The Gaming Den

Just because idiots in the former Yugoslavia cannot tell the difference between race and religion, doesn't mean we should either.

That's what their fucking leaders used to drum up support for genocide.

Religious intolerance is bad enough on its own. It doesn't need further sensationalizing, nor stooping down to Yugoslavian definitions just to win an argument.

I'm going back to rambling about the Judean Liberation Front now. Because saying that we should, in fact, blur the lines between racism an religion just to villify a bunch of intolerant idiots who beat up two fellow Christians is sad.

FrankTrollman wrote:OK, well I'm in Eastern Europe, and Islam is a Race.

The major ethnicities of the Former Yugslavia are:

• Croatians (Catholics)
• Serbians (Eastern Orthodox)
• Muslims (Muslims)
• Jews (Jews)

Those are the major "races" on census forms.

-Username17

Good point.

Surfing crocs.
BP attempts damage control, buys search phrases on Google and Yahoo
BP Station is beyond irony.

I'm in Russia.
1. People in here hate Muslims, because Muslims are primarily associated with Chechens, and all Chechens are considered to be terrorists.
2. On the other hand, they freaking luuuuuuve Arabs, because all Arabs are considered to HAET AMERICA, and their religious affiliation is not important at all. So if you're an Arab Muslim, commutativity does not apply.
3. Christian Fundies in particular hate black people, no matter their religion, and openly campaign for killing mixed-race families. This, being the fundies' "freely expressed personal opinion", is not persecuted.

Zinegata wrote:Just because idiots in the former Yugoslavia cannot tell the difference between race and religion, doesn't mean we should either.

That's what their fucking leaders used to drum up support for genocide.

Religious intolerance is bad enough on its own. It doesn't need further sensationalizing, nor stooping down to Yugoslavian definitions just to win an argument.

I'm going back to rambling about the Judean Liberation Front now. Because saying that we should, in fact, blur the lines between racism an religion just to villify a bunch of intolerant idiots who beat up two fellow Christians is sad.

The significance of Yugoslavia is this: What people consider "race" and "ethinicity" are completely arbitrary terms whose definitions are created by people who will almost certainly have different ideas for said definitions that will allow different people to use them in different contexts.

Meikle641 wrote: BP attempts damage control, buys search phrases on Google and Yahoo

They can do that? Doesn't feel right to me.

I don't see how it's a big deal. Google "oil spill" and the main sponsored link is from BP: "Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping." Then, on the right-hand side of the screen are links pillorying BP, or providing news, or whatever.

And the bulk of responses are the standard Google responses.

No big deal from what I can tell.

Oh, okay. Just tested it out. I thought that "purchasing it" meant that it would be the first link to show up (instead of Wikipedia).

Psychic Robot wrote:Oh, okay. Just tested it out. I thought that "purchasing it" meant that it would be the first link to show up (instead of Wikipedia).

Yeah. It shows up as an advertisement. I don't know why people think this is that big of a deal... Certainly we should be aware of it, but only in a sense we should be aware that the stuff in the little boxes was paid for.

-Crissa

Blasted wrote:

Maj wrote: Is that racism because they equivocated Arab to Islam, or is it religious intolerance because their goal was to specifically attack adherents of Islam? Or both? Neither?

Whatever it was, it sucks. Bigotry of any form that is translated into violence is unacceptable.

I'd go with both. The assumption that your race links with a certain religion is racism, IMO. Religious intolerance was the obvious motive for the protest/attack.

I think I like your answer and I'm going to go with it. So the protesters were acting both because they were racist and religiously intolerant. The comment on the blog, though, didn't mention anything about race, just religion. I don't think I can call racism on that, dickish though it was.

Blicero wrote:The significance of Yugoslavia is this: What people consider "race" and "ethinicity" are completely arbitrary terms whose definitions are created by people who will almost certainly have different ideas for said definitions that will allow different people to use them in different contexts.

My objection is not factual. Words mean different things to different people.

My objection is moral. We're gonna start mixing "Race" and "Religion" the same way as the fucking genocidal Yugoslavians are now just for added villification of a bunch of morons?

One can very, very easily say "Those religious intolerant guys were probably also morons who don't realize not every Arab or brown guy is a Muslim", as opposed to simply scream "racist".

Anyway, back to silliness.

Never mind, realized I had misinterpreted something.

What is exactly the advantage to rewarding dickish behavior with a pedantic dissection of whether their actions are racism or 'religious intolerance'? Can't we just use the shorter word?

I don't see the point of deciding if arab, sikh, mulism, or pacifica is an ethnicity deserving to be called a race. If someone is attacking someone's ethnicity or religion or color of their skin or whatever, why is it so important that it is racism or not?

-Crissa

Because then you make it okay to call you a racist anti-Semite for opposing Israel.

But hey, go ahead and blur race and religion. Everything seems to be a blur to you anyway.

Crissa wrote:If someone is attacking someone's ethnicity or religion or color of their skin or whatever, why is it so important that it is racism or not?

Because attacking imaginary categories, like races, needs to be looked down upon, and to do that we invest a large amount in the word racism.

But attacking belief structures, like religions, needs to be fucking okay, because lots of beliefs are wrong and harmful.

Like I said, some religions claim that blacks are inferior. Is it racist to hate those religions?

Is Frank Racist against Mormons when he points out how Randall Bills (and Jason Hardy's) religious observance is actually hurting Shadowrun by encouraging them to support a known thief.

Is it racist to say "Cutting off a female's clitoris at the age of 3 is fucking wrong, and no one should be allowed to do that."

I wonder, do these trolls skip the part of the definition that they linked to which included 'irrational'?

And what does Israel have to do with Semitism? Most of the Jews in the world don't live there. Isn't it much like ascribing all Muslims the characteristics of the Taliban to say all Jews or Judaism is Israel?

Why would someone even want to mix up religious intolerance with justifiable arguments against anti-social behavior?

-Crissa

Crissa, talk to us again when you're actually reading what we wrote, instead of a bunch of blurry symbols.

Crissa wrote:Why would someone even want to mix up religious intolerance with justifiable arguments against anti-social behavior?

I don't know, why don't we ask you, the person who thinks behavior and belief are racial characteristics, except when they are behaviors and beliefs you don't like, in which they suddenly stop being races.

Zinegata wrote:Because then you make it okay to call you a racist anti-Semite for opposing Israel.

But hey, go ahead and blur race and religion. Everything seems to be a blur to you anyway.

You know, it's funny. Everyone I know who is anti-Israel is Jewish. They just think the Israelis are oppressive assholes.

It's important to realize that Zionism is a minority viewpoint within Judaism. Most Jews do not want to carve a chunk out of Palestine and create a Spartan state there. It's fucking stupid. You could just go to New York or Los Angeles and live there instead. Enjoy more freedom, more safety, and better food. There are more Jewish Americans than Israeli Jews.

It's a stupid country that has no reason to exist. The need for a place for Jews to flee to after World War II was real. But that place was and is New York, not Tel Aviv.

The entire narrative of Israel's creation and perpetuation is just ridiculous. We should not be reviving Hebrew, we should not be kicking Palestinians out of their homes, and we should not be fighting over a patch of desert that our ancestors probably lived in back when we were a bunch of filthy goat herders that migrated around the fringes of the Egyptian colonies. It's retarded. We found places to belong, and we belong in those places.

-Username17

Neeeek wrote:

Zinegata wrote:Because then you make it okay to call you a racist anti-Semite for opposing Israel.

But hey, go ahead and blur race and religion. Everything seems to be a blur to you anyway.

You know, it's funny. Everyone I know who is anti-Israel is Jewish. They just think the Israelis are oppressive assholes.

Why do you think I keep saying Crissa's position - which attempts to blur the lies between race and religion - is silly?

Complain to Crissa, because again if we follow her definitions, anyone who rags on a religion is also a racist and vice versa.

Again, stooping down to Yugoslavian definitions of race is simply dumb when you can, in fact, make these distinctions.

FrankTrollman wrote:It's important to realize that Zionism is a minority viewpoint within Judaism. Most Jews do not want to carve a chunk out of Palestine and create a Spartan state there. It's fucking stupid. You could just go to New York or Los Angeles and live there instead. Enjoy more freedom, more safety, and better food. There are more Jewish Americans than Israeli Jews.

It's a stupid country that has no reason to exist. The need for a place for Jews to flee to after World War II was real. But that place was and is New York, not Tel Aviv.

The entire narrative of Israel's creation and perpetuation is just ridiculous. We should not be reviving Hebrew, we should not be kicking Palestinians out of their homes, and we should not be fighting over a patch of desert that our ancestors probably lived in back when we were a bunch of filthy goat herders that migrated around the fringes of the Egyptian colonies. It's retarded. We found places to belong, and we belong in those places.

-Username17

Except of course Israel does, in fact, already exist. And the only way for it to stop existing will involve a fuckton of bloodshed.

As for Antisemitism, Arabs and Jews are both Semites. You can't be an Antisemite for taking the Israeli side against the Palestinians, and you can't be an Antisemite for taking the Palestinian side against the Israelis. Both sides are Semites.

You can take any side you want in that conflict and not be Antisemitic.

-Username17

What does racism or religious intolerance have to do with not liking storm troopers who happen to fly the Israeli flag?

-Crissa