Hundreds of Verified Twitter Accounts Compromised, Post Swastikas, Pro-Erdogan Content (bloomberg.com) 289
From a report on Bloomberg: At least 25 verified international Twitter accounts (Editor's note: other outlets are saying the number is in hundreds) have posted content supporting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his feud with Germany and the Netherlands, with hashtags reading, in Turkish, "NaziGermany" and "NaziHolland." The accounts that were hacked include international news organizations such as the German newspaper Die Welt, Forbes Magazine, BBC North America, and Reuters Japan. It also targeted the Twitter accounts of the European Parliament, French politicians like Alain Juppe, Sprint Corp's CEO and President Marcelo Claure, among others. Gizmodo adds:It was an incredibly bad week for Dutch-Turkish relations. Turkish voters go to the polls next month on April 16th to decide whether President Erdogan should be given more powers. In the lead up to this vote, Turkish diplomats in the Netherlands had been speaking at Dutch rallies to Turkish ex-pats in support of the referendum. But Dutch officials prevented the Turkish ministers from speaking, causing a dust-up between the two countries. [...] Even where some of the tweets have been deleted, the banner image of the Turkish flag sometimes remains, like on the account for Starbucks Argentina.Twitter said in a statement, "We are aware of an issue affecting a number of account holders this morning. Our teams are working at pace and taking direct action on this issue. We quickly located the source which was limited to a third party app. We removed its permissions immediately."
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, the problem is also the dictator himself. Anyway, Turkey is fucked. Erdogan is leading his people backwards straight into previous century and it will take at least 50 years to recover him.
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Seriously, if Ataturk was still alive, he'd kick that SOBs ass SO fucking hard that he'd land next Tuesday from the kick.
Re: The real problem (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, the only "Hitler" in the whole spiel is Erdogan himself. The law he tries to push through has a lot in common with Hitler's "Ermächtigungsgesetz" that turned Germany back then into a dictatorship.
If that law passes, he's basically dictator for life.
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The similarity doesn't stop there. Hitler and his Nazis were big fans of genocide, obviously. Well, the Turks are too, since they refuse to admit that their murder of millions of Armenians was genocide.
Turks are looking more like Nazi-era Germans every day.
The real problem is ISALM (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Funny)
I really don' t see what the International Symposium Advances in Legal Medicine has to do with the issue.
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is ISALM. That's why so many Muslims want to turn their back on Ataturk's dream of a modern, secular Turkey and make it yet another Sharia hell-hole.
The problem is not Islam by it self, it's what we in the software business call rotten 'legacy code' common to all Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. They all have the same problematic common legacy of misogynism, violence, homophobia and intolerance. People talk as if Islam is all hate and Christianity is all hugs, kisses and fluffy bunny rabbits but in reality you don't have to search very long for bible passages like Deuteronomy 22:13-21 [biblegateway.com] to which the bible thumpers usually respond that Christians don't follow such hateful passages in the bible and (my favourite christian snowflake argument) the hateful old testament laws are "only for Jews" (amazing how quickly the followers of the religion of hugs kisses and fluffy bunny rabbits revert to medieval antisemitism) which leads us to Matthew 5:17-18 [biblegateway.com]. But I think we've had enough fun with scripture. Let's address your main argument that the problem is Islam. What the hell makes you think that all Christians disregard bronze age laws about stoning or otherwise abusing and suppressing women (just to cite one example) but that all Muslims gleefully embrace such commandments instead of ignoring them like many Christians apparently do because that's what you just insinuated, i.e. that all Muslims religiously (pun not intended) follow passages in the Quaran requiring them to practice barbaric reprisals (similar to ones found in the bible) against people who break religious laws and commandments and just for your information: millions of Muslims don't do that and would, for example, not dream of stoning a woman.
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes...and no. Muslims are generally well-disposed to Sharia as a political system while the other two are not well disposed to religion as a political system. I suspect the reason is the greater abuse in the other two in years past. Now that reformation has taken place in the sense that the Bible Thumpers are running the show (doesn't prevent them from trying, however), Islam is looking worse for wear.
The problem becomes apparent in the political systems of many Muslim countries and the tyranny of the majority in places like Malaysian and Indonesia. Islam as a political construct is old, creaking, and cannot keep up with the hopes of the younger generations. The problem for them is they have no real alternative "in their bones" so to speak. Their only exposure to political leadership is to their local mosque leaders who will be damned if they are gong to give up the delights of telling everyone else what to do.
It doesn't help that many societies in the Mid-East are tribal. That only gives political Islam a guaranteed divide and conquer strategy. With everyone fighting like that, no one notices the deal the central governments have with Islam, i.e., keep'em fighting and keep local politics local so the people do not notice our incompetence.
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Informative)
the other two are not well disposed to religion as a political system.
I don't about jews in general, but as an israeli jew, I can tell you that there are plenty of people here who want religion to play a stronger part in our government. In Israel marrige and divorce must go through a rabbi, and there are parties whose size is roughly one sixth (the biggest party in general is one quarter) that define themselves as "religious parties". It is feasible that Israel might become "sharia-lite - jewish version" at some point.
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As an American Jew, I see the efforts to give religion a stronger role in the USA's government and it frightens me. First of all, the religion that's pushed is always Christianity so I'd become a second class citizen unless I decided to worship Christ. Not that I'd support it if Judaism was the "official religion", mind you, because of my second point which is that I've seen where "Religion And State Are Mixed" ends up and it's never good. Historically speaking, we Americans fled from such a system. (The Ki
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Excellent point, I forgot about this part, but it's correct, Israel, despite being considered racist/facist/whatever is actually more multi cultural than many eurpoeans countries, TOO multi cultural in this case.
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Muslims are generally well-disposed to Sharia as a political system while the other two are not well disposed to religion as a political system.
I don't agree with that at all. A lot of people vote Republican specifically because they have been conned into believing that it is the Christian party. Those people would love to see more theocracy.
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This is the big issue, and whilst the monotheistic abrahamic religions are all basically the same, they are also somewhat different. And a big debate is whether those differences matter or not. Some people, Moslem Islamic academics, argue that it is not reformable the way Christianity was. Some argue that the natural progress of authoritarian to modern is a natural developmental process which will unfold for all societies sooner or later.
Of course, a bigoted view will simply paint all with the same brush. T
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I live in Germany and don't have to suffer through the crazy that is common in some splinter groups of "christianity" ( prosperity gospel - wtf?? )
That's not a "splinter group". Here in America, the Prosperity Gospel megachurches are now the mainstream in the suburban areas. You're probably thinking they're "splinter groups" because their rise has been so quick; that whole theology really didn't exist over 30 years ago I think. But they've become the dominant form of Christianity here in the US now, espe
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Re:The real problem is ISLAM (Score:3, Interesting)
People assume that Islam is just a kind of Christianity with a different brand and a few ceremonies swapped. It's not. The Bible is a big honking pile of contradictions, making cherry-picking not only permitted but the only possible way to worship it. You also need a lot of doublethink, but if you got conditioned to it as a child, you take it for granted and accept as normal.
The Koran, on the other hand, is consistent. Instead of being made of a bunch of different books from over a thousand years writte
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People assume that Islam is just a kind of Christianity with a different brand and a few ceremonies swapped.
No, it's a kind of religious fundamentalism with a different brand and a few ceremonies swapped.
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No, all of Islam is a problem, not merely the fundamentalists. While at a given moment only a "small" minority of several hundred million are fundies, anyone else, even someone whose parents and grandparents were civilized people who didn't give a damn about religion and visited churches/mosques only for weddings and funerals, may have a mental crisis, hear a sermon, follow a fashion (the recent revival of Islam is just that, a fashion) or the like, and start reading the Koran.
And since, unlike the Bible,
What a crock of BULLSHIT! Cherry picked at that. (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, trying to untie Koran from the Bible doesn't really work cause it contains the same damn stories and same damn people.
Only real difference being that Jesus is not the son of god but just another prophet.
So that "Islam by one hand" is a crock of shit regardless if that one hand is Allah's or Uthman's as you put it.
Second, saying shit like that "Islam is the work of one man. (Not counting nameless scribes, no one ever credits them.)" is basically proof that you don't know jack shit about Islam.
Or you would have known of hadith.
Which is basically an attempt to expand the Koran after the death of its writer - by compiling quotes attributed to him by various sources.
All of which are specifically and strictly credited because... well... some might choose not to believe some sources. [wikipedia.org]
There are many flavors of Islam. [wikipedia.org] Just like with Judaism [wikipedia.org] or Christianity [wikipedia.org]
Painting it with a generalization-brush of "one Islam by one hand", particularly in today's climate of CLEAR [wikipedia.org] AND OBVIOUS EXAMPLES [wikipedia.org] of Shia-Sunni divisions is beyond ignorant or retarded.
Third turd... Just like the Bible which was not written in modern languages it suffers from transcription and translation errors. [researchgate.net]
Which compound when most of the text is metaphoric in nature - as is the case with all religious texts.
Saying it is consistent requires more than just belief - it requires blind faith.
Fourth... The Bible is plentiful with DIRECT commands to murder anyone from witches and gays to infidels. [evilbible.com]
And both Koran [skepticsan...dbible.com] and Bible, [skepticsan...dbible.com] old testament and new [skepticsan...dbible.com] give even more reasons for hate and murder of everyone.
Fifth... Islam is as "compatible with the civilized world" as any ancient religion, cooked up by schizophrenic hermits in a cave, desert or jungle somewhere, edited by lunatics, crooks and child molesters and left "unchanged" for thousands of years.
You know... like all those flavors of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism...
Not that newer religions cooked up by loons and crooks are any better!
Mormonism, Scientology and Moonism are the same kind of shit.
Just with fewer genocides to their name.
So far.
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These people that claim to follow Islam but don't believe in the bad parts, the parts about conquest against unbelievers, females as second class citizens, Sharia, etc., they are lying to themselves.They don't follow Islam. At all. They follow some cherry-picked bastardized form of Islam.
Your lack of self-awareness is staggering. Every Christian that doesn't sell everything he owns, give the money to the poor, and hit the road spreading the good news, is not doing what Jesus specifically fucking told everybody they have to do.
In other words, a cherry-picked bastardised form of Christianity.
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Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is ISALM. That's why so many Muslims want to turn their back on Ataturk's dream of a modern, secular Turkey and make it yet another Sharia hell-hole.
My argument is always this: Islam is roughly 600 years younger than Christianity. Look at where Christianity was 600 years ago. Inquisitions, witch hunts, regular mass killings of Jews, regular armed conflict between believers of different sects, strict and oppressive interpretations of religion and law, etc. All things that we are basically seeing now with Islam. Take Christianity of the 14th/15th Century and put it in the 20th/21st Century and you would see something that looks a lot like extremist Islam. You want to fix it, you don't try to shut down all things Islam. That just fuels the fire. Instead, you have to embrace and support the moderate elements within Islam, as they are the only ones that can bring Islam out of the dark ages and transform it into a more modern religion. Unfortunately, there are too many people on both sides who derive profit and power through the fear and hate of Islam, so it seems as if is going to take longer and longer for that to happen.
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Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. What the "alt-right" and other associated dickheads fail to realise is that going after moderate muslims is precisely what the likes of IS want to see happen. They like to see things like the veil ban in France. Anything that adds to their propaganda.
The best thing to do is to ignore them in terms of public attention, and quietly go after them with law enforcement. Being politicised and seen as a boogey man is again precisely what they are after.
This is basically another way of saying that the shrill, panicky anti-muslim sentiment is actually just... dumb. Stupid as fuck.
Then you have the likes of Trump, Sarkozy etc - bigging them up and talking endlessly about how scary they are. They are bigger allies of IS than they realise.
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The problem is RELIGION. It leads to people thinking that they have all the answers and are thus better than other people, and then making decisions for those other people on that basis. Islam is merely the most successful and offensive example available today. Catholicism is still running around raping children and subjugating women, for example. It's just not doing as much of either as Islam. They are both evil and must be destroyed, along with every other religion that teaches people that they are superi
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I agree but I would calm the language down. You can't defeat religion with force. It has to become a popular figure of ridicule.
You probably cannot stamp religion out with violence. But you can stamp it out with education. That's why the conservatives are always trying to harm it.
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. More to the point 'getting rid of islam' is itself something that paves the way for authoritarianism. I mean, we're essentially talking about banning beliefs and an ideology. This is the definition of thought crime and pretty much the least liberal thing one could do. If this is done, if we admit that the state has the power to regulate what people are allowed to believe, then the banning of other ideologies and other thoughts can naturally follow. Both Turkey and Russia have laws in place right now which criminalize critiquing the ruling powers. Trump is talking about media as 'the opposition party' because the media dares to highlight when he's not using facts.
Wahabbism treats those who oppose it as enemies of god. Right wing demagogs replace god with the nation state and deem those in opposition to them as 'enemies of the state', or 'un-*insert national adjective*'. Two sides of the same coin.
Re:The real problem is ISALM (Score:5, Insightful)
You stopped short, you forgot that left wing authoritarians do the same thing only declare enemies of the people or the revolution. It is a common tactic among all authoritarians, delegitimize your enemies, whether it be by declaring them mentally unsound or just hateful bigots who opinions can be ignored or censored. That sounds familiar.
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The reality is Christianity went through this phase. Remember that in the US, the majority of founding fathers weren't Christians but deists. You jump further back, and you had the same reasoning within Christianity. Reform or else vs "we're perfect" and the enlightenment phase. The real question is, do you feel the same way with Nazism? After all it's an ideology, it's banned in most countries.
Trump calls the media the "opposition party" because the media is very happy to lie when it suits their cause
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Yes, I do feel the same way about it. We're currently having a court-case coming here in Finland wherein the local (very small) nazi party is probably going to be banned because the party itself holds to principles which are against the constitution. I agree with that as well. See, in my view, it should not be a crime to just hold an opinion, and it isn't. That is, being a nazi, or being an
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As a Finn that lives next to sweden, speaks some of the language and has some friends there I suspect your idea of what exactly is going on in Sweden is not accurate. Sweden has had and is having some immigration related problems which are caused primarily by 2 things: the way they handled the housing and education reform has lead to the rise of suburbs with predominantly immigrant populations. This has made integration harder, leading to higher unemployment which in turn generally leads to increased crime, especially organized crime. So gang activity in immigrant-heavy areas is up, similarly to the situation in some american inner cities, But crime overall has not skyrocketed.
I have friends that I've known since the 90's who live in Sweden, I'll trust their word that things are far worse today then they were then. Much like I would tell someone that Toronto is a complete shit hole compared to 20 years ago, and we have ghetto-enclaves appearing there where violent crime is going through the roof. Keep in mind that media actively discourages particular types of reporting. If you need a clearer evidence of that, look at Tim Pool and his recent trip to Sweden. [youtube.com] If your country
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Of course. But this is something the Swedes themselves admit. The authorities admit that gang acitivyt has increased and become more violent which is a problem. Keep in mind though, the immigrants responsible for organized crime tend not to be muslims as much as they're from eastern Europe/former yugoslavia area. R
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Trump calls the media the "opposition party" because the media is very happy to lie when it suits their cause.
It takes a special kind of idiot to (a) regard the 'media' as a monolithic entity (all the same people, sure!) and (b) heavily imply that Trump doesn't lie. Seriously.... LOL.
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Yep, all those Buddhist suicide bombers trying to kill all Jews are a threat to us all.
Who's the "dim twit"?
Those were called "kamikaze" you twit.
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Read something, [amazon.com] you putz. [wikipedia.org]
Central authority (Score:2)
In any case Islam doesn't have a central authority like the Roman Catholic Church does.
Well, but that's useless: Christianity, as a whole, does not have a central authority since not all Christians are Roman Catholics, There are other groups of Christians who do not consider the Pope the central authority.
Individual groups of Muslims--shiites-- have a central authority, their Ayatollah (technically only acting as leaders until the return of the Mahdi.)
Whether it is good to have a central authority is another question.
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To simply say abolish all religions is like saying don't breath anymore. You cannot do it, the Soviets tried and failed. Other communists regimes tried and fail. Because you cannot replace a deep fundamental yearning for something greater than yourself with a rational explanation or the worship of materialistic idols.
You can be an atheist and feel the need for something greater than yourself, you just choose something like art or love or nature that actually exist.
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Is worshipping nature really that different from worshipping god?
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They have to believe it is. Whether it is different or not doesn't matter.
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Is worshipping nature really that different from worshipping god?
Nature actually exists.
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Not in the way most people who worship it think about it, i.e. "GMOs are not natural".
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Yes, and this goes to the question of what makes a modern state. It isn't just ballot boxes. Nor is it a complete absence of tribalistic-minded people.
Every nation has those, because the tribal mindset is a stage everyone goes through at age 8 onwards... and many stay there. So there's always a tribal tendency in society.
What really makes a modern state is probably in the character of its institutions. Like the famous Yes Minister where politicians simply come and go, whilst the real control and continuity
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Well... sure. I can call myself dictator of the world but if nobody else agrees with me it doesn't matter. The question is how do dictators get people to agree to give them power. And over years of watching them and reading about them, my conclusion is bullshit.
Bullshit is a lie that isn't for believing; it's for going along with. A lot of diplomacy is a kind of constructive bullshit.
Now it should be clear that all politicians bullshit. The ones who do it the least are contemptuously dismissed as "pro
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The real problem is that a compromised Twitter app can post spam on your account (and all the accounts using the app) even if you have have strong passwords, 2FA and have basically done everything correctly with regards to security.
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And he was elected about as democratically as Hitler... well, no, Hitler didn't manage to shuffle embassy personnel around to ensure votes from voters abroad.
Seems Like A Case Of "All Your Base" (Score:2)
Expats? (Score:3, Insightful)
They have been living in the Netherlands for three generations already. Some were born in the Netherlands, of one or even two parents that were also born in the Netherlands. Of course they still speak Turkish, have a Turkish passport (and a Dutch one), serve in the Turkish military (and the Dutch parliament if they want to), watch Turkish TV, eat Turkish food, and go to Turkish supermarkets and Turkish mosques, where they get indoctrinated by Diyanet - the Turkish ministery of religious affairs. And if their government wishes to speak to them, but the evil white oppressors forbid that, they go out and riot throughout the conquered province in the name of Erdogan and allah.
Yet somehow we are all supposed to pretend they are also Dutch people that are perfectly well integrated into Dutch society. Now tell me why I should NOT vote Wilders (the Dutch Trump).
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Re:Expats? (Score:4, Informative)
He wants to forbid dual citizenship. They can stay, but they will have to choose to either be fully Dutch, or fully Turkish - no longer both. In the first case they can act as citizens of the Netherlands (with all rights and duties associated with that). In the second case they will be considered permanent foreign residents. That means they can no longer vote in the national elections, are not eligible for some functions, and if found guilty of a crime, can be deported to their country of origin.
Obviously, Turkey must agree to striking citizenship for those who choose to be Dutch (that means no more service in the Turkish army, among other things). And should Turkey choose to not cooperate - well, that really leaves only one choice then, doesn't it?
As for "reasonable integration plans", we have tried those for the last three generations. What makes you think such a thing can work _at all_? The group is large enough that it can easily form Turkish enclaves where contact with Dutch people is not necessary (so there is no pressure to integrate), and there is considerable financial and religious support from Turkey to retain their original cultural identity. That's kind of a tough fight, isn't it?
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If with 'integration' you mean that all traces of their ancestorship have been erased, then yes, you may argue that integration has failed. But then integration of the immigrants from Indonesia, China, and Suriname has failed as well. Hell, even the Hugenots that fled from France centuries ago still have some French-language churches in the Netherlands.
For reasonable definitions of 'integration' things are working pretty well.
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Well, fortunately that is not what integration means, and nowadays most former immigrants from Surinam, Indonesia, and China are considered to be well integrated. You see, this is where the accusation of racism and hatred falls apart: there are large groups of non-white people in the Netherlands who are simply considered to be Dutch, despite having foreign roots. I have friends who have their roots in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Surinam. They celebrate that by serving exotic food once in a while, and for the re
Re:Expats? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for clarification. If plan is to remove dual citizenship, I can share experience of my country, Latvia. We too have large community of people who don't integrate that well — Russians. We have never allowed dual citizenship to begin with., but just forcing to choose one passport does not help. Most likely most of Turks will choose Dutch passport (since they live there and it is a more wealthy), they will still be able to live in enclaves, watch Turkish news, eat Turkish food and all that just like before.
However, you could be more explicit on “that really leaves only one choice then, doesn't it?”.
You forgot the Fascist+Inquisition bits... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.geertwilders.nl/ind... [geertwilders.nl]
This is what the PVV will do:
1. De-islamize the Netherlands
- Zero asylum seekers and no immigrants anymore from Islamic countries: close the borders
- Withdraw all asylum residence permits which have already been granted for specific periods, close the asylum centers
- No Islamic headscarves in public functions
- Prohibition of other Islamic expressions which violate public order
- Preventive detention of radical Muslims
- Denaturalization and expulsion of criminals with a dual nationality
- Jihadists who went to Syria will not be allow to return to the Netherlands
- Close all mosques and Islamic schools, ban the Koran
2. The Netherlands independent again. Leave the EU
3. Direct democracy: a binding referendum, power to the citizens
4. Completely abolish health care deductibles
5. Lower housing fees
6. Retirement age at 65, indexation of supplementary pensions
7. No public money for development aid, windmills, art, innovation, broadcasting, etc.
8. Rollback cuts in home care and elderly care, more hands on the bed
9. A lot of extra money for defense and police
10. Lower income taxes
11. Halving of car taxes
Banning books, closing churches, abolishing healthcare, canceling representative democracy while amassing more power, militarization + police state, no more public money for freeloaders like artists, engineers, media and "etc." - but hey... free money and cheap cars!
And according to his back of the envelope calculation - it will cost nothing.
He actually tries to balance the budget by guesstimating costs for things like "De-islamize the Netherlands" - which according to him will create 7.2 billion Euros.
Cause " Islamic headscarves in public functions" cost money. You wouldn't think it does... but you aren't thinking it through.
Cause when you let the women start wearing scarves, they're gonna keep buying scarves until their closets are bursting with scarves - and then they'll just buy more closets.
Those things are made out of silk too, you know? That shit ain't cheap.
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That's the thing with populism, on the headline front it all sounds reasonable (at least for some). Like when Trump says he will replace ACA with something better and cheaper, that would cover healthcare for everyone. On this level it is a no-brainer, but implementation and context is what matters. So with no further adieu:
1. One element of the rich and long standing culture of Netherlands is the tolerance of religion. And you seem to conflate religious label with attitude towards a country. And I don't s
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He doesn't tackle anything. He is very good at figuring out what people are upset about and then tweeting about it. He is not good at working with other people to actually solve problems. It's been over 10 years (he left the VVD in 2004, founded the PVV in 2006) and his party is still essentially a one-man show. He can't participate in a government because his party doesn't have people capable of becoming ministers. Even the experiment where his party supported a minority government (2010-2012) failed when
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... For small values of 'they', but hey, xenophobes would never generalise, would they?
But go ahead, vote for Wilders, it's better than suppressing this idiocy. One warning, though: Wilders has as much of a clue as Trump, so don't expect coherency, honesty, or fairness if he ever gets any real power.
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Don't expect coherency, honesty, or fairness if the non-integrated muslims throughout Europe ever get any real power, either.
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Don't expect coherency, honesty, or fairness if the non-integrated muslims throughout Europe ever get any real power, either.
Since there is zero chance of that happening in the next 50 years, and after that the world will have changed too much to make any reasonable predictions anyway, your prediction is uninteresting.
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Because it will mark you as very much the same as the people you despise, simple as that. The name of the religion or the nationalist you are voting for doesn't matter, the outcome is the same, the policies similar enough, the angry mobs alike.
Re: Expats? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, this is fundamentally wrong and it's the fatal mistake that Western liberals have made and now refuse to acknowledge.
The concepts of freedom of religion and beliefs has progressively been equated to equality of religion and beliefs over the years, without anyone ever stopping to really think that statement through.
Western, Judeo-Christian culture is not "equal" - for lack of a better word - to that of Islamic culture. This is self-evident when you compare the stark differences between the Western world
Re: Expats? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not self evident because you are cherry-picking your examples. To prove you wrong I just have to name one counter-example and it is modern Russia. Most of the recent crazy laws there were sponsored by Christian fundamentalists and the country is nowadays less secular than Erdogan's Turkey.
Your mistake is a perfect example of survivorship bias. You see certain wealthy countries and think that they are wealthy because of a certain attribute they have - in your case the attribute is the Judeo-Christian culture. What you ignore are the countries with a similar or the same culture that fail to prosper (several countries in Latin and South America would be examples) and countries with a different culture that are prosperous (Japan, South Korea, Singapore). Matter of fact, Indonesia - a predominantly Muslim country - is more successful than quite a lot Christian countries.
And yeah, I still don't see any real difference between Turkish nationalists and our very own Neonazis, except maybe the skin colour.
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"It is a sad reality that Islamic societies of the Middle East and Asia have seen either none or very little of this, with a clear, inverse correlation between "progress" and the degree of theological involvement in society. "
Yea, about that, you do realize that Islamic people were responsible for most of our stuff today thanks to that one little thing called Algebra, right? In fact, Islamic communities were once highly-regarded as scholarly and scientific types. Meanwhile, the Judeo-Christians brought abou
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They have been living in the Netherlands for three generations already. Some were born in the Netherlands, of one or even two parents that were also born in the Netherlands. Of course they still speak Turkish, have a Turkish passport (and a Dutch one), serve in the Turkish military (and the Dutch parliament if they want to), watch Turkish TV, eat Turkish food, and go to Turkish supermarkets and Turkish mosques, where they get indoctrinated by Diyanet - the Turkish ministery of religious affairs. And if their government wishes to speak to them, but the evil white oppressors forbid that, they go out and riot throughout the conquered province in the name of Erdogan and allah.
Yet somehow we are all supposed to pretend they are also Dutch people that are perfectly well integrated into Dutch society. Now tell me why I should NOT vote Wilders (the Dutch Trump).
You could say all the same things about American and Dutch Jews who hold Israeli passports. I'm not trying to dump on Jews, they can speak Hebrew, have an Israeli passport (and an Amercan one), serve in the Israeli military (and run for the US Congress or Dutch parliament if they want to), watch Israeli TV, eat Jewish food, and go to Jewish delicatessen markets and Jewish Synagogues, where they may or may not (depending on their choice of Synagogue) get indoctrinated by Zionist activists supported by the Is
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where they may or may not (depending on their choice of Synagogue) get indoctrinated by Zionist activists supported by the Israeli government.
That's not OK either, Zionism has become little different from Nazism. But it's a much less serious problem than Islam, because Judaism is shrinking and Islam is growing, and because Judaism as a whole is becoming more progressive while Islam is not. When is the last time you saw a Jew make a terror attack on anyone but a Palestinian?
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About two years ago. [telegraph.co.uk] Which is sad, because I consider modern Judaism the most progressive abrahamic religion. Especially this [wikipedia.org] deserves a lot of respect.
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While the problems you mention do exist, Wilders barely presents any form of solutions. Abolishing passports sounds nice but doesn't do a whole lot, a strong cultural identity is not changed by taking away some paperwork.
You need to realize that most Turks in the Netherlands live their happy life without causing any form of trouble and without being nationalistic supporters of Erdogan. Erdogans main voting base is mostly rural Turkey, not varying degrees of westernized Turks in Europe. This whole (completel
Turkey is in trouble. (Score:3)
Erdogan is their May, Trump or Turnbull, leading them bacwards into the past, whilst behaving like spoied children.
The great Turkish leader, Kemal Attaturk would be spinning in his grave.
Thanks Obama!
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Thanks Obama!
I mostly agree with the first part, but I'm confused by this. Is this ironic? Are you seriously blaming the rise of Erdogan on Obama?? Is this an in-joke I'm missing?
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Irony.
Irony is invisible on the internet (Score:2)
Irony.
Irony is invisible on the internet, because it is indistinguishable from cluelessness.
You should know that by now.
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LMGTFY:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/... [knowyourmeme.com]
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A common criticism of Obama that seems to transcend political wings has been his tepid foreign policy behavior. Lines in the sand in Syria, weak responses to Erdogan, and so on.
My sense is that Obama is a kind of purposefully analytical leader who only makes measured responses if, and only if, in-depth analysis shows them to be worthwhile. I think this is good on paper and in a lot of situations doing nothing isn't the worst possible choice relative to its nominal cost.
That being said, global foreign poli
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Would the situation in Syria, in total, be worse if Obama had responded to Assad's use of chemical with strikes on his residences or key military assets in response to his chemical weapons use? Might it have undermined Assad enough that he had to settle somehow, or even possibly killed him and prevented the final siege in Aleppo?
Most likely, the whole country would have fallen to various factions and tribes, instead of just part of it.
All experiment, no control (Score:2)
Hindsight is so wonderful.
History lacks the ability to have an experimental case and a control case for the "what if we had done XX instead?"
If instead Obama had done this or that, maybe things would have spiraled out of control and been much much worse. Without a time machine, you can only speculate.
...That being said, global foreign policy is a stage where bold leadership has a value that seems to be beneficial even when its outcomes are suboptimal....
At the risk of Godwinizing the thread, let me point out that this was exactly Hitler's theory: bold leadership (even when its outcome is suboptimal.)
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The problem is you have this situation where the *appearance* of weak leadership is taken for weak leadership itself with ramifications for other nation's behavior.
You're right in that "boldness" alone is a poor measure of leadership, and by itself, it's best labelled "reckless". But the other side is of that is "boldness" combined with measured action, best perhaps described as "decisiveness".
Personally, I think Obama is open to some criticism where he's appeared indecisive, and it's made him look weak.
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Iran is no danger to anyone, only to people who still havent got over the Embassy affair who ignore the reason, the US overthrow of a democraticly elected government in Iran, and the truth is stranger than fiction bit, to restore a monarchy.
It is US behaviour and posturing that drives them to develop their own weapons. I dont blame then one bit, a quick glance at the last 50 years paints a clear picture of who the number one agreesor invading and bombing other countries in the world has been, and Iran simp
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Distinct lack of anything to back up some outlandish claims there. Allow me to retort:
Nah.
Minor legal note (Score:4, Informative)
Turkish diplomats in the Netherlands had been speaking at Dutch rallies to Turkish ex-pats in support of the referendum
Please note that this is illegal according to the Turkish constitution.
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Armenian Genocide (Score:5, Informative)
So Turkey, the country that is yet to acknowledge that they wiped out 1.5 million Armenians [wikipedia.org], is trying to call out a country that has acknowledged the genocide they committed.
Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
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Do you really think Mr Erdogan's comments and actions are based on a rational dispute over historical fact?
Do you think that even has ANY bearing on what he's doing, saying, & why?
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The irony (Score:2)
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Welcome to the post-factual times.
What you say needn't conform with reality. All that matters is how it makes people feel.
Verified Twitter Accounts (Score:4, Insightful)
To me, the story seems to be that a bunch of "verified" Twitter accounts can be so easily taken over. All kinds of havoc can be created simply by posting a message to a high profile account. Imagine if somebody were to take over Donald Trump's Twitter account. I think that Twitter should require that all verified accounts undergo extra security to ensure that the accounts aren't taken over. Whether that means two factor authentication, client certificates, or some other means, they should be doing more to ensure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen. That verified checkmark should come with some extra requirement. Twitter currently recommends using two factor authentication for verified accounts, but it isn't a requirement.
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your own fault. Should have let him be overthrown rather than calling in the special forces. Ok maybe Merkel didn't give the dutch a choice...
What the hell are you even talking about?
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That's because whether you're a Turk in the Netherlands or a white American in Mexico or Asia, you are nothing more than a guest.
Therefore, you have no right to participate in the workings of your host and your political activity with regard to your former homeland is tolerable only to the extent it creates no disturbances for your host.
By that logic, they should also pay no taxes.
What? You never heard of "No taxation without representation"?
And why would you tax your guests? Just what kind of a host are you? What's next? Paying for food and lodging?
Oh wait... did you perhaps mean "slaves" but mistyped it as "guests"?
Cause that's what you're describing. Foreign citizens with no rights. I.e. Slaves.
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You want to be represented? No problem there, dump your Turkish allegiance and become Dutch. Or German for that matter. It's actually quite easy, way easier than in other countries.
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ignoring the significance of the world's 3 billion Muslims (which outnumber Christians btw)
Your post is one that I agree with in broad terms, but this is incorrect. In 2012 there were 1.6 billion Muslims to Christianity's 2.2 billion.
It's better to be right, even if it doesn't help your argument.
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Part of that article:
There is no dispute that Holocaust denial has been on the rise in Arab countries during the last two decades. This has been illustrated in a disgraceful way by the hero-like reception that Roger Garaudy, the French former communist turned Catholic, turned Muslim, turned Holocaust denier, received in several Arab countries in the late 1990s, after his sentencing by a French court for a Holocaust-denying book.
You should have had a read through it, because it's an apology in no way, shape or form. Now you just look like an idiot. Sorry, I mean you obviously are an idiot, it's just now you've outed yourself.
Still, at least you didn't log in.
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