22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Discussion of Web Log and Analysis topics from the Generational Dynamics web site.
Raynote
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by Raynote »

JR wrote:
vincecate wrote:The fear is Islamophobia.
and therefore, by definition, irrational.
Some fears may be irrational, but some are not... When danger arises, it is rational to be afraid and to take appropriate action. That's how our ancestors survived and that's what we must do if we want to survive too.

John
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by John »

I posted a version of this article on BigPeace, and a lot of people
are really furious at me, if I'm to judge by the comments.
It's an interesting subject.

http://bigpeace.com/jxenakis/2010/08/24 ... the-world/

John

at99sy
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by at99sy »

Interesting article on "Coexist" bumper stickers the posers like to show off.
http://bigpeace.com/kschlichter/2010/07 ... you-first/

"So I’m driving down the 405 in West Los Angeles, thinking about how I can’t exist while others who believe differently from me exist, when I see it – a blue bumpersticker on the back of a Prius with the letters of the word “COEXIST” replaced by a variety of religious symbols. Whoa. I’d never thought of just, you know, coexisting. Thank you, mystery middle-aged hybrid-driving guy with a goatee, for stripping off my mental blinders and allowing me, for the first time, to truly see a future of love and tolerance.

Funny thing, though. I don’t remember seeing any COEXIST bumper-stickers – much less love or tolerance – when I was deployed to the Middle East. And I sure don’t remember any in the ethnically cleansed villages of southeast Kosovo. But I wasn’t really looking then since I was pretty busy actually doing something about hate and intolerance instead of just striking concerned poses."

"There is nothing wrong with “coexisting” – Americans have done it for centuries in a manner that is the envy of the world. The problem is the people who are not interested in coexistence – and it’s not some tiresome bumper-sticker that we’ll need to stop them."

I find it difficult to imagine being tolerant of a select portion of a religion that is determined to either convert or exterminate me. I've been a few places in the world and most of the people I have met really want the same things out of life. a safe place to live a decent way to make a living, able to take care of their kids well, and the opportunity to have success in life, It's the leadership who controls the people and the agendas that they are mandating who cause the problems.
just my 2 cents.

ay

vincecate
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by vincecate »

John wrote:I posted a version of this article on BigPeace, and a lot of people are really furious at me, if I'm to judge by the comments.
It's an interesting subject.

http://bigpeace.com/jxenakis/2010/08/24 ... the-world/
I am impressed by how many people there understand that Islam is both a political ideology and a religion. Or you could say there is no separation of church and state in Islam, unlike what Americans are used to. Politically it is a totalitarian system trying to take over the world, much like fascism or communism really. I did not think most Americans understood this. What sort of people are reading BigPeace?

John
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by John »

I posted some responses to the comments on the BigPeace article:


**************** Some responses - part I

These comments really put up a good fight with moveon.org for
producing unbelievable amounts of pure nonsense.

Hitler and the Nazis were Christians. The Hutus are mostly
Christians, and they slaughtered almost a million people in the Rwanda
genocide of 1994. Then, last week, Hutu rebels gang-raped 250 women
in the Congo.

So please try to get it out your head that Christians have a better
historical record than Muslims, because I can assure you they don't.
You can't judge any religion by the actions of a small segment, and
every religion looks bad in history.

You don't have to be Islamophobic to oppose the Ground Zero mosque.
There are plenty of good reasons why it's a bad idea -- bad for
Americans and bad for Muslims.

What's all this talk about Sharia law? Most Muslims HATE the
distortion of Islam and Sharia law practiced by al-Qaeda and the
Taliban. Are you really afraid that if a Muslim builds a mosque, then
America will turn into a Sharia state? What the heck are you talking
about?

Now here's what I want all of you to think about:

When Muslims bombed the WTC in 1993, the bombers were tried in
criminal courts. Even after 9/11, we went to war with Afghanistan,
but I can't recall anything like today's level of Islamophobia. In
2005, we gave to the Pakistanis after the tsunami, and there was no
outcry.

The point I'm making, and that I'd like you to think about, is that we
have a trend here: Islamophobia has been monotonically increasing from
1993 to 2001 to 2005 to the present day. What's causing that trend?

The answer is that the 1990s were a generational Unraveling era, run
by the Silent generation of WW II survivors, and they didn't see
bombing the WTC as tiny compared to what happened in WW II. London in
particular had suffered something like three 9/11's a day for months
during WW II, so even 9/11 didn't cause the kind of national hysteria
that the mosque is causing.

If you don't like that explanation, they YOU explain what's going on.

What's happened since 2005 that has caused this reaction?

John


****************** Some responses - part II

oreoexpo wrote:
> Generational Dynamics is a good theory as far as it goes. I
> believe it is correct to the extent that it predicts uphevals
> every 80 years or so. But what I think GD fails to take into
> account is the influence of ideas in the culture. GD might predict
> a revolt in Iran, but it can't predict whether it'll be a revolt
> in the name of Islam or in the name of freedom. It might predict
> upheaval in the US, but it can't predict whether that upheaval
> will take the form of fighting for greater freedom or for greater
> government controls.

That's a good summary of what Generational Dynamics can do. But I've
also done a lot of work combining "short-term forecasting" with
"long-term forecasting" to produce much better results than this. See:

** Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... cast090503

> As for Islamophobia, a fear is only a "phobia" if it is
> irrational. As a woman, I can guarantee you that I don't want to
> live under Islam, or anything resembling Islam, and that I will
> fight such an eventuality with everything within me. Better to die
> on your feet than live on your knees.

This makes no sense whatsoever. Who's talking about living under
Islam? What could that possibly have to do with the mosque issue or
with providing aid to Pakistan? Are you afraid that if you say
something nice about some Muslim then you'll get sucked in or
something?

> nceeno wrote:
> I guess since more Pakistanis are killed by Islam, we should be ok
> with Islam? Wow, what a nutter. Dude, go back to crunching
> math. You suck as someone who thinks they know more than they
> really do. Islam is not a religion, but a hate filled political
> ideology.

It's always fun to deal with total morons like you. I may not know
know as much as I'd like to know, but I sure know a hell of a lot more
than you. And yes, Islam is a religion, and sometimes an ideology,
just like Christianity and Judaism and Buddhism.

> vhistory wrote:
> My respect for this site as a whole just went up a little bit.

Since I don't get many compliments, I'm going to assume that this
is a compliment. Thanks.

> Tyler520 wrote:
> Still waiting for evidence of "Islamophobia"...<crickets>.

> phobia is an irrational fear; I have no fear of Islamists - I
> loathe them, and I know exactly why. Sorry to burst your bubble,
> Mr Xenakis, but not all cultures are equal.

> Sadly, "moderate" Muslisms, if there really is such a thing, are
> the pseudo-faithful, living in a fantasy

> Ignorant people such as Mr. Xenakis have utterly destroyed the
> meaning of "bigotry" and "racism" to the point that they have
> absolutely no impact anymore. He and his ilk simply toss excrement
> at the fan hoping something will stick.

> A man once said, "If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes
> truth." That man would be proud today

Another moron. What about the Christians who perpetrated the
Srebrenica massacre? Do you loathe all Christians too? And the only
excrement I can see is coming from you. Yuk.

Well, that's enough for now folks. If I have time, I'll try to
respond to a few more comments. There are almost 100 comments now,
and with any luck I might be able to find one or two that actually
evince intelligence.

Sincerely,

John

Tom Acre
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by Tom Acre »

John,

I think what you meant to say was that Germans were mostly Christian during the reign of Hitler and the Nazis b/c Nazism was an overtly anti-Christian movement. It grew from the ideas of what amounted to a 'New Age' psuedo-religion (Theosophy) strikingly similar to the hippy 'New Age' nonsense we're all familiar with. I don't want to go into all of these odd beliefs, but their conclusions led them on wild archeological and anthropological junkets to the ends of the earth in search of lost civilizations and clues of their aryan past. And to make a long story short the Nazis believed that Christianity is a "religion suited to slaves" that had corrupted their aryan culture; furthermore they believed that it was an intentional subversion. And I'll give you three guesses who they blamed for this intentional plot ...

Surely you see the difference between people who happen to be Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever committing atrocities for various reasons under various circumstances and Muslims committing atrocities for 'Allah' b/c of what they memorized in their Madrassas from the Koran. The Muslims are doing it b/c they are Muslim based on the teachings of Islam; Islam is a necessary cause just as the Nazi deification of their aryan race and its mythical history was a necessary cause.

John
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by John »

Dear Tom,
Tom Acre wrote: > Surely you see the difference between people who happen to be
> Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever committing atrocities for
> various reasons under various circumstances and Muslims committing
> atrocities for 'Allah' b/c of what they memorized in their
> Madrassas from the Koran. The Muslims are doing it b/c they are
> Muslim based on the teachings of Islam; Islam is a necessary cause
> just as the Nazi deification of their aryan race and its mythical
> history was a necessary cause.
No, I don't see the difference. You're quoting the standard excuses
made for the role of Christianity in Naziism. Even if Hitler himself
devised some crazy Aryan policies, there were still tens of thousands
of Christians in Germany and Italy that implemented his policies,
including the holocaust.

In 1204, a new Catholic Crusade was heading out to recapture Jerusalem
back again from the Muslim Turks. Along the way, the Catholic army
sacked Constantinople, starving and murdering its citizens, and
plundered the Orthodox Church's treasures accumulated over the
centuries. Pope John Paul only finally apologized to the Greeks in
2004, in a visit to Athens, where he isn't very popular. In 1572, the
Pope congratulated the French Catholics for the slaughter of
Protestant Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew's Night Massacre. Pope
John Paul apologized in 1997.

So, for centuries it was Catholic policy to use violence against
Orthodox and Protestant Christians, and that was part of the
"teachings of Christianity."

There are many "teachings of Islam." Historians generally regard
Mohammed himself as someone who never used violence unnecessarily,
although he was harsh with people who defamed or mocked Islam. And
Mohammed held Jews and Christians in high esteem, not as "infidels" to
be killed.

All the "teachings of Islam" that talk about killing the infidels are
perversions of Islam that were adopted by later people like Osama bin
Laden.

This is not surprising. From the point of view of Generational
Dynamics, religion is an important tool in every generational crisis
war. The only way that a leader can justify the slaughter or
extermination of the enemy -- whether by machete or by nuclear weapon
-- is to protray them as inferior in some way, and religious is
frequently used to do that.

As I've written many times before, religion does not cause war. It's
the other way around: war causes religion.

** Book review review: Christopher Hitchens: 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' (I)
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 03#e070603


** Book review review: Christopher Hitchens: 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' (II)
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... b#e070603b


Christian politicians don't like to mention this, but it's unalterable
Christian doctrine that anyone who has not accepted Christ as a savior
will be going to hell -- and that includes Jews, as well as Muslims,
Hindus, Buddhists, etc. That doctrine is only one tiny step away from
something a dictator could use to justify the slaughter of anyone, in
any way, for any reason. And Christianity itself would not have
survived if it hadn't been used that way on a regular basis.

John

JR

Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by JR »

Matthew 5:5
Matthew 5:41

For about 300 years, Christians were on the receiving end, and behaved themselves in an exemplary manner.

Unfortunately, some of the leaders (and people) got cocky afterwards. But everything will work out, no worries.

xakzen
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Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by xakzen »

John wrote:...Historians generally regard
Mohammed himself as someone who never used violence unnecessarily,
although he was harsh with people who defamed or mocked Islam. And
Mohammed held Jews and Christians in high esteem, not as "infidels" to
be killed.

All the "teachings of Islam" that talk about killing the infidels are
perversions of Islam that were adopted by later people like Osama bin
Laden.
John,

I'll certainty yeild your point that members of Christian churches and often by official sanction by church authorities have done atrocities in the name of God, but I'm afraid you are quite mistaken about Mohammed. Originally he was sympothetic to Jews and Christians and taught that they should be not regarded as Infidels. However when the Jews of Medina refused to even acknowledge his teaching as equal to the Torah, he changed his stance and slaughter those that would not immediately convert. This is documented in the Traditions of Mohammed (Hadith, I think it's called in Arabic). As for mainline Islam's tolerance of Christians & Jews is only until the Muslim End Time Prophecies when they too are expected to convert or be beheaded. It's exactly analogous to Dispensational Christians supporting Israel today not because they respect their religious identity, but because such support fits their End Time Eschatology.

Tom Acre
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Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 11:48 am

Re: 22-Aug-10 News -- The global rise of xenophobia

Post by Tom Acre »

Dear John
John wrote:No, I don't see the difference. You're quoting the standard excuses... there were still tens of thousands
of Christians in Germany and Italy that implemented his policies, including the holocaust.
The standard excuses were: "I was just following orders." and "I did not know about it." Countless subsequent experiments in various cultures and countries have shown this subordination of personal will and detachment from feeling of personal responsibility to be a pervasive human weakness within organizations. Thus, we see the importance of leadership, their beliefs, and the policies that flow from those beliefs. In the case of Hitler and the Nazis those beliefs (e.g. Aryan Master Race, sub-Races, social Darwinism etc.) came from pseudo-scientific, occult, new-age style religions like Theosophy.
John wrote:In 1204, ... the Catholic army
sacked Constantinople, starving and murdering its citizens, and
plundered the Orthodox Church's treasures accumulated over the
centuries. Pope John Paul only finally apologized to the Greeks in
2004, ...

So, for centuries it was Catholic policy to use violence against
Orthodox and Protestant Christians, and that was part of the
"teachings of Christianity."
A lot of what the Popes and Catholic Bishops did was not Christian in the least, but was based on personal benefit, grabbing power, money and pleasure. And that enormous disparity between the Bible and the policies of the Catholic Church is in essence what eventually caused the Protestant Reformation, once the general population gained an understanding of what the Catholics had kept shrouded in mystery from common people by among other things reading, writing and speaking the relevant passages exclusively in a foreign language.

My understanding is that not many Kings really wanted to participate in that Crusade and those who did ended up being essentially mercenaries who were diverted from their mission to Jerusalem and instead set off across Europe taking revenge on their rivals while seizing random opportunities, taking whatever appeared to be valuable and relatively available through the application of a little force. And in like manner the Pope was just as pleased to have them attack and plunder Constantinople and the rival to his authority in the East.

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