[rhinoceros] I would. I could put something else aside and go to read this if you offered a compelling reason. What knowledge would I gain?
Would I be able to go tell a contemporary mainstream Islamic scholar "no, your interpretation of Islam as a peaceful religion is just plain wrong and the right way to interpret it is to talk for jihad, because that is what this or that famous scholar did in the 12th century"? Or what?
Wow! Do I love this phrase. Talk about summing up America. Or at least a large voting block of America. The part that would think this government deserves another four years in power.
Bill
It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of OUR NATIONAL STUPIDITY. - F. Zappa
No, but you would have a harder time debating with a jihadist mullah who referenced such Quranic sources, as would your pacifist imam - which is probably why we hear volumes from the jihadist clerics, but not so much as a peep from the peaceable ones.
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #18 on: 2004-05-14 07:36:09 »
not to ruin the natural progression of this thread...but didnt the US hold Berg for no reason at all before he was allegedly beheaded by iraqi terrorists...didnt his father complain bitterly that if the US had allowed his son to leave Iraq while it was still safe, he would still be alive..why did the FBI question berg..why was he arrested..how did he get to the beheaders from there...there are questions..and there was a fleeting whisper of an answer by a BBC commentator...it goes something like this..the weakening american resolve to continue to stay in iraq after the prisoner abuse pictures had done a 180 degree turn...with the berg execution, americans consider trailer trash american soldiers sodomising iraqis better than beheadings....strategic weapons of mass distraction...you know..like how we were all momentarily distracted by the obviously fake british torture pictures...took the heat off the real american torture pictures....this is an A-HA moment..in more ways than one..btw..how do we know this beheader is who the americans say he is..really...other than, of course...because they told us so..
its time to remember another beheading...daniel perl...rumsfield and co denounced it and said it was against the geneva convention rules to publish images of prisoners being abused when perl lost his head...geneva..wha... anyways...i hear that they are going to invoke the same gemerpivaubneklnaslobberdripdrip convention rules to prevent the rest of the 1800+ images of iraqi prisoner abuse by american soldiery being published to the rest of the world outside wash. ruling elite...
democracy's torchbearer...needs to stick the torch up its ass...lubly...
By AMIR TAHERI http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/20835.htm May 14, 2004 -- THE murder of Nick Berg, a 26-year-old American businessman, by a group of Islamist terrorists in Iraq continues to send shock waves through much of the West. What has impressed most people is the fact that the terrorists cut Mr. Berg's head in the way that sheep are beheaded at the annual Feast of the Sacrifice. Berg is, of course, not the first to be murdered in such a gruesome manner. Nor, alas, is he likely to be the last. For the cutting of heads (in Arabic, qata al-raas) has been the favorite form of Islamist execution for more than 14 centuries. In the famous battles of early Islam, with the Prophet personally in command of the army of believers, the heads of enemy generals and soldiers were often cut off and put on sticks to be shown around villages and towns as a warning to potential adversaries. In 680, the Prophet's favorite grandson, Hussein bin Ali, had his head chopped off in Karbala, central Iraq, by the soldiers of the Caliph Yazid. The severed head was put on a silver platter and sent to Damascus, Yazid's capital, before being sent further to Cairo for inspection by the Governor of Egypt. The Caliph's soldiers also cut off the heads of all of Hussein's 71 male companions, including the one-year-old baby boy Ali-Asghar. Islamic history is full of chopped heads being sent around by special delivery to reassure rulers, to terrorize foes and to impress the common folk. In 1821, the Qajar king of Persia ordered a week of celebrations when he received the severed head of a Russian general who had been captured in a battle near Baku. In 1842, the Afghans massacred the British garrison in Kabul, a total of 2,000 men and their wives and children, chopping off their heads and putting them on sticks to decorate the city. (They allowed one man to leave to report to the British.) In 1885, it was the turn of British Gen. Gordon to have his head chopped off and put on a stick in Khartoum after it had fallen to the forces of the Mahdi. Slightly later, Mullah Hassan, the Somali rebel known to the British as "the mad mullah" but to his fanatical supporters as "the Shah," made a habit of chopping Western heads in what is now Somalia. At one point he had a large collection of severed Italian and British heads. Iran's Khomeinist mullahs also love severed heads. In April 1980, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali wanted to cut off the heads of eight American soldiers who had died in a failed hostage rescue mission in the Iranian desert. He was prevented from doing so thanks to a last minute intervention by the Swiss government. In 1986, the Khomeinist mullahs cut off the head of William Buckley, the CIA's Beirut station chief who had been kidnapped by the Hezbollah and sent to Tehran for interrogation.
And in 1992, the mullahs sent a "specialist" to cut off the head of Shapour Bakhtiar, the shah's last prime minister, in a suburb of Paris. When the news broke, Hashemi Rafsanjani, then president of the Islamic Republic, publicly thanked Allah for having allowed "the severing of the head of the snake." In 1993, Fereidun Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most famous pop stars, had his head chopped off in Germany by a Khomeinist hit squad after the mullahs issued a fatwa for his murder. Chopping off heads was widely practiced throughout the Afghan wars of the 1980s. An estimated 3,000 Soviet soldiers, many of them Muslims, had their heads cut off by the Mujahedeen, who at the time enjoyed U.S. and other Western support. (In other cases the Mujahedeen cut off the testicles of the Soviet soldiers and fed them to other Soviet prisoners.) Needless to say, rival Mujahedeen also chopped off each other's heads. The group led by one Haji Akbari was especially notorious in that respect. One of its members was Osama bin Laden. Throughout the 1990s, head-chopping was routinely carried out by the Army for Islamic Salvation (AIS), the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), the Salafi Group for Preaching and Armed Jihad (GSPAJ) and other Islamist terror outfits. One Algerian specialist in slitting throats and cutting off heads was known as Momo le Nain (Muhammad the Midget). He was a 20-plus-year-old butcher's apprentice recruited by the GIA for the purpose of cutting off people's heads. In 1996 in Ben-Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, Momo cut off a record 86 heads in one night, including the heads of more than a dozen children. In recognition of his exemplary act of piety, the GIA sent him to Mecca for pilgrimage. Last time we checked, Momo was still at large somewhere in Algeria. Four years ago, Iran was shocked by the murder of the well-known dissident leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh. The couple, in their 70s, had their heads chopped off and displayed on their mantelpiece. The regime blamed "rogue elements" within its Ministry for Intelligence and Security. But no one was punished. Cutting heads is frequently practiced against clerics from non-Islamic faiths or even rival Islamic sects. At least four Christian priests and nine Sunni Muslim muftis have been murdered in that way in Iran since 2001. In Pakistan, rival Sunni and Shiite groups have made a habit of sending cut-off heads of each other's activists by special delivery. By one estimate, over 400 heads have been chopped off and mailed since 1990. Chopping heads is also practiced by Muslim militants on the Indonesian island of Borneo as a means of driving the Christian majority out. It has been effective in forcing nearly half of the island's Christians packing. At one point in the 1980s, the Abu-Sayyaf Islamist group in Mindanao, The Philippines, used the tactic of severing heads as a means of terrorizing the security forces. Americans should also remember Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered in the same way in Pakistan over two years ago. Although head-chopping is now seen as a mode of communication between Islamist militants and the Western world, the overwhelming victims have been Muslims. Mankind has a natural propensity to become used to the worst atrocities and factor in the cruelest facts of life. But the sight of a severed head will continue to shock even the most blasé of the cynics. This is why those who are defying the whole of humanity in this war on terrorism are certain to continue to employ people like Momo le Nain.
Re: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #20 on: 2004-05-14 11:11:11 »
No, it's because peaceful statements don't increase viewership and advertising dollars for the media.
What journalist can make his career off of “give peace a chance?”
None.
Media is served by money interests and sensationalism serves viewership and peace isn't sensational.
Memes are all.
Memetic analysis is the only viable analysis when talking about memetic issues.
-----Original Message----- From: "Joe Dees" <hidden@lucifer.com> Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 20:24:30 To:virus@lucifer.com Subject: RE: virus: The Berg Execution
No, but you would have a harder time debating with a jihadist mullah who referenced such Quranic sources, as would your pacifist imam - which is probably why we hear volumes from the jihadist clerics, but not so much as a peep from the peaceable ones.
Re: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #21 on: 2004-05-14 11:19:18 »
: > Disneyland of delusion. : Wow! Do I love this phrase. Talk : about summing up America. Or
America was named after a sensationalist journalist/explorer who wrote stories about giant bare breasted women and battles with sea monsters - in order to drum up enthusiasm for his explorations.
Do I understand you correctly in suggesting that the alleged shortcomings of the man America was named after have some relevance to that country?
What is it with US self-loathing and the persistent myth of American stupidity? People are generally ignorant, benighted and easily fooled the world over.
Compared to the vast majority of the world the average US citizen is extremely well educated and well informed. Every country has scare polls like "1 in 10 adults think England is surrounded by the Pacific". The US is no more Disneyland of delusion that France is The Disneyland Paris of Delusion.
Give the self-loathing a rest.
Kind regards
Jonathan
-----Original Message----- From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of Erik Aronesty Sent: 14 May 2004 16:19 To: Church of Virus Subject: Re: virus: The Berg Execution
: > Disneyland of delusion. : Wow! Do I love this phrase. Talk : about summing up America. Or
America was named after a sensationalist journalist/explorer who wrote stories about giant bare breasted women and battles with sea monsters - in order to drum up enthusiasm for his explorations.
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #23 on: 2004-05-14 14:36:32 »
[Casey] It is a tragedy that Nick Berg was murdered. There's no doubt about that. But, his death will have served the Muslim people less because it has distracted world attention from the criminal behavior of US military police officers. Unfortunately, those who commit such barbaric crimes such as the aforementioned decapation don't see things with much rationality. But, there has been an outpouring of Muslim commentary that condemns this atrocious act. Read below for more details.
[Casey] Different shades of condemnation in Arab world to Berg killing some blame U.S. abuses
Updated: 12:17 p.m. ET May 14, 2004CAIRO, Egypt - From Baghdad to Cairo, the brutal beheading of American contractor Nicholas Berg in Iraq by militant extremists was widely condemned, yet it was also seen as an unfortunate, but inevitable act of revenge for the revelations of U.S. prisoner abuse at the Abu Gharib prison.
In Cairo, university student Mohamed Mwafiq saw the news on TV. "It's a very terrible thing," he said, but "it's action and reaction."
Fellow student Amin Hanouris extended sympathy to Berg's family but said, "Let me be frank with you, this is because of revenge."
Mohamed Hamdy, an Egyptian engineer saw the entire video on the internet. "As a human being, we see these scenes [of the beheading] and feel incredibly sorry. He is a human and [the Iraqi prisoners] are humans, but the [U.S.] started it."
From East Jerusalem, academic Abdel Hadi called the killers human beings "in a state of madness" but warned, "if you create a culture of war, you have to expect revenge.”
The CIA said Thursday that analysis of the videotape released by the killers indicated the murder was committed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who has been linked to a series of attacks in Iraq and is believed to have links to al-Qaida.
Violated precepts of Islam- Among those interviewed about the killing, all said it violated the precepts of Islam, and denied that the perpetrators acted out of religious conviction.
"They don't have any religion…all they have is killing and blood," Mwafiq said.
"All of this cannot be accepted in Islam or Christianity or Judaism," added Hanouris.
In Baghdad, Majid al Azawi, felt restrained by his religion. He said that if it was up to him, he would burn all Americans, "not just cutting one head, because the Americans killed our people and destroyed our country.”
But, he said, the Quran prohibits Muslims from killing one person for the mistakes of another.
On the other hand, Hamdi in Cairo found some religious justification in the saying - "a tooth for a tooth."
"They didn't do this for the sake of God," Hamdy said. "What Islam said is ‘a tooth for a tooth’ and whoever started is the oppressor. [The U.S.] started in Iraq and did worse than that. "
A few voices unequivocally condemned the act.
Mustafa Abu-Lebdeh, chief editor of Jordan's Al Rai newspaper said they didn't run pictures with the story because it would offend readers. "This is a case where we feel that there is no logic in such a case except if you analyze it or understand it in the context that it is brutal."
The chief editor of the Arab News, Khaled Al Maina, also condemned the brutality of the crime. Jehan Jafar, a Baghdad resident, said she was ashamed of being Iraqi if the killers called themselves Iraqi. "We are against what happened no matter who he was. He was a human being and nothing justifies his death," insisted Jafar.
Most Arab governments – silent, but officials outraged - From most Arab governments, there was silence, although officials from four nations decried the murder.
Saudi Arabia, embroiled in its own war against terrorism, issued a statement from the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, who said "killing detainees and mutilating the remains of the dead are acts which are condemned by all religions and are contrary to the morals of all nations and peoples."
He called the al-Zarqawi group "a criminal deviant and un-Islamic group, allied with [Osama] Bin Laden and the criminals of al-Qaida who are killing even Muslims and Arabs for no reason."
Jordan's Embassy in Washington condemned the barbaric act and said that Jordan had issued a death sentence against al-Zarqawi who has plotted terrorist acts in Jordan which threatened to kill thousands.
The Information Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan, called it a "heinous crime against the civilized world."
In a statement he said, "We are ashamed because these terrorists carried out this revolting and inhumane act in the name of our religion and culture…This disgusting brutality can never be justified and has nothing to do with Islam or with our Arab values."
The Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin called the perpetrators "psychopaths" who should be brought before justice very rapidly.
Media coverage- dismissive - Yet, in marked contrast to the massive and continuing coverage of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, Arab media treated the brutal murder dismissively.
Most Arab newspapers gave the story short shrift, carrying it as brief news item among other Iraq related stories.
The headline in Al Hayat, a prestigious pan-Arab newspaper, seemed to imply the murder was a result of Iraqi prisoner abuse. It read, “’Al Zarkawy’ Executes an American in Revenge for the Prison Torture: The Red Cross and Amnesty International both Consider Prison Abuse to be Methodical and not Exceptional.”
Al Wafd, an Egyptian tabloid, was even blunter: "A Revenge Operation for the Victims of Abu Gharib.”
Egypt's leading newspaper carried the story on the fourth page, but was more circumspect: “Abu Zarqawi's Group Executes an American Hostage by Decapitating Him With a Sword: Washington Denies the Link between the Operation and the Torture Crimes…”
TV coverage scant, but sympathetic TV coverage was scant but sympathetic, with the two major Arab networks, Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya, carrying the story as a brief news item for half a day.
Although the U.S. government has been sharply critical of what it perceives as biased coverage from Al-Jazeera, the network's editorial commentary criticized the action rather than offering justification for it. An Iraqi political analyst interviewed by Al-Jazeera called it a stupid, angry, individual action that worsened the plight of the Iraqi people.
Al Arabiya, another popular Arab network, had a panel discussion in which participants condemned the act, and contended that it cost Iraqis the sympathy they gained in the wake of the Abu Gharib prison scandal.
Gamal Nkrumah, foreign editor of the Al Ahram Weekly, voiced the same opinion. "In the past week, there was a resurgence of sympathy for the Iraqi people, and for the Arab and Muslim world generally in the West, and so this evil deed doesn't do the Arab cause any good."
Nkrumah and many others suggested that those who committed the atrocity have a different agenda than the Iraqis. "I don't think the person who did this has the same cause as the victims of U.S. occupation in Iraq."
From Baghdad, Dr. Abdel Wahab, political science professor at Al-Nahrain University agreed. "This has nothing to do with Iraq. Nothing to do with the Iraqi agenda."
Charlene Gubash is an NBC News producer based in Cairo. NBC News' Rachel Levin in Baghdad, Moufaq Khatib in Amman, and Ara
Re: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #24 on: 2004-05-14 17:14:50 »
: Are you referring to Amerigo : Vespucci's letter to Pier Soderini, : Gonfalonier of the Republic of : Florence?
Yes, and the books he authored on similar and more elaborate whimsy.
Both America and Amerigo love tall tales of high adventure. I find it appropriate that our country, the worlds largest producer of fanciful tales, was named after such a man.
Because as much as Amerigo was a master salesman, he really did inspire many people to learn about the world.
America is very much like that. Being in love with fantasy is a mixed bag. Sometimes our skill in storytelling gets in the way of the truth. But sometimes it leads us to progress and places we would have never explored otherwise.
I know that in my life, I'm the same way. Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth. Other times, by eggagerating and bragging, I actually wind up causing things to happen in my life. Like my skidiving trip this weekend...
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #25 on: 2004-05-14 18:36:10 »
....you have to admit, if you werent a soldier with orders to stay...head-choppers make a very big impression, such that many would prefer to flee. this of course gives rise to the suggestion that the darker side of humanity has an edge - unless those opposed to gruesome acts lacking empathy unite, which is much harder to do than cut off a few heads. and with the spread of islam as it is, one has to wonder.
DrSebby.(against chopping off heads) "Courage...and shuffle the cards".
By AMIR TAHERI http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/20835.htm May 14, 2004 -- THE murder of Nick Berg, a 26-year-old American businessman, by a group of Islamist terrorists in Iraq continues to send shock waves through much of the West. What has impressed most people is the fact that the terrorists cut Mr. Berg's head in the way that sheep are beheaded at the annual Feast of the Sacrifice. Berg is, of course, not the first to be murdered in such a gruesome manner. Nor, alas, is he likely to be the last. For the cutting of heads (in Arabic, qata al-raas) has been the favorite form of Islamist execution for more than 14 centuries. In the famous battles of early Islam, with the Prophet personally in command of the army of believers, the heads of enemy generals and soldiers were often cut off and put on sticks to be shown around villages and towns as a warning to potential adversaries. In 680, the Prophet's favorite grandson, Hussein bin Ali, had his head chopped off in Karbala, central Iraq, by the soldiers of the Caliph Yazid. The severed head was put on a silver platter and sent to Damascus, Yazid's capital, before being sent further to Cairo for inspection by the Governor of Egypt. The Caliph's soldiers also cut off the heads of all of Hussein's 71 male companions, including the one-year-old baby boy Ali-Asghar. Islamic history is full of chopped heads being sent around by special delivery to reassure rulers, to terrorize foes and to impress the common folk. In 1821, the Qajar king of Persia ordered a week of celebrations when he received the severed head of a Russian general who had been captured in a battle near Baku. In 1842, the Afghans massacred the British garrison in Kabul, a total of 2,000 men and their wives and children, chopping off their heads and putting them on sticks to decorate the city. (They allowed one man to leave to report to the British.) In 1885, it was the turn of British Gen. Gordon to have his head chopped off and put on a stick in Khartoum after it had fallen to the forces of the Mahdi. Slightly later, Mullah Hassan, the Somali rebel known to the British as "the mad mullah" but to his fanatical supporters as "the Shah," made a habit of chopping Western heads in what is now Somalia. At one point he had a large collection of severed Italian and British heads. Iran's Khomeinist mullahs also love severed heads. In April 1980, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali wanted to cut off the heads of eight American soldiers who had died in a failed hostage rescue mission in the Iranian desert. He was prevented from doing so thanks to a last minute intervention by the Swiss government. In 1986, the Khomeinist mullahs cut off the head of William Buckley, the CIA's Beirut station chief who had been kidnapped by the Hezbollah and sent to Tehran for interrogation.
And in 1992, the mullahs sent a "specialist" to cut off the head of Shapour Bakhtiar, the shah's last prime minister, in a suburb of Paris. When the news broke, Hashemi Rafsanjani, then president of the Islamic Republic, publicly thanked Allah for having allowed "the severing of the head of the snake." In 1993, Fereidun Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most famous pop stars, had his head chopped off in Germany by a Khomeinist hit squad after the mullahs issued a fatwa for his murder. Chopping off heads was widely practiced throughout the Afghan wars of the 1980s. An estimated 3,000 Soviet soldiers, many of them Muslims, had their heads cut off by the Mujahedeen, who at the time enjoyed U.S. and other Western support. (In other cases the Mujahedeen cut off the testicles of the Soviet soldiers and fed them to other Soviet prisoners.) Needless to say, rival Mujahedeen also chopped off each other's heads. The group led by one Haji Akbari was especially notorious in that respect. One of its members was Osama bin Laden. Throughout the 1990s, head-chopping was routinely carried out by the Army for Islamic Salvation (AIS), the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), the Salafi Group for Preaching and Armed Jihad (GSPAJ) and other Islamist terror outfits. One Algerian specialist in slitting throats and cutting off heads was known as Momo le Nain (Muhammad the Midget). He was a 20-plus-year-old butcher's apprentice recruited by the GIA for the purpose of cutting off people's heads. In 1996 in Ben-Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, Momo cut off a record 86 heads in one night, including the heads of more than a dozen children. In recognition of his exemplary act of piety, the GIA sent him to Mecca for pilgrimage. Last time we checked, Momo was still at large somewhere in Algeria. Four years ago, Iran was shocked by the murder of the well-known dissident leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh. The couple, in their 70s, had their heads chopped off and displayed on their mantelpiece. The regime blamed "rogue elements" within its Ministry for Intelligence and Security. But no one was punished. Cutting heads is frequently practiced against clerics from non-Islamic faiths or even rival Islamic sects. At least four Christian priests and nine Sunni Muslim muftis have been murdered in that way in Iran since 2001. In Pakistan, rival Sunni and Shiite groups have made a habit of sending cut-off heads of each other's activists by special delivery. By one estimate, over 400 heads have been chopped off and mailed since 1990. Chopping heads is also practiced by Muslim militants on the Indonesian island of Borneo as a means of driving the Christian majority out. It has been effective in forcing nearly half of the island's Christians packing. At one point in the 1980s, the Abu-Sayyaf Islamist group in Mindanao, The Philippines, used the tactic of severing heads as a means of terrorizing the security forces. Americans should also remember Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered in the same way in Pakistan over two years ago. Although head-chopping is now seen as a mode of communication between Islamist militants and the Western world, the overwhelming victims have been Muslims. Mankind has a natural propensity to become used to the worst atrocities and factor in the cruelest facts of life. But the sight of a severed head will continue to shock even the most blasé of the cynics. This is why those who are defying the whole of humanity in this war on terrorism are certain to continue to employ people like Momo le Nain.
Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
Re: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #26 on: 2004-06-17 11:03:44 »
I still love this idea, Sebby.
Dr Sebby wrote:
> ....you know, i cant help but look at the israeli x palestinian situation > and without thinking about who's right and wrong, realize that there has > been pretty much non-stop bloodshed and fear on both sides for, well, just > about the entire existence of israel. Therefore........ > > ...i say lesson learned.... > > ...pull out of iraq, saudi arabia, all countries with government supported > islamic groups, apologise for attacking them, and issue a total boycott of > these nations and their nationals. give a moratorium as of July 2004 and > say that after that anyone NEW coming from these countries, or with a NEW > stamp in their passports be turned away from entering the country. > eliminate oil dependancy(get it from venezuela and others), initiate govt > programs for serious streamlining of fossil fuel burning(hybrids, alcohol, > whatever)....and just get out and stay out until the region is done > fighting(200 yrs from now). > > ...i know it sounds silly and is likely impossible, but it's fun to think > about =) > > DrSebby. > "Courage...and shuffle the cards". > > _________________________________________________________________ > The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > > --- > To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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