Posts by Abaddon

84

Is New Zealand right to ban military style guns?

by ThomasCovenant in

jw
friends

in response to the recent terrorist attack in new zealand their government is proposing to ban semi automatic and military style weaponry.. do you agree with this idea?.

would they be better off allowing more of these weapons instead?.

would it be better to perhaps allow more of the muslim community for example, to be armed with semi automatic guns to protect themselves at their places of worship?.

Abaddon

LoveUni

I appreciate you putting things in context: right-wing terrorism is a risk. Unfortunately, as it is a risk typically targetting minorities, even though it's rising and a far higher risk in recent years in the US (for example) than left-wing or Islamic terrorism, it's not considered by some to be the risk it statistically is.

WingCommander

You seem to have missed I covered what you are reacting to; that an army asked to target a majority population would likely refuse. But the fantastic thinking persists; you seem to think that before a town was targetted like that, that all retail outlets would not have been shut down.

Also, I know a shit tonne of Americans and neither view them as you think people do nor see their thinking reflected in yours. You are not a spokesperson for all of America.

Simon

Strange how a politician widely seen as being an example of how to react in a situation such as that after the Christchurch shootings can be spun as "petty token gimmicks to look good". I object to the actions of the right-wing Israeli government, but would never be negligent in showing respect for the victims of a shooting in a mosque.

Islam is practised in dreadfully culturally backwards ways, for example in the major Western ally Saudi Arabia that we buy oil from and sell arms to. But just as secularisation defanged Christianity from the racist, homophobic, sexist, religiously totalitarian entity it became in Western culture, so too Muslims in other countries are going through the painful process of defanging their religion.

I'll take your views about headscarves in mosques seriously when I see you pulling hats off old ladies in Roman Catholic churches in Northern Ireland terrorism and sexism are facts of life.

Until then, take it from me; telling a woman what to wear is not making them freer. Voting for political parties that will not support states that oppress women is making them freer. In fact, even if a woman's choice of headgear is constrained by their father/husband/mosque, forcing her not to wear it is not making her freer. Acting against the men constraining her free choice is making her freer.

I, personally, am very curious about how you came to your current political opinions. Or maybe back in this board's heyday when I was a regular poster (almost twenty years ago) you had the same opinions but didn't discuss them. Obviously, the change in the willingness of people to express reactionary opinions is linked to their perception of the consequences of doing it. Were you always this, for want of a better word, 'conservative'? If not, what made you shift to a more conservative and reactionary political opinion. I'm asking not to start a fight but because I am interested. It's far more productive understanding people's reasons for belief than simply disagreeing with them.

As I say to WingCommander above, I already said that "... most modern armies would not engage in mass killings of people like them. But the later is true whether the people have guns or not".

To make this explicit; Britsih Army are no more likely to serve a tyrannical government than the US Army, despite the lack of weapons in British civilian's hands. Do you agree?

If you do agree, then guns actually have no role in protecting us against tyranny. They're just a tool in making people feel free, buying votes, and getting political contributions, but are also actually a major public health issue.

For example, we would have to import terrorists into each European country (right-wing, left-wing, Islamists, doesn't matter what sort of deranged killer), arm them, train them, and then let them kill hundreds of people in each European country to match the firearm homicide rate in the United States

84

Is New Zealand right to ban military style guns?

by ThomasCovenant in

jw
friends

in response to the recent terrorist attack in new zealand their government is proposing to ban semi automatic and military style weaponry.. do you agree with this idea?.

would they be better off allowing more of these weapons instead?.

would it be better to perhaps allow more of the muslim community for example, to be armed with semi automatic guns to protect themselves at their places of worship?.

Abaddon

LoveUni

I appreciate you putting things in context: right-wing terrorism is a risk. Unfortunately, as it is a risk typically targetting minorities, even though it's rising and a far higher risk in recent years in the US (for example) than left-wing or Islamic terrorism, it's not considered by some to be the risk it statistically is.

WingCommander

You seem to have missed I covered what you are reacting to; that an army asked to target a majority population would likely refuse. But the fantastic thinking persists; you seem to think that before a town was targetted like that, that all retail outlets would not have been shut down.

Also, I know a shit tonne of Americans and neither view them as you think people do nor see their thinking reflected in yours. You are not a spokesperson for all of America.

Simon

Strange how a politician widely seen as being an example of how to react in a situation such as that after the Christchurch shootings can be spun as "petty token gimmicks to look good". I object to the actions of the right-wing Israeli government, but would never be negligent in showing respect for the victims of a shooting in a synagogue. I don't blame the religion for the politics, and Islamic terrorism is political as Da'esh shows.

Islam is practised in dreadfully culturally backwards ways, for example in the major Western ally Saudi Arabia that we buy oil from and sell arms to. But just as secularisation defanged Christianity from the racist, homophobic, sexist, religiously totalitarian entity it became in Western culture, so too Muslims in other countries are going through the painful process of defanging their religion.

I'll take your views about headscarves in mosques seriously when I see you pulling hats off old ladies in Roman Catholic churches in Northern Ireland where terrorism and sexism are facts of life.

Until then, take it from me; telling a woman what to wear is not making them freer. Voting for political parties that will not support states that oppress women is making them freer. In fact, even if a woman's choice of headgear is constrained by their father/husband/mosque, forcing her not to wear it is not making her freer. Acting against the men constraining her free choice is making her freer.

I, personally, am very curious about how you came to your current political opinions. Or maybe back in this board's heyday when I was a regular poster (almost twenty years ago) you had the same opinions but didn't discuss them. Obviously, the change in the willingness of people to express reactionary opinions is linked to their perception of the consequences of doing it. Were you always this, for want of a better word, 'conservative'? If not, what made you shift to a more conservative and reactionary political opinion. I'm asking not to start a fight but because I am interested. It's far more productive understanding people's reasons for belief than simply disagreeing with them.

As I say to WingCommander above, I already said that "... most modern armies would not engage in mass killings of people like them. But the later is true whether the people have guns or not".

To make this explicit; Britsih Army are no more likely to serve a tyrannical government than the US Army, despite the lack of weapons in British civilian's hands. Do you agree?

If you do agree, then guns actually have no role in protecting us against tyranny. They're just a tool in making people feel free, buying votes, and getting political contributions, but are also actually a major public health issue.

For example, we would have to import terrorists into each European country (right-wing, left-wing, Islamists, doesn't matter what sort of deranged killer), arm them, train them, and then let them kill hundreds of people in each European country to match the firearm homicide rate in the United States

84

Is New Zealand right to ban military style guns?

by ThomasCovenant in

jw
friends

in response to the recent terrorist attack in new zealand their government is proposing to ban semi automatic and military style weaponry.. do you agree with this idea?.

would they be better off allowing more of these weapons instead?.

would it be better to perhaps allow more of the muslim community for example, to be armed with semi automatic guns to protect themselves at their places of worship?.

Abaddon

It's really funny how the gun lobby always fail to observe that no matter what arguments they might make about firearms, the majority of mass killings are carried out by people using the kind of weapons targetted by these bans. And that these bans have been effective before. So that banning these weapons is a good idea.
The idea that armed civilians could resist real military is ridiculous. Even if you ignore dropping mortars or an airstrike on the house of someone resisting, or just lighting it up with a 50 calibre will solve the military issue, just shooting everyone in the first town that resists handing in firearms works. People will then report anyone not handing in firearms. It's happened before. The idea is restricted to fantasists.
Of course, the argument that 'but the army wouldn't do that' is both right and wrong. Wrong because, yes, the army would do that if targetting a minority that the government had turned into scapegoats. And right because most modern armies would not engage in mass killings of people like them. But the later is true whether the people have guns or not.
And given that the gun lobby in the US is paid for by the gun industry, people repeating the talking points of the gun lobby are the sheeple following the people who want to sell them guns.

38

What Privileges do you get when you are baptized ?

by LOLS in

my husband was baptized at the recent 2018 convention in south africa ....... he was very annoyed that his non-believing wife did not attend the baptism....... but i think he received pressure from his jw father & elders as to why his wife was not attending ....... anyway ..... it's really water off my back .

i wanted to know what privileges you get as a baptized jw man , as i saw a message from one of the elders at his cong , congratulating him on his baptism and to earning more privileges ..... what are these privileges the elder is speaking about ,,,,, .

i don't feel like asking my husband as it just lands up in a stupid fight ..... or a long winded explanation ..... thanks .

Abaddon

I think people have covered the ‘privileges’ quite well.

But there are downsides too.

I don’t know if you are aware, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses are obsessed about sex. Either who you should not be having sex with dash you’re okay in this respect as you’re married but anything else is wrong.

But you or he may be disappointed to find out that oral sex was banned for Jehovah’s Witnesses back in the 1960s, if my memory serves correctly. I don’t think it was ever allowed, per se, but they went out and explicitly (LOL) banned it, and then a few years later said it was none of the Elder’s business for a short while, before banning it again.

This opens up an interesting experiment. You know how they say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?

Well maybe the way to get a man out of the cult is through something a little lower.

16

Jehovah had a wife the ancient Israelites also worshiped Asherah

by Finkelstein in

recent archeological discoveries have found that the ancient israelites were not exactly monotheistic to yahweh, apparently the israelites also worshiped a god which was seen as yahweh's wife asherah.

small carved sculptures have been found in places of worship and homesteads to support these findings.asherah's connection to yahweh, according to francesca stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in the bible and an 8th-century b.c.

inscription on pottery found in the sinai desert at a site called kuntillet ajrud.

Abaddon

My simplified imagining is that the returnees from Babylon basically redefined their ancestral faith to provide a focal point for building a national identity, and helped this along by discovering ‘ancient texts’ which allowed them to claim they were advocating a return to orthodoxy.

193

tommy Robinson --update

by zeb in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8b_xqi_nm.

this is self explanatory.

please if you are in a commonwealth country write /phone /fax your local member to support tr release from his current place of imprisonment.. you may not receive any reply but do so anyway.

Abaddon

Actually, opposition to same sex marriage in the US is 39%, having fallen in recent years from 48%. About 40% only think abortion is acceptable if the mother's life is at risk. If you don't think those are a religiously-predicated opinions I don't know what would qualify.

In contrast, in Turkey 43%, in Pakistan 34%, in Morocco 29% of Muslims want their religious laws forced on non-Muslims.

So, no lies Simon - I was out be a few percent for Turkey as I was quoting off the top of my head.

And, again, you mischaracterise my argument.

I describe the awful things that were acceptable in our society two hundred years ago and say how some Islamic cultures are essentially comparable to then as they have not been subjected to the ameliorating influence of secularism.

I'm not denying that there are problems with certain groups of Muslims or that they do bad things.

But I refuse to reduce Muslims to a monolithic block or fall for the same divisive prejudiced nonsense that is spewed by the Tommy's of today or the Mosley's of the past.

The simplistic calls to action such people make neither describe the issue comprehensively or provide a solution. They do create an 'other' to be vilified and rejected, the populist's answer to everything - find someone who is different you can blame, use it to get followers.

I stand with peaceful law-abiding citizens no matter what their beliefs. I have seen firsthand more violence and hatred directed AT immigrants than I have ever seen directed BY immigrants, and I've lived most of my life in mixed communities.

And I lived in London when Catholic terrorists were bombing the shit out of it through the seventies - had one go off outside my bedroom window close enough to see the flash. But I never confused the Irish people I went to school with or worked with with terrorists and have a similar lack of difficulty confusing Muslims I know with terrorists even when some of that religion commit dreadful cowardly attacks deliberately targeting people that the IRA normally avoided doing on the mainland (different story in NI though).

193

tommy Robinson --update

by zeb in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8b_xqi_nm.

this is self explanatory.

please if you are in a commonwealth country write /phone /fax your local member to support tr release from his current place of imprisonment.. you may not receive any reply but do so anyway.

Abaddon

humbled

"But there are many sympathetic to the troubles within Muslim communities who know that education and focused efforts to assistance assimilation must come.

Attention is needed to avoid violence."

Yes.

If in October 2001, the US had started a massive campaign in conjunction with its allies in which throughout the developing world a water supply was installed in every village and a school and health centre built within walking distance, it would have cost less than the War on Terror.

The money of course would to have been an internal investment as military spending is. Would not have bought as many votes.

But it would make it very hard for those who wanted to spread hate in the developing world to get traction, as they would need to convince people whose mother draws fresh water from a tap with a sign saying 'A gift from the people of the European Union' next to it, and who went to school at a school with a little sign saying 'A gift from the people of America' that the West is their enemy.

And it would make the immigrant populations in the West feel proud, not conflicted when they saw this on TV. How can a young man get angry about water, schools and hospitals? What a comparison to seeing their co-religionists bombed...

193

tommy Robinson --update

by zeb in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8b_xqi_nm.

this is self explanatory.

please if you are in a commonwealth country write /phone /fax your local member to support tr release from his current place of imprisonment.. you may not receive any reply but do so anyway.

Abaddon

cofty

More Christians in the US support the imposition of religiously-predicated laws on non-Christians than Muslims in Turkey support the imposition of religiously-predicated laws on non-Muslims.

What's their excuse?

Do they feel that their beliefs are marginalised and that they are not accepted?

Possibly.

Are they representative of Christians in the USA?

Nope.

Let's call these Extreme Christians.

Are the majority of Christians in the US people who don't want to force their beliefs on others, and good neighbours working hard to give their children a better life, wanting to live peacefully and law abidingly with their neighbours no matter what their beliefs or ethnicity?

Certainly. Lets call these Moderate Christians.

What happens when people criticise Extreme Christians who want to force their religion on others? At least some of the Moderate Christians feel bound to support their fellow religionists.

Muslims are exactly the same. The ones you are worrying about are not a majority, not even close. But obsessing about them makes them feel even more excluded from the society they live in, and means some of their co-religionists feel bound by loyalty to them.

Rather than focusing on our best allies, the religious moderates, and making them feel more included in society and untainted by association them people whose beliefs they don't share and whose violence they repudiate, people focus on the minority that is doing wrong and make the situation worse.

Let the government agencies focus on anyone who wants to break the law. And give those who want to be isolationist (but still law abiding) the same right we give the most orthodox of Jews or Christian groups to be isolationists.

"The West do not have the time and patience to wait for an Islamic 'Reformation'. Neither would that be possible since Islam has no central authority in the way 16th century Christendom did."

I'm not even talking of the 16th Century or the Reformation. I am talking about secularisation. Totally different thing. Christianity has had no role in secularisation other than as a screeching and protesting retardant. The lack of a centralised Islamic authority therefore has nothing to do with the potential of Muslims to secularise, and in fact is something that could speed it, as well as the fact they are following a trail that has been blazed.

I don't know where you live, but I see Muslims who are as nominal as you could imagine, but would still tick 'Muslim' on a survey. They might attend mosque occasionally or not, just as nominal Christians attend church sometimes. They might answer questions as they think a Muslim should, just as Christians do. But they don't observe dietary restrictions, do have sex before marriage, and drink alcohol.

It's the way that it is going to go. Saudi is finally reforming - our supposed ally who has sponsored their culturally retarded form of Wa'habi Islam being preached in mosques and madrasas around the world - the form of Islam being most every terrorist Islamist group. Iran wavers on the verge of a new cultural revolution. Whether the West wants to wait is barely immaterial as there is nothing to do but wait and foster peace by mindful action. The War on Terror did no one any good, other than the politicians it helped stay in power and the corporations that made billions.

193

tommy Robinson --update

by zeb in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8b_xqi_nm.

this is self explanatory.

please if you are in a commonwealth country write /phone /fax your local member to support tr release from his current place of imprisonment.. you may not receive any reply but do so anyway.

Abaddon

Why are you posting prejudiced shit resolute Bandicoot? And what if I were a Muslim?

I've no interest in listening to a bigot on YouTube blow off with error after error in his monolog, but quite happy to have a dialog with you if you use your own words to express what you think.

I find it absolutely hysterical when non-believers take 'holy books' more seriously than the majority of the believers do, as most believers, whether they are Christian or Muslim only take what is convenient to them.

Look at how the expression of Christianity has changed in two hundred years - not because of any revelation from god, but because secularism and pragmatism has rubbed off the awkward bits and allowed people to ignore large parts of the Bible.

Islam is at the beginning of this process in many countries. Outside of the febrile imaginations of those pushing divisive ideologies, many Muslims in the West are well down this road.

The fact is culture expresses religion; religion does not express culture. This is how nasty, sexist, violent, racist Christian countries changed to far more peaceful and egalitarian ones. The culture changed, and people reinterpreted the religion accordingly (and became more and more nominal believers if not outright atheists). Our great great great grandfathers would consider the education of women nonsense, wife beating and marital rape a man's right, that an unchaperoned woman was a whore, that a woman showing her hair in public was likewise a whore, that it was right to impose religion with violence, that slavery was ok, that invading countries for trade or resources or just for land was totally permissible, that god created the world in seven days...

The culture in parts of some Muslim countries is basically unchanged from the time of WWII (and in many cases that means it closely resembled the culture in the country two hundred years ago, thus my comparison with great great great grandfathers), in others it has progressed. Immigrants carry cultural values with them, their children possess a blend, their grandchildren begin to resemble the 'norm' for that country. This has happened with almost every immigrant group in the past.

It will happen with Muslims because they are people just like us. The vast majority of the Muslims I have lived, worked and studied with are no more a risk to society than the average nominal member of the C of E, so it is happening, has happened.

88

Favourite female heroes in film ...

by LoveUniHateExams in

... well, obviously not rey (daisy ridley) from the latest star wars films.

she's a complete mary sue.

but, before hollywood tried to force sjw propaganda down our throats, there were lots of powerful, legit female characters in film.. here are some of my favourites .... ripley (sigourney weaver): i though this character was great.

Abaddon

LoveUniHateExams

i was riffing off your handle.

And yes, suggesting that black families have 1/10 the net worth of white families because black people are lazy IS racist.

if you doubt this, venture this opinion at work or in ethnically diverse company.

I know you won’t do that off course. You’ll advance racist ideas when you have the protection of anonymity but doing it at work where (in any decent company) that would end you up in HR, or where you’d have to say that to a black person’s face and it’s a different story.

Which proves you know it’s racist on some level.

You need to really have a good long think about that attitude. I’m not making out you’re dyed in the wool irredeemable. But your ideas in that area are reprehensible