From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 18 Nov 2002 - 01:18:45 GMT
> Joe,
>
> I don't have any problem with war on terrorists. In the UK we have had
> it for 30 odd years in the shape of the IRA (financed by the US and
> Libya - Odd combination)
>
> And if Europe is giving I to the Muslims, what about the Christians in
> the US. Bombs at abortion clinics, doctors threatened and killed etc.
>
Although the threats and intimidation have been immense, there have
been fewer than five abortion doctors actually killed in the US by
antiabortion zealots. The magnitude is on an entirely different level.
>
> As far as I am aware the only time I have seen things black and white
> is on a chess board. But that is not life.
>
Whe terrorists tell you that the reason they kill you is because you
stubbornly refuse to adhere to whatever rules the current hothead
whom they take their orders from thinks you should, you have to make
as an objective decision as possible which of the two sets of values,
yours and theirs, you view as constitutive of or more conducive to the
more humanistic culture. If that set of values happens to be your own,
but not that of the hothead, then you must decide whether suicide is
one of those values. If it is not, you must contend with the hothead and
his organization to defend your chosen culture.
>
> > Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 12:36:44 -0600
> > From: joedees@bellsouth.net
> > Subject: Re: Why Europe is so Contrary
> >
> >>> snipping<
> >>
> >>> The international community adopts a similar approach to the
> >>> Middle East. After all, who is easier to condemn--Arabs or Jews?
> >>> And so the pressure always falls on the latter. Especially since
> >>> everyone knows that their conduct is generally guided by
> >>> principles of humanity, morality, honesty, compassion and justice.
> >>
> >> What has this rant got to do with memetics?
> >>
> > Oty has to do with the root causes for the European reticence to
> > engage a dire terrorist threat: fear. Quite simply, they are afraid
> > to piss off the maniacs; they would much rather snub the reasonable
> > people, because the reasonable people will not answer with
> > truckbombs, airplanes flown into skyscrapers, and poison gas in
> > subway systems. What the Europeans fail to realize is that they,
> > inasmuch as they are not Islamic and ruled by shar'ia law, will
> > receive these attacks anyway, simply because of who they are; part
> > of the infidel Dar el Harb, and an affront to Allah. Chamberlain
> > once, as Churchill phrased it, had a choice between war and
> > dishonor, chose dishonor, and still got war. Vis-a-vis Radical
> > Muslim terrorists (Al Quaeda and others) and those who would supply
> > them with WMD's, many Europeans are facing the same choice, and are
> > making it in the same way that Chamberlain did. Fear is a visceral
> > memetic hook, sometimes overriding both logic and the urge to
> > freedom.
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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