Barcelona

[robert k]

8 hours ago, Gary D said:

See you are doing exactly the same with your western head on. They don't care. With these people it's religion first, family second, tribe third and country fourth. Why should their countries stop then, they support them. Muslims beleive the Koran was writen by god and moderation is not possible because you can't change the word of god. It is what it is and always will be, they even kill so called moderate Muslims because they considder that they have strayed from the word of god.

They CAN be made to care. Might not be very many of them left when they start caring, but they can be made to care. Genghis Khan made them care. They cry about it to this day.

Let us also not forget that China has edited the Koran and told their muslims that they can have the edited version....or none and the muslims have accepted it. If your thought is defeatist? You are defeated.

Edited August 26, 2017 by robert k

[stevewool]

4 hours ago, Snowy79 said:

We've even got a leader of a political party in the UK who thinks the solution is to sit down, drink tea with ISIS and talk the differences over. This is how far separated some peoples thinking is from the real World.

And yet still folk vote for him,

Yes i am of the thread a little here.

[Snowy79]

10 hours ago, robert k said:

They CAN be made to care. Might not be very many of them left when they start caring, but they can be made to care. Genghis Khan made them care. They cry about it to this day.

Let us also not forget that China has edited the Koran and told their muslims that they can have the edited version....or none and the muslims have accepted it. If your thought is defeatist? You are defeated.

Any links to the proof about Genghis and the Chinese?  All I can find is Genghis was tolerant to Islam and other religions even though he believed in an older form of religion and the Chinese version of the Koran has been praised by international Imans as being the same as the Arabic version. There's also different translations of the Koran available although the word of Mohamad is identical in all it's just some Hadiths that are worded slightly differently. I'm aware the Chinese government is looked on as being Atheist and have clamped down on some Muslim practices but all that has done is fueled further resentment.

One interesting thing I discovered, although getting away from the original Barcelona thread it may have a reasoning behind why certain types of people believe in religion to the extremes rather than just a casual interest in it. Scientists have discovered that people with religious and spiritual beliefs tend to have more activity in certain parts of the brain. It was initially discovered through studying people that suffered from epilepsy. 8 out of 10 sufferers had an elevated belief in god due to changes in their brain. The studies have been replicated using magnetic resonance to stimulate the same part of the brain and it increased religious beliefs while activated. They also injected  isotopes into the same areas of the brain of religious people and it temporarily reduced their belief.

Maybe evolution is the real thing we are fighting against. It's well known that in the Muslim faith there's a lot of inter family marriages and births and also that throughout history they have massacred the non believer. I could see it as being feasible that we are fighting a battle against a belief system that has been hard wired into their system and it'll explain why they are prepared to give their lives up against the non believer as they 100% are convinced in their own mind they are right.

No amount of appeasing or trying to convince them will change their mindset. Only be breading it out will make a difference and that's outlawed in their religion.

[Benington]

9 hours ago, robert k said:

They CAN be made to care. Might not be very many of them left when they start caring, but they can be made to care. Genghis Khan made them care. They cry about it to this day.

Let us also not forget that China has edited the Koran and told their muslims that they can have the edited version....or none and the muslims have accepted it. If your thought is defeatist? You are defeated.

The Genghis Khan approach of mass slaughter, or threats of it, are just not on today. The US/UK tried a milder form of that with regime change in Iraq and Libya. Look what that produced. More terrorism.

Drone strikes are the nearest you'll get now, especially with Trump in the WH.

Tinkering with the Koran is just the sort of approach one would expect from a Communist country which has a record of denying their population access to information. There is a state funded Islamic Council and, yes, those attending the mosques may well accept the sanitized version. But the Muslim terrorism in Western China is really about a separatist movement....so I am sure those trying to attract recruits make good use of the original version and the fact that the Chinese government has changed it.

The German government banned Mein Kampf until recently. That didn't stop Nazi groups growing there.

It looks like ISIS now have a two pronged terror program...there's the large scale attacks, more like al Queda's and the small scale attacks with sympathisers using any weapon they can get their hands on.The large scale attacks are costly, but they have the money. They have created their own Sovereign Wealth Fund of investments, businesses and they still get donations, though maybe less now since they have lost territory.

Getting back to Barcelona it seems that the Van attack was a Plan B. Plan A was basically to ruin the tourist industry by bombing a number of attractions. One mentioned was Gaudi's Sagrada Familia basilica. Started in 1812 it is unfinished, but they are hoping to complete it by 2026. That date could have been put back as Plan A didn't go ahead due to an explosion where the terrorists were making the bombs. The death/injury toll would have been much higher.

So Spain got very close to suffering its second large scale attack in 13 years, but elsewhere in Europe the security services seem to be able to stop or disrupt nearly all ISIS "spectaculars". But there's little they can do against small scale attacks. The focus there has to be on better defensive and reaction measures.

The idea of establishing a Caliphate initially attracted the religious fanatics...ISIS may try again with that, but there's no element of surprise now so I don't see another one being created. With a shrinking Caliphate "lower quality" recruits are now fed a more general mixed message of hatred for the West for supposedly being anti Islam and supporting the persecution of Muslims worldwide. There's also hatred for other Muslims in there.

The West's interventions in the Middle East go back a long way, then there's Afghanistan. In Asia there's Myanmar with the Rohingya. The Saudis are bombing carelessly in Yemen, with the help of the US and UK. Muslim populations around the world are often subject to harsh measures.and laws. Even if countries have good reasons for these, eg banning face covering, all this is grist to their mill. 

I think we must endure the small scale attacks for some time yet, but we can lessen them by thinking harder about the effects of our foreign policies in fueling terrorism. This may have to await the election of a new US President, IMO!

One or two large scale attacks may get through, but rather than through talks, ISIS and al Queda may one day see that they too are following a counter-productive path and give up. Who knows, they may even join the democratic process in some countries? 

 

[robert k]

6 minutes ago, Snowy79 said:

Any links to the proof about Genghis and the Chinese?  All I can find is Genghis was tolerant to Islam and other religions even though he believed in an older form of religion and the Chinese version of the Koran has been praised by international Imans as being the same as the Arabic version.

 

[robert k]

5 minutes ago, Benington said:

I think we must endure the small scale attacks for some time yet, but we can lessen them by thinking harder about the effects of our foreign policies in fueling terrorism. This may have to await the election of a new US President, IMO!

Only 8 years to go.

[Benington]

I

1 minute ago, robert k said:

Only 8 years to go.

It would be nice to get some much longer, considered responses to the issues raised in the two recent longer posts.

But even if he does last more than one term, maybe by starting a war somewhere, I am given hope by the reactions to his performance so far. I think there was a certain complacency in foreign policy under Obama.

[Dave Hounddriver]

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This topic is now locked awaiting the admins review. Once the topic has been reviewed it may reopen as is or to the admins discretion. 

Ghenghis Khan?  800,000 Muslims killed?   "I think there was a certain complacency in foreign policy under Obama"?   I think we have lost the plot so waiting for the boss to decide if this one should go on permanent lock.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Dave Hounddriver