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New York, 4:15 AM
Sat Nov 7
41 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/06/09
McKinley of the Times from Killeen: "Sergeant Munley, who is 34, is an expert in firearms and a member of the SWAT team for the civilian police department on the base, officials said.
She received two wounds in each thigh and one to her right wrist. The base’s fire chief applied torniquets to stop her bleeding, and she was taken to a hospital that the officials did not identify, where she was reported in stable condition on Tuesday."
This woman is the poster child for female heroes. She will be embraced, rightly so, by women's advocates everywhere.
I hope for her speed recovery, ney-sayers of New Gonzo Drifter. #forthood
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That is courage under fire. And nothing can be countered on that point.
Right? #forthood
11/06/09
Thanks lefty crazies.
Signed,
Moderate-to-left New Gonzo Drifter, nutter of the highest order! #forthood
11/06/09
To me, I'm bored senseless by the "why" of the nihilistic disregard for human life displayed by all these fuckers, the absolute narcissism of thinking your "reasons" trump anyone else's right to continue living. Fuck no.
Muhammad told you to kill your fellow soldiers? Fuck him. Jesus wanted you to invade a country and take out a few hundred thousand civilians? Fuck him. Lord Krishna order you to torch that mosque and take back your temple? Fuck him and fuck your temple. Fuck your mosque, your church, your synagogue, your scripture, your holy places and your heritage. Fuck your cause.
Because if this is the service your God asks of you, your God is an asshole.
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That's not at all what she's doing. If killing isn't a service your god asks of you then your god isn't an asshole!
But, arguably, it's not your god but you whose the asshole in that equation, right? So god's off the hook! Unless even the good gods are as much a projection of their believers as the bad ones--something that does go toward understanding the complexities of religious affiliation, but not one that the religiously affiliated would appreciate. Too bad. #nidalmalikhasan
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And I concur. #nidalmalikhasan
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Hmmmm....how about man made god long ago out of ignorance and fear?? #nidalmalikhasan
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It's bullshit like this that makes embarrassed to be an atheist, sometimes. But then, there are short-sighted nitwits in every group that reflect badly on the whole, amirite?
Anyway, the serious point to make is, it's monumentally stupid to boil down something like this to simple religion. It's never that simple. The foulest thing about this whole mess is that no one will learn from it. Islamic nationalism / militarism has little to nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with elements of regional cultures violently resisting western encroachment. The idea of a global network of religious extremist only kind of came into reality after 9/11, when the Bush Administration became the proverbial bull in the china shop of the Middle East. The seeds of it were sewn long before that, in Cold War politicking and CIA meddling, in the side effects of American economic imperialism. This is all international politics.
"Al Qaeda" didn't spring from whole cloth. They were a locally-focused group who, after failing as a popular movement (fancy that, a bunch of devout muslims not deciding democratically to submit to ultraconservatives!) decided they'd use violence against their regional states, and ultimately came to the (probably accurate) conclusion that they would never come to power with Western nations involved in local events.
But the point is, it's kind of ridiculous and typical of lazy atheists to think that a person just picks up a holy book and becomes a violent warrior of faith. Yes, there is history behind it. Yes, there is sociology behind it. There's got to be an explanation why there are some muslims who never murder anyone and some who have the desire to murder everyone. It's grotesque and dishonest to paint them with the same brush.
What if we find out that this particular murderer was not part of a terrorist cell, but acted on his own spontaneously? It would make more sense to assume that there was something about his job, something about the war that pushed him irrevocably to the edge. But that's too difficult to think about, isn't it? Best to just sever that Gordian Knot. What's the worst that can happen? Yeah, fuck this nebulously defined group of astounding breadth. Punk rock!
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For the record, my problem with religions has everything to do with their hijackers, the fundamentalists, who use these dogmas for their own selfish, narcissistic purposes. I think most people in all religions couldn't really give a shit, go through the motions and are embarrassed by their co-religionists' misuse of their various dogmas.
And I reiterate my opinion that anyone who undertakes the murder of unsuspecting, unarmed people really doesn't have an excuse grounded in any wothwhile philosophical or metaphysical paradigm because it is, by definition, an act of insanity. To me, Charles Whitman, Tim McVeigh and this prick have nothing to say to me because they're all just nuts.
But again, I'm not here to harsh on anyone who gets off on feeling intellectually superior to me. It's the least I can do, right? #nidalmalikhasan
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Crazy Religious Does Something Crazy, Religious. #nidalmalikhasan
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Terrorism? The guy was attacking the military. How is that terrorism, which is almost exclusively defined as attack against civilian targets? #nidalmalikhasan
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Ones who are not, will not.
I dunno, that's just me. #forthood
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01:15 AM
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Religion causes way too much fuckery to be justifiable. #nidalmalikhasan
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I feel like Matt Lauer. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
It is part of the definition of God (and dark matter) that it is undetectable and imperceptible.
It is not impossible for something imperceptible to exist, even as part of the world described by physics.
Therefore (although I lean more on the atheist side), there is nothing inherently stupid or wrongheaded about a belief that God does exist (mind-independently).
Of course, is very difficult to defend that belief, as it is very difficult to defend a believe in many entities posited by theoretical physics. But we can argue about it civilly without calling people morons. #nidalmalikhasan
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Sometimes I find myself immediately faulting religion without considering the fact that some people are just crazy and will figure out a way to carry out their crazy regardless of what they believe or do not believe. #nidalmalikhasan
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I'd argue that God was invented primarily to reconcile human beings to the mystery of their transitory nature. It was invented because us, humans, need to find a way to explain death to ourselves. The strong emphasis on coercive morality and such is a prominent tenet of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, but hardly as emphasized in Hinduism, Buddhism, and countless "pagan" or "native" systems of belief.
I do agree that organized religions often begets senseless violence. That doesn't negate the vital importance of spiritual/religious belief systems. ("Religion causes way too much fuckery to be justifiable.")
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I offer that this sort of complete refusal to consider something at more than a shallow depth is more worthy of blame in a situation such as this- by all accounts this guy was, for lack of a better word, bullied by his colleagues after 9/11 because of his Muslim background, which he may or may not have even personally embraced as a practicing member of the faith, and his superiors either weren't able to help him or weren't willing to, and he felt trapped in the institution, and it would appear that he snapped. None of this absolves his actions, however I think the analogy that is more apt than any religiously based violence is to the Columbine shootings , and if we are looking at something to pin blame on we would be best to look at the propensity for people to be cruel to other people who don't fit into some perceived category of "acceptable". #nidalmalikhasan
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(When I speak of God in most casual settings, I'm speaking of the Omnipotent, Omniscience, Omnibenelovent imperceptible thing that the Abrahamic religions posit. I don't think that thing exists on purely conceptual grounds.)
I think Spinoza's different, 'heretical' conception of God as part of the natural world is way more plausible. I'm digressing a hell of a lot! #nidalmalikhasan
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I never claimed that there was no violence in either book, and you have no grounds to say that I did. I expressed surprise, as a nontheist who was raised Muslim and knows about all the weird rules, including the one where your prayer is invalidated by audible or smelly farting (Hadith Bukhari), that the Quran mentioned beheadings. Is this some kind of Gawker custom/joke, attributing to commenters things that they didn't say? I don't get it. #nidalmalikhasan
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It is well known amongst military trainers that men in ferocious combat situations do not fight for nobility of the cause - they fight for each other. An important part of preparing soldiers for combat is to build unit cohesiveness. And the military uses misogyny as one of their tools to build that cohesiveness.
Just look at New Gonzo Drifter's comments below. How he blames the women he trained with for the fact that some of the soldiers he was training with had sex - with each other. As if the male soldiers had nothing to do with. They were consumed by the female soldier's voracious sexual appetites. And of course the female's voracious sexual appetite weakens the cohesiveness of the unit and its potential combat effectiveness. #forthood
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It really does remind me of the attitudes towards black soldiers in the '40s and '50s. The only way to overcome those prejudices was to force the military to confront them head on. 60 years later, I think success speaks for itself. #forthood
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He only attacked once his ass was getting sent to Iraq. Hardly noble, even if you do think suicide bombers are noble. #maliknidalhasan
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"Civilian" and "contract" were the terms used by Ft. Hood officers in the press conferences I've been watching. "Rent-a-cop" is a perfectly common way to refer to them.
If you need to add something to my comments so you can whine about them, you have a personal problem. #forthood
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JSL, while I think it wasn't your intention to belittle Ms. Munley, I think just saying civilian contractor = "rent-a-cop" did sort of come across that way.
Sorry that turned into a rant. #forthood
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I expect everyone to use colloquial expressions and to exhibit a black sense of humor on Gawker, even at times like these, because that's what I've seen them do. #forthood
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