What a fucked up world this is.

[fritx]

Do people who are Atheists forget that their faith is just like any other faith? Religion is a way of approaching the Divine; isn't denying the Divine a way of approaching it?
Atheism is a particularly useless form of faith for me personally in that it has a very restrictive dogma i.e. 'Thou shalt deny divinity of all kinds' with no possibility whatsoever of spiritual evolution.

[Zen-Chan]

It's all going off right now - newsflash on BBC1 and ITV. They're not sure who started it.

[Zoot]

Just watching the news about the kidnapping at the Russian school. The kidnappers have refused to accept medicine or water for the kids. I mean for fucks sake, we're talking of tiny babies and young kids, how evil and uncaring can some of our human race be.

I am so fuckin angry and sad. I personally offer to kick these fuckers to death when they come out.

Sorry for going off on one, but having a young un myself just makes it all the harder for me to accept and understand.

For fucks sake, they've just reported that 30 of the tiniest babies and infants were released because 'their crying was upsetting the kidnappers'

Bastards. Just fucking cunts, is all. No fucking excuse in the world justifies harm to innocent children. Fucking bastards. I am so mad, at all of them.

[biggestjim]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3624024.stm

awful-awful-awful

[clovis]

My experience of people on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum, and of those from religious backgrounds spanning atheism to Buddhism, is one of tolerance/understanding/compassion for a wide variety of viewpoints, beliefs, lifestyles, etc.

how far left?

russian communism

pol pot

china

shining path

hahahaha - don't make me laugh any more

Err, did you actually read the post I wrote that in reply to? If you did, you might want to consider a little thing called "context," in that my words were a response to an assertion by another poster, i.e. "Everyone here is so damned "superior" to everybody else, but you all just hate what isn't like you."

So taking that into account, most people would see my comments as being about left-leaning people of the vague socio-economic background broadly represented here, since that was the actual context of my reply to GodMedia in the first place.

Note also that the work "leaning" would (to most people, but not you for some reason) seem to indicate that I wasn't talking about anyone or indeed any organisation at the extreme end of the spectrum, in any case. You know, "leaning." As in "a little bit to one side of the centre," which most of us here (whether it be to left or right), would most likely fall under the broad banner of. Note that I didn't say "standing at the extreme left end, almost over the horizon, somewhere out where the buses don't run" end of the political spectrum. (Which you nonetheless chose to interpret it as, for reasons unclear.)

Left-leaning. Ordinary folks who work a job and happen to vote Labour/Democrat or whatever. And who I would still say tend to be a bit more tolerant and accepting of others than their counterparts on the (religious) right. Which was my original point.

I'm not sure if you just missed the point because I wasn't clear enough, or whether you were just being wilfully ignorant for the sake of an opportunity to make slightly hysterical, highly innaccurate and essentially irrelevant comments. Either way, your basic assumption about what I was saying was incorrect. And kinda funny.

I think you just proved his point.

[Foozwah]

I think you just proved his point.

Hardly. And good of you to neatly side-step taking any responsibility for the fact that your original "Pol Pot, etc." post completely misrepresented what I was actually saying. But anyway... <shrug> We'll just have to agree to disagree. Which is just fine by me. And possibly also proves my point.

PS But seriously, I'm not going to post further on this topic in this particular thread, as the recurring posts in here regarding the genuinely terrible events at that school make punctuating it with this kind of essentially inconsequential debate seem a bit, well, insensitive and pointless and crap, really. (I only logged on just now to avoid watching yet another re-run of footage from the school. Fuck...) In any case, I don't particularly want to go on with this, but if you feel you must, could you just PM me or maybe we shift it to another thread? Personally, I suspect there's not much point in continuing. Cheers.

[Guest]

So why has Russia been so desperate to hang on to Chechnia, when other parts were allowed autonomy?

Can it be oil? I don't know, but it seems likely.