From: Bernt Budde <bug@arachne.udac.uu.se>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: The "civilized" west
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 14:51:26 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: UDAC, Uppsala, Sweden

RBNXHS@rohvm1.bitnet writes:
>Bernt Budde <bug@arachne.udac.uu.se> writes:
>> [deleted] ...And even criminals that are convicted to
>> death do not get state terrorist murder groups after them,
>> in any civilized country!

>   America did just that for Fidel Castro in 1960s (see below).

>>                           Of course, a FEW HUNDRED YEARS
>> ago, it could very well happen in Europe,

>   Yes, it definitely did happen a lot in those days.

>>                                         , but then it could
>> be questioned if Europe qualified as civilized countries by
>> modern standards...

>       YOU ARE RIGHT AGAIN, EUROPE DID NOT QUALIFY AS A CIVILIZED
>       NATION JUST FEW HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

>We do not have to go a few hundred years as to the practices
>of *civilized countries* of the west in state sponsored terrorism.
>... Tripoly try to kill Gadaffy as an example...

This is the wrong newsgroup and excuse me for this (isn't this
moderated? If so, it deserves to get cut) but I probably should
answer... Some relevant discussion at the end.

A relevant discussion for this group would be different religions
tendency to result in such behaviour, not state terrorism. This
discussion started with a critique of Islam as barbaric and
primitive even for a religion. You are attacking comments I wrote
saying that that kind of oppression wouldn't happen in the western
countries with a list of what the west do to other countries for
different reasons.

Would you care to elaborate on Jihad(sp?)?

On to the answer:

You are mixing Apples and CP:s here.. (excuses to people that
suffer from Cerebal Peres (English spelling?))

To return to religion, the real version (the one everyone uses
and the one that works) of the Golden Rule is that 'You should
do unto others what they do unto you'. If someone does some-
thing it comes back. After we got a working "police force" it's
society that exacts revenge. In primitive times, it was your
relatives.

What you are complaining about for the first pages in your
article, is that some western countries (USA and France,
mostly?) aren't following their own laws (not to say, UN
Human Rights) in handling people when having international
"problems".

Laws about how to handle individuals are not applicable to
groups or countries.

Calling USA civilized is debatable (the number of poor
people and the level of violence is, for a Swede, appalling.
But I'd not call Sweden perfect, either) and USA do have a
tendency to be a world police. Trying to kill Gadaffy is, of
course, not a nice thing to do; quite an aggressive one, really.
On the other hand, to be blunt, you shoot mad dogs too. If a
country support terror organisations (which Libya did and
probably does) and is an oil nation and in that way is quite
immune to international trade sanctions, war is the only
alternative.

Not nice, but what else is there?

Of course, you could argue that the Libya terrorist actions
was relevant freedom fighting and the USA counterattack was
brutal and unprovoked revenge?

> In the 1960s the Americans also conspired to kill Fidel Castro.

Yeah, USA behaviour in Latin and South America is quite dirty.
Not that Castro is any better. They didn't like Soviet influence
in their "back yard". It is debatable if it would have been any
better with leftish governments there (Soviet probably couldn't
have afforded paying for more countries than Cuba.)

>... lots of examples ...

My point is that you find two different cases of acts. This is
mostly about USA and totally irrelevant to the discussion of
this group...

a) Getting rid of unwanted governments. Motivated by economic
and political (Communist-scare) reasons. Not defensible, of
course.

b) States/International Organisations that you want to get at
for reasons of terror. The only way to get at them is to break
a lot of international laws. Do you know why the Russians never
had trouble with kidnapping in Libanon? When the first Soviet
was kidnapped, they found out who the guilty party was and
kidnapped back... If Libanon had been a working country with
a police force, that wouldn't have been neccessary. But there
wouldn't have been the wave of kidnappings either.


If there is a point to this, except that USA and France
act disgustingly sometimes, I'd say that the only other
modern example we have about how a country uses total
power over a lot of other countries would be the Soviet
Union. That is definitely worse. The point is that the
USA has been(to a certain extent, probably are) acting
like bastards (excuse the emotional term) but some other
country probably would have been much worse.

> ... some more or less good and dreary and probably mostly
>     truthful examples...

> All these simply because the tyrant in Baghdad has become too
> uncontrolled (don't forget this was our friend whom we armed
> to the teeth prior to his ill-advised aventure in Kuwait).

When a country, through it's own actions, obviously is at fault
starting a war, the people in it is in the same boat as the
leadership. The UN force obviously had more concerns about
civilians than the Iraq side; that's more than you can expect
in a war as a citizen of an agressor nation. Not by inter-
national law but by international practice. Could someone else
comment on the '100 000 civilian dead' part? I haven't heard
anything about that.

> How about the deliberate shooting of the Iranian domesitc
> Airline by the US Navy just around the end of the Iran-Iraq war?

Oh, come on, do you seriosly believe in that!? If they really
did it on purpose from a ship with normal soldiers we would
have known by now -- to believe it could have been kept quit
is ridiculous. There was no reason to blast a civilian plane
at all. If you can explain things either by a complicated plan
based on malice or through incompetence, my money would be on
the second case.

If you want to build a serious case, you destroy it by adding
obvious errors that presume a conspiracy.

> ...etc...

> ...to the genocidal practices
> against the indigenous people as a result of their being
> colonized by the European *civilized* countries, even as recent
> as 1960s.

Not nice. Not particularly relevant either to how we handle
individuals and their rights in Muslim/west societies...

I talked to a Bulgarian. It seems that they were the country in
Eastern Europe with least hate against Russians. They kicked out
the Turks in the 19th century and took over after them... (Yes,
this is risking taking the discussion even farther along comparing
different countries instead of talking about the original subject:
The death sentence of Rushdie.)

If there is any defence for Great Britains action in Africa in the
19th century and the rest of Europe's colonization practices, it
would be that if any other area had had the technology to colonize
the world before Western Europe, they would probably not be any
better.

All this is, of course, irrelevant to how a country handles its
internal citizens.


> ... *civilized* French government...

If I called France as civilized anywhere, it was a mistake...:-)

>... etc
>their anger by burning the effigy of the criminal, the law and
>order authorities gunned down several of these *uncivilized*
>creatures. Not only that, other volunteers, who are all
>... etc
>rights for victims to ask for fairness and justice.

What was that about? Could you elaborate what the example was? I
might have edited some explanation out. Only if it was relevant,
please.

>The Penguin (UK) was reported to have paid a handsome amount
>of money (according to some reports close to a million dollars)
>to S. Rushdie in advance for writing a book which is going to be very
>sensitive (and perhaps very hostile to Islam).
> ...more about Rushdies greedy, low and despicable personality...

'Ere we go again! Something relevant to this group! Even if some
of that was true, so what? My original point was that peoples
opinions are their own problem, as long as they don't act upon
them.  Thoughts, ideas, books and films are free. If someone has
so thin skin that they can't take a little bit of humour and
irreverence and want to forbid something, they ask for more!
This is mostly about the Moral Majority and it's ilk. But
censuring records that use four-letter words is one thing, to
send murderers after the artist is another!

Without reading the 'Satanic Verses' I can guarantee that I own
books and records that are more irreverant to the local cults
than 'SV'.

Don't you feel yourself that not having enough security in your
own opinions to be able to take a joke is pathetic?

The idea of a conspiracy to miscredit Islam by writing books to
make it look bad is quite ridiculous. I do not mean that the
religion looks particularly more stupid than the rest of the
local big religions (would that be possible?) but that a big,
western conspiracy to miscredit a religion that don't have
particularly many followers locally, would be a waste of
time. Not that a religion that sends out killer teams after
authors deserves any consideration, but if you think we're
out to get you actively you're mostly wrong. (It's purely
reactive.1/2:-) Why should anyone care?

Controversy is a strength. If you can't take things up and look
at them, how are you going to be able to discuss things from
different viewpoints?

No matter that some strange people (Carter? Buchanan? Are you
serious?) -- that don't represent any majority opinions -- (in
the bible belt?) think that Rushdie went over the top, not even
they advocate murder.

We have pulled the claws out of our religions, the Muslims will
eventually do the same. They will reevaluate their teachings and
make them much milder and humane. As of now, the word 'primitive'
comes to mind. "A few hundred years after", too..

>I do not want to go into the details of his book, suffice it to say
>that it was very offensive to the taste of any Muslim.

Believe me, I'm very offensive to any Christian that I get into a
discussion with. Seriously. I check out their position and then
use some of my standard arguments, if I'm feeling nice. If not I
go for blood and use standard tactic 1a: Ask them if they believe
in the existence of Hell. If they don't, I ask them how they can
call themselves Christians (standard line that it's well documented
partly in the bible and very well in early Christian beliefs).
If they accept Hell as existing (good!), you take the moral approach
and say that you personally couldn't sentence anyone, disregarding
crime, to torture for (well, say an hour) and continue upon the
*incredible* inhumanity of it and finish it off with that even if
that kind of god *did* exist, I wouldn't believe in such an
incredible-<insert adjectives here, lots of 'em> bastard; how can
you accept such a god!?!? I still haven't got any acceptable
answer, but I'm still hoping for some fanatic that says "that's
what they deserve."

Excuse the rambling, I hope you all get the gist. From what I've
seen of Siddiqui, I don't really think that the above argument
would work on its turning point: the acceptance of the obvious,
true and utterly *evil* nature of such a god. (Of course, the
ideas good and evil don't exist, but to use it about the god of
someone, when it's obviously well-placed, is fun!)

But, to leave the ad hominem attacks, I'm still breathing. My
nose is even unbroken (I'm only 5"10' and not in any particularly
good shape (-: but handsome :-).) I have honed my technique and my
arguments since my teens. It might have been different if I came
from another part of Sweden.


This should be better written and much hotter, but I don't
have the time.


Bernt Budde                            |Religion, n: A daughter of
bug@arachne.udac.uu.se                 |Hope and Fear, explaining to
UDAC (Uppsala Univ. Computing Centre)  |Ignorance the Nature of the
                                       |Unknowable.
Don't for a moment believe UDAC,       |
while being a nice place, have         |-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's
opinions like me!!                     |                 Dictionary