Well, I guess if they attacked Times Square, no actual New Yorkers would be hurt…
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Honestly though, these assholes are our favourite kind of opponents. It’s easy to imagine that they represent some kind of existential threat. I mean, they told us as much themselves. They don’t share our motivations. We don’t understand them. They’re comfortingly foreign. They won’t be happy with any peace talks, but talk in terms of the domination of their ideology over our own. It’s not even worth talking with them as they’re basically savages. They also represent an enemy inside, so mistrust and mass surveillance are justified - more than that, they’re a patriotic obligation. They’re almost too conveniently black to counter the whiteness of our own actions. It’s back to the good old days.
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Aside from the whole ‘looming threat of thermonuclear apocalypse’ thing, perhaps the most depressing feature of the Cold War was the quality of the ‘friends’ we made in an attempt to win it. Not all of them were awful; but we sure didn’t care much one way or the other.
If you look at the whole roster of “Anti-Communists” (not counting the ones who calculated that they had to go with the flow or drowned), you see that none of them actually believed in liberal democracy. Authoritarians to the last one, they might be partially excused for believing that an iron-fisted totalitarian State would outcompete America and other free countries on any remotely level playing field.
So allying with more or less fascists was just a matter of “hang together or all hang separately.” The thought of pointing out to (e.g.) people in Latin America that the US Founders were way more radical than the graduates of Stalin’s graduate program for revolutionaries simply made no sense to them.
My family in Brooklyn will stab them in the face with a tire iron, bet on it.
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Rainbow Daesh?
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That headline seems to be putting words in the mouth of France’s foreign minister; he contends that the label ‘ISIS’ risks a damaging conflation with Islam as a whole, whereas ‘Daesh’ singles out this group to the satisfaction of everyone (except Daesh, of course).
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I guess it might if you don’t speak Arabic or check the meaning of the word, but both terms mean roughly the same thing (and specifically refer to Islam) and neither is ambiguous with regard to other organisations. I would like to see a different name, but that’s what they call themselves and I don’t mind referring to them with that name while being clear that I think they’re a bunch of murderous assholes who do not represent Islam, states, Syria or the Levant.
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this explains why it’s good to use: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/decoding-daesh-why-is-the-new-name-for-isis-so-hard-to-understand/#.Vkxyig9zMy0.twitter
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If they like the name ISIS, let’s call them SISI.
If they are actually the 14-year-old trolls they are purported to be, that ought to piss them off plenty.
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I’m going to stare at the wall instead of watching that, so that I can continue to say stupid-ass bullshit. Also! It’s in English! He’s clearly not really addressing them! It’s not like English is the lingua franca of the Internet!
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Sophisticated people read the Atlantic.
Except that ignores the historical debate about the Islamic age of conquest. It’s not settled history.
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I already linked to that.
did you read the rebuttals?
Yes, and it’s an argument about textual literalism versus evolved interpretations. Same argument as creationists versus evolutionists in Christianity.
Yay military industrial complex!
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Does the WBC practice genuine Christianity? If God exists, does God really hate fags? Is the solution to homophobia militant atheism?
