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.
Do you deny that the constructs I provided capture the intent of the statements you gave? You said it couldn't be done. I did it. Now you want me to disect them further? Is this a test of my logical parsing abilities or a discussion of the applicability of logic to thought? Must all my responses be in tabulated form to prevent you from running around, saying "See, your response isn't stated formally, ergo, logic isn't the basis of all reason."? Talk about doing away with the aesthic qualities of language.
Prove that "like" is an operator. Can operators be subsumed as you claim I have done?
Yes. And the Pope wore a muzzle until the vague allusions of the christmas, 1942 address his defenders point to with such unwarranted pride.
hmmm. Well, I can definitely say I felt some kind of burning sensation while trying to read the tribal census.
I am not the one who claimed it was either a logical operator or a logical theorem, so proof is not relevant to my contention.
Of course operators can be subsumed. You just make up a predicate statement that assumes that a logical operator, or some attribute of a logical operator holds true. Why would you think otherwise? Did someone say "tap, tap, no predicate statements about logical operators"?
No. In fact, they simply restate what I said with extraneous parentheses added.
You said it couldn't be done. I did it. Now you want me to disect them further?
You haven't "dissected" them at all. If you are going to make claims about logic which are far from obvious, than it is actual logic you must provide as proof.
Is this a test of my logical parsing abilities
not so far.
or a discussion of the applicability of logic to thought?
It is a discussion, including a lot of noise and not much logic, of the unwarranted claim that you made that you could duplicate the "like" "function" in normal use in human reasoning using deductive logic.
Must all my responses be in tabulated form to prevent you from running around, saying "See, your response isn't stated formally, ergo, logic isn't the basis of all reason."? Talk about doing away with the aesthic qualities of language.
At the risk or repeating myself, if you think you can provide a demonstration that the laws of logic can replace the "like" "operator", than you must utilize the laws of logic to do so. If you don't want to call it a formal proof, fine. You still have to apply the laws of logic systematically to demonstrate how you will replace the "like" "operator".
Nothing you have done so far remotely resembled this.
Because I can't pick myself up by my bootstraps.
I try to argue a point with you, and you ignore my response and instead hurl a storm of absurdities at me. I'd like to respond to each one, but there are not enough hours in a lifetime. Maybe someday when you can keep on topic and give some consideration to your opponent's posts, we will attempt to argue again.
I am pleased that these topics interest you, as they do me. Keep reading, keep thinking, for god's sake avoid pop literature on these topics--as arduous as it may seem, read textbooks with theorems (or descriptions of actual experiments in the case of the empirical sciences), and don't accept someone's interpretation without it making clear sense to you.
Finally, strive always for simplicity. Being able to blast a shotload of mathematical terms and names does not mean you understand what you are talking about--and I doubt it fools even those who don't know what you think you are referring to. In fact it reeks of obfuscation.
Live, learn, and have a happy life.
Okay. I think I understand. You don't want to know how to form a statement like[!] "oh, that's just like your father" into a categorical proposition. You want to know how logic was used to arrive at a conclusion like (there's that word again) "A is like B".
"A is like B" is not in the form of a categorical proposition. A has attributes. B has attributes. If, in the eye of the beholder, A and B have a sufficient number of attributes in common, or alternately, have certain specific attributes in common, then the beholder (the one doing the reasoning) uses the word "like" as a short hand to express the results of the comparison. What "A is like B" really means is "A and B are both members of sets W, X, Y, and Z" (or some other combination).
The comparison of the attributes is a straight forward logical comparison. A is in W, B is in W, etc. Not too difficult to formalize. What is more difficult to formalize is how many attributes (or which attributes) must be shared before the "like" threshold has been reached. Different people will often have different thresholds in the same context, and this can result in arguing over the defintion of "like" ("Hillary is like Stalin." "No she isn't, Stalin was a guy." "I wasn't talking about gender, I was talking about political philosophy." "Oh. Then Hillary is like Stalin."). And "like" will have a different threshold for the same person in different contexts. But once you define "like" in a given context, determining if A is like B can logically proceed.
It all depends on what the meaning of the word like is.
Do you like it?
Right
and the word has none.
Of course it does. It's a word, isn't it?
Well, no. Not all words have meaning. Some have apparent meaning until you analyze them and find that they don't refer to anything real.
Here's an example:
Sprite - an elf, fairy or goblin
Elf - one of a class of imaginary beings - with magical powers given to capricious interference in human affairs, and usually imagined to be a diminutive being in human form; sprite, fairy.
Fairy - one of a class of imaginary supernatural beings, generally conceived as having diminutive human form, and intervening with them in human affairs.
Goblin - a grotesque sprite or elf that is that is mischevious or malicious towards people.
And if you look at the synonyms for Fairy it says, sprite, elf, goblin.
So sprite is a goblin, a goblin is an elf, an elf is a fairy and a fairy is a sprite. Now let's go one step further.
Let's define a elgobfairspritathon as the yearly convention of elfs, goblins, fairies and sprites. Let's also say that because the other definition of 'fairy' is a homosexual, that fairies do exist, and if fairies exist, and by this definition they do, then sprites and goblins must exist as well.
Then I say to you, 'there was so much noise at the elgobfairspritathon last night I couldn't sleep.' Now, in reality we have a word, we have defined one, 'elgobfairspritathon' but does it really MEAN anything?
This is the problem I have with the word 'faith.' My dictionary gives 9 meanings to this word. Some of them I can accept and other I cannot. And this is why I am always saying "Equivocation" when these subjects come up. Because in one case a person will apply definition #1, and in the next sentence apply definition #7, and then go on acting as if they were the same thing and they are not.
A common religious definition for faith which I was recently reminded of, which is not in my dictionary, 'evidence of things not seen' is not the same as #4 - belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, (logic) and this is what is continually done in these discussions. This is what I object to. It is saying that sprites exist because fairies exist because there are fairies standing on the street corner right now. The word is so equivocated that it has no meaning anymore.
This is what happens when someone equates 'faith' in God with 'faith' in evolution. It is an equivocation. It is dropping the context, applying a different connotation, and equivocating the issue.
The same can be said for those who insist that human beings are 'animals.' It is an equivocation of the word for the sake of proving a point that cannot be proved.
A fellow in post 1478 disagrees. ;-)
There is a passage that talks about how God instructed the Israelites to set up camp. Seemed boring until I thought that one through. It was genius!
Think about how to get hundreds of thousands of people settled into camp quickly, then how to get them to break camp and get moving quickly. Also think about how in the world you'd keep track of all those people. God solved those problems!
Oh, really? Better tell Daniel Webster and the others who compile dictionaries.
I do believe this is about the silliest comment I've seen on FR yet.
Now that you've experienced LW for yourself.....
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
-- Lewis Carroll , "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland."
A good point.
I'm fairly used to self-declared winners. As you've never offered much of a rebuttul to the glaringly obvious and obnoxious central and undesputed facts, I'd be more inclined to say the argument never began in the first place.
You've already established the Pope was anti Nazi. :-)
Whether or not the Pope was anti-nazi, there is still no reasonable explanation for the uncommented-on behavior of the Catholic church, and most of the lutheran churches throughout nazi held territory in offering up their historical records to SS's jew-ferrets, until the SS started looking for converted jews. No reasonable explanation or excuse has been offered by the oh-so-well-researched book of the other thread, or any book accepted as scholarly, for the priests in the SS, the Tilo regime in Slovokia, the accords of silence Pius the Silent signed with Hitler, or the co-operation and official accolades and confirmations offered by various churches to the nazis for their pursuit of the jews.
Being anti-nazi doesn't demonstrate you aren't anti-jewish, and the church is explicitly expressing anti-jewish sentiment in the doctrine of salvation through crucifixion and resurrection, rather than through works, ie. obeying the law of God, like jews hold.
The Catholic Church owned up this with the "we remember" document. Too bad the rest of the christian world, and most of the laity of the Catholic Church don't have the moral gumption to follow suit. In fact, it's more than too bad, it's immoral at the fundamental heart of what morality is for.
PIUS XII was a good man, no doubt about it, and no doubt felt genuine pain about the treatment of the Jews. But the same constitutive force that's central to christian doctrine regarding salvation makes jews an underclass in the christian world whose torture and murder just don't make to the top rung of christian concerns. One need only consult history leading up to the holocaust to understand how totally this permiated the thinking of those priests who inherited Hitler's world, however generally humane their makeup may have been. How many buildings in the Vatican were dedicated to kidnapping christian children from their parents to be raised jewish, without the law seeing anything untoward about that?
Long-winded as this is, all you have demonstrated is the subsumption I was telling you you were engaged in.
"A is like B" is a predicate of an argument. I'll give you an example of the application of logic in action on a set of predicates, which may help:
"A is like B" and "B is like C", therefore "A is like C".
Notice my capacity to do a formal logical sorite(s) here without having to understand anything about what "like" means.
To actually demonstrate that "like" is some sort of logical theorem--which I can apply to transmute a predicate or set of predicates into something else, like I did in the example above--that can be derived from logical operators, you must provide the proof of the theorem.
Lots of explanation you feel really strong about is not a proof, and this is a pretty technically specific claim you are trying to make, so a technical demonstration isn't the least bit unreasonable to expect.
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