Metal Reviews

You do live in a bit of an idealistic fantasy.


I had a Serb sniper nearly kill me when I was 11 years old. Serb artillery nearly killed my father and damaged our home. Serb airforce nearly killed all of us.

These same Serbs had lived there together with us Croats for 50 years. There were no issues. No one cared about religion or culture (they're kind of the same). We were all Yugoslavs.

The Serbs then decided that old vendettas mattered and that with the fall of Communism they needed something to define themselves with. Goaded by nationalists, people brought into the concept of Greater Serbia.

So they happily slaughtered their Croat neighbours. We of course returned the favour.

In the space of 10 years (from about 1980-1989), any sense of brotherhood that they tried to build since 1945 disappeared and people went back to butchery.

I will never forget what the Serbs did to my family and I relish how we ethnically cleansed them. Even my mother who was a true Yugoslav with a career communist soldier father and who is nominally a pacifist enjoyed watching the Serbs being bombed by NATO as revenge for all the sufferering we went through.


History has proved that most people can only live together while the living is good. (And with many fundamentalist types, not even wealth stops them from their crusade/jihad.)

As soon as the current paradigm does not meet the expectations of the people, the people look for a scapegoat and then vent their frustrations on these people.

The scapegoat is always someone who is different to the majority.

In Europe it was always the Jews (way before Hitler was even born). In countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, the ethnic Chinese played the same role - indeed when the Asian Finanical Crisis came to Indonesia, the first thing many Indonesians did was riot and burn Chinese shops, rape Chinese women and murder Chinese men.

And when there's noone internal to rage against, people rage against foreigners and outsiders.

After a while you get history. And people remember what has happened in the past.





With over 50% illiteracy rates in some of the countries (basically all women).

Star of David is a Jewish sign and is the equivalent to a Christian cross or Islamic Crescent.

Some of the signs were in English and said "Mubarak the Jew."

When they were raping that journalist, they were shouting "Jew"

These one's are good too:






Such nice people. We should let more of them into the West and we really should adopt Sharia law. Apparently heavy metal music thrives in Islamic countries.


*Yes that's sarcasm for the uninitiated*

Claiming people were 'evil' in World War II needs to be qualified. The Eastern Front was the single most catastrophic war in history, often fought in terrible conditions with no supplies. We are affected by our environments: war is hell, especially that war. Human beings were denied their humanity in that bloodbath and thus acted in ways they never would have considered outside of it.

Being fair, the star of david's also on the Israeli flag and is a recognised symbol for the state of Israel. She wasn't raped. And those other pics you posted aren't from Egypt, but Europe. Shall we start posting Westboro Baptist Church etc placards and have a circle-jerk about how stupid some people are? Those extremist protesters are a minority and are heavily condemned by moderate muslims.

Actually the guys generally commiting atrocities on both sides were often not frontline troops but rather second line logistics, security, administrative and other generally non combat units. Books by chaps such as Anthony Beevor and Max Hastings confirms this.

The number of frontline troops as a percentage of a WWII military force is very low. Given high casualty rates, it was even lower in both German and Russian combat formations.

For example most Russian divisions usually had only several hundred front line combat troops out of an average strength of 5,000-6,000 (nominal strength should have been 10,000- 12,000 for a Russian infantry division). Rest was artillery, logistics, admin.


Your average landser or frontnik was too busy fighting for his life though many of them did commit nasty stuff too.

Your average guy in a supply or rear echelon security detachment on the other hand had plenty of opportunity for mischief.



This behaviour did not generally happen on the Western front where the fighting was just as brutal. Normandy casualty rates were higher than the much larger concurrent Operation Bagration ones in the East. Only units that committed deliberate atrocities were the various SS formtations (in particular 2nd SS Das Reich division which destroyed an entire town in France as a revenge attack)

Only Western Allied troops that were just as barbaric as Germans on the Eastern front and Russians were the French Goumiers, who were Morrocan Arabs. How ironic in the context of this discussion.

Would like Kaathy to make an appearance here and talk about Turkey again--last time he mentioned the growing power of fundamentalism there. I find myself between the left and right on this issue, hopeful and very worried about the popular movements sweeping the world. I do know a few Muslims, and yes, they are regular people, much like the Spanish speakers I am alarmist about bifurcating American culture. Regular people can still represent challenges to societies which may need legal/political responses.

And dead1, I am not going to talk to you about history anymore; it is like arguing with a brick wall. Frontline or not, the nature of the war was far beyond any other. To deny the systemic impact of Nazi or Soviet regimes in propagandizing the war is ridiculous.

Yes it is. But Israel is a Jewish state for Jews. You cannot be anti-Israeli and not anti-Semitic. It would be like being against the Vatican but not the Roman Catholic Church



I forgot to mention that they were frokm Europe. Which was part of the point I was trying to make with the sarcastic remarks.



Really?

In Australia then there must be no moderate Muslims.

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali was Australia's most prominent Muslim leader (Grand Mufti in fact).

His statements include:

1988:


2004:


2006
Sacked from Prime Minister's Muslim reference group for comments against Israel

After a prominent rape case where Muslim youths gang raped Australian women:



2007
On Television stated that Muslims have more right to be Australia than Australians, that sentences against rapists were too high, that Australia allows homosexuals too many freedoms.


If this man is a moderate Muslim leader, I'd hate to see a fundamentalist one.

Emp, I think you'd be interested in the workings of the Quilliam Foundation.

http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/

Set up by a former extremist, Maajid Nawaz, to combat Islamic extremism. In action here, debating Anjem Choudary of the radical Islam4UK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XtUsRyWAcg

Thanks. I will look at this, certainly.

No-one denied it. In fact Stalin in the end even figured out that he had gone too far promoting the complete annihilation of the Germans and started issuing orders against it.

However we can use any other examples - I've already included my own personal example in the Balkans.

Or the Tutsi-Hutu conflict or Arab-Israeli conflict or slaughter inflicted by the Crusaders during the Crusades or American settlers or Venezuela's War of Independence or whatever.


Point is that people are not good (nor are they really evil). They commit acts that at the time maximise their own interest in the context of their own morality.


I witnessed people looting in Croatia just before the war. They looted government property and private shops in the name of Croatia (one guy asked a looter why they were doing it) . They were ordinary people. My own mother looted Serb houses.

Young men drove around lobbing grenades and molotov cocktails into shops that didn't display the Croatian flag (and often that wasn't enough).

The funny thing was that only months prior to it, everything was normal.

It took nothing at all to turn people into beasts.

I'm not bandying quotes around, never heard of this Mufti of yours but he's clearly no moderate. But this



is pure nonsense. Israel is a secular state, set up by Zionists, and Zionism is a political movement, not a religious one. There are many Jews who are anti-Israel in all sense of the word, and there are many Zionists who tried to erase Judaism from their ideology - cue famous story about the Jewish homeland nearly being carved out of Africa. Criticism of the Israeli state is very different from criticism of Judaism as a whole.

And here's a British muslim leader, Dr. Daud Abdullah , signing a declaration that promotes attacks on anyone trying to stop the smuggling of arms to Hamas:

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/08/ ... eclaration

One assumes that includes British police and military officials that may be involved in counter arms smuggling operations.






The Muslim Council of Britain has not sacked Daud Abdullah

He was the leader of the Muslim community in Australia. Hence he technically represented all Muslims in Australia.

One other thing he also did was vandalise his own mosque in order to try to roust up the local youth. He was caught on CCTV.

So he's clearly trying to incite violence and antagonism in the community.



Jews against Irael? Really? Some proof would be nice.

I had heard about proposals for establishing a Jewish homeland elsewhere including Argentina.

And despite being secular, the main purpose of Israel is a Jewish homeland and they generally accept Jews from anywhere including Ethiopia and Russia where they've vbeen persecuted by Ethiopian muslims and Russian Communists/Orthodox Christians (in fact Hollywood was partially established by ex-Russian/Eastern European Jews escaping the pogroms).




And do these Arab protesters differentiate?

Most likely not.


If you look at a recent history of Egypt prior to the current turmoil, you will see attacks by Islamic terrorists on tourists and heavy oppresion and violence against Coptic Christians.

Proof of Jews who are anti-Israel? Me, for a start, although I'm hardly a religious example. Try www.jewsagainstzionism.com and www.nkusa.org for that, thought the latter were pretty well-known at least.

You're missing my point - Zionism is a nationalist political movement that views Jews as a race, so of course they're going to accept Jews from all over.

And again, I'm not denying the existence of Islamic extremism or terrorism, so stop trying to prove it. You're just ranting now.

There's been anti-Jewish Jews here in Australia too come to think of it - the comedian John Saffran comes to mind.

Here's a question:

Jews have been persecuted for over 2,000 years wherever they live.

So why are you against a homeland that at least offers some sort of security against potential aggressors and one that promotes the rights of Jews?






Jews once were a race before they were dispersed around the globe and mixed with the locals. A Jew from Germany certainly is different from a Jew from Ethiopia!

However I accept religion as a point of differentiation. The difference between a Serb and a Croat and a Bosnian Muslim is purely religion (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim) and geography.

They speak the same language and urban culture.

I can understand a Bosnian or Serb perfectly but struggle to understand some of the Croat rural or island dialects.

So religion is a matter of differentiation.

Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisation outline's this perfectly (topic of my honour's thesis). In the 21st century, nationalism is replaced by religious and ethnic differences.

I started typing a long and detailed answer, but accidentally closed the window and lost it all! So I'll try and be brief and probably lose you all with the lack of detail, but I could write about this for hours because it's a deep and fascinating topic with real personal meaning for me. I've come from being a Jewish supporter of Israel to being an atheist non-supporter, and I'm still torn at times. So looking at this broad and complex matter bluntly and quickly - making it clear that I don't want to dismantle Israel or destroy it with nuclear weapons or whatever, this is just why I think Israel as a state should not have been brought into being.

Zionism is, again, a nationalist political movement that accepts as truth the idea that Jews will always be persecuted, wherever they are. Clearly, nowadays when Jews are accepted as equals in what, nearly all countries around the world, this is proven untrue. And that's basically it! The father of Zionism -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl

was a secular Jew who believed this and wanted to set up a kind of utopian society where non-Jews were treated equally under a Third-Way economic system. Palestine wasn't even on offer at first, he took a British offer of part of Uganda on board at first -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Uganda_Programme

He offended a lot of secular Jews with this idea, as well as religious Jews who were put off by the anti-religious aspects of Zionism. So who wanted Israel? Jews, or Zionists? The two only became one group as the idea grew with popularity, and nowadays Jewish Zionism is common. But at first, they were very diverse ideologies.

Elsewhere, does Israel offer security when they've fought wars since the day it was established, when terrorist organisations commit actions like suicide bombings and civilian attacks? Not at all, it's far safer in the west, even with events like 9/11. Does Israel offer rights, when religious Jews were oppressed from the moment they arrived there, when those of Sephardic (eastern) background are treated even nowadays as second-class citizens by the (European) Ashkenazi? Blame class differences if you like (trapt!) but Israel is far from the tolerant ideal of Herzl even before we consider the Palestinians.

So, to me, Israel was set up under a false premise, and philosophically I believe that it should not exist. Practically, I accept that it exists and that there now exists a group of people called Israelis who have a right to their country. But because of the long-standing ill-treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis, something that rankled even whilst I still considered myself Jewish, I can't support an Israeli state that so violates my beliefs of freedom and fairness. Even were I to accept that Jews need a state of their own to escape persecution, the benefits of such have been outweighed by all the bloodshed since, on both sides.

Really interesting stuff Goat.

So what do you think should happen with what is now Israel?

It's a shame Israel never developed those equal rights fully. But then no country or indeed human society ever has.

Australia for example had an apartheid type system up to 1967 (Aborigines weren't even counted in the census nor had the right to vote in federal elections).

Even today many Aborigines in the north of the countries live in shanties similar to the ones in South Africa.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... versy.html

A little too little too late, though I can't imagined being asked at my hospital bed "Are you an American citizen"? The state representative Gould that sponsored the bill lives in the district directly above my own, and he's always regularly staging Minutemen events and anti-Hispanic rallies in Havasu.

I'm a migrant of the legal variety....

I have never understood why people support illegal immigration.

Here in Australia we have a lot of problems with illegal migrants.

Some bleeding heart types think that we should just let everyone in.

Yet we need to be able to control our own borders.

Illegal migrants are unregulated, often have no papers and it's common for them to have dodgy pasts (at least the one's coming into Australia).

There have been numerous ex-Iraqi military officers who came here as illegals in the past few years. How many of them might have been wanted for war crimes?

And recently we've seen an influx of Tamils - again how many are ex-Tamil Tiger guerillas/terrorists?

In one instance one illegal migrant who was acting as a spokesperson for a boatload of them was found to have originally lived in Canada but was expelled from that country for violent criminal activities (he was basically a gang member).

Even legal ones can present issues - Australia let in ship loads of migrants from the 1950's onwards. There was a great many ex-Nazi/Fascist personnel from Latvia, Estonia, Croatia etc on those ships and many have since been pursued for war crimes.

Migration needs to be controlled and regulated.