Sensible Erection | Radical Islamists lay waste to Timbuktu heritage

Monday, 2 July 2012

Radical Islamists lay waste to Timbuktu heritage

quote [ DAKAR, Senegal - Muslim extremists continued destroying the heritage of the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu on Monday, razing tombs and attacking the gate of a 600-year-old mosque, despite growing international outcry... Hamaha said he didn't care about the impact that their actions will have on tourism. "We are against tourism. They foster debauchery," ]

Those dirty tourists!

[by maryyugo@7:55pmGMT] [+10 WTF]

Comments

conga said @ 8:01pm GMT on 2nd Jul [Score:5 Funny]
Who knew they had Crest Whitestrips in Senegal?

cb361 said @ 8:26pm GMT on 2nd Jul [Score:2]
This is just the sort of thing maryyugo would have loved...

maryyugo said @ 8:42pm GMT on 2nd Jul [Score:1 Underrated]
???

arrowhen said @ 9:57pm GMT on 2nd Jul
Stories about brown people behaving badly are right up your alley.

Naruki said @ 1:42am GMT on 3rd Jul
Yeah, I kind of miss maryyugo. I wonder what happened to her?

lalanda said @ 7:09am GMT on 3rd Jul
Him!

cb361 said @ 7:25am GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:2]
Both of them.

ring riot said @ 8:33am GMT on 9th Jul
I haven't been to SE in YEARS now - I come back just to check out what's been happening after all this time, and gee, what a shock - the main page has TWO passive-aggressively anti-Muslim Maryyugo posts, and an a passive-aggressively anti-Muslim post from erich weiss. I swear those two get PAID to post this stuff on this site. YEARS later, and they're STILL posting the EXACT same shit. Unbelievable. lol

horseinsheep said @ 8:41pm GMT on 2nd Jul
I feel that we (the US) need to fight the Christian extremists if only to prepare ourselves for the coming Muslim extremists.

danshyu said @ 8:53pm GMT on 2nd Jul
We do have those here as well. It's just that they don't have enough numbers to do anything in the same scale as this. Plus, they're also constantly being ridiculed by the rest of us. And they know they probably will not be taken seriously ever.

Milkman666 said @ 9:08pm GMT on 2nd Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
Same scale? They are in the government, they write policy. When they want to rile up the natives they go in with bibles thumping looking to deride, defund and demonize. Difference in style perhaps, but the goal and the outcome is the same. At the cost of society at large these demagogues amass power. They just use religion as an easy way to get people to turn their brains off.

Naruki said @ 1:43am GMT on 3rd Jul
I could be wrong, but I think danshyu meant they also have MUSLIM extremists, and that they are ridiculed.

danshyu said @ 2:00am GMT on 3rd Jul
Sorry, but that's a not a fair comparison at all. People chopping head off a living person on youtube is in a whole different "extremist" league than people with "god hates fags" signs and asshole politicians pandering to the religious nutjobs by banning gay marriage.

papango said @ 2:04am GMT on 3rd Jul
What is it about the electric chair that makes it so different to a beheading? Most countries have moved away from the death penalty. And why is it thought to have such a greater societal impact than making a law to deny women abortions?

danshyu said @ 5:08am GMT on 3rd Jul
First of all, the death penalty has nothing to do with religion. It's the state policy. Is the policy crazy and babaric? Perhaps, but we're talking about a very different monster than "religious extremism" here.

Also, the difference is they placed the video of the beheading on the internet and are quite proud of it. That they absolutly believe that it's their god's will, that they have the divine justification to do whatever the fuck they've been doing. These kind of religious motivated savagery, are by and large, kept in check here.

papango said @ 5:12am GMT on 3rd Jul
Have you ever listened to a pro-death penalty politician defend their belief in it? You might find it educational if you think 'state policy' and religion are so separate.

danshyu said @ 5:28am GMT on 3rd Jul
Hit me with a link of a politician arguing for death penalty using mostly religious reasoning and divine will. I would like to hear it myself.

I'm under no delusion that religion have a huge pull in our political scene. But most of these so called religious politicians we have aren't even genuine to begin with. All they're doing are simply vote pendering (in some ways they're even worse than true believer nutjobs). Untill we have an out and open government sanctioned murder of none-Christians based on religious reasonings, I won't lump the greedy ass psychopathic nutjobs we have here with the batshit crazy ones over there. Like I said, two very different monsters.

papango said @ 5:58am GMT on 3rd Jul
You're right. I can find pundits and wind bags and hard core fundies all baying for blood in Jesus name (and the quote form Jesus about executing people), but the politicians will only go as far as 'it's in God's hands' or some other vague nonsense.

However, my search was limited to a quick flutter through google. I'm not American and my country doesn't have the death penalty (so few do). I assumed you meant American politician as finding Pakistani's who think Allah wants the state tyo kill wasn't hard at all.

papango said @ 6:01am GMT on 3rd Jul
Stupid thing cut me off.

I was going to say that I agree with your second point to some extent. But don't be fooled into thinking that Christian nations are the only ones where people with a thirst for power will manipulate the population through religion. Plenty of religious leaders in other countries are in it for the power as well. Who knows how much the Saudi royal family believes of the toxic nonsense they force on the population, they certainly don't live like they expect their subjects to.

assbastard said @ 11:47am GMT on 3rd Jul
July 8, 1999. Florida. Allen Lee Davis. Electrocution. "Before he was pronounced dead ... the blood from his mouth had poured onto the collar of his white shirt, and the blood on his chest had spread to about the size of a dinner plate, even oozing through the buckle holes on the leather chest strap holding him to the chair." His execution was the first in Florida's new electric chair, built especially so it could accommodate a man Davis's size (approximately 350 pounds). Later, when another Florida death row inmate challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair, Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw commented that "the color photos of Davis depict a man who -- for all appearances -- was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida." Justice Shaw also described the botched executions of Jesse Tafero and Pedro Medina (q.v.), calling the three executions "barbaric spectacles" and "acts more befitting a violent murderer than a civilized state." Justice Shaw included pictures of Davis's dead body in his opinion. The execution was witnessed by a Florida State Senator, Ginny Brown-Waite, who at first was "shocked" to see the blood, until she realized that the blood was forming the shape of a cross and that it was a message from God saying he supported the execution.

cb361 said @ 12:18pm GMT on 3rd Jul
And quite right too. If God hadn't supported the execution, he would have sent angels to stop it.

danshyu said @ 1:57pm GMT on 3rd Jul
But was she taken seriously? And did the fact her delusional eyes saw a blood cross have any actual weight in the final decision?

papango said @ 8:01pm GMT on 3rd Jul
By everyone? No. By the seriously religious? Probably.

Silent said @ 1:42am GMT on 4th Jul
So it needs to be taken seriously in order for it to matter, that appears to be moving the bar a little.
All it takes is one person in authority to claim that state-sponsored murder is either okay with god, or somehow gods work in order to encourage some nut job with too little of a "do unto others" attitude to commit murder in some holy crusade.

danshyu said @ 4:34am GMT on 4th Jul
Actually, no. Unless the vast majority of the country are also as batshit insane as him. His crazy notion will be almost immediately struck down by the due process.

papango said @ 4:37am GMT on 4th Jul
Can you flick me the research that the people chopping other people's heads off on youtube have the backing of the majority of their country? I'd be really interested to see the methodology.

pleaides said @ 9:32am GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:2]
Here you go;

Antonin Scalia on the death penalty in a Speech in 2002. This is quoted from "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris.

"This is not the old testament, I emphasise, but Saint Paul. The core of his message is that government, however you want to limit that concept, derives its moral authority from God. Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal, it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next?

For the non-believer on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. What a horrible act. The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy, to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as resolutely as possible. We have done that in this country, and continental Europe has not. By preserving in our public life many visible reminders that, in the words of a Supreme Court opinion of the 1940s "We are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a supreme being."

All this, as I say, is most un-European, and helps explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as Saint Paul did, that government carries the sword as "the minister of God" to "execute wrath upon the evildoer".

This is terrifying.

papango said @ 9:56am GMT on 3rd Jul
That is fucking terrifying. And it makes no sense, really. If death is 'no big deal', then the death penalty is worse than useless, it's a reward. So they should stop doing it. How did someone this crazy end up on the Supreme Court?

sanepride said @ 4:24pm GMT on 3rd Jul
In 1986, Scalia was appointed by Reagan to the Supreme Court to fill the associate justice seat vacated when Justice William Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice. Whereas Rehnquist's confirmation was contentious, Scalia was asked few difficult questions by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and faced no opposition. Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate and took his seat on September 26, 1986.
(via Wikipedia)

danshyu said @ 1:55pm GMT on 3rd Jul
Oh yes, I have no doub there arereligious nutjobs using whatever fucked up shit he believes to support his agendas on policies. But the bottom line still stands. Death penalty still exist in America not because of religious reasonings. Rather mostly just a mentality of getting even, and not wanting to pay for visious criminal's living expenses for the rest of his life.

pleaides said @ 2:43pm GMT on 3rd Jul
This isn't some religious nutjob (insofar as he's not way off the mainstream) and he's one of your fucking chief justices of the highest court in the fucking land!!

American maintains barbarous punishments *for explicitly religious reasons* and is proud of it.

By way of comparison you need look no further that Europe, which has a larger population than the USA, yet imprisons fewer people for *all crimes* than the benighted US imprisons for non-violent drug offenses alone. I might remind you that these countries have the same racial and cultural heritages. The religiosity is the only difference, and the results are there for all to see.

The quote above ought to make you afraid of just how close you are to living in a theocracy.

Having said that, I largely agree with your contentions, and you describe a real difference where others (Chomsky) seem to believe that none exists.

lilmookieesquire said @ 3:01pm GMT on 3rd Jul
Jailing people in the US is a patriotic business.
Felonies also legally disqualify people from voting.
That makes it an excellent way to systematically tamper with voting.

danshyu said @ 8:09pm GMT on 3rd Jul
"American maintains barbarous punishments *for explicitly religious reasons* and is proud of it. "

Again, I don't see anything religious about these cruel punishments. When it comes to crime and punishment, I have yet to see a case of "We must do this and that because our religion tells us to!" just a lot of case of "We'll do this. But before you judge, our religion is okay with it, too.".

the circus said @ 7:30pm GMT on 3rd Jul
I can't help but be reminded of Ben Stein's statements while pedalling his snake oil Expelled, that science leads to killing people. Well this is the demonstration of where religion leads, to a place where human life holds no value. Murder isn't bad because of it's affect on a human, it only has meaning because God doesn't like it, just like he doesn't like gays or drunks or any of countless other trivial characteristics. Science doesn't lead to nihilism and depravity, religion leads to nihilism and depravity. I have never been more thankful for the amount of resolve present in human nature to resist this philosophy, despite so much of humanity trying so hard to follow it, than I have been after reading a statement like this from a high ranking law maker who sees himself as a partial arbiter of "God's justice."

theolypse said @ 3:05am GMT on 3rd Jul
How many people must one starve to death with inadequate disability care to equal a beheading?

Naruki said @ 3:36am GMT on 3rd Jul
Depends. The more indirectly you starve them, the more you will have to murder before people make the connection.

danshyu said @ 5:09am GMT on 3rd Jul
Is that wrong, of course, but not religious motivated.

theolypse said @ 10:17pm GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
It's not qualitatively different.

Silent said @ 1:53am GMT on 4th Jul
To divert just a little, this is something I feel that shows just how out of touch with the teachings of Jesus American Christians are.

I used to have a Christian friend, who resented having to pay tax, when I quizzed her upon this she told me "Gold only asks for 10%" and we got into a debate about whether it was god who had asked her for that percentage or if it was the church.

If I recall my lessons right from school, Jesus taught to give what you could to the poor, to help your fellow man and that's essentially what taxes are meant to do, take from those who can afford to give a little, in order to give to those who can't afford what they need.
I am pretty damn certain Jesus had some strong thoughts upon greedy religious leaders.

Now I know this has little to do with your and Theo's points, but right now in my rather drunken state, the fact that a "good christian" would rather give to a church than to her fellow man seems something akin to murder through wilful neglect, not cutting off someones head in anger, but purposely turning a blind eye to anothers suffering.

Naruki said @ 6:33pm GMT on 4th Jul
erich's donwmod means you made a valid point about religion. He's a fundie.

Milkman666 said @ 9:53am GMT on 3rd Jul
So whats the conversion rate between a beheaded contractor to someone who's going to die from aids in africa because the catholic church thinks rubbers are sinful?

You might be scratching your head going "WTF, isnt it obvious?". The problem is that its not obvious, and that its easier to point to the guy with the axe and say woah thats fucked up, and to tolerate the prick that says either global warming wont happen because jesus wont allow it or that it should happen because it will bring the rapture.

cb361 said @ 11:32am GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
To take on just the issue of global warming, while they might say that Global Warming won't happen because of Jesus, they're not responsible because they're not the ones causing it to happen. Or only to a small degree. Climate change isn't being inflicted on the rest of us by a small minority of religious nutters. It's being inflicted on us by ourselves, and it's not about religion, it's about money.

The energy lobby might happily co-opt fundamentalist arguments, like they'll co-opt any crappy arguments. But it's not the fundamentalists who are holding the knife. It's the people willing to sacrifice everyone's future for their own short-term gain.

Milkman666 said @ 7:11pm GMT on 3rd Jul
A lot of organized religion is about money, and power. Im not making the case that religion caused global warming but its an example of where for a short term gain someone is willing to use faith and zealotry to the detriment of others. Global warming is the hard sell, aids is a bit easier since the catholic church actively discouraged rubbers. Closer to the beheadings would be the witch hunts started against orphans by evangelical priests in africa.

radioelectric said @ 1:31pm GMT on 3rd Jul
I saw something about the Phelps family a few weeks ago that surprised me. Their matriarch Shirley Phelps Roper is friends with an openly gay man who goes to their house for dinner. There was a video of the two of them being interviewed together and making jokes at each others' expense but it has been taken offline now.

It changed the way I thought about them a bit. (as did the Louis Theroux documentary)

Silent said @ 1:59am GMT on 4th Jul
The Theroux documentary on the Phelps family made me think "Oh hey, I'd tap that.."
But otherwise it just confirmed what I sort of thought, group convinced they were doing gods work, told the world hates them.
Seems the easiest way to get someone to become cold to reason is to make them feel like a victim.
Or to paraphrase the words of the Phelps' clan "The hate only makes us stronger"

papango said @ 9:31pm GMT on 2nd Jul
Well, the US is finally moving against Colorado City, but they managed to be 'taken seriously' for quite some time.

danshyu said @ 8:50pm GMT on 2nd Jul
Not surprised, they're called 'religious radicals" for a reason. They still lives with stone age thinkings, that's what they are, that's what they'll ever be. If anything, take pitty on them.

arrowhen said @ 10:01pm GMT on 2nd Jul
They belong in a museum.

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:39am GMT on 3rd Jul
That's the problem!

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:40am GMT on 3rd Jul
Subtle undertext: (they're in one)

happiest_sadist said @ 6:33am GMT on 3rd Jul
Not a lot of musing going on at that exhibit.

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:38am GMT on 3rd Jul
I kind of wish we could have another old fashioned crusade (swords and whatnot) and just put all the volunteers inside a giant Thunderdome in the dessert.

"Crusaders/infidels/whathaveyou go in, but they don't come out"™

chold_numa said @ 12:48am GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:2 Funny]
The idea being they all die of sugar poisoning or diabetes I suppose.

bltrocker said @ 2:11am GMT on 3rd Jul
+1 spelling wit

mechanical contrivance said @ 2:24am GMT on 3rd Jul
That's it. We drop candy on the middle east until the violence stops.

Candy said @ 3:37am GMT on 3rd Jul
Fuck you! Drop Bambi. Dat bitch be bigger than a moose and she all up in my street corner scarin away my johns.

mechanical contrivance said @ 5:04am GMT on 3rd Jul
Repeatedly dropping a prostitute from a great height won't solve anything, but it would sure be interesting to watch.

happiest_sadist said @ 6:34am GMT on 3rd Jul
Give her a parachute, aim for convertibles.

lilmookieesquire said @ 2:55pm GMT on 3rd Jul
Well most of them sprinkle their believes with going to religious services on sundae.

cb361 said @ 11:15am GMT on 3rd Jul
The conclusion I would have to reach if it was based exclusively on my own personal contact with Americans - which has been almost entirely through SE, is that Americans are are a kind, philosophical race, too gentle to throw off the tyranny of a capricious and mostly-but-not-entirely-malevolent occupying power.

cb361 said @ 11:16am GMT on 3rd Jul
Oops. Should have been a reply to a comment by papango.

papango said @ 8:10pm GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:1 Interesting]
Which one?

Doesn't matter. I tend to agree. I think they (the Americans I have met) would like to change their system. But it's not an easy thing to do and there is quite a bit of opposition from 'vested interests'. I don't think worse of Americans just because the noxious loud mouths are making the most noise.

I think for me (and I suspect for a lot of other people) is that America purports to be different to other countries. It was set up to be better. I'm not talking about American Exceptionalism, which I have problems with, but the fact that it was a country founded on the principles of not being another feudal shit-hole or a colony sucked dry of its resources and then used as a dumping ground for Europe's undesirables.

chold_numa said @ 3:41am GMT on 4th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
Like most Western democracies, the voting public has become complacent about their end of the deal. A large amount of this has been orchestrated by vested interests by either buying the media, buying seats at the political table, delegitimising the opposition and undermining public education.

Ultimately, the system will continue to break down.

The US of today is so far removed from the US of the early 20th century where it really seemed that it was a country to be admired and emulated. Admittedly, there was a definite dark side to that, but on the whole, it seemed that what it was working towards was worthwhile. Today, it looks like an example of "don't do this".

lilmookieesquire said @ 5:03pm GMT on 4th Jul
I think that has to do in large part to gerrymandering.

chold_numa said @ 10:44pm GMT on 4th Jul
That's part of it, but public disengagement is also apparent in areas where there is little or no gerrymandering. Media consolidation and increased consumerism are also part of it, as is the breakdown of traditional (and more importantly, local) social structures.

It's much, much, harder for an individual to have a large impact on the political environment without engaging the machinery of a mainstream political party. The last place this happens now is within churches. Currently, there's some really poisonous and divisive theology being promagulated there.

rangerx said @ 3:17pm GMT on 3rd Jul
What kind of nitwit goes to Mali as a tourist?!?

papango said @ 8:27pm GMT on 5th Jul
I'd love to go. See all that history I feel like I know almost nothing about. Of course, now's not a good time. And I have very little sympathy for people who take holidays in clearly unstable parts of the world thinking their resort will shut out the unpleasantness.

atter_cob said @ 8:31pm GMT on 3rd Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
People are stupid and religion makes them stupider.

erich wiess said @ 9:03pm GMT on 3rd Jul

"People are stupid" in relation to whom?

loomspace said @ 9:08pm GMT on 3rd Jul
As with willful ignorance in the right wing fundies, a lack of population relativity does not make it less definitive.

Naruki said @ 12:26am GMT on 4th Jul
Not you, obviously. But maybe to other people.

rangerx said @ 1:19pm GMT on 5th Jul
Person

ring riot said @ 8:39am GMT on 9th Jul
It's called a misanthropic statement, erich. "People are stupid" - as in, the entire human race is worthy of contempt. Here, I have a way of explaining it that you might be able to grasp without that little glob of spittle forming at the corner of your mouth: take your feelings for anyone who isn't white or Christian - now apply that to everybody else, including yourself. Get it? Now - go grab a towel, because I see that, despite my attempt to delineate the simplest of concepts for you, you're still starting to drool a bit. We'll wait.