WHO Says Afghan School "Poison Attacks" Probably Mass Hysteria 146
New submitter smugfunt writes "A number of incidents at schools in Afghanistan, especially girls' schools, have been attributed to poisoning by the Taliban. The World Health Organization has investigated 32 of them but found no poison. "Mass Psychological Illness is the most probable cause," they conclude, the Telegraph reports. The Taliban has consistently denied poisoning schools and have even consented to allow the education of girls in a deal with the government which allows significant Taliban control over the curriculum."
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Who? Oh, those guys. I don't know what happened but I'm not taking the WHO's word for anything at all.
Hey, they have some kick ass songs. Plus, Pete Townshend's powerslide [youtube.com].
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That Tommy sure plays a mean pinball.
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Heh, whippersnapper at least you know what an Amiga is, I'll give you props for that. I'll stand by the WHO comment though no matter how they downmod me. They're a pack of liars. Like I said, I may have doubted the claims at first but now that WHO says it didn't happen I have to think it might be true. If they say it's sunny I'm taking a flashlight. By the way, if you need a hard drive for that A500 I've got a GVP A530 for sale too. ;)
The Taliban denied.. (Score:3)
Re:The Taliban denied.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the Taliban are the most politically convenient thing to the US Neocons to appear on the global marketplace of \textit{casus belli}, it's more accurate to say, "Something was said about the Taliban.. and people believed them?"
Anyone not allowing themselves to be as the slowly boiled frog over the past 15 years should recognise that nothing which comes out of the mouths of Washington and London is to be believed, nor is any of the reporting home and abroad which can be controlled by either. War reporting died after the DoD saw what happened when people saw the live action footage of Vietnam. It's not that everything's a lie - though everything does, of course, have a spin put on it. It's merely that it would be intellectually dishonest for the average guy sitting at home to claim that he has evidence of what's a lie and what's the truth - anyone who claims so is usually just allowing his prejudices to select the evidence which backs up his views.
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The Taliban has traditionally used physical harm as a conduit for communication. The Taliban has made an agreement with the government to permit the education of girls so long as they have substantial control over the curriculum. If the Taliban wanted to put a stop to these schools for girls what would be the logical reason for denying their involvement in poisoning the girls or for working with the government in operating these school?
If the girls truly were poisoned then it would be best to look at moti
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... It's merely that it would be intellectually dishonest for the average guy sitting at home to claim that he has evidence of what's a lie and what's the truth - anyone who claims so is usually just allowing his prejudices to select the evidence which backs up his views.
Including yourself, of course.
Re:The Taliban denied.. (Score:5, Interesting)
To play devil's advocate, what reason do they have to deny it if they did it? The Taliban is a fundamentalist party that supports acts of terrorism. The difference between a terrorist and psychopath is that a terrorist has a message. If a terrorist group were to lie about culpability it would probably be to take credit for acts they didn't commit. In fact, for pretty much any disaster or accident, there is almost always a group willing to take responsibility whether they did it or not.
The Taliban is a malevolent organization, but they are not comic book villains plotting nefarious acts for evil's sake.
Re:The Taliban denied.. (Score:5, Insightful)
what reason do they have to deny it if they did it?
My thoughts exactly. The fact that they could have done it and nobody would be very surprised is what gives this denial plausability.
The Taliban is a malevolent organization, but they are not comic book villains plotting nefarious acts for evil's sake.
Like all real-life villains, they consider themselves the good guys.
Re:The Taliban denied.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Taliban is a malevolent organization, but they are not comic book villains plotting nefarious acts for evil's sake.
Spot on. The Taliban are basically the political right-wing of the Pushtun tribe (ie: a clan within the tribe). The Pushtun's have ruled the area around the ancient city of Kandahar for centuries, the area is also a natural choke point for intenational trade and is a strategically a very important control point, as such the locals have fought with and against just about every empire that has existed over the past 10,000yrs, there is a desert city in the area that is 7000yo (forget the name), it has been leveled by invading armies 800 times, the current city is built on a 30-40 foot high mound of rubble left over from the previous 799 versions.
Hamid Karzai (the president of Afghanistan and Nato's BFF) is himself a Pushtun but belongs to a different clan. They are all hard people living in a hard place, a large chunk of the population are literally still living in a medieval culture, the more radical clans such as the Taliban remind me very much of the Scottish highlanders who until fairly recently attacked anyone who came to close to their mountains (and did so with sound reasoning based on past experience).
AFAICT US policy seems to be to assasinate the Pushtun warlords it does not like. Having seen the video of Saddam Hussien doing something conceptually similar [youtube.com] (start @ 1:25, nsfw), I'm not sure I'm ok with that.
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To play devil's advocate, what reason do they have to deny it if they did it?
They have reason to deny it because it makes them look like backwards savages to the rest of the world
The Taliban has never cared to be seen as backward savages by, in their own view, immoral infidels. These are the people who blew the Bamiyan's Bhuddas to pieces, who whipped women to shreds, who planned to give yellow armbands to the local Hindus for ease of identification, and were quite ok with committing acts of genocide against the Hazaras. They are too fucking illiterate to even realize the type of bestial savagery they represent.
Any concessions they give now is because they have been under the gun
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But does it make sense? Yes, they oppose the education of women. Which would be smarter for them to do, poison the schools and not only keep quiet but flat out deny it or to poison the schools and say "We oppose the education of women and not only did we poison this school, but we will continue at random until every last school closes?"
My point was that terrorists are not lone nuts wreaking havoc, but are whackjobs wreaking havoc to further their agenda. If they did it and are keeping quiet then you are giv
Re:The Taliban denied.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No offence meant to your brother here, but your evidence that the Taliban is evil is that your brother, a foreign soldier and member of an occupying army, has been attacked?
Wow.
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Evil is relative, especially if you believe your committing it in the name of God then it is ok.
You try to make the case that they are just defending their Country and in part they may feel that is what they are doing.
But ask the people who when the Taliban was in power had their hands and feet cut off, or mutilated.
The number of thousand year old cultural artefacts that they destroyed. From that perspective kind of a Evil group.
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Hey buddy I have a group of the last dozen or so of the last Native Americans left with me and they wanted me to tell you you can go fuck yourself.
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Assuming you are actual Native american, you might want to look at your own history.
Native Americans where killing each other and taking each others land and towns. You're people helps a great deal against other tribes.
So don't get holier then thou, fuck twad.
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True but they didn't pursue systematic genocide across an entire continent. And no I'm white. You can also stop with the they did it too so that makes it ok mentality. You probably love the whole M.A.D idea don't you?
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You cannot STEAL land, it is taken and held by force alone. This is called military conquest, and is a completely legitimate form of ownership.
Your thesis on homeowner's rights intrigues me and I would like to join your suburban real-estate agency.
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No offence meant to your brother here, but your evidence that the Taliban is evil is that your brother, a foreign soldier and member of an occupying army, has been attacked?
Wow.
Afghanistan has a legally formed government based on UN monitored elections. The Taliban is trying to overthrow that and reestablish their dictatorship. Along the way they are chopping off heads and hands, blowing up markets with bombs, hanging 7 year olds as spies, banning kite flying, destroying schools, driving out or killing foreign aid workers, and working hand in glove with the drug cartels. The main reason the brother was there to begin with was the Taliban government hosted Al Qaeda, who greatly
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Oh for god's sake.
I wasn't saying the Taliban aren't evil or that the US is, I was saying his standard for evidence of that was ludicrous.
Try reading comprehension sometime.
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That's not what you said though, is it? You said -
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here we are helping a nation that is going to allow the Taliban back with open arms the moment we leave, and possibly even sooner.
This is the crux of the problem: we're spending an insane amount of money on this place, and short of exterminating all the males there, there's absolutely nothing we can do to prevent it from becoming exactly like it was before we invaded. The afghanistan campaign should have taken no longer than 6 months at the very most: bomb all of AQ's training camps and caves and wipe them
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Get serious about internal power.
Get a really like war effort moving on building 4th gen reactor and solar combined country system.
One people stop using their oil, it will take about a decade for them to be throwing rocks at each other, or work together.
" then leave the people there to their own devices."
AH, so blow up all their shit then just leave.
I see. You're pretty rude, aren't you?
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" then leave the people there to their own devices."
AH, so blow up all their shit then just leave.
I see. You're pretty rude, aren't you?
To be fair, AQ was not exactly enmeshed in the general population there; they were separate, in training camps and mountain bases. We didn't need to go into the cities to bomb AQ to smithereens.
And how else would you do it? Take over the country and set up a puppet government that's thoroughly corrupt, taking decades and bankrupting yourself in the process? How's that wo
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That would have to read "filled with men and women" to sound like the US Congress.
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Taliban are not relevant. At least not to the investigation part into whether or not the crime occurred. Who cares what a possible suspect says anyways when you still can't even establish that.
This isn't just somebody either. It's the WHO. Considering their reputation, I think it's reasonable to assume they were some actual investigation into hospital records, perhaps even direct tests on the girls.
I am admittedly still a little bit skeptical. 32 incidents, and not a single scrap of evidence for poison
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Re:The Taliban denied.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Furthermore, as I already alluded to, the society in Afghanistan is already so rife with the abuse of women and girls that it has one of the highest rates of female suicide and attempted suicide in the world. And it's not the quiet, comfortable type that girls usually go for like ODing on sleepi
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They do have a history of political distortions. Recall the world health study that ranks the USA very low. The methods were so undefensible they never repeated it. Basically the only stat that mattered was equality of outcome.
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Ohh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts
You can't get a whole lot less rational than declaring a vendetta against a non-sentient entity.
--Jeremy
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Is that why Bin Laden hid in Abbottabad?
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I remember hearing about several where people swore they smelt something that made them sick but nothing was ever found.
We had that happen at a company I worked for almost 10 years ago. Determined it was a complex chemical reaction between "Steve" and "Del Taco".
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20 some years ago I recall engaging in 'chemical warfare' in the cube farm.
Garlic, Hard boiled eggs and Old Mil are like a 50 megaton nuke. After that day we decided to stop. The paint was peeling and they were complaining in the accounting department (at the far end of the floor).
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THE RELEVANT thing is that the girls haven't died AND they've all gone home in few hours.
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The point of terrorism is to cause terror. Denying its existence would not be in the Taliban's interests if they were behind the attacks. Still, it's possible that they have just backed out.
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Terrorism has a target. As long as the people who were meant to be terrorized believe the source and motivation behind the attack, it doesn't matter what everyone else believes. An abusive husband can tell everyone else that his wife tripped and fell without reducing the effectiveness of his violence, because she knows
It's not "Mass Hysteria"; it's "Mass Terror" . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . and the Taliban are quite successful at spreading it. If you had a bunch of "Islam Gone Wild" retro medieval fanatics romping around your neighborhood killing innocent folks for fun and excitement . . . you might tend to be a bit on the edgy side yourself. A car engine backfire will incite you to grab your assault rifle and empty the clip in all directions, to defend yourself. In essence, anyone in Afghanistan will believe that the Taliban are capable of committing horrific atrocities. That makes people fear the Taliban, and it gives the Taliban strength.
Now, take a look in your own airports, and see if the population of your country is so scared, that they tolerate crotch groping and all other types of submissive humility . . . all because the fear of terror has devoured their souls.
Yep, terror can inflict colossal mass hysteria damage.
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I dunno about living in Afghanistan, but here the population is not scared and didn't decide to be groped at airports. Population is forced to submit to screening at gates.
If a rational debate about security from terrorist attacks on flights had ever been made, it would have concluded that a determined attacker with a bit of equipment can take down whatever civilian flight and escape, without needing to pass through gates. Ergo, both Al Qaeda and the TSA's objectives are likely different from what they proc
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you might tend to be a bit on the edgy side yourself. A car engine backfire will incite you to grab your assault rifle and empty the clip in all directions, to defend yourself.
Hmm, that's doubtful. Wouldn't that just lead to waves of scared people taking up arms against the stray bullets of their neighbours?
. . . all because the fear of terror has devoured their souls.
FDR said it best, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
So, we're afraid of the fear, as we should be?
I'd say it's impossible for fear to have "devoured their souls", those spirits have been gone a long time. That's why they couldn't tell the difference between People and Corporations.
It's almost like they didn't really mean it when they repeated the quote with
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That's why they couldn't tell the difference between People and Corporations.
A moderately insightful comment turns to shit with this sentence. Nobody, including the court systems of the world, actually makes that mistake. I see this ranting against corporate personhood as another form of theater. Doesn't make us any more free than groping crotches does in airports.
It's almost like they didn't really mean it when they repeated the quote with zeal, "Give me Liberty or give me death!" -- I mean, they've hardly any damn liberty left, WTF do they expect?
What do you think is the appropriate response to tyranny? Roll over and let them scratch your belly? Bark at shadows? At some point, you have to actually resist the actual tyranny.
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"I see this ranting against corporate personhood as another form of theater."
I hadn't thought of that, but I think you've got a good point there... when times are bad, or going wrong, everyone wants a bogeyman to blame. For the gov't, it's OMG-terrorists. For the geek crowd, it's corporations.
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yeah, the Taliban and their fellow cronies have given up on airplanes long ago. We have no reason not to give them first class tickets just as show we don't fear them taking down a plane for the sheer pleasure of it.
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[[Citation Needed]]
Also, Christianity, which seems to have a history of torturing or forcefully converting people (ie: the inquisitions) is frequently referred to as the religion of love. If you're going to mock the fact that Islam is called the religion of peace, at least be unbiased enough to mock Christianity on the same basis.
Remember, Christianity is the religion that says it's better to contract AIDS and die an excruciating death than to use a condom. The reli
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Citation done:
19,171 [thereligionofpeace.com]. Done, it's not hard to figure it out. They're all nicely sourced for you too. Including by day, week, month, and year. Including, death tallies, injuries, and all the rest.
Well let's see, between Christianity and Islam. Which of the two had a reformation? And no that's all of Christianity, rather that's one branch of that says using condoms is *bad*. If you're going to try something, try harder. Remember the two major branches of Islam(Sunni and Shiite) believe the same thing
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I do believe that Islam requires putting infidels to the sword, though. Don't look at the actions of people who *say* they're followers, look at the doctrines of the religion itself.
Ok, let's see what the Good Book says...
15:13 That whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.
Oh, yeah, much better than Islam. Islam has more crazies now, but given the chance any religion will stab you in the back with no second thoughts, you dirty unbeliever.
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Christianity is (obviously) based on the teachings in the Old Testament, but it doesn't end there. Otherwise, Christians would just be Jews.
1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In th
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“If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Removed in edit by council of Nicaea.
A rock whizzed by Jesus's head and hit the harlot square in the temple, she dropped. Jesus slowly turned and with great annoyance said 'Mother...'
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Hahahaha oh man, that's great.
I guess you never hear about the other benefits of immaculate conception.
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3 centuries ago? I guess you've never been to an Old Firm game.
Of course, now you'll never have to.
Ahahahahahaha!
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Then there was the case in Dearborn last weekend of "sudden Jihad syndrome" where a muslim tried to rundown 9 Christians protesting a muslim fair thing. He's been charged with attempted murder.
That incident had nothing to do with jihadism and everything to do with Christian fundies playing party poopers. I'm not saying his course of action was legitimate, but provocating and insulting rarely results in constructive outcomes.
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When someone is your enemy, but lying, getting him to tip his hand is a 'constructive outcome'.
There is now one less violent jehadi pretending to be civilized in the USA.
I suspect the real purpose of Iraq was to provide stupid Jehadis a convenient place to go and get killed. Keep them out of Afghanistan (which in turn is there to keep them out of Europe and N. America.)
One thing I'm sure of, we aren't creating 'new enemies', we're getting old enemies to reveal their true intentions. Provoking and ins
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I also live in a country in which I can shout "I AM AN ATHEIST" on a public place without being ostracised - the worst I would get.is a "so what" look or a "why should I give a fuck" look. Or more likely a "Dude, just quit shouting already, it's annoying."
I live in a country in which the religious believes of candidates is considered a marginal matter when it comes down to elections.
I live in a country in which catholicism is the mainstream religion, and in which even conservative political figures, if they
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The one with the lowest tax rate. Duh.
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I'm glad you live there too.
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That incident had nothing to do with jihadism and everything to do with Christian fundies playing party poopers. I'm not saying his course of action was legitimate, but provocating and insulting rarely results in constructive outcomes.
So, if you're standing on the corner of your street and you're pissing on a flag. I should just get in my car and run you over? No free speech for you I guess. There's no difference. And there's no difference in this case either.
Just so you know, since it was actually reported in the newspapers, you can go blog hunting for it though. When they pulled him out of his car he was screaming the good old gone-by-gone "god is great". Yeah he was a sudden jihad syndrome.
Conversion diseases are so frustrating... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a neurologist and I deal everyday with people that are obviously suffering a conversive disease. This does not mean that they are feigning or malingering, It's just that somehow their brains malfunction and generate bizarre symptoms. In most cases the disease has no anatomical and physiological integrity (i.e. it crosses boundaries that it should not, or a certain part that should also be affected works fine). ... or worse: a harmless congenital defect can be found, which will produce more anxiety.
It's frustrating because the patient and everyone around her (mostly happens to females) is pretty convinced of an impending illnes and they request test after test, sometimes even threatening to sue. Of course nothing is found
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Are the "electric shocks" that occur after (or even without) cessation of SSRIs a "conversive disease"? I ask only because no neurologist, or psychiatrist, or general prac that I've personally spoken to even admit it's they are a true phenomenon. They say it cannot be true because CAT,. MRI, and other etc neuroimaging methods show nothing. So I guess those millions of people who do suffer from them are making it up, or have somehow been "infected" through a "conversive disease" (??)
Re:Conversion diseases are so frustrating... (Score:4, Insightful)
I ask only because no neurologist, or psychiatrist, or general prac that I've personally spoken to even admit it's they are a true phenomenon.
Define "true". Are you experiencing side-effects which to you feels like electric shocks? Yes. Are you actually being shocked? No. It's "all in your head", but you're not imagining it. It's real, but it's really not what it feels like. In the same way that heart-attack sufferers often report numbness or pain in their left arm, not their chest. It's real, but it has nothing to do with their arm. (Or in the case of the Afghan girls, their symptoms are "real", in that they are classic symptoms of anxiety and panic (Nausea, dizziness, breathing problems, even fainting.) But they aren't "true" in being caused by poison.)
As for health professionals "admitting it's real". It was my GP who suggested the term, "electric shocks", when I tried to describe that part of the withdrawal symptoms. (To me it's not a "shock", it feels more related to the inner ear. Or at least, to head movement.) He told me it's a common symptom, gave me a pretty good idea how long it would last, used it to gauge the level of withdrawal.
I wonder if the difference is the intellectual respect your GP/etc has for you? Your GP/etc sees their job as reassuring a panicky/hysterical patient that he/she is not actually being electrically shocked (it stuns me that they actually sent you to get CAT scans, MRIs, etc), while my GP sees his job as working with me to ensure I'm getting the benefits I want, without unusual/dangerous symptoms. (For example, my GP picked up on my description as being related to head-movement, and asked about balance/dizziness. If the symptoms were severe enough to actually affect my balance, then I'd probably have to slow the speed of withdrawal, give my brain longer to adjust.)
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It's a side effect I've heard from many people. I don't know why it happens, but I believe them. I don't even know if the sensation is produced in the peripheral nerves or in the brain. Like when you hit your elbow and feel an electric shock in your outermost fingers: the hit stimulates the ulnar nerve and that signal is interpreted in your brain as a weird feeling in the area the aforementioned nerve controls. No imaging method nor an EMG/ENG/EEG will show anything because it's a tiny chemical malfunction
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Serious question from the audience: How frequently do you encounter patients with some form of conversion disorder, and where you later discover your initial diagnosis was in fact wrong?
I have just been through 18 (eighteen) years of severe migraine headaches, because I was incorrectly labelled as having conversion disorder, probably due to stress encountered in and after a car accident. (Note that migraine runs in my family.)
Turns out my initial, self diagnosis for the cause of the migraines, some form of
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I myself have migraines. Lots of people do and everyone's migraine is different and has different triggers. As an anecdote: I had daily migraines for a few months while at med school. I even blamed the anatomy teacher, because they would begin during said class. Then someone fixed the vending machine, which had been giving away Fanta at 1/10th the price and I quit drinking it before class. The migraines remitted to their usual frequency of once or twice a month and I could unleash one by drinking a Fanta (n
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What should I have done differently?
Made an appointment for a full sleep study and paid cash. The cost is less than a used car, and the payback period would have been short. Put it on a credit card if there's no cash, payback period would be short (if you're right, but you were).
I seem to know lots of people who refuse to put any of their own money into healthcare because they have insurance form their employer or from the State and feel that if they can't get them to pay for it, somehow it's impossible.
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I *did* spend money on private sleep specialists, and I did have sleep studies early on.
Ah, well then good for you. When you mentioned suing insurance companies, it didn't sound that way.
So, what was it that those sleep studies missed that [something] later picked up on?
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So, what was it that those sleep studies missed that [something] later picked up on?
Oh, nm, I found the cousin comment. Very interesting - I hope you got a journal article published for the sake of others in your condition.
Suspicious... (Score:4, Funny)
This sounds like the work of Scarecrow. A Dark Knight Rises ad campaign?
Plausible (Score:5, Interesting)
As best I can tell there have been no reported deaths. [bbc.co.uk] That doesn't completely rule out poisoning, but along with there being no actual threats or anyone claiming responsibility, it does lend credence to the idea of it just being hysteria.
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Acid Attacks (Score:3)
Just because the WHO says the girls haven't been poisoned doesn't mean they are not being attacked. Girls have had acid thrown in their faces repeatedly. And when you're face is scared for life, there's no dispute that it happened:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/asia/14iht-kandahar.1.17822365.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-224_162-4631708.html [cbsnews.com]
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If you're going to link it, you should at least address your own link's statements, otherwise it is a citation refuting, not supporting, your claim/snark.
De Marchi claims that the prediction of an unspecified "miracle", the abrupt beginning and end of the alleged miracle of the sun, the varied religious backgrounds of the observers, the sheer numbers of people present, and the lack of any known scientific causative
I don't know. (Score:2)
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Sam and Janet Evening!
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Mass hysteria (Score:1)
The American reaction to 9/11, that's mass hysteria. Just wait until WHO finds out that Bin Laden didn't do it.
Attacks as Propaganda (Score:1)
from those with a vested interested in keeping war profits flowing.
I smell a rat here (Score:2)
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Just because you have a criminal as your next door neighbour doesn't mean everything bad that happens to you is something your neighbour did. It might be very convenient to blame everything on him, but it's more constructive to look into the actual cause first.
As I expected (Score:3)
"Mass hysteria" (an unfortunate term for a real phenomenon, IMO) was my guess from the outset, based on
1. The symptoms reported are typical of mass hysteria.
2. Nobody claimed responsibility (somewhat unusual for a terrorist attack).
3. Symptoms resolved fairly rapidly, with no deaths (so pretty incompetent poisoning, if that was what it was, but typical of mass hysteria)
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Lack of proof is not proof of lack
Did you get that from some TV shows? Like the one where they are always hunting the "Squatch"?
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So that explains the Christians here on the streets beating women who don't have their heads covered. That explains why all the women here have been forced out of employment and education. That explains why Christians who go to another religion or become atheist are commonly executed here.
Oh wait, none of that's even close to happening.
We have a tiny, tiny minority of Christians in this country who wish they could do a Christian-style Sharia, but the most encroachment on our lives is the annoying Westboro B
Re:A small foreshadowing of the US's future. (Score:5, Insightful)
But even then, the Bible says to give to Ceasar what is Caesar's
I always thought that meant that you had a duty to pay your taxes, serve the army, serve your country...
But that you also had to be mindful of a duty to tithe, serve god, and serve the church..
I'd never read that as "separation of church and state", just an admonishment that you had a duty to both, and should neglect neither.
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A very strong case can be made that the phrase refers to paying tax as the payment of tax is the specific issue involved in the story. The rest is interpretation.
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The passage suggests that a seperation of church and state is permissible, but not required. Jesus said that paying taxes was required even if the government did not enforce religious law. If Jesus felt that Government was required to enforce religious law, he would have stated that ceaser's government was illegitimate and that paying taxes to him was forbidden.
I don't believe that there is any passage in the new testament that encourages theocratic government. Groups like the Westbroro Baptist church clai
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Yes, your personal duty, not the duty of the state. In the perfect Muslim state there is no differentiation between religion and state, they are one.
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The Roman denarius was the USD of its day, being the most important world currency and what you needed to pay your taxes. It was stamped with an image of Cesar. Now, remembering your history, t
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Factually erroneous on every point, but out of curiosity, what do you mean by "evil" per -your- definition and objective justification, rather than parasiting off of Christianity's as you attack it?
Are you saying that any of this behavior reduces the likelihood of the DNA of the theism advocates propagating maximally, as a Naturalism criticism that would validly remain open to you? Because at this point, you haven't suggested anything that gives any weight, validity, or significance to your characterizatio
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Cool! Where can I find your blog. I would like to add it to my RSS feed.