What the fuck is Russia upto?

[Little stoned kiwi]

What's the point? Are Russia going to stop assassinating spies and double agents because of some weak political pressure? Is any country? Russia isn't the only state involved in espionage and assassination.
It's obvious why Russia did what it did the way that they did it. These retaliations in the public eye and covered by the media stink of a propaganda campaign in itself.

What the fuck is UK upto?

[Meow]

Is someone playing silly buggers???

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/krem ... -bv56bmf2k

Russia claims Britain helped fake suspected chemical attack

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ier-claims

Russia tested nerve agent on door handles before Skripal attack, UK dossier claims

[(o)(o)]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24358543
https://www.scribd.com/document/1690253 ... ta-Version

[PFVA]

I agree with Guterres:

"The Cold War is back with a vengeance, but with a difference," he said. "The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43759873

[KlaxonCow]

The Twitter response, from the Russian Embassy to the US, to US / UK / France bombing of chemical sites in Syria:



"Insulting the President of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible".

Wait, what? Excuse me?

When did Putin become a "God King" whose word must never be disobeyed?

If that's how it works in Russia now then, to be honest, Putin can fuck off. He's a cunt.

And I hope he's deeply insulted by that. May all the insults to his ego ruthlessly rain down on him without mercy.

You can stick your "Divine Right" up your arse, Putin. There is no such thing.

[zip accident]

"Insulting the President of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible".

Wait, what? Excuse me?

When did Putin become a "God King" whose word must never be disobeyed?

Less than two years ago I'd guess, but they may backdate it to some earlier election in hindsight.

If that's how it works in Russia now then, to be honest, Putin can fuck off. He's a cunt.

And I hope he's deeply insulted by that. May all the insults to his ego ruthlessly rain down on him without mercy.

You can stick your "Divine Right" up your arse, Putin. There is no such thing.

Try telling that face to face to Kim Jong-un, half the rulers of Africa, Xi Jinping:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/25/asia ... index.html (loud autoplaying video, sorry)

Any of them would probably terminate your day.

The pendulum swings, then it swings back again. We had Beau Brummel, then we had the Victorian era with it's Bowdlerism.

The alternative could be a world-wide islamic state that lasts as long as islam, I think a few temporary tin-pot dictators might be a small price to pay to escape that.

[tufty]

The alternative could be a world-wide islamic state that lasts as long as islam

Sure, it could be. It could also be ice cream and hookers.

[Istar]

In fact, forget the ice-cream.

[zip accident]

The alternative could be a world-wide islamic state that lasts as long as islam

Sure, it could be. It could also be ice cream and hookers.

You mean Putin doesn't have ice-cream on hookers?

[KlaxonCow]

The alternative could be a world-wide islamic state that lasts as long as islam, I think a few temporary tin-pot dictators might be a small price to pay to escape that.

Possible.

But I feel deeply unlikely as the rise of religious extremism - of all stripes, not just Islam, such as the revival of literal Creationism, evangelical Christianity (the only place where there's actual growth in congregations) and, yes, even the counter-rise of "strident" atheists too - is basically a failure state.

As deeply frightening as the tactic of suicide bombing is, it's an act of ultimately futile desperation.

After all, they're killing themselves. Were it not for the prospect of new recruits, this would actually be a self-solving problem in time.

And what is the goal? Well, it's not really murder. Because if your simple intent is simply to murder all Americans, then it would require some 100,000 events like 9/11 - which was their best shot, when no-one knew it was coming and so there was basically near zero security on domestic flights for them to sail past with their bolt cutters - to pull off.

No chance. And they know that too.

This is not the point. The point is fear. Well, as the name literally tells you, it's "terror". An attempt to sway things in your political favour by scaring everyone into compliance and, failing that, at least disrupting things towards your favour. For example, scaring enough racists into shouting "deport all the Muslims!" because then you can plant some discord in relations. Rouse some hatred that might sway some Muslims over here to despise the West, join Islamic State and so on and so forth. To at least create a potential recruiting sergeant out of the "useful idiot" racists.

And, on an existential level, becoming a martyr. A nice little mental delusion that your "sacrifice" will kick off some magical march towards that global Islamic State. Well, on the other side of the grand divide of life and death, we can see that, however much they might have convinced themselves of this happening before killing themselves, this delusion simply did not ever come true.

Yes, this stuff is very scary. But we must not let the emotion blind the intellectual response that can see that, actually, this is all perfectly pathetic.

The rise of religious extremism - which, in fact, has been going on for decades longer than most people credit - is matched by the decline and failure of religion. More specifically, the congregation numbers decline because, in the modern scientific world, the gods are perfectly irrelevant, by and large, to the majority of people.

Indeed, I often prefer to say "the irreligious" than single out atheists specifically. Because, well, one doesn't have to be, like me, confidently declaring the gods to be dead. The real demographic shift is in the wider group of "the irreligious". The "just not of a practising religion" than specifically positively non-religious. Because, increasingly, in the Western World, that's the biggest demographic of the lot.

Religion is losing the battle, because it simply cannot compete.

Science has brought us the car, the computer, refrigeration, the lightbulb, central heating, materials science, planes, the eradication of smallpox, vaccines, the Internet, online shopping. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Simply, science delivers. Pragmatically, directly, right here and right now.

Whereas the gods deliver bugger all. Well, some vague promises that never happen. A bit of "feel good" nonsense. Some false hope. Nothing that ever pans out in the long run - well, okay, I'll hold fire on whether "the Afterlife" is one promise that gets delivered, because until we're dead, we cannot know for certain, but let's just say that, going by the track record, I'm a good 99% confident that one'll be utter bollocks too. Indeed, religion demands quite a bit of cognitive dissonance in this regard, and falls back on "works in mysterious ways" excuses when it clearly makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

They hate the West because the West is the current champion of the scientific method - though, yes, that is just happenstance, and it was once Islam and it was China beforehand and probably, as things are going, might well become China again - and so we're delivering to the world a whole bunch of things that the local gods and religions just cannot compete against.

When Sayyid Qutb - the Egyptian school teacher who's a cited inspiration for Al Qaeda and their policy of attacking "the enemy over there" - went to America and was horrified by its "empty immorality" - in letting school children of both genders dance together at proms and such - when he returned to Egypt, what he most complained about was that Egyptians were watching Hollywood movies, drinking Coke, wearing jeans. That many of the financial institutions were American banks.

He was, to put it simply, pissed off by American cultural invasion. Because America was "Satan" for its immorality and it was exporting "jahiliyya" - an ignorance of Allah - to the world. To Islamic nations. To Muslims.

At least, that's how he saw it. The way I'd phrase is that the West - with America just being its most visible member - was exporting scientific achievement. And, yeah, sure, in Hollywood movies, a touch of our culture was piggybacking along for the ride. But remember that cinema is, of course, a scientific achievement of repeated photography projected onto a screen.

That's the real export and the accompanying culture was just that, well, whoever's doing it will inherently stamp their work with their own thoughts and beliefs, because how can you not? I actually feel that the West is quite good at being self-critical, because of that scientific underpinning and stuff like "freedom of speech" / "innocent until proven guilty" which demands some critical self-reflection.

I mean, one of the grand ironies is that the West rips itself apart over its own guilt for, as an example, historical slavery. But most of the world - certainly Islam amongst them - was also fucking doing it too. And they've never apologised for it in the same way, nor self-flagellate in guilt as we do over it. The Western "white man" gets all the flak here for being the most decent to unreservedly admit fault. To indulge political correctness and such.

Actual evil people would simply not give a shit. True racists would not apologise or hide their want to keep "the subhumans" down. True misogynists would just tell the feminists to shut the fuck up. Real homophobia would never have allowed gay marriage to ever come to pass.

Actual evil doesn't apologise. As it sees nothing wrong in its actions.

Anyway, slight digression aside, the real war here is between the modern world and ancient mythology. The latter, of course, stands no fucking chance, as it's just made-up bullshit stories. While the modern scientific world delivers. And keeps on delivering, at an actually ever-increasing rate.

There is really no contest here. And this is ultimately why, for those who cling dearly to the ancient mythology, why they've become so desperate.

They've already lost. They have no useful weapons in their arsenal to combat this inevitable decline.

Sayyid Kutb said this explicitly. The very name "Boko Haram" is roughly translated to "Western Science is forbidden". What they attacked on 9/11 was a building with "World Trade" in its name, in the heart of the most modern city on the planet.

This is really their underlying problem. The people who don't believe in their magic man in the sky - who increasingly don't believe in any magic men in the sky - are doing just swell, thank you very much.

But, wait, if God's on our side, then how are the infidels winning? How are they doing so much better? How the shit do we keep our next generation - the youngsters - from not becoming intoxicated by all this wealth and riches of technology to not make the obvious leap to not bothering with this "God" fellow, who delivers nothing useful until you're dead (if we're to even believe he can do that) and, umm, in the obviously successful scientific narrative - which is the thing that's delivering to us all this working useful technology, so it surely can't be entirely wrong because it is delivering to us all the time - there simply is no need for any gods to explain anything. That is, when we look closely, then God is just not there and, more over, doesn't even need to be there, as it's all quite explicable without ever needing to resort to "it's magic!" at any point.

Yeah, this is quite the conundrum that the religious have here. A puzzler indeed.

How does the meme survive in the face of this onslaught?

Well, simply, I would say that it just doesn't. Its days are numbered. "God is dead... but I see that I've come too soon with this news".

These are just the desperate death throes of an ideology in its end failure state. It's doomed.

There will be no global Islamic State. That's entirely what's pissing them off. Because their god promised them this and it's clearly not fucking happening. And they can't yet accept the obvious. Fuck this god. He's full of shit and fails to deliver. They have a heck of a lot of investment - wrapping up their identities into all of this - so, sure, that's not an easy thing to give up. Not at all.

In the end, new ideas don't succeed, so much as they just wait for the old ideas and their proponents to finally die off.

[zip accident]

As deeply frightening as the tactic of suicide bombing is, it's an act of ultimately futile desperation.

Yes. I agree.

However, there are converts. That is strange, if religion is dying. Where are the converts coming from, and more importantly why are they coming. The converts are, at least some of them, child converts from nominally christian families. They are perhaps victims of racism, lashing out at a society that has alienated them.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Grooming disenfranchised youth is like shooting fish in a barrel. Just make a group/gang/brotherhood and make them feel they belong to the clique.
It doesn't have to be based on religion. Though often is as that's how a lot of religions work.

[tufty]

sail past with their bolt cutters

Point of pendantry...

bolt cutter:


box cutter:

[KlaxonCow]

Point of pendantry...

I do know the difference. That was just a "brain typo" on my part.

[KlaxonCow]

Grooming disenfranchised youth is like shooting fish in a barrel. Just make a group/gang/brotherhood and make them feel they belong to the clique.

Known as "false kin" by the psychologists.

Could also be called "tribalism", remembering that, originally, back in those nomadic caveman days, your "tribe" would have basically been composed of your extended family. Maybe, for larger tribes, the intertwining of a few extended families, joined by some marriage between them.

That is, human "tribal" instincts are really just an extension of our familial instincts. To add a few non-genetically-related members to your "family", as humans survive a little better with some cooperative effort between them.

It's worth noting that both religion and gangs have that thing of calling each other "brothers" and "sisters". The authority figures being the "father" or "godfather". You get the gist.

And, really, nationalism / national identity is also just this "false kin" writ extremely large. The "tribe" on its largest scale.

Genetically, you might actually have more in common with some bloke on the other side of the world than your next door neighbour - there is, in fact, more variety within "races" than is found, on average, between them and that's pretty much why the notion of "race" doesn't actually exist in biology, as there really is nothing objective that specifically defines it.

(Indeed, as a humanist, the psychological trick we play is to define "family" as absolutely everyone - the entire human race - so it's not that anyone is actually immune to these things, as they are instincts intrinsic to our species. But there are ways and means to not let it colour you too much. And it would be interesting if, one day, humans did meet some space aliens, whether this would help make all of us take the "the entire species as family" attitude or not.)

It doesn't have to be based on religion. Though often is as that's how a lot of religions work.

Yes, this is a point worth noting. Because I do tend to emphasise religion, but it is much wider than that.

The same sort of mechanisms - false kin, magical thinking, etc. - are at work in more than just religion. Or, if you like, yes, I would entirely count what's going on in places like North Korea as basically "religion" in all but name. Some political ideology - such as communists calling each other "comrade", which is akin to saying "brother", really - strays into tribal territories. Plus, of course, even sport has some of these attributes too.

So, in a sense, when I say "religion", I do mean it in its broadest sense and it covers a lot more ground than just that which formally identifies itself as a religion. I mean, there's the argument that the only difference between "cult" and "religion" is whether you feel positive or negative towards it.