Random Politics & Religion #00

If you give the people the choice of "Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism" vs. "lets round up all the Muslims and kick em out" people are going to drift towards the less dangerous option.

If you give the people the choice of "Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism" vs. "lets round up all the Muslims and kick em out" people are going to drift towards the less dangerous option.

Can we do that with teenage boys too?

Ooh paged, good times

Teenage boys? Or ISIS trained refugees? I don't know if this is still relating to the orphans with ak-47s or some inner lament against American teenage angst.

Can we do that with teenage boys too?

Edit: Oh paged, good times

What about American teenage boys with AK-47s?

Frankly, my gut reaction is that any teenager with an AK-47 is nothing but trouble and I would like to be thrown out of the country regardless of their origin.

But, I mean. C'mon.

Some of them turn out okay:

Substance abuse is a choice, bad decisions are a choice. Bad luck isn't and mental illness can go either way, as people who refuse help are making that choice. People who choose to be homeless through their choices make the vast majority of them and you in no way help them by coddling them.

I (theoretically) help the crack head begging for money on the street corner by refusing to subsidize their bad decisions than you do by giving them money to further destroy themselves.

If you think this is turning out okay, then your bar is lower than mine:

AFP says 18 bodies have been carried out of the hotel and that there are no more hostages in the hotel

Are they differentiating perpetrators from victims in that body count? I'm seeing "only" 3 victims cited right now, but I'm not following super-closely.

It has to do with desperation. Their upbringing leads them down a path. Using narcotics to overcome the fear of actually carrying it out speaks more to their doubts about their actions than anything else.

As The Post's Liz Sly recently noted, the war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al-Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers."

On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas.

Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon.

A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters and the ability to keep the conflict boiling, according to the Guardian.

“Syria is a tremendous problem in that it’s a collapsed security sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so many criminal elements and organized networks,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) regional representative, Masood Karimipour, told Voice of America. “There’s a great deal of trafficking being done of all sorts of illicit goods — guns, drugs, money, people. But what is being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that’s not something we have visibility into from a distance.”

A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as "fenethylline," Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon....

"I felt like I own the world high," another user said. "Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling."

"There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon," a third man added....

Uh, substance dependency is a medical illness, buddy. And decisions often aren't easily assigned good or bad until long after the fact and often because of changes after the fact.

If it makes you feel better about your life to boil every hardship down to choice, have at it, but it is not universal truth, so stop spreading it as if it were.

I did not say all homelessness was all choice. In fact I said it in the post you just responded to, and I said it quite clearly.

Can't you at least twig-man or brick-man me once?

Brick-manned:

If you think this is turning out okay, then your bar is lower than mine:

Not an Ice Cube fan, but I'd take a conversation about him over several more pages of Syrian refugee talk.

Dead. Horse. Beaten.

It's really not twisting anything. It's very easy to infer that from what you've said there. I understand you didn't say exactly that, but again, it's very easy to infer and it's not that far from what you did actually say.

Have you ever noticed all your arguments with everyone devolve into you being condescending about others' reading abilities?

Have you considered maybe you present yourself and your positions in a horrific, undignified, arrogant fashion?

Also, I'm fairly certain people have reported me for calling them obtuse. I'm not saying that means anything for certain, I'm just saying you're someone who likes to cry that people are being mean to you and it's ignored and maybe there's some correlation.

"If you are XXX person,

Haven't you noticed that almost all of your posts have been condescending period? Would you like an example?

I'll accept arrogant, but I find it an insult if you think I present myself and my positions in either a horrific or undignified manner.

At least I don't respond in personal attacks at every post, unlike some people here.

And the problem is, mods/admins have even stated so

You aren't the fairest judge.