Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp
The Recent Nightclub Bombings in Bali Illustrate Just What the "War on Terror" Is Really About
On the night of Saturday, October 12--the second anniversary of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a year, month, and day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and mere days after terrorist attacks in Yemen, Kuwait, and the Philippines--two car bombs detonated outside neighboring nightclubs on the island of Bali, triggering a third explosive planted inside, and killing nearly 200 people (the majority of whom were Australian tourists), injuring several others, and redirecting the focus of the war against terror to Indonesia.
Also on the night of Saturday, October 12, the following bands and DJs were playing and spinning at several of Seattle's rock and dance clubs from Re-bar to Rock Bottom: FCS North, Sing-Sing, DJ Greasy, Michiko, Super Furry Animals, Bill Frisell Quintet, the Vells, the Capillaries, the Swains, DJ Che, Redneck Girlfriend, Grunge, Violent Femmes, the Bangs, Better Than Ezra, the Briefs, Tami Hart, the Spitfires, Tullycraft, B-Mello, Cobra High, Randy Schlager, Bobby O, Venus Hum, MC Queen Lucky, Evan Blackstone, and the RC5, among many, many others.
This short list, taken semi-randomly from the pages of The Stranger's music calendar, is designed to illustrate a point that is both facile and essential to reckoning the effects of the Bali bombings. Many of you were at these shows, dancing, smoking, drinking, talking, flirting, kissing, groping, and presumably enjoying yourselves, much like the 180-plus tourists and revelers killed at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Pub in Bali. Though no group has come forward to claim responsibility for the bombings, they were almost certainly the work of Muslim radicals launching the latest volley in the war against apostasy.
Whether the attacks turn out to have been the work of al Qaeda or one of the like-purposed, loosely connected, multicellular organizations that function in the region--groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah (an umbrella network that seeks a single Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (led by the nefarious Abu Bakar Bashir), Laskar Jihad (which waged holy war on Christians in the Spice Islands before mysteriously disbanding two weeks ago), or the Islam Defenders Front (which makes frequent "sweeps" of bars and nightclubs, attacking non-Muslims, and violently guarding against "prostitution and other bad things")--will ultimately prove to be of little consequence. What matters is that the forces of Islamic fascism have struck again, in a characteristically cowardly, murderous, and yes, blasphemous fashion that must register as an affront to every living human with even a passing interest in freedom.
The facile part: It could have happened here, at any club in Seattle. It's a ludicrous thought, of course--at least as ludicrous as the thought of shutting the Space Needle down on New Year's Eve because some crazy terrorist was arrested at the Canadian border--but that doesn't make it any less true. That doesn't mean we should be looking over our shoulders and under our chairs every time we go to a show. It simply means that it could happen anywhere, because anywhere is exactly where rabid Islamists can find evidence of blasphemy against their precious, imaginary god.
Which brings us to the essential part: The Bali bombings were not an attack against Bali; they were an attack against humankind. In all the jawflap about the whys and wherefores of the multiple conflicts currently dotting our collective radar screen--the war against terror, the war on Iraq, the coming holy war, et al.--it seems worth restating (at the risk of sounding pious) that the war against basic human liberty, waged not by us but on us, is at the heart of the matter. Discourse has justifiably, necessarily turned to complexities of strategy, diplomacy, and consequences. The moral truth, however, remains agonizingly basic. We are still dealing with a small but indefatigable contingent of radicalized, militant absolutists who believe that every living being is accountable to the stricture of Shari'a, under penalty of death. As Salman Rushdie wrote, in an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, the fundamentalist faction is against, "to offer a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." If these were fictional villains, you'd call them hyperbolic, not believable. But they aren't fictional. Their code would be laughable if it weren't so aggressively despicable.
As headlines about Bali cross-fade into news of North Korean nukes, and there are further debates about the finer points of Iraqi de- and restabilization, it's crucial to remember that there is, in fact, a very real enemy, with a very real will, and the very real power of delusional self-righteousness. How to remember? Consider the scene of the attacks (as reported by various Australian and European news sources):
It's a typical hot, sweaty, drunken, lascivious Saturday night. People, primarily young Aussie tourists from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, and Adelaide, are crammed into the clubs, mixing it up, spilling out into the street. Rock band noises mix with techno music and innumerable voices as latecomers clamor to squeeze inside. Just after 11:00 p.m., a car bomb explodes outside of Paddy's, followed a few seconds later by a second blast that smashes the façade of the Sari Club and leaves a hole in the street a meter deep and 10 meters across. The second bomb is strong enough to damage buildings miles away. All at once, everything's on fire. People are incinerated. Cars go up in flames. Televisions explode. Ceilings collapse, trapping those still inside. Screams. Blistered, charred flesh. Disembodied limbs. Mangled bodies. Victims covered in blood. Inferno.
Now transpose this horrible, fiery mass murder from the seedy, alien lushness of Bali to, say, Pioneer Square, where clubs and bars are lined up in the same teeming proximity as the Sari and Paddy's in the "raunchy" Jalan Legian district, the busiest strip of nightlife in Kuta Beach. Imagine a car blowing up outside the Central Saloon and another, across the street at the New Orleans. Again, it seems too simple an equation, but the fact remains that the victims were not targeted at random, or for merely political purposes. They were doing exactly what any of us might be doing on any night of the week: exercising a liberty so deeply offensive to religious believers as to constitute blasphemy. And the punishment for blasphemy is death.
There is an ongoing lie in the official governmental position on the war against terror, which bends over backwards to assure us that, in the words of our president, "we don't view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form." Clearly, in every sense, this is a war of religion, whether it's declared as such or not. And if it isn't, then it certainly should be. Not a war of one religion against another, but of reason against religion--against any belief system that takes its mandate from an invisible spiritual entity and endows its followers with the right to murder or subjugate anyone who fails to come to the same conclusion. This is the war our enemies are fighting. To pretend we're fighting any other--or worse, that this war is somehow not worth fighting, on all fronts--is to dishonor the innocent dead.
How? I don't see how it violates identity even fully clothed.
I'm sure you don't need it, but just in case and to make sure I can do it correctly. here.
Man, that is so funny Beavus!
Kind of like standing in front of a mirror and stating "I do not exist.".
yes, I stand by it because it is, and has been, in common usage with that meaning, according to historians and bigots for about 1600 years, as I have offered you both encyclopedic evidence, and specific examples to verify. How long will you stand on this petifogging issue before you manage to think of something meaningful to say?
How? I don't see how it violates identity even fully clothed.
Draw a venn diagram around one of the slits on the shield of the 2-slit experiment. Label it "A". Label the rest of the shield "NOT(A)". Call the elements of the domain of discourse the buckyballs thrown at the shield. At a given time(t) throw one buckyball through the shield. According to classical physics, the buckyball can go through only one or the other slit at time(t). According to quantum physics, the buckyball goes through both slits at time(t).
Now lets construct the predicate representation of this phenomenon:
We examine the element buckyball(t) to determine whether it is went through A or NOT(A), and discover it went through both, so plug these values into the predicate statement, which you claim always gives the value FALSE, (A AND NOT(A)), and we discover that it now gives the value TRUE.
So which baby are you planning to throw out with the bathwater? Are you going to claim we can't draw venn diagrams on a flat plate? Are you going to claim a 60 atom molecule cannot be an element of a set? Or are you going to acknowledge that the law of identity is just a useful tool for understanding some things that are mathematically tractable, rather than a law of nature?
I don't know about the rest of the discussion (and I do agree that what we have been wrangling about come to not very much about which we were at odds after all), but you did not put the 2-slit discussion to sleep with the claim that "someday we'll understand better". That is remarkably feeble. If the law of identity is ubiquitous, than you don't have to hold your head just right to see it working in a properly constructed domain of discourse.
This reflection is false.
This reflection cannot be validated.
...therefore, both TRUE and FALSE at the same time? Like Tares just claimed can't exist? Such statements are the the form of valid predicates. Where do you get the nerve to swipe them off the table?
In point of fact, they aren't contradictory in the straghtforward sense Tares means, although I have accepted this previously, just to get on with the argument.
They just don't have a known binary truth value. You can't say "This sentence is FALSE" has a value, because none is ever returned when you try to evaluate it. You can therefore, also not say whether such statements are elements in A or NOT(A). So you can't process the law of identity on them.
Whatever "invalid" means, "this sentence is FALSE" does not poop out of existence because you uttered the word--it is member of the set of predicate statements--said which, we are not normally shy about including in valid domains of discourse about which one may meaningfully issue proclaimations about the Law of Identity.
Fascinating words coming from someone whose made a lifetime thesis out of the supposedly exclusive exacting definition of a word, to the exclusion of an actual sensible response to the meat of the question.
Someone who won't drop it, and won't change the subject.
Why don't you two toss a coin, and decide whether I am constantly changing the subject, or won't drop a subject?
There have been two promenent discussions in this thread I've tried to participate in: whether the Law of Identity is inviolate and ubuquitous, and whether the Gospels were the chief source of Western anti-semitism. If you will, between you, decide whether I am constantly changing the subject or constantly sticking to the subject, I will offer my profound apologies for whichever behavior was incorrect.
There is only one.
So...Allah and Zeus, and the exacting God of the Laws the Jews worship? They don't exist? They are the same as your God, but with makeup on? The Chistian God of the Holy Rollers and the Mormons is the same as the christian God of the Aglicans?--these are the same God, but with makeup on? Sorry. Ask a less broad question, and maybe I'll not need clarification. I am putatively a catholic. My commitment to the notion varies from time to time.
I'll concede that there have been bigots and ignoramouses who have equated Jew with Pharisee with Christ-killer with root of Germany's problems with money-grubber with big-nosed crotchity money lender.
Tell me again who is being precious and elusive here?
Where do you get the nerve to swipe them off the table?
Hey, I gotta lotta nerve, in case you haven’t noticed. But then, you should have met my Dad. Now there was a man with a lotta nerve! They just don't have a known binary truth value. You can't say "This sentence is FALSE" has a value, because none is ever returned when you try to evaluate it. You can therefore, also not say whether such statements are elements in A or NOT(A). So you can't process the law of identity on them.
I don’t want to process the law of identity on them because by definition it has none, it contains a contradiction. All sentences that contain a contradiction have no identity, by definition. Whatever "invalid" means, "this sentence is FALSE" does not poop out of existence because you uttered the word--it is member of the set of predicate statements--said which, we are not normally shy about including in valid domains of discourse about which one may meaningfully issue proclaimations about the Law of Identity.
It is meaningless. It isn’t true, false, up, down, right, wrong, true, untrue, blue, red, green, or anything. It is nothing. It is not valid. None of this has anything to do with anything other than that single statement. Doesn’t mean horses aren’t horses because horses aren’t sentences. It doesn’t mean logic is invalid because logic isn’t a self contradictory sentence. It can contain a self contradictory sentence and that sentence is exactly what it is, one utterly without meaning. It has no other effect outside itself. It has no other implication outside itself. None can be shown, none can be demonstrated. It is an isolated blob meaninglessness.
So what does God want us to do?
The law of identity is not inviolate and ubiquitous because it is not a 'thing.'
The Law of Identity is an absolute requirement for the mind to apprehend anything in reality. No matter what concept, thought, idea or whatever the human mind uses to picture that reality it has a one to one relationship between that 'symbol' in the human mind and the object itself that conforms to the 'law of identity.'
It doesn't matter whether 'Buckyballs' are simulaneously particles and waves because to the human mind it doesn't matter. To the human mind they are a chain of molecules in the shape of a geodesic dome that are doing something weird. Before it goes thru the two slits and after it goes through the two slits it is a 'Buckyball.' The 'mind' creates the "law of identity' because it cannot think any other way.
Call it a domain of discourse, call it ice cream, i don't care. As soon as you define anything, including what a 'domain of discourse' is, you are utterly dependent upon the law of identity or you can't understand it.
I'm not interested in putting it to sleep. I'm not trying to say we have an absolute understanding of the universe, which is the only answer you will accept in this case. There are unresolved contradictions, just as there was before Einstein came along. But the fact that they are contradictions proves logic, not the fact that there are contradictions disproves logic.
You want this 2-slit experiment to be verified with a certainty that you claim is impossible. You want all answers absolutely answerered now, and I'm admiting that that cannot be done. That doesn't invalidate logic, just the opposite. The only reason we know that we don't have all the answers is because of the contradictions that remain, something doesn't make sense. This is evidence of a faulty map. The only other conclusion is that it will forever be impossible to know.
It is you who continually defines your 'domain of discourse' as the molecular world and this supposed violation of the law of identity, who then wants to apply that 'domain of discourse' to where it doesn't apply, in the discussion of the logically fallacy of the Smuggled Premise, the Question Begged, the Assertion Without Proof, and the Circular Definition implied in ID, which is where the conversation began. You violate your own rules with impunity and never see that you are doing so.
If you assert that Godel forever bars anyone ever, ever, ever from creating a formal system that can prove its own axioms, then you assert an absolute certainty that you say this very formulation proves is impossible.
If you assert that the 2-slit experiment proves that the Law of Identity is forever flawed, will never be solved, can never be reconciled then you have placed an absolute Law of Identity upon this experiment, an irrevocable proof, which you say the 2-slit experiment makes impossible.
These very assertions are type violations with themselves. They are, therefore, contradictions, and therefore, invalid. The viewpoint is faulty.
ohhh please! like you aren't far more intelligent than you let on! and you forgot Tares. I always forget to ping everybody on these, I just figure they are following along. Like any of this mattters.
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