Well, I was one of the first members to join this forum back in 2002. Unfortunately, you are no longer to say anything here that is not 100% PC. Accordingly, I am deleting my account immediately and will spend my time elsewhere. Thanks for 13 years of timely Apple news ...
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Think of it less as shielding Islam from criticism, more as taking a stance against the lizard brained mob mentality BS that usually starts rolling when things like this come about.
I live in Chattanooga, and got to see all this crap roll out first hand. 5 servicemen get shot and killed by an extremist idiot, and the people, looking for a place to lay some of that sweet, sweet comfort blame, starting pointing their fingers at the Islamic community as a whole. "You people always do stuff like this", "We need to do something about them before things get worse", as if the lone actions of a single person are endemic of the whole. It's the type of thinking that inevitably leads to people hanging from a rope off tree branches.
Call me a Muslim apologist all you want. I honestly don't give a damn about Islam. What I do give a damn about is seeing a bunch of frightened people, feeding off their own ignorance, flushing our country down the toilet by siding with demagogues to fight in the name of mob justice.
If you'd read my entire post, instead of stopping at the part you chose to be offended by, you'd see I cautioned against the sort of overreactions you seem to have a problem with.
And you may not care about islam, but islam cares about you. Perhaps you owe it to yourself to find out why, so you're less perplexed by one "lone" "extremist idiot" and start to recognize the pattern of violence that goes back 1400 years.
I'm sorry, these are human beings you are talking bad about. There is no excuse for that, and it's not up for discussion!
I might be willing to lend an ear to what you say if it didn't sound exactly like every other anti-whatever tract that's been fielded practically since the dawn of human civilization.
Yeah, there's ISIS. Out of everything we've seen arise from the region, they're probably the only one that truly represents a threat to the interests and ideals of the Western World. But what you fail to understand is that ISIS isn't Islam, and can't be equated to the whole. If this were the case, you wouldn't be seeing the usual bouts of sectarian violence among the different branches of the religion. Iran wouldn't be doing a goodly amount of the dirty work against them for us. The entire region would be united behind them in one common goal.
Your mistake is referring to Islam as a "they", as if it's a hive mind with one common goal, all shared among billions of people. It's a cognitive rut that everyone is capable of falling into. It allows you to dehumanize people, judge them guilty over superficiality, and makes justifying and escalating violence that much easier. In the end, you'll become just as bad as those you're standing against. This isn't a new thing. It's been the way of the world up til The Enlightenment.
What you fail to realize is that you and ISIS do share one thing in common. A mindset. They're what you would be in more desperate circumstances. Blind hate, given voice, aimed at everyone who isn't you.
But unlike you, who are only some random angry person on the internet spew out angry diatribes against things that scare you, ISIS is an actual threat. They're armed. They're dangerous. They're extreme. But it's not one that'll be dealt with by blanket statements and making enemies of allies because they share the same religion. No. You fight your enemies, but you don't make new ones in the process because you're too busy fretfully kneejerking around all over the place to actually look at what you're aiming at.
That one lone idiot and extremist who murdered 5 of our servicemen. He was a Muslim. Does that mean we should burn down the local mosques, and start stringing people who even looks sorta Islamic from the trees?
I don't know who you're replying to, but it's not me. I'm not angry nor giving diatribes. I'm not calling for the burning down of mosques or the stringing up of people who look sorta islamic. My hatred of a hateful and violent ideology is not blind, it is based on years of careful study of that ideology using primary sources (I encourage everyone to do the same). I also made a clear distinction between the liberal or secular muslims and the fundamentalists.
So, perhaps you should actually read my posts before making your own quoting mine, so you could actually reply to my posts, not reply to some strawman you are attempting to make me into. What's more, actually reply to the substance of my posts and tell me where you disagree with me and explain your reasons for doing so, rather than giving a blind defense of islam because you somehow feel compelled to defend it from any criticism at all because some critics of islam are people you don't like.
Maybe you should do the same, because I'm not blindly defending Islam. I'm taking a stand against the breeding of extremist thoughts of our own. I don't want to trade a distant evil for one in my own back yard, one given birth through fear, and enabled by the selling out of everything we stand in order to attain some empty comfort from it.
I'm not going to call a bunch of scared people fleeing for their lives "invaders", and I'm not going to accept a false "but some of the moderates are good people" for anything but what it is: a way to cover your ass once the, as you call them, the PC brigade start calling you out. I've seen what you've upvoted. I've seen what you've written. I have a pretty good idea of where you stand. You paint with a broad brush.
If this were just crap I hear on the internet, I could ignore it easily enough. But I'm starting to hear the same thing from people around me. It's local now. I'm surrounded by it. And I'm getting kinda sick of it.
The problem with this comment is that it falls into the trap of attributing the criticism to an individual or a group of people.
The problem isn't with muslims it's with the islamic religion itself. The core tenants of islam are flawed. They not only allow but in certain instances explicitly call for violence, intolerance, and many other evil things.
Just because a person adopts a label, i.e. being muslim, doesn't mean that they endorse every single aspect of islam, it doesn't even mean that they are aware of every component of the religion. Most people are born into a particular religion and adopt it's label as part of fitting in with their family/culture.
That's why it's dangerous and wrong to take a criticism of an idea like islam and attribute it to a person or a group of people.
However, criticisms of the idea itself are completely acceptable and to be intolerant of that criticism is contrary to the principals of a free democratic state.
It's almost like you're saying people want the best option for themselves and for their family! Revelation! Didn't see that one coming!
If you were offered two new jobs offers outside of a company you absolutely hate, you were paid minimum wage and you want to leave. Do you pick the job offer that offers $10 an hour or the one that offers you $100 an hour?
That same sort of logic (in this case you use money) can be applied to almost any attribute you can think of when it comes to humans making decisions. If it's not money it's education. If it's not education it's well-being. If the "100 vs 10" comparison is not obvious, people will follow the crowd in a referral type system. I.e, if some of these people's buddies have told them Germany is a great place, people will want to go there.
Also the "UAE, Arabia and Qatar aren't taking them!?" point is rubbish. Those countries are known for being extreme xenophobes. You know you can't even live permanently in some of those countries unless you were born there? Did you also know that if you're foreign you're not allowed to own a business unless you appoint a native as co-owner? And legally that 'co-owner' doesn't need to help out but gets a very large portion of profits anyway?
Arab countries are saying 'no' because they're greedy and rich. They want to keep the wealth for themselves. For them it's nothing to do with religion, it's nothing to do with "they're ISIS!" and it's nothing to do with having some secret knowledge about the migrants that nobody else knows. No, it's greed.
This is a dumb thread and should be deleted. I guarantee you nobody, irrespective of which side they choose, knows anything about this problem and knows nothing about what's really going on in the middle east. It doesn't matter what book you read, what video you watched, what news station you follow, what ideology you follow. The entire situation is complicated and it always will be. There is nothing anybody can do to help out the M.E situation in whatever way people consider 'help.' By monday morning we'll all be back at our jobs and schools worrying about our own problems first. By Friday we'll all be consumed by the 6s.
Don't give yourself carpal tunnel for the sake of proving yourself right over the internet. Leaving this thread now.
The thing is, all Abrahamic religions have their own set of beliefs that could be considered questionable in a modern society, with each and every one offering a contradictory message of peace and intolerance. Judaism kicked it off, Christianity picked up a lot of its bad habits as well as its good, and Islam has its foundations both, with even more Zoroastrianism added for spice. The religion itself isn't any more or less flawed than any of the others, it's that some of the practitioners have taken greater strides towards enforcing a literal, fundamentalist ideology than any of the others in the recent era.
It's more the contemporary interpretation of the message than the message itself. Something that's far from being exclusive to Islam.
This...
It is a sad part of the whole refugee thing now...
There is no way to tell if they are really refugees or are they undercovers...
Apple has done this for years following any disaster or crisis. The timing in this case was purely coincidental.
The Philippines' tycoon huh MacRumors? Yeah I hate it when those ravenous oil barons blow in from the ocean.
Apple has run American Red Cross donation campaigns several times in the past for crises such as the 2013 Philippines tycoon,
And as a region the Middle East has a huge number of problems, and it isn't very tolerant. No need to join them with that intolerance though.
Germany's Merkel invited 800,000 and then promptly closed the border. Why? Because relatively few migrants were refugees from Syria and of many Syrians many were already living in Turkey and safe. Most were Afghans, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, various Middle Easterners and others. Not people fleeing war, just invaders.
This left Germany's neighbours with a huge problem as people surged. And when any little nation like Hungary tries to enforce border controls the world's press portrays them as akin to nazis. So everyone in the world is basically being told to surge through the European borders and no one will stop you!
This is on top of illegal immigration and bogus asylum seeking that's been going on for years, leaving many Europeans forced out of their towns or facing racial crime waves that 95% of the time the press buries as much as possible in the interests of 'community cohesion'. In Sweden and Norway virtually all violent rapes and sexual assaults are by muslim 'refugees'. Of course, one the rare occasion a European person attacks a migrant then it's big news.
Many of the the surging migrants have been rioting and hurling rocks at Europeans, some screaming Allah hu Akbar and other islamist chants.
We are not anti-immigration or racist but it must be controlled with points systems and proper visas. If I want to rock up in Australia, or the USA, or Canada I have to go through a process. I can't surge in throwing rocks demanding free everything from the state.
And that kid's clock looked like a freaking suitcase bomb - in East London many kids around his age have run off to Syria to fight for ISIS or marry terrorists. If he'd shown up with that in Tower Hamlets people would rightfully run a mile and call the army.
This left Germany's neighbours with a huge problem as people surged. And when any little nation like Hungary tries to enforce border controls the world's press portrays them as akin to nazis. So everyone in the world is basically being told to surge through the European borders and no one will stop you!
This is on top of illegal immigration and bogus asylum seeking that's been going on for years, leaving many Europeans forced out of their towns or facing racial crime waves that 95% of the time the press buries as much as possible in the interests of 'community cohesion'. In Sweden and Norway virtually all violent rapes and sexual assaults are by muslim 'refugees'. Of course, one the rare occasion a European person attacks a migrant then it's big news.
Many of the the surging migrants have been rioting and hurling rocks at Europeans, some screaming Allah hu Akbar and other islamist chants.
We are not anti-immigration or racist but it must be controlled with points systems and proper visas. If I want to rock up in Australia, or the USA, or Canada I have to go through a process. I can't surge in throwing rocks demanding free everything from the state.
And that kid's clock looked like a freaking suitcase bomb - in East London many kids around his age have run off to Syria to fight for ISIS or marry terrorists. If he'd shown up with that in Tower Hamlets people would rightfully run a mile and call the army.
That kids clock totally looked like a bomb and last night on real time with bill maher, mark Cuban said he spoke with the boy and the boy admitted to acting shady as hell when the teachers questioned him about it.
This is what our society has come to, where we hate on teachers for alerting authorities of a possible threat.
Even if the police/teachers acted with heighten suspecion because of the boys religion, so what. The Boston bomber was a Muslim boy only a little older than this kid in Texas and guess what folks, he did what he did because of islam.
When you can point to specific passages in their texts that call for violence, it would be asinine not to act with an elevated leve of suspecion.
And again, THAT THING LOOKED LIKE A BOMB.
This is what our society has come to, where we hate on teachers for alerting authorities of a possible threat.
Even if the police/teachers acted with heighten suspecion because of the boys religion, so what. The Boston bomber was a Muslim boy only a little older than this kid in Texas and guess what folks, he did what he did because of islam.
When you can point to specific passages in their texts that call for violence, it would be asinine not to act with an elevated leve of suspecion.
And again, THAT THING LOOKED LIKE A BOMB.
Yes, it may have looked like a bomb and notifying the principal was appropriate. The over reaction with 4 cops interrogating and arresting him and not letting him contact his parents is the problem here. They clearly and immediately realized it was not a bomb. That is obvious as the school was not evacuated nor the bomb squad called.
So what, a hoax bomb is still a crime under Texas law.
I am rarely one to praise the police, but in this case what they did was right. What if the clock was a diversion for bombs that were planted else where?
There is a public safety exception to custodial interrogations of both adults and minors.
Nope it looked like an electronic clock. So do you think every raspberry Pi or electronic breadboard looks like a bomb? The difference is this was a kid who was known to be good with electronics. Tabloid reading ignorant teacher and idiot police.
To any person off the street who doesn't even know what a raspberry pi is that thing looks like a bomb.
Would you put that in your bag and go through airport security with it?
That's a false analogy ...the purpose of the example was to illustrate that a reasonable person could believe that it was a bomb.
Every single individual in my 100+ person office at first felt very sorry for the boy, then they saw the picture of his device and their immediate response was "oh wow that looks nothing like a clock and looks a lot like a bomb"
The applicable Texas statute for hoax bombs in part reads as follows:
"(2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies" See Tex Pe. Code Ann § 46.08
It doesn't matter what the device actually was, or who he is (race/religion/gender or otherwise).
It has everything to do with how others would perceive it, and its not unreasonable at all to suspect that what he brought to school may have been a nefarious device.
That's why he was arrested. The teacher should be applauded for reporting it, and the police did the right thing by taking him into custody.
So the intent doesn't matter, just the perception that it could be something it's not? Considering how panicky people are these days, being able to charge people for causing unintended hysterics might not be the wisest move in the world.
Keep in mind the kid didnt walk in with a full sized suitcase. It was housed in a Vaultz pencil box.
Intent does ...but you don't adjudicate that on the spot ..that's why we have trials.
I'm not saying there's enough here for him to get convicted of something.
I'm just saying that the police had enough to detain him.
I'm not saying there's enough here for him to get convicted of something.
I'm just saying that the police had enough to detain him.
If the bomb treat was credible then the principal should be in prison for not evacuating the school.