urgh, I was aware that UK only signed parts of the treaty but I thought it would include the omitted border controls - my bad, sorry.
but my point stands: the tunnel makes distance and island position less important
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Youâre confusing me here, are you admitting to making a false equivalence? Why did you? I donât see anything in the post you called out for straw manning suggesting what you say either.
Itâs a common tactic in apologism to point out failings closer to home to excuse those under discussion, theyâre rarely comparable though, and even if they were it wouldnât be a very good excuse.
If I find any presentation by someone with an obvious axe to grind, I assume Iâm going to be presented with a one-sided cherry picked argument, and I am too old to bother with those any more. It saves me having to look at tabloid newspapers.
(I exclude on the ground reports by real journalists).
Well it was a dumb assumption to make in this case.
If one of the results of secularism is that a lot fewer people get killed because their religion, or lack of same, does not match up with that of the leaders of the state, then IMO the sense of superiority is completely justified. And âa lot fewerâ is enough for me to hold that opinion, it does not have to be âzeroâ.
(edit) Mindysan, if you did not mean a âfalse sense of superiorityâ in your post, I apologize!
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I agree. Which is why, if the USA goes to war against anyone, we should do it with boots on the ground in a big way. Because (a) non-nuclear wars are never won in any other way, and (2) the costs of war should be blindingly obvious to the American public.
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John le Carré remarked that the Vietnam war was lost in air conditioned rooms, not in the jungle. You can lose a war by simple remoteness, but the whole thrust of US military development has been in long range projectile weapons. You can argue about the reasons for this, but I think that one is the experiences of WW2, where the US had to create an army lacking in experience and so had high initial casualties. The war in the West turned into a series of artillery barrages before the troops went in, and this along with carrier warfare in the Pacific became doctrine.
The Battle of the Bulge showed that a nucleus of experienced American troops could withstand and repel a German attack. But it was considered too visibly costly compared to the attrition of the artillery and bomber approach.
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On the way into work I heard In Living Colorâs âCult of Personalityâ and was reminded of FDRâs quote, ââŠthe only thing we have to fear is fear itselfâŠâ
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I am well aware that itâs not a bad commute, but my point is that it would have to be quite the explosion to be at risk of shrapnel. To say nothing of the breathtaking ignorance of some of my countrymen.
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Very much so:
Certainly agree. This might work for France, but not for the USA, where we have a national pathology about only making common cause with the âgood guysâ.
welcome to the caliphate,
Itâs having a functional society and government recognition of the separation of church and state which is the only antidote for religious based killing.
I would suggest we apply the following test to any religious person: âDo you agree that it is a basic civil right to make jokes about and draw mocking cartoons of any religious figure, including but not limited to Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed?â If they answer ânoâ, out with 'em.
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Thanks for sharing! This is the video for those who donât have Facebook:
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Waleed Aly is a fucken champ.
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Actually, I have to backpedal on my assessment that this wasnât the case - not so much for Muslims in general, but certainly for (Syrian) refugees in countries that already have right-wing governments. Hungarian police for example has been treating refugees quite inappropriately for months now, and the new right-wing Polish government of the PiS party (sic) who a few hours after the Paris attacks chickened out on the agreement that they would take the (laughable) number of 4500 refugees, or this clown who wants to send the refugees back to Syria to fight ISIS.
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The third attacker, for reasons still unknown, waited another 23 minutes
to trigger his vest, killing only himself, away from the stadium, next
to a tree and a traffic sign in a side-road wedged between office
buildings. - AP/yahoo
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Yes it would! We need to know populations and also sizes of armies doing battle. What if he counted as battles little raids by one guy on a horse? We donât have the info to make a rational conclusion. Also, the battles in Spain are suspiciously geospatially uniform. Something is off about both his presentation and his map.
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A lot of the incidents (especially around the coastal areas) were slave raids, so small forces, limited casualties but large numbers of slaves taken (1-2 million in a 200 year period). The exact numbers for each incident arenât relevant though, itâs clear the numbers are stacked substantially against the west to matter how you count it up (and this doesnât even include the 1.5 million killed in the Armenian genocide).
Yes, the numbers are important. And so are the number of slaves taken each time and where in the geography it occurred. And you admitted the map is inaccurate because it wasnât an even geographic distribution throughout Spain, but mainly on the coastal areas. So the map was drawn to make it look like a total continental incursion, but in reality was mostly coastal activity. So you canât have it both ways. The numbers canât be irrelevant and the map is drawn inaccurately. Pick one. Either the numbers are relevant or the story is skewed.
When somebody tells me numbers arenât important, thatâs like a stab in the eye. Itâs showing me that you arenât looking at this with a critical view; instead itâs some other form of political communication which I canât get behind.
Okay, if youâre going by the original/literal meaning of the term âconcentration campâ. I donât particularly like that. History has made that a very powerful term that should not be used lightly.
This is about the Serbia->Croatia->Slovenia->Austria route - Hungary has taken itself off that route by simply closing its borders.
At this time, refugees are âbeing put in campsâ because for some reason they do not seem to appreciate the opportunity of being allowed to sleep under the limitless freedom of the European sky in November. The weather has been exceptionally kind, with 18 degrees during the day, but Winter Is Coming, as they say.
The other bad thing thatâs being done to them is registration. Which must be almost as degrading as passing through US immigration. Iâm sure itâs inefficient, and having to wait surely is annoying.
Police are also trying to prevent people from bypassing that bureaucracy and crossing the border elsewhere. People who get caught are arrested and are brought to the official border checkpoint, were they can continue on their way.
Yes, a lot of things could go wrong. But right now, I honestly donât see how the arrival of these masses could be handled in a more refugee-friendly way by the governments of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, and Germany.
Let me just remind you of the scale of the migration going on here.
Every day, about 7000 people arrive at Austriaâs border with Slovenia. Most of them want to go to Germany; about 3000 people each week apply for asylum in Austria. Slovenia has 2 Million inhabitants, Austria has 8.5.
Basically, this is the equivalent of 250,000 people fleeing from a hypothetical civil war in Brazil marching across the Mexico-USA border every day in order to reach their destination in Canada.
There will be calls to do more to actually determine the identity of the people who are coming. People will call for deportation and/or punishment of people who are caught providing false ID, or who cross borders illegally when explicitly ordered by police not to, by just pushing past the outnumbered police who are, fortunately, not that trigger-happy.
It wouldnât be quite fair to talk about âconcentration campsâ then, either.
On the question of whether religion is a primary factor:
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The numbers arenât important (to my original point, maybe you want to go back to the very first post I replied to in case youâve lost the thread) because theyâre an order of magnitude greater on one side, the exact numbers are not relevant. Even if he was out by a factor of 10, then youâd still have more Christians killed by Muslims than vice versa (especially if you include the Armenian genocide, which he doesnât), and my original point would still stand.
And I havenât admitted the map is inaccurate, maybe it is, Iâm not about to go checking the validity of every dot heâs included, but there were lots and lots of battles during the conquest of Al Andalus, and lots and lots of battles in the Reconquista, so I donât see why an even spread of dots would be particularly surprising - Iberia is a big place. So it wasnât mainly on the coastal areas of Spain at all, I was just pointing out that the ones on the coast were mostly slaving incursions (in fact heâs left a lot of them out of his map, heâs not included any of the ones in Britain or Ireland, they even went as far as Iceland).
