To Plato - you owe me a chair..

Submitted by Michel (United States), Jan 30, 2007 at 16:21

Submitted by Plato, Jan 29, 2007 at 03:53

Plato, your post was beyond brilliant.

After recovering from the best laugh I had in weeks- I actually fell backwards off my chair and broke the thing in the process– I just can't help myself to add my two cents .

"Show me where this mythical mass of moderate Muslims is reforming Islam? ..."

Here is a site called Memri. You will see some interesting articles there from the Arab media. That is the trickle that Michel is talking about. The selection is just random. The site also gives articles which will make you happy and confirm you in your belief.

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=reform&ID=SP25701

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=reform&ID=SP28201

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=reform&ID=SP30701

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=reform&ID=SP33102

The above "trickle" will be labelled as irrelevant, as not representative, whereas of course isolated occurrences like in Muttenz, are fair game to evidence their stand.

"...The Western world is paralyzed with fear and bends over backwards to avoid "offending" those savages..."

Wrong. Look what happened to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan. I did not see any fear there.

You are looking - I commend that - at the glass half full, Plato, whereas I must as European at least concede, that there are clear tendencies (eg France) of appeasement and fear, which must and could be counteracted. Across the board militant fanatics are not being prosecuted in a forceful manner. Despicable occurrences like the Birmingham example are indeed scary propositions. "Freedom of Speech" is indeed in a process of perversion - but my slant is - not just by Muslims, but throughout.

"Totally irrelevant to the subject and nothing more than an attempt at deflection. Stick to the topic"

Very relevant. You brought in the topic un-Americanism (shades of MaCarthy?). If you can invade America and reform (obliterate) the Red Indians why should the Muslims not believe that they can launch a migratory attack and reform (convert) the presents owners of that land mass.

Any effort to point out a double standard will be dismissed as present vs. past.

"No, the drift of my argument is that the only good Muslim is a reformed, peaceful Muslim. If that's not possible, then the only good Muslim is a Muslim confined to his cage (ie isolated in Arabia). If that in turn is not possible, then yes, the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim."

From what you have been saying it seems to be your firm belief that Muslims are neither peaceful, nor can be reformed. And confining them to Arabia is an impossible task. So the only good Muslim is a dead one.

You nailed the causal chain precisely. Now take it a step further and ask yourself, when that very exact dogma was used. Replace the word "Muslim" with Jew, Krim Tatar, Armenian, Indian, Christian, …… shall I go on?

"Well, since we don't have a time machine, we can't go back and un-do that, now can we? So the issue is moot. Get back to the actual topic and stop deflecting."

True. A moot issue. But why are you trying to undo another moot issue. The existence of Muslims in America, Europe and elsewhere. And your plan for that looks suspiciously like how you dealt with the red Indians, Maoris and aborigines. Past experience of depopulating counts but the circumstances and dynamics of the ground realities today are a bit different from two or three hundred years ago.

Moving target. Moot is in the eye of the beholder. You forget that we are not dealing with objectivism..

"I'm not Christian, so I can't say that God gave me anything"

If your ancestors were white, they believed they had that right. And now you are sitting pretty there. I hope you don't believe in ghosts either. You would be haunted by the thought of all those injuns who were sent to their happy hunting grounds prematurely.

So the blessing of living in the US, the freedoms and pursuit of happiness is a miracle? Who gave you that? Did not come by itself, right? That fact that you can sit there lazily in your armchair, spill any form of intolerance, is based upon our own migratory attack, our own genocide, small pocks in covers given to peaceful Injuns, millions of buffalo cadavers littering the railway tracks.
But such points are of course irrelevant to the issue at hand....

"As many as it takes. If that means wiping all of them out, fine. As far as I care, we can nuke Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait, give one each to the USA, China, and Russia, and that will prevent any conflict between the Big Three over it."

May be you know better than most of us about MOAB, neutron bombs and other clean killing equipment. When Chernobyl let out a bit of gas we had Europe running for cover, and not from the smell. Converting those land masses into masses of glass would I expect make the rest of the earth also unlivable. Hating someone enough to become suicidal I cannot understand.

There is no such thing, Plato, as a clean killing equipment. Pure propaganda. Neutron Bombs are for a variety of reasons not applicable here. Bunker Buster "low yield" nukes will make Tschernobyl look like moth spray. I tried to explain that to them to no avail. Apart from the tiny little aspect, that the locations are completely dispersed, in direct proximity to civilian targets and as deep down as any Swiss Gotthard Tunnel (To my everlasting shame, the Swiss were building some of Saddams and Iran's underground facilities) The only "strike" militarily possible would be utter annihilation of IRAN or a full-fledged Invasion. The first would result in fall out of unheard magnitude… the second may end up to be inevitable with Vietnam level casualties. Any effort from our side to point out the consequences is dismissed, as it is always easy to call for such, if one sees the whole problem as a video game.

The psychobabbler in me wants to speak up. You may tune out if you wish. Us wishy-washy left liberal types break out in a cold sweat when there is talk of blood and gore. But having said that we also recognise that for us to retain our dovish attitudes there must be some hawks hovering far above to protect us. We are beholden to them in the free world. But we also like to keep a tight reign on them to ensure they feed only on birds selected by us doves and normally we allow them to devour only birds and rodents that attack us physically. Keeping the hawks natural instinct for slash and burn in check is what keeps the free world free.

I commend you for your empathy and can only invite the fanatics to go and have a talk with a Vietnam vet. If you do not know the stench of fresh blood, the sounds and carnage of just one grenade, the butchery of a suicide bombing in the middle of a market, the horror of killing, all these horrible consequences remain abstract notions for our desk jockeys. I have a simple remedy for that: go ahead and turn off the power of your freezers for 3 weeks. Then, take a whiff. If you still stand, multiply that by10000. Then, come back and have the audacity of recommending to nuking just one village.

Now for a bit of mathbabble. Mathematical simulations have found that pure dove populations and pure hawk populations are not stable. Each will be invaded by the other. Also interestingly hawks do poorly when in high frequency. For more on that Google 'Hawk dove game theory'.

Thank you Noah, Susan we need you. And we thank the natural law that keeps your kind in tolerable numbers. The same should hold in the Muslim world too. At the moment their hawk population is on the ascendecy helped along by the hawks in the free world. So eventually it may not be voices of reason that prevail, I grant you, but the logic of mathematics.

End of babbling for now.

No babbling…I could have read on forever. I hope though that you are right, as the cavemen have much bigger tools nowadays and the species runs out of room for error.

"If you cannot see the threat Islam poses, then you are clearly too stupid to engage in conversation on the matter with me..."

Duh. Stupid old me signing off for now. Have to. My saliva is dribbling all over my keyboard.

If you are not willing to "see the truth", then Plato you are stupid. There we go again. Either you capitulate, or you will be insulted. Nothing in between.

For what it's worth, ILMAO, hence you made my day. Nevertheless, while I babble with you, I am kind of tired of going in circles. People to do and places to go. But I enjoyed your posts tremendously and invite you to contact me directly, as I would love to stay in touch. (MCZala@hotmail.com).

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