Just wanted to clarify my questions to you, Killarney. They are in the context of your words, "If those who empathise with the ‘them’ had been listened to throughout history, a helluva lot of misery and destruction might have been avoided."

What is your pathway to avoiding misery and destruction as things stand?

Craig, Koombyah.

Dear o sung wu,

You wrote;

“it would appear that evil seems able of supplanting everything else, that might prove good within human kind”

Sometimes it might appear that way but thankfully we are at peace far more than we are at war. I am of the mind that what we deem good tends to win out in the end.

Dear Loudmouth,

I like most people was appalled at the slaughter wrought by the Christian snipers and mortar batteries on the residents of Kosovo. This is not to dismiss the actions of the KLA which more than deserving of the War Crimes indictments they attracted. The fact that Christians made up 70% of those who were indicted seems to me to be a pretty fair indication of who committed the most atrocities during the conflict.

Dear Killarney,

I'm aware of the doubts raised about the media's account of what was occurring in Bosnia during the war. JOM pointed to an article from Edward Herman, (whom I had already read in Manufacturing Consent), making claims like “And of course they had never proved that there were 7,000 or 8,000, even men and boys killed. The bodies in the graves added up to something like 2,500.”

But time and science tells a different story;

“By analyzing DNA profiles extracted from bone samples of exhumed mortal remains and matching them to the DNA profiles obtained from blood samples donated by relatives of the missing, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has so far revealed the identity of 6,598 persons missing from the July 1995 fall of Srebrenica.”

“In an effort to identify the victims ICMP has collected blood samples from 21,566 Srebrenica victims’ survivors. The number of reported missing for whom ICMP has blood samples as well as the matching rate between DNA profiles extracted from these bone and blood samples leads ICMP to support an estimate of around 8,100 individuals missing from the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. This leads us to a conclusion that the bodies of approximately 1,500 persons still need to be found.”

Cont..

Cont..

“So far 5,564 cases of Srebrenica victims have been closed by local court-appointed pathologists.”
http://www.ic-mp.org/press-releases/613-srebrenica-victims-to-be-buried-at-a-memorial-ceremony-in-potocari613-srebrenickih-zrtava-bice-ukopane-u-memorijalnom-centru-potocari/#more-1397

Regarding the rigorous War Crimes Tribunals I find it hard to believe that those convicted would have been victims of unsubstantiated hype. That some of them were directly indicted and convicted for their involvement in the rape camps set up in Foca leaves little doubt in my mind that these camps did exist and that horrific sexual crimes were committed against women and girls.

Rapes of course occurred on the other side of the conflict and charges were laid, for instance Rasim Delic - chief of staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina was indicted “For his failure to prevent the Mujahadeen members of the Bosnian army from committing crimes against captured civilians and enemy combatants (murder, rape, torture)”. These were the Mujahadeen who were flown in by the US. But the evidence is substantial that rape was most often employed by the Christian side of the conflict.

The point I'm trying to make is that the nomenclature that is employed dictates how we view conflicts and terrorism. To use the term Christian Serbians raises the ire of some with claims that they 'can not be regarded as true Christians'. But Serbia is a highly Christianised nation whose Education Minister once directed that evolution no longer be taught in schools before being over-ruled by the President.

If Boko Haram was described as a North Nigerian separatist movement rather an Islamist terrorist organisation we would surely view it differently. Yet it is held up as evidence that Islam is an inherently violent religion. The kidnapping of 250 school girls for sexual slavery and as child soldiers is a sobering tragedy but they have a long way to go to get to the estimated 25,000 children abducted by the Christian Lord's Resistance Army headed by the infamous Kony in Ughanda whose “ father was a lay catechist of the Catholic Church and his mother was an Anglican." “Kony was an altar boy for church until 1976.”

Cont..

Cont..

“Kony insists that he and the Lord's Resistance Army are fighting for the Ten Commandments.” who "has found Bible justifications for killing witches, for killing [those who farm or eat] pigs because of the story of the Gadarene swine, and for killing [other] people because God did the same with Noah's flood and Sodom and Gomorrah." “

“Kony believes in the literal protection provided by a cross symbol and tells his child soldiers a cross on their chest drawn in oil will protect them from bullets.”

But the first person indicted, charged and ultimately convicted of crimes against humanity for the abduction of children for sex and child soldiers was of course Charles Taylor, the Liberian President who “had been a lay preacher in the Baptist tradition”. When the US finally moved against him one of his staunchest supporters Pat Robinson said “So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country. And how dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down.' “

Finally much is made of Muslims killing other Muslims, once again as an indication of the violence of the faith. We seem to have forgotten the fact that arguably the most Christianised nation in Africa during the early 1990s was Rwanda.

“Reports indicate the percentage of Muslims in Rwanda has doubled or tripled since the genocide, due to Muslim protection of Tutsis, and to Hutus' wanting distance from the people who murdered.  Although the growth of Islam stabilized after a few years, it is still attracting some converts. Conversions to Evangelical Christianity also increased after the genocide, while attendance in Catholic churches has decreased. Observers believe this is due to the participation of some Catholic priests in the genocide.”
Wikipedia

Recognising that history and the struggle we all have with the religious fundamentalism in our various faiths might mean empathy rather than derision is the driver for change.

Thank you, thank you, Killarney, for confirming my premise.

Regardless of whether you think that those "useful idiots" (ABC luvvies) who live in the west, who support International Socialism, Islam, or extreme environmentalism, and always attack their own society, do so because they think it is an indicator of superior intelligence or morality. Or, they do it because they think that those who support their own people and their own successful civilisation are stupid and immoral, it is exactly the same concept.

What it boils down to is a compulsive psychological need to believe that they are morally and intellectually better than everybody else. This makes them difficult people to debate against, because their beliefs have no basis in fact, they only parrot the slogans of the peer group of "intelligentsia" to which they aspire to be a part of. They will therefore claim that black is somehow white because they have linked their self esteem to denying self evident reality. To admit at they are wrong, even when they quite clearly are wrong, would force them to admit that they are not the towering intellects and moral giants they imagine themselves to be.

SR,

Kony = Boko Haram ? So two wrongs make a right, yet again ? Can we move on from this stupid pissing contest ? Kony is evil, Boko Haram is evil: it's a tie, they both can piss higher than their heads, wow.

Face up to the fact that Boko Haram ['Western Education is Evil'] that it is an Islamist-terrorist movement ? its leaders have pledged themselves to the Islamist State. The terrorists in northern Nigeria have murdered upwards of 50,000 people and driven 1.5 million from their homes. It's a terrorist organisation, and happens also be Islamist. Suck it up.

Currently, there are such terrorist organisations spreading out from Algeria; Libya; Somalia; Yemen; Syria-Iraq; Chechnya; Afghanistan; Pakistan; southern Philippines; southern Thailand; and perhaps (we don't hear much about them) in Central Asia. As for Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, Sudan, Eritrea, we'll need to wait and see.

If you see a duck flying, it's just a duck. If you see hundreds flying together, it's a flock, a group, of ducks. You may say, no, it's just a huge, random aggregation of individual ducks who happen to be flying in the same direction . No, it's a flock.

Face it: there is a very widespread terrorist movement across the Muslim world, currently factionalised but for how much longer ? Perhaps 99 % of Muslims are not interested in supporting terrorism, but they are still there. You can't wish them away, SR.

Joe