Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao. Don’t you people ever get bored of this same back and forth?

Anyway, this is quite dull. Only 3000 people died in 9-11. There were plenty of incidences of religious violence where far more than 3000 civilians died.

Fail.

Also, John Lennon was a fucking poser:

1) He talked about politics and charity all day, but in the end what did he do with his millions of dollars? ‘bed-ins’ to raise awareness of what? His own public image.

2) Once he got into heroin he basically quit music. Sgt. Pepper? The White Album? Abbey road? All he did was come into the studio with some chord changes and a few lyrics and let Paul actually work it into a song. Paul lived in the Studio while John was busy having bed-ins and shooting heroin. Paul even played most of the instruments on the Last four albums.

3) For all his hippy peace-and-love idealism, he was sure a woman beater. He beat both of his wives black and blue. He once beat up a waitress and would have probably rotted away in prison but she refused to press charges.

“The difference is that Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao didn’t claim their actions in the name of atheism. Of course they persecuted religious groups, but so have other pious leaders”

They claimed their actions in the name of an inherently atheistic belief system just the same as as the 30 Years’ War was “fought in the name of religion”. Of course there were ulterior motives (especially in the case of Stalin), but there always are.

I see your powers of confirmation-bias-fu are sophisticated, young lotus.

Well, then, Camel… awesome.

But, again, I would say there are some major economic and political motivations there.

I mean, come on. All these people are seeing the West toy with the economy of their region, and maybe these suicide bombers don’t have a deep understanding of the subtleties of the situation, but they must know that the US and Europe – more prosperous parts of the world – have their fingerprints all over the politics of the region. And I would wonder if the relatively recent European teardown of the Ottoman Empire and the resulting colonialism hasn’t been imprinted on the collective memories of the Arabs. When white folks march in, start a bunch of localized wars, start untaxed factories, destroy local industry and strip you of the few natural resources you have, you don’t forget it. Hell, from the Arab point of view, I doubt there’s much of distinction between the pre-WWII great game policies and the current oil-driven game of chess that’s been going on since Eisenhower.

I mean, hell, the average Arab has no reason to know that the US or Europe even exist except in the broadest terms (go to India and Mozambique and ask questions about the US; you’ll be surprised how people little know about the US there).

The Jihads or whatever might be framed in specifically religious terms, but I doubt the Middle East and the West would even know about each other if there weren’t clear economic motivations on both sides.

O-key doke:

The Jews “made the desert bloom” as the cliche goes. They used their ability to read and research modern agricultural techniques to reroute the little fresh water there was to form a genuinely productive and strong watershed which could cope even in drought years. They gradually and carefully worked previously infertile land into productive farm land. They then used a strong agricultural base to build a modern service economy.

Meanwhile, the Arabs, who had little access to modern agricultural techniques, and an economy devastated from the conservatism of Ottoman rule, the destruction of European rule, and decades of western-driven war, see that these foreigners, speaking a different language and practising an alien, are suddenly prosperous on land they consider their own.

Do the math.