Politics

January 20, 2009 at 6:19 pm Fortune Cell 52 comments

Formerly Obama inaug thread.

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January Jesting February Frivolity

52 Comments Add your own

1. Jadestone | January 21, 2009 at 7:11 pm

WOOOOO

I wore the “Yes We Did” shirt I got at the Chicago rally on Nov. 4th today for it. I watched as much of the inauguration a I could in the library during lunch, which was unfortunately the period before when he’d be inaugurated. But woo!
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2. Bird of Purple | January 22, 2009 at 2:05 pm

Ha, I wore my Obama t-shirt too, (although I didn’t get to go to a rally…). We wasted most of Tuesday in school watching, but I didn’t really mind. XD
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3. ebeth who is too lazy to sign in | January 22, 2009 at 7:21 pm

I wore my sexy “Bexley for Barack” shirt. they extended our lunch period so we could watch it.
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4. ebeth who is too lazy to sign in | January 22, 2009 at 7:45 pm

Also re: MB inauguration thread…

VENDY AND PENTY AND OXLIN I LOVE YOU ALL LOGIC FOREVAR! PWN THOSE BITCHES!
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5. Fortune Cell | January 22, 2009 at 9:23 pm

GODDAMMIT EBETH
I wanted to express loves first

but srsly all, you kick asses.
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6. Potato Chip (Kelly) | January 24, 2009 at 6:05 pm

My English teacher wouldn’t let us watch it.
“This is English class, not social studies.”
“But he’s an orator! vocab word!”
“Nice try.”
The next day she criticized me for not introducing a quotation in my research paper (I cited it, and it was a database without an author, it’s not like it was written by someone well known). She then proceeded to ask me if I watched the inauguration, because apparently Obama forgot to credit somebody in his speech. Aggravating.
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7. FrigidSymphony | January 25, 2009 at 4:09 am

Was I the only one pissed off at all the bible humping going on in the introductory speeches?
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8. glasseh (DEATH) | January 25, 2009 at 9:51 am

No, you weren’t. At all. *glares at US*
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9. Pan | January 25, 2009 at 12:03 pm

7- Oh, good god. Everyone there was bible-happy.

Though, I almost think it was worth it for the commentary made by my gay chemistry teacher during the whole invocation. Well, not really. But it was hilarious.
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10. Bird of Purple | January 28, 2009 at 9:49 pm

I know… at least in his speech he mentioned “Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers”. It was like “wow, that’s right… we aren’t all Christian in the United States!”

6-Eww, she doesn’t sound very nice…

The best thing, I think, to come of the whole inauguration was the xkcd: “You know, it might be cool to be a woman…” XD
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11. tetracontakaidigon | January 28, 2009 at 10:21 pm

10- The xkcd still makes me crack up every time I see it. And I’ve tabbed to it about once every two hours in the past three days…

I haven’t seen Obama’s speech yet. We didn’t watch it in math class (fuck related rates. I don’t care if the ladder is sliding down the side of the house at two feet per second right now. There are people doing a fanfare with trumpet-esque instruments!) and I didn’t bother to watch it online. It’s just a speech, right?
Why am I wrong?
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12. Beavo | January 31, 2009 at 5:57 pm

7-Hell no. The non-beleivers bit had most of my friends yabbling about it in Civics.
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13. Fortune Cell | February 18, 2009 at 8:01 pm

ARGH Israel discussing HERE.

Personally, I’m against Israel. I understand wanting to have a country for that ethno-religious group, but driving people *out* of their home to do that is just ridiculous. Plus, Israel’s behavior lately (well, not just lately, but it’s been worse recently) has been extraordinarily out of hand.
I’m not very sympathetic to Israel.
I also found this picture interesting: http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/photos/maps/landloss.jpg
They’re not any better than squatters.
Squatters with big guns.
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14. groundhog22 | February 18, 2009 at 8:33 pm

13 – You’re not very sympathetic to Israel–no, really? And I’m just curious, what exactly has been out of hand? Would you just sit there and do nothing if someone was shooting rockets at your house and refused to stop no matter how much you pleaded? Also, the first part of that picture is inaccurate. Before 1948, Israel belonged to the British. Not to the Jews. Not to the Muslims. The British. The British decided what to do with it, and they decided to give half to the Jews and half to the Muslims. (never mind the fact that Balfour had promised the Jews all of it.) Then the Muslims decided to try to get even more land, despite the fact that they’d gotten all of Jordan as well as half of Israel. They lost, and they lost some of their land doing it. That’s what happens when you lose a war, especially one that you started. And ever since then, it’s been the same story. Palestinians attack Israelis, Israelis retaliate, etc. The Israeli government is happy to let Muslims, or any other non-Jews live peacefully in Israel and have a say in the government too. There are Muslim political parties in the Knesset. But most Muslims have chosen to attempt to eradicate the state of Israel and kill all the Jews in it. I think that Israel is justified in fighting back against that.
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15. Vendaval | February 18, 2009 at 9:51 pm

…and even before the British had it, Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
Also, I don’t think whatever Balfour said means anything.

Fuck politics.
I just want to
BURN SHIT DOWN.
~A Softer World
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16. FrigidSymphony | February 19, 2009 at 2:34 am

Responding to a comment in the other thread:
I have never heard anyone saying Israel has no right to exist.

In any case, the trouble is being caused by religiously motivated people, on both sides. In Palestine, Muslim party Hamas wants to kill the Jews, because, you know, they’re jewish. In Israel, orthodox Jews are moving out of their assigned area and are trying to settle and claim lands that they believe to be biblically theirs, but that politically belong to Palestine. I’d be pissed off in both cases.
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17. groundhog22 | February 19, 2009 at 8:45 am

15 – It’s true, the Balfour Declaration wasn’t anything official, but it would have been nice for the British to keep their promises. But no, they cared more about getting Arab oil, so… You know, you’re right. Politics is screwed up.

16 – I have heard people say that, and what’s even stranger is that some of them are Jewish. Okay, I could understand a Muslim saying that, because s/he wants that land to be an exclusively Muslim country, but Jews saying that is just bizarre. And the whole “moving out of your area” thing is over, I think. It wasn’t anything really big, like building whole cities, it was mostly people setting up tents in places and living there for a few days to protest the dismantling of existing Jewish towns. And you’re right, I am pissed off. Hamas is acting disgustingly, shoving their own citizens into the line of fire and then blaming Israel for killing them, not to mention a whole host of other things. If Hamas wins (and I really hope they don’t, because if they wipe out Israel then they’ll be declaring war on Europe next) then they will win with PR, because they can’t win in a fair fight, and their current tactics are designed to get their own people killed.

…God, that was a long rant. I guess that’s what comes of living in Israel and seeing the war close up.
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18. FrigidSymphony | February 19, 2009 at 9:04 am

I’m Jewish as well, but being God’s chosen people gives you no greater rights than any other country on a political level.

Initially what I find ironic is the fact that they chose to stick Jewland in the middle of the religious group most pissed off at Jews. How’s that for an apology -.-
Orthodox Jews are still going around settling places that don’t belong to them, just because the Talmud says it does.
And agreed, Hamas should F.O.A.D, but if those assholes build bunkers under schools, it’s also Israel’s responsibility to behave like an advanced civilized nation, and not some imperialistic country gone mad with a sense of Western authority and guns.
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19. Mel | February 19, 2009 at 10:44 am

Re: Israel: Biggest entitlement complex evar?

Re: Balfour: Well, at least here, Britishland acknowledged that, y’know, the land their godbag asses wanted to dish out to the Jewish was, uhm, kinda sorta INHABITED by Palestinians?

Then I think comes 1948 where the UN decides to countrify Israel. In Palestine. Giving the Palestinians a tiny portion of the land, and the Jewish people the rest. Because it’s not unethical to kick people out of their land, when that land is, like, totally sacred to another group. And the current group of people living there are those gosh darned Muslim infidels.

Hamas- also assholes, but not bigger assholes than Israel.
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20. FrigidSymphony | February 19, 2009 at 12:19 pm

19: Um yes, bigger assholes. They’re killing out of religious hatred, Israel out of defense. Misguided, but still defense.

What’s mostly ironic about the whole fucking Israel thing was putting the country for Jews right smack dab in the middle of the people who most want to kill them.

God I hate Islam.
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21. Fortune Cell | February 19, 2009 at 4:26 pm

God I hate Judaism just as much as I dislike Islam.
-shrug-
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22. Schrodinger | February 19, 2009 at 4:36 pm

Politics. Are silly
Religion. Equally or even more so

Put ‘em together and you are fucked.
also, xD Julia
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23. ninjapenty | February 19, 2009 at 6:26 pm

ninjapenty is ninja, ninjapenty is wishy-washy, ninjapenty is doing this in IR right now, so I’m sorry if I go on forever and don’t come to any conclusions.

DISCLAIMER: I would like to get my biases out in the open right now and say that I tend to go pro-Palestine, but really it’s all a giant mess and both sides make valid points.

The Thing About Israel (the area of land, not the political entity) is that everybody wants it. You can’t say that the Palestinian claim is more valid because they were there first, because they weren’t; the Jews have a very real historical claim to it as well (not “God promised it to us”) and before the Israelites showed up, there were still other people there.

Despite the fact that the land sucks a lot for actually doing anything with, people have been fighting over it for a while, and determining who actually belongs there is not an easy thing or even a possible one.

Incidentally, one of the first rumblings of trouble over Israel (then called Palestine, belonging first to the Ottoman Empire and then a British mandate) came from land development. The region was kind of a backwater during the Ottoman years, and the Arabs who lived there farmed using pretty much medieval technology. So along come these Jewish immigrants from Europe who start these agricultural communes, and they get the land to be pretty productive because they’re familiar with modern techniques. At first, they hired local Arabs to work on the farms, but as Jewish immigration increased they hired from the immigrant pool instead. Now the Arabs are jealous of the greater productivity of the Jewish settlements, they’re angry that they’re not getting a cut of those products, and this is all before WWII or even Balfour.

Spoiler: It got worse.

another Interesting Thing: The original UN partition of Palestine (region not country, yadda yadda) gave the Jews areas with heavy Jewish settlement and the south, which no one wanted, and the Arabs the west bank of the Jordan (not capitalized because it was bigger) and the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem was to be internationally administered, with respect for visitors of all religions. This would probably have worked out beautifully if people actually listened to it.

Britain was happy because they didn’t have to deal with that mess anymore, the (moderate) Jews were happy because they got a country, and the Arabs were furious because they saw it as Western imperialism taking their country away. The day after the UN resolution, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq declared war on Israel. Israel beat all five of them and took a good chunk of territory, including half of Jerusalem. This pissed off a lot of people.

Do note that up until the Intifadehs this was almost entirely a political issue, without much of a religious dimension at all. The PLO and other Arab nationalist groups had some socialist leanings, got hand-me-down weapons from the USSR, and weren’t in much of a position to bring Islam into the mix until recently. Which, to be fair, did happen, but Islamic fundamentalists are actually traditional enemies of Arab nationalist groups. (This is one of many reasons why associating Saddam with the Taliban is a load of crock.) They can agree on Israel, but not much else.

Personal opinion is that Israel is overly aggressive and relies too much on the US to protect its interests. Is this a bad thing? Certainly. What do we do about it? Nobody knows. But the human rights violations just keep going, on both sides. Shelling villages? Not cool. Shelling mosques and UN buildings? Not cool either. However, Israel’s handling of the issue of Arab Palestinian refugees is terrible. These people have been living in camps in the neighboring countries for sixty years, since the first Arab-Israeli war. Some of them left on their own, some got kicked out when Israel took over the land. The countries they’re living in let the camps stand because they make Israel look bad. Israel will occasionally make noises about compensating the refugees for the property they’ve lost, but they aren’t a rich country and they usually say things like “we acknowledge the problem and we hope our close friends the United States will help us in solving it.”

Conclusion: It’s a mess. Have fun coming to any. And…don’t let me talk too much about this stuff.
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24. ninjapenty | February 19, 2009 at 6:38 pm

20 (Fridgey)- Forgot to mention this bit: until there was substantial European Jewish immigration to the Middle East, the residents really couldn’t have cared less if you were a Jew or a Christian or whatever. The Jews chose to settle there, and then their neighbors started hating them. The state of Israel was established where it was because there was a historical connection and substantial Jewish settlement.

Also also, hating any religion or religious group is not going to get you very far. (This is a collective you, btw.)

Well, it won’t get you very far in balanced decision-making. And the Nazis lost, anyway.
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25. FrigidSymphony | February 20, 2009 at 3:10 am

24: the Nazis hated for ethnic reasons, not ideological ones. My disgust for everything religious is because of the violence and social destruction that stem from faith-based ideologies.
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26. Fortune Cell | February 20, 2009 at 8:15 am

25- Then why do you identify as a Jew?
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27. FrigidSymphony | February 20, 2009 at 10:04 am

Because ethnically I am Jewish. I don’t share any of the religious beliefs, but I’d have been Jewish enough for the furnaces.
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28. groundhog22 | February 22, 2009 at 9:32 am

25 – The Nazis’ hatred was the same as any religious hatred. It’s the hatred of people who are different, or that they thought were different. It’s just that they didn’t use religion as a cover.
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29. FrigidSymphony | February 22, 2009 at 10:55 am

No, wrong. It’s judging and hating people on the basis of something they have no decision over. Hatred of Muslims is the hatred of people who consciously choose to conform to an imperialistic, violent and arrogant mentality. Being Jewish is biological chance, being Muslim is a choice. There’s a world of difference.
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30. kinky | February 22, 2009 at 12:06 pm

But when you think about it, how much control do we really have over our religion? I mean, obviously, we have total control if we really think about it, but how you are raised has a huge impact on what you think and believe later in life. If you never take the time to really figure out why you think what you do and make sure you’re thinking for yourself, you’ll probably just believe whatever you were raised with. And a lot people just wouldn’t bother to figure this shit out for themselves, or their religion has been pounded into their heads so hard that they would be afraid to. So it’s not necessarily a conscious choice.

The other thing is that with many religions, such as Judaism, Islam and Catholicism, it’s not just a belief, it’s a whole culture. When religion and culture meet, there are certain things that come with the package that can’t really be trained out of the people in question even when the belief is no longer there. For instance, where I live there are a fair number of Catholic families. The kids and even the parents may not even be Christians, but they still eat fish on Fridays. That’s a mild example, but consider religions for which the cultural aspects can be more extreme. Look at all the people who hate homosexuals because of the church’s teachings. These people are not necessarily very religious or moral themselves, but they unthinkingly believe homosexuals are evil just because it’s how they were raised. I’m not defending people like this, I’m just saying a person’s religious beliefs are not always a conscious decision.
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31. Fortune Cell | February 22, 2009 at 2:41 pm

29 – People convert to Judaism. It is a choice. There are good and bad examples of every religion, and Islam is not inherently worse than all the others.
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32. Vendaval | February 22, 2009 at 3:31 pm

80% of Christians identify as such solely because they were raised so, they do not actively practice or believe.

Islam: “imperialistic, violent and arrogant mentality” ?
Sounds like Christianity in the middle ages, when Islam was all hugs in comparison. I think that it’s the cultural context which in turn , the basis of ethics in Islam is solid enough.

I think we need to differentiate between culture, ethnicity, and religion.
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33. groundhog22 | February 22, 2009 at 5:48 pm

29 – But Muslims don’t necessarily have a choice either. If a Muslim leaves Islam, then other Muslims will try to hunt down and kill him/her.
31 – But somehow, despite beliefs and such, if you’re born a Jew, you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life.
32 – Hard to differentiate between those three. They’re kind of woven together in a lot of cases.
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34. dark duke of darkness | February 23, 2009 at 6:11 am

33: yes. All Muslims are such fanatics that they will kill people who leave Islam.
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35. groundhog22 | February 23, 2009 at 2:30 pm

34 – If that was sarcasm, I didn’t quite catch it. Let me modify that statement slightly. If someone is born into a Muslim group that has those imperialistic, violent and arrogant views, then they will be hunted down if they leave. I don’t think that moderate Muslims do that, but I could be wrong. Unfortunately, moderate Muslims are becoming more scarce lately.
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36. Axa | February 23, 2009 at 8:10 pm

I think moderate Muslims or what have you are just less visible. I think in foreign countries there’s also a stigma against Islam so it maybe be an attempt at keeping a low profile…It’s the same as anything else, you hear more about fundamentalist Christians more than people actually doing good by Christianity.

…Which is basically irrelevant to conversation but I thought I’d say it anyway
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37. dark duke of darkness | February 23, 2009 at 8:59 pm

35: http://www.adherents.com/images/rel_pie.gif
1.5 billion people are religious extremists? please. the vast, vast majority of Muslims are as moderate as anyone. Extremists are called that because the represent a tiny minority.
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38. Vendaval | February 23, 2009 at 9:08 pm

35- Omar Bin Laden is still alive and well.
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39. groundhog22 | February 25, 2009 at 11:54 am

37 – Perhaps not, but they are part of extremist societies.
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40. Fortune Cell | March 7, 2009 at 6:52 pm

39 – Are you saying the entire religion of Islam is extremist by definition? Religious extremism is, by definition, the outliers.

Also: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/plan-for-tourist-theme-park-raises-jerusalem-tensions-1638521.html
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41. groundhog22 | March 7, 2009 at 7:06 pm

40 – What happens is that the extremists take everyone else over and force them to conform to their views. The position of a country can be different than the individual positions of that country’s residents.
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42. dark duke of darkness | March 7, 2009 at 11:08 pm

41-In that case it has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with politics.
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43. FrigidSymphony | March 8, 2009 at 4:00 am

No, no. Extremism in Islam is more dangerous than moderate Islam, yes, but even moderate Islam is violent and a threat to western civilization. I had some quotes from the leading moderate spokesman for Islam in the UK somewhere, can’t find them now… Something about enforcing Sharia law, punishing blasphemers and apostates, and a lot of other intolerant violent shit.
Islam is by definition not extremist, but violent.
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44. groundhog22 | March 8, 2009 at 9:28 am

42 – Except that the most common place where it happens is in Muslim countries. Yes, there have been other oligarchies which are not Muslim, but at the moment the majority are Muslim countries.
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45. Mel | March 12, 2009 at 8:00 am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/4968239/Brazils-president-attacks-Vatican-for-condemning-nine-year-old-rape-victims-abortion.html

Oh fuck no.
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46. Potato Chip (Kelly) | March 12, 2009 at 10:57 am

45- Wow, that is seriously messed up.
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47. groundhog22 | March 12, 2009 at 8:47 pm

46 – Agreed. She’s allowed to have an abortion by canon law, yet the Pope still condemns it? And her dad gets off scot-free? Greeeat.
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48. FrigidSymphony | March 13, 2009 at 1:21 am

44: Oligarchies?
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49. groundhog22 | March 13, 2009 at 9:19 am

48 – I think that’s the right word…It means a government controlled by a very small group of people. Like a dictatorship, except without the single leader.
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50. FrigidSymphony | March 30, 2010 at 5:38 am

I.
Hate.
Libertarians.
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- 51. Fortune Cell | March 30, 2010 at 6:44 pm
  
  Try to avoid low content posts, please.
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52. kinky | March 30, 2010 at 8:54 am

Why is that? I consider myself sort of libertarian ideologically but not all in alignment with the Libertarian Party.
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