[ExI] Religions are not the ultimate cause of war

[Tomasz Rola]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2012, BillK wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:11 AM, Keith Henson wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 1:37 PM,  John Clark wrote:
> >> I don't believe it is. Saudi Arabia is not a poor country and yet almost
> >> all the 911 hijackers came from there, and all were middle class.
> >
> > Before 9/11, the was a 75% drop in the per capita income for Saudi
> > Arabia.  It was due to a rise in the population of factor of two and a
> > fall in the price of oil by half.  That seem to be enough to trip the
> > population wide "bleak future" detector.  And in the stone age, the
> > relatively well off warriors were infected by the same "kill the
> > neighbors" memetic mechanism as the rest of the tribe.
> >
> 
> 
> Terrorism is not the result of a nation switching on to 'war-mode'.
> 
> Terrorists are mostly a tiny minority (even including non-involved
> supporters). And as John said terrorists are often more middle-class
> than poor.

AFAIK, right. From what I can tell, the poor are busy minding their own 
business. And they are - kind of - impregnated against ideas preached on 
them by rich kidos (you know, ideas, how to do to have it all fixed, 
this kind of BS). However, at the same time, if one is young and sees no 
perspectives and deep in shit already, one is really easy prey for 
preachers - and from what I have heard, this happens, too. I.e. there is 
recruitment (or was) going on in all kinds of poor neighbourhoods of 
Middle East.

> Terrorism is probably used because it is the only method a
> relatively powerless small group have available to inflict damage on a
> hated powerful nation.

Ok, agreed.

> (e.g. resistance fighters against WWII German invaders).

Uh, not agreed. Sorry to be such a rightous prick (I guess this is how I 
look) but resistance was not a terrorism.

Terrorists are, for me, some kind of brain washed borgs directed by 
cowards, going after _unarmed_ and _unprepared_ civilians whom they never 
before met. Hence a chance those people did something wrong to them is 
really slim, and even if they did, I doubt they murdered anybody - which 
would be probably the only acceptable reason to kill them, but not before 
they have a legal case before a judge.

In other words, they are doing against their own ideals (like, their 
religion) which is about being right and doing just things - or so it 
says. The only religion I heard of that would ok acts of terrorism is 
satanism (but I'm not sure if this is religion proper). Anyway, killing 
random people is cowardish and unjust in my opinion.

Resistance, OTOH, at least in Poland, was quite busy with fighting German 
military and police, attacking prisons to free their comrades, blowing up 
trains going to Russia (i.e. East Front) and smuggling V1 and V2 to Great 
Britain (as well as doing other intelligence jobs which perhaps shortened 
the war a lot). In other words, it was acting against _armed_ force, which 
was trained to fight and expected to be attacked. There were _executions_ 
of some pro-German civilians but from what I know it could only happen 
after underground judgment council okayed this, in case when they found 
such a person to be guilty of someone's death or equally wrong doing 
against Polish nation. There were special executor squads specializing in 
this kind of work (sometimes consisting of one person only - executions 
were to be discreet and fast, but they started with reading a judgment and 
ended with bullet - at least this is what I was taught).

Overally, Polish Resistance was acting as underground government, with all 
consequences - there was legality, and there was armed force, aka Home 
Army (with proper army structure, divisions, brigades and so on, military 
intelligence and counterintelligence, logistics, you name it you get it), 
and there was underground education, including exams and university-level 
studies (because all schooling above very basic was prohibited for us by 
occupants). There were even underground courses for new officers (because 
Home Army was in need of young cadres). Last but not least, there were 
underground workshops building weapons, radios and other equipment (demand 
always bigger than supply, unfortunately). [1]

Since it was wartime, I think it was possible this idealistic picture did 
not always stick to reality (snafus, hot blood, shit happened, judges 
erred and there was no internet to dispute who knew what and who was 
wrong), but overally I find their acts neither cowardish, nor unjust.

So, we have a huge difference. On every level I can think of.

[1] To give you a clue, on one occasion, a workshop like this built 
improvised APC (Armoured Personnel Carrier) during Warsaw Uprising in 
1944:

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/polish-armor-1939-improvised-armored-car-kubus.htm

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **