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.
Uh huh. And therefore no demonstration that claiming something is "like" another thing has much of anything to do with logic, or anything else, for that matter.
Do you like it?
Well, yes, actually, I admire the contruction of the argument, and I admire the effort you've put into it. Even if I think you've failed to address the question to hand.
There is no interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that is NOT bizarre, and mine is the one Einstein has, so far unsuccessfully, objected to, so it is hardly out of left field.
and you have no idea what a domain of discourse is or is used for. But worst of all, you appear to have no command of basic English.
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Nowhere in your ostensible quote of the _OED_ does it say that "Pharisees" means "Jews".
Yes, it does, in at least 5 specific use-cites in the various permutations of the word.
As I 'd imagine you would be. :-)
Whether or not the Pope was anti-nazi, there is still no reasonable explanation
Sure there is. It's called human nature. Think of the present sex scandals.
What should be remarked on is the opposition to Hitler and the Jews saved for great risk and no gain. That's should be considered "unhuman." In other words, Godly.
And what you should do is worry about how you would behave if presented with a moral dilemma in which you were required to make a decision that would cause your death or the death of some innocent person if your decision should be made thoughtlessly, or even correctly.
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?
Let God judge Pope Pius IX.
"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.
You have done no such thing. "A is like B" is not in the form of a categorical proposition.* Like is not a logical operator. It is a shorthand for a series of logical operations.
A: Emmit Smith
B: OJ Simpson
C: Ted Kennedy
Emmit Smith is like OJ Simpson. OJ Simpson is like Ted Kennedy. Therefore, Emmit Smith is like Ted Kennedy.
It doesn't work. "is like" has different meanings in the two predicates. Logical operators don't change meaning from predicate to predicate. In the first, "is like" refers to the ability to rush a football. In the second, "is like" refers to the ability to get away with homicide without being convicted.
That is why "like" can be subsumed. It is not a logical operator, but a series of operations, and is subsumed by replacing the word with the series it represents. You are confusing an english word with a logical operator. Using your arguement, I could claim "as bad as" is a logical operator: A is as bad as B, B is as bad as C, therefore A is as bad as C. Not every word or phrase is a logical operator. But some words do represent chains of operations. It's easier to say "like" than to lay out the whole chain of reasoning behind it as long as speaker and hearer have the same chain of reasoning in mind. If not, then things have to be made explicit. We use "enthymic" words all the time. This in no way, shape, or form means that anything other than logic was behind the reasoning that went into the arguement.
*If you insist "A is like B" is in predicate form, your soritie must become: (A) is (like B), (like B) is (like C), therefore (A) is (like C). Now all you have to do is define the relationships between "B" and "like B" and between "C" and "like C". All this can be done logically. "like" is nothing more than a plain language shorthand so we don't have to have discussions like this all the time.
Than list them (in the order in which they can be applied to produce "like" as a theorem that can be so applied), please, without another ardent non-technical lecture that avoids this absurdly simple task--provided you are correct--yet again.
No, I'm not. What you are mish-mashedly referring to is the very problem of "domain of discourse" I have been referring to constantly. If you use different meanings of "like", you are referring to different domains of discourse and pretending logical operators apply across these domains.
Many ancient greek riddles and 12th century proofs of God's existence rely on this trick. It's true, I didn't say "tap, tap, no straying from the subject", but that is generally assumed by mathematicians in talking formally about sets.
Your argument, if examined in the light of day, should convince you that you are a little confused here. How can you claim "like" has several different meanings, and in the same breath, claim that "like" is just a shorthand for a series of logical operators?
When you use the world "like" in the sense of drawing an analogy, in fact, that is precisely it's logical weakness. What you are doing with the "like" operator is intentionally mixing domains of discourse, because intuitive insight may be a more important than preserving logical precision.
By the same logic, perhaps we should award medals to serial rapist-killers for sparing some of their victims occasionally.
...
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?
Let God judge Pope Pius IX.
There's a phrase for this mode of reasoning: Moral abdication.
Gee, almost as many as Rauel Wallenberg operating from a basement with printing press, on an attache's salary? Even the churches most imaginative apologists can't manage to chaulk up one oven's worth of saved jews. How does that stack up beside telling all priests in Germany to shut their yaps about saving jews from Hitler, actively packing for the ovens in Slovokia, handing over the marriage records to the SS, and inventing mass absolution so that the SS could continue their work unhindered by spiritual qualms?
How do you know?
It reeks of an accelerated math 10th grade text book.
I have been recounting nothing to anyone here that wasn't taught me as a freshman engineering student at UCBerkeley. I've written automated theorem provers, and I spend most of my working day telling circuit designers and programmers what the limits of formal verification are for their specific domains of discourse. If I am confused, than so are a large number of present day working mathematicians.
Because for each meaning there is a different series of logical operators and attributes being operated on.
What you are doing with the "like" operator is intentionally mixing domains of discourse, because intuitive insight may be a more important than preserving logical precision.
The overall domain is the domain of thought. Thought about football and thought about homicide do not use different sets of logical operators, only the sequences of operations and the terms operated upon differ.
You're job is to get to the bottom of the matter. You got to interview the complaintent, then the accused, then find some witnesses. What's that? Most have been dead for a century? You got a problem in pursuing justice.
Even the churches most imaginative apologists can't manage to chaulk up one oven's worth of saved jews.
The first and greatest Jewish authority on the subject was Hungarian Jew, Jeno Levai. He defended the Pope at the Frankfurt trial of the last Auschwitz personnel taken prisoner, as late as 1964. However, on the papal side, the blockbuster is the work of Pinhas Lapide, one-time brigade major in the British army, Jewish journalist and diplomat.Lapide worked in Israel and had access to the great centre of archives, "Yad Vashem". In his book The Last Three Popes and the Jews (London, 1967), he surveys the entire area covered by the anti-Jewish policy, points out the measures taken and the lives saved in each region. He reaches a total of 860,000 lives saved through Pius XII's programme. Another writer, David Herstig, writing in 1967 (Die Rettung, Stuttgart) calculated that 360,000 Romanian Jews in Israel owed their lives to the Pope.
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Well, the ones who consult you anyway.
And so, for the third time, what is the series of logical operators?
The overall domain is the domain of thought.
There is no "overall" domain. If that existed, it would include plane geometry, and sub-nuke theory under one umbrella, and as we have discussed, that means things could be commutative, and non-commutive at the same time.
To speak sensibly about applying the discrete laws of logic, you must be addressing a set of related, well-formed sets of things--things you can clearly say are in either set A, or set B, or ...
To speak of an "overall" domain is to commit yourself to fallacies of the excluded middle. Like virtually ALL mathematicians, I don't think you are really talking about much of anything at all that logical axioms apply to, unless you specify, either implicitly or explicitly, a well-formed domain of discourse. Discrete logic ain't about big fuffy clouds of vaguely understood existence. Discrete Logic is about things you can unambiguously plop into sets because that's all discrete logic tells you about at base--what you know axiomatically about how things in overlapping sets can relate to each other.
Thought about football and thought about homicide do not use different sets of logical operators, only the sequences of operations and the terms operated upon differ.
That's not the germane question. The fact is that any logic you apply to football is not likely to be usefully related to any logic regarding homicide. If you don't guarantee a well-formed domain of discourse--about things related to each other in terms of football exclusively, or homicide exclusively, you haven't guaranteed that you are talking sense in applying logic.
Virtually all working mathematicians would agree with me that you aren't doing anything sensible in real world terms when you don't specify a well-formed domain of discourse upon which to apply discrete formal logic. Try it on a mathematician or 6 in your neighborhood, see if any of them are unfamiliar with the phrase "well-formed domain of discourse".
I ain't pursuing justice, I'm pursuing morality, which has no statute of limits, or OJSimpson defense teams.
One single oven consumed approx. 1,000,000 jewish lives. By contrast, the Danish Lutheran congegations, whose Spiritual leader did NOT sign a concord of silence with Hitler, spirited at least 90% of their jews out from under the SS, WHILE A DEFEATED AND OCCUPIED COUNTRY.
Throughout history, the Papacy has instigated policy and doctrine that inspired laity to persecute jews, whereupon, the church rises high on it's holy shanks to express shocked disapproval--short, of course, of any but symbolic remedial action.
800,000/6,000,000 = ~12% -- pardon me if I'm not bowled over. And, by the way, that net count should be credited to the Church, not PIUS XII personally, Zucotti looked quite extensively into the justification for associating PIUS XII's name with all this body count, and found the evidence rather less than overwhelming, unless it's your job to seek sainthood for PIUS the silent--whom, I'll remind you once again, unambiguously signed an accord with Hitler to shut up about the jews, in return for fat trinkets for the Church in Germany.
That's just because you aren't putting in context of all the rest that have said on the subject. We have many words that have only a fantasy meaning, are floating abstractions, or are so equivocated that they have no real meaning. If people actually used those dictionaries, and used consistent connotations then their words would have meaning, but since they don't they don't.
Even at the silliest, at least its at the most of something. I love being on the edge!
if u were better versed in logic, you would understand he doesn't
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