place when many conservatives that are smart do not contribute or help the deniers as much as they used too, then the ones that are fake environmentalists with more unsavory axes to grind remain. And it is clear that you will remain clueless about such a development. You are indeed just projecting.
In a move that would make the KKK proud:
Texas governor Abbott tells their agencies to become the Texas Unhealthy and Inhuman services.
Wow. Almost daily, I read something and say to myself, “Please be The Onion…oh, please be The Onion…”
Incredibly, sadly, it’s almost never The Onion.
Shit, I’m happy just when it isn’t Texas!
Holy shit. Has anyone ever been wronger about everything than Peters?