Al-Qaeda Calls For the Execution Of Bill Gates and Others To 'Damage the US Economy' (betanews.com) 486
An anonymous reader writes: Al-Qaeda's official online propaganda magazine, Inspire, contains a montage of violent images -- things like guns and blood -- next to an image of Bill Gates. The terrorist group is urging its followers to murder successful business folks, such as Gates, which is absolutely sickening. The terrorist group says that murdering high ranking people can damage the U.S. economy.
Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
Al-Qaeda's the Jeb Bush of terrorist orgs. Once respected, they coasted for too long, grew fat and lazy and lost their edge.
Like Jeb Bush, Al-Qaeda has an excellent donor network to fund future activities.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Funny)
Al-Qaeda's the Jeb Bush of terrorist orgs. Once respected, they coasted for too long, grew fat and lazy and lost their edge.
Like Jeb Bush, Al-Qaeda has an excellent donor network to fund future activities.
And, similarly, they will be spending those donations on hookers and blow.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Interesting)
Like Jeb Bush, Al-Qaeda has an excellent donor network to fund future activities.
Like Jeb Bush, Al-Queda is a has-been, and donors have moved on, to Trump and ISIS respectively.
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Al-Qaeda still exists?
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:4, Insightful)
The international jihadi movement was fragmented in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but it started to coalesce around two groups in the 90s: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. (Hamas and Hezbollah are mostly specific to a Israel/Palestine and Lebanon, respectively, with a little bit of overlap to neighboring states.) Since then, the movement has been fragmenting again: Boko Haram arose in Nigeria, ISIS in Iraq (out of what was once al-Qaeda in Iraq), and the Taliban have split at least once and maybe twice. Al-Qaeda has tried to reinvent itself, with reports of strategic changes limiting acts against civilians (particularly Muslims) and an attempt to portray themselves as somewhat more gentle than they were, especially in the face of the savagery that ISIS has taken up.
But with all of the attention to al-Qaeda over the years, the leadership really has dwindled, and their ability to adequately train operatives to undertake attacks against Western targets has similarly declined. The group has also proved to be far less adept at social media than is ISIS, limiting their recruiting capability for both front line forces and leadership. Most of their recruits come from areas that don't have strong connections to the outside world, limiting recruitment to more personal means. ISIS is also widely seen as the more effective group, since it's taken territory across large swaths of Iraq and Syria (though word of their losses has not been widely reported in the media and the group isn't keen to play them up), while al-Qaeda's holdings are mostly limited to small parts of Syria, Somalia, and Yemen.
I would not be at all surprised to see that al-Qaeda ultimately outlives ISIS. The former has more experience surviving losses than the latter, which has changed names about a dozen times since forming in the late 1990s as it keeps reinventing itself.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Funny)
So, really, they're the Microsoft of terrorist organizations!
don't they? (Score:3)
> And yet they don't do any of those really simple things.
They don't? It seems to me that SOMEONE who vowed destroy the US as we knew and "fundamentay transform" it has been destroying or blocking economically important infrastructure such as pipelines, doubling the debt, vowing to "relentlessly go after" business owners while creating uncertainty for entrepeneurs, and spreading race-based propaganda. Maybe it wasn't a terrorist per se, maybe that was somebody else who blames the US for the fact tha
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And what would the world be like if we started killing the richest people in the world? I'm not for killing anyone ever, but what happens if you kill the .01% and keep culling until it doesn't exist anymore?
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:4, Insightful)
You eventually reach 0%? Or, maybe you can pick someone you like, and we'll stop culling right before it hits them? That's how people always expect these things to work. Robespierre learned the hard way that it does not.
That's why talking about killing the rich and powerful is absolutely retarded. You'd be the second guy up against the wall.
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So in the long run, was the french revolution a good thing or a bad thing?
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After 10 years, they went straight back to monarchism under Napoleon, after all the revolutionary Jacobins were dead. Whether that was a good thing or bad thing is left as an exercise to the reader. Code Napoleon was great; losing a generation of men to war was not.
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Napoleon
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Informative)
what happens if you kill the .01% and keep culling until it doesn't exist anymore?
You're left with just the people who don't understand percentages.
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what happens if you kill the .01% and keep culling until it doesn't exist anymore?
You're left with just the people who don't understand percentages.
And people who don't understand Zeno's "Achilles and the Tortoise" paradox.
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And people who don't understand it was tried for several thousand years. No, seriously.
I can't think of any better descriptions of feudalism than the concentration of what little mobile wealth there was into 0.01%, who then proceed to kill each other over those spoils, ad infinitum. Look how few noble houses really made it more than 3 or 4 generations. Skim down the "92 hereditary members" of the British House of Lords and note how few of the "th" numbers are in the teens...and of course we're several ge
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And what would the world be like if we started killing the richest people in the world? I'm not for killing anyone ever, but what happens if you kill the .01% and keep culling until it doesn't exist anymore?
You get Ayn Rand's "Rapture of the Rich" fantasy.
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By definition, you can't kill the top %0.1 by killing the incumbents, because they're replaced immediately by the next runners-up.
And even if you ignore my pedantic description of how percentages work, the fact is that killing of today's elites without ending the root causes of income disparity is only going to result in an endless cycle of killing rich people off.
Only... the new rich people won't be stupid enough to let you kill them they way their predecessors went.
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thanks for a thoughtful answer
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, this has come before, and raising inflation does nothing to the richest top %0.1. In fact, it will make them richer.
It is a long discussion, but go read "Capital in the 21st Century". For a short idea, think about the ways they "park" their assets. Do you think prices of real estate will not appreciate with inflation?
Inflation is mostly harmful for the middle class which cannot invest in efficient assets, but has enough money to lose value.
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The CPI isn't BS at all. I'm certainly old enough to have seen how prices have varied over the years, and they've barely changed in a couple of decades, in fact many things are quite a bit cheaper. Cars aren't really any more expensive than they were 20 years ago (you get a lot more car now for $20k than you did back then), gasoline is only a bit more expensive, food is a little more, computers are far, far less, music is cheaper, video games are about the same. Most various knick-knacks are cheaper sinc
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Housing isn't apples-to-apples. When I was a kid, everyone I knew had more people than rooms in their house, or about the same number if they were doing well. Now the expectation is that you have at least as many bedrooms as people who live in a place, plus some common rooms. The housing boom that ended in the mid-2000s bubble was mostly about this transition.
Health care is even more apples and oranges. Health care would be cheap indeed if all we had was 1950s-style care. It's expensive because we have
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Coffee and sugar used to come in one or five pound bags. Now it is all sub-16 ounces.
Huh? Just this morning, I bought a 7-pound bag of sugar. Granted, that's about a year's supply for the two of us. (And it's mostly an artifact of my local reputation as a maker of good margaritas. ;-) It isn't at all hard to find sugar packaged in 2- or 5-pound bags hereabouts; most of the food stores that I frequent sell it that way.
Coffee I've always bought in sub-pound packages, mostly because the taste tends to decay slowly, and it's more noticeable the larger the package is. The advent of home
their money is your office, the Tesla factory (Score:3)
> Actually every decade we should kill off the top .01%. That by itself will keep the economy flowing as their cash will keep being moved instead of just sitting there.
I hope you're being sarcastic, but in case you're just young or woefully uninformed, I'll explain it for you. You don't get rich by putting cash under your mattress. You get rich by owning productive capital. The office you're sitting in, the computer you're using at work, and those glossy flyers advertising your company's products are
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I agree. They would be much better off targeting Donald Trump.
Man, we would be so screwed if they did that. The whole country would probably be in chaos instantly if they went after Donald Trump. I don't know how we would handle such a thing
I sure hope they don't set their sights on Donald Trump instead.
Re: Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:3, Funny)
Fortunately for us, they said they were only going to target successful businessmen.
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While I wish no harm upon Bill Gates - in spite of being vehemently anti-Microsoft myself - I don't see what Al-Qaeda could expect to accomplish by killing him. He stepped down how many years ago from the top of Microsoft? This seems about as logical as watching too many reruns of ER and then deciding to kill George Clooney to harm our health care system.
They just don't think laterally enough. Economy depends on infrastructure and governance and some key businesses supported by that infrastructure and governance.
- How much does Apple help the US economy? What happens to Apple if someone were to kill off their entire security team?
- There are less than a dozen locations in the USA where you could effectively take out the US Internet.
- How about making the main deep water harbors unusable?
- Dress up as cops and shoot a bunch of militia guys in one place, a bu
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I think you're on the right path and I really want to comment but I'm too darned afraid of being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night or put on some kind of a watch list.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think a better analogy would be AQ calling for killing HW to cripple the US government, even though he's not part of the government any more and hasn't been for many, many years and is quite elderly and liable to pass away from natural causes at any time. Basically, AQ seems to be stuck in a time vortex and not realize that the year is 2016, not 1996.
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I agree - targeting Bill Gates today is pretty useless. Larry Ellison on the other hand might cause a bigger splash.
Targeting the Windows validation server infrastructure would however cause a bigger impact if all backup keys were destroyed.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of this stuff is due to pure ignorance of how America works. Their minds are focused on the idea of a centralized source of power. A supreme leader or a king.
The U.S. in general has power distributed where someone can be valuable however not indispensable. In theory you can kill the CEO's of the fortune 500 and still the U.S. Economy will still run. Their wealth will be transferred to next of kin, their investments will still be moving most companies can keep up to day to day operations for an while before they can replace the loss in leadership.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is that this is almost a reflection of the West's understanding of how Al Qaeda works. How long did we focus on going after Bin Laden or any of the other top guys, as if taking out those guys is sufficient to wipe out an entire ideology. Likely the mis-targeted drone strikes and other operations undertaken to eliminate these figureheads only served to bring more to the extremist ideology.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
While I wish no harm upon Bill Gates - in spite of being vehemently anti-Microsoft myself - I don't see what Al-Qaeda could expect to accomplish by killing him. He stepped down how many years ago from the top of Microsoft? This seems about as logical as watching too many reruns of ER and then deciding to kill George Clooney to harm our health care system.
The Gates Foundation funds education, including education for girls.
An educated populous is the greatest threat to a theocracy.
This is what naming Gates is all about.
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Yeah, but that has nothing to do with harming the US economy. And given how it's run, Gates probably spends very little time managing it, so even if the Gates are murdered, the foundation's work continues on.
And for the big companies, there already are succession plans.
To harm the US economy by killing one or two targets is extr
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While I wish no harm upon Bill Gates - in spite of being vehemently anti-Microsoft myself
Same here. I can't stand him, but I don't wish him any harm.
It's ridiculous to think that killing him would have any actual effect on the US economy. The Al-Qaeda people must be huffing chemtrails.
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I went the other way. What's with the "which is absolutely sickening" line? They're talking about murdering people. Murder is a thing. It's murder; it's not special. Brown people in Uganda get murdered. White people get murdered trying to drive through gang neighborhoods at night. Black people get murdered trying to walk through East Texas during the day. What's so special about rich people that we're supposed to feel more or less disturbed that people want to murder them?
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
If they wanted to collapse the US economy, they should bomb 5 airports with bombs inside luggage that goes off in the scanner line. All 5 within 1 minute of each other spread around. Then, two weeks later, set off 5 more in the ticketing lines. Then, presuming the response is greater curb-side inspections, wait another few weeks and set off car bombs.
Attacking the security perimeter shows that the idea of a perimeter is the failure, and nobody will ever feel safe again. Random acts of terrorism that attacks the common person will do more. Hijack a pizza delivery guy and deliver a bomb instead. Nobody will order delivery food again, if they fear getting a bomb instead. The terror will cripple the US economy.
Re:Wow, they really are stuck in the past (Score:5, Informative)
The bombers of the airport in Brussels exploded their bombs in the check-in area (before the passport control and even further from the baggage scanners). When the airport reopened, they had pushed the security as far back as they could.
There are now military+police checkpoints for cars before you get near the airport, just off the highway exits. It would be difficult to get a car bomb past. You have to get dropped off in a specific car park and walk up to 2 km to get to the security queue to get into the temporary airport buildings.
The queue for the next security check, where they check bags is about 500m long. Everyone is in a very long, thin queue. If there were bombs in the bags to be checked in, the best they could do is explode in the queue outside of the building, which would cause little damage, except to the few within 10m or so.
The end result is a nightmare of an airport, with people avoiding it and not flying. Passenger numbers are way down. A friend who flew recently took 4 hours to get through the security lines and to his flight. He just made it, even though it was a morning flight, and he arrived 4 hours in advance, at around 6am. I would hate to see the queue at 10am or later.
It hasn't crippled the economy, but has really screwed the operators of the airport and all of the airlines using it.
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His philanthropy may even be what is irritating them, who knows?
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His philanthropy may even be what is irritating them, who knows?
Probably more than a little truth to that. The Gates Foundation gives a lot of money to immunization programs, IIRC, and we all know that preventing polio is just another front for dirty Jews trying sterilize young Mu'min. Right?
More likely Windows Vista (Score:5, Funny)
His philanthropy may even be what is irritating them, who knows?
Actually given how out of date they seem I suspect that it may be because they have only just upgraded to Vista.
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Since that something includes enabling the e-mail and document virus, I'm not so sure Clooney wouldn't be the better target...
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Yeah, I can't imagine why someone hasn't thought to create a billion-dollar investment fund in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan!
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Everybody who could afford a lawyer to draw up a family trust will avoid inheritance taxes. This is not just the very rich.
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Woohoo (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, the year of the Linux desktop
Because the Quran says (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's the one right after the one that identifies itself as the religion of peace.
Re:Because the Quran says (Score:5, Insightful)
Al Qaeda was born of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They drew lessons from that and thought they were applicable to other situations. The leadership of Al Qaeda has many mistaken views.
The first is that the mujaheddin, the "faithful" who opposed the soviet invasion actually drove the soviets out. In reality the Soviets had them beat until Americans started funneling advanced weapons in which neutralized the Soviets weapons.
The second is that the expense of fighting the mujaheddin was so costly it resulted in the collapse of the Soviet economy and the unwinding of the entire Soviet state and a withdrawal from "Muslim lands". Of course the reality is that Afghanistan was a side adventure for the Soviets, it was the collapse in oil prices (the only way the Soviets could earn hard currency) in the 80's along with trying to keep up with the American defense spending of the 80's that did the Soviet government in. This double wammy exhausted the currency and gold reserves of the soviet state and resulted in collapse.
The third is that Americans were not willing to sacrifice blood and would retreat in the face of actual combat.
The first two misconceptions have driven the entire strategy of Al Qaeda since the start. They truly believed that by drawing America into a war in the middle east that not only would America be beaten handily but that the economy would collapse and America would be forced to abandon the middle east (their goal). After the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq they thought they had triggered the end of the American empire when the crash of 2008 happened.
The subsequent recovery has put a lie to their predictions so the natural path is to assume something prevented it. Like any good religion they've decided the reason the American economy didn't collapse was because of the wealthy Americans, not because their original assumptions were stupid and wrong. This an organization that wants to bring back slavery and the laws of 700AD Islam and that anything that goes against (capitalism and democracy) that is a perversion that's doomed to failure. The existence and success of America and western states makes this belief a lie. They will continue to come up with "reasons" why their predictions haven't come true and undoubtedly urge the killing of all kinds of people in an effort to make it happen.
They simply don't understand America or the West and what makes us collectively strong.
Re:Because the Quran says (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're joking, but after seeing a few tattoos of teachings of Leviticus i can assure you that many of the most devout followers of any religious book really don't understand it. The Bible/Torah/Qu'ran can at times be seen as a Rorschach test, where you really see what's in the mind of the viewer rather than the book itself.
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You did not understand the message of Jonah, then. God was telling Jonah he was wrong to be uncompassionate to his enemies.
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Bible [Re:Because the Quran says] (Score:3)
The Bible also has some rather violent suggestions. Such books are kind of like a Rorschach test: you see what you want in them. They both have tolerance and violence.
After clobbering each other bloody for a hundred odd years, Christian factions finally saw a giant clue-stick built out of caskets and learned to coexist peacefully. It's not Bible passages, but reality that changed them.
Unfortunately, Islam is repeating history.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously I wish no ill will on anyone, but let's be honest, there are a number of "successful" people who's loss would improve the economy.
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Yeah, imagine how bad the 2008 crisis would have been if the terrorists haven't got half the brokers at 9/11.
Of course Al Qaeda is pissed (Score:5, Funny)
I guess Al Qaeda woke up to find their Windows 7 had been automatically upgraded to Windows 10 then? That's got to piss them off.
Re:Of course Al Qaeda is pissed (Score:5, Funny)
That's how the CIA found their next drone target!
Once Win10 was started, triangulation was acquired and.... 3... 2... 1... "boom".
Who?? (Score:2)
Remind me why... (Score:2, Interesting)
Can anyone remind me why it's bigoted to point out that most of the terrorism in the world is Islamic? Also, why is it bigoted to point out that the Qur'an calls for violence against nonbelievers but the New Testament says to love your enemies? Why is it acceptable to condemn the Westboro Baptist Church for their hatred but wrong to condemn Islam for their hatred and violence?
What about the Irish? (Score:2)
I remember when most terrorism we got to hear about was from the Irish -- should we condemn all Irish for the actions of a few wackos?
There's a Christian Pastor, can't remember his name right now, but he's famous for holding a "Kill the Gays" rallies. The Klu Klux Klan considers itself a Christian organization, and if I can Godwin this conversation, Hilter was not a Muslim, and yet you're defending Christianity?
From an atheist viewpoint, *all* your damn religions are about violence against others.
Re:Remind me why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if it's not being done by Muslims, we call it something else.
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How utterly ingenuous. Do you actually believe that or are you just regurgitating mindless rhetoric?
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Mostly because what you claim is factually incorrect?
1. The vast majority of terrorism in the US is ... surprise, by white people.
Sideways argument. Twice... He said world, and you said US. Also, there are Muslim white people. Some in the US, indicted on terrorism...
2. The Quran does not call for violence any more than the Bible does; and it doesn't even necessarily call for it, it's all in interpretations (of which Christianity has its own share of whackjob fundies that try to interpret the Bible literally). I like how you try to specify 'New Testament' as if that's the only part that matters - if you disregard the Old Testament, you disregard Creationism, the 10 Commandments, and basically the entire foundation of which Christianity was built upon.
But the bible has a new testament that was an all new agreement, retracting a lot of the violence. Christianity also had a "reformation" to specifically set aside a lot of violence as well.
3. WBC is not an entire religion, and you don't have entire societies condemning 'Christianity' simply because the WBC exists... You're not making equal comparisons.
No, it is an example. And there are more then a few Christian based groups that are OK to hate, but not many Muslim based ones.
Kill off the rich? (Score:4, Interesting)
So... they want to kill off rich people in the hopes of *hurting* the economy?
Can I assume that people are already tweeting them suggestions on who to go after, so that all the money that is currently being sequestered by all these rich people will finally be released back into the economy?
Al Qaeda is irrelevent (Score:2)
They know they are outdated and trying to get back up to speed in this Apps and Social driven reality.
Up next:
They are going to threaten Steve Jobs.
Good thing (Score:2)
Let Bill serve as a decoy, because if they bag Larry Ellison, Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos it'll totally be game over.
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They were going to try Larry Ellison but the waiting list from disgruntled Oracle and Java users meant that they wouldn't have had an attempt until 2035 at the earliest.
I hope they don't go after Steve Jobs (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, if they're going after Gates, might as well try to take out Apple too...
If they were serious about destroying capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it me or - (Score:4)
Those terrorists sound like idiotic schoolchildren that have no idea how things work.
Talk about moronic... They couldn't make themselves appear dumber if they tried
heh... (Score:2)
This explains a lot (Score:5, Funny)
They've been reading waaaaaaay too much Ayn Rand.
losing bill Gates would help america, but others w (Score:2)
You are welcome, rest of the world (Score:3)
The Al-Qaeda spokesman was able to issue the statement because he hadn't died from malaria.
Steve Jobs is already dead (Score:2)
You may not agree, but some people hold the opinion that Steve Jobs was a visionary and that Apple has been going downhill ever since he died and as Apple uses up the ideas he bulked up before abandoning us to the afterlife. In theory, a sudden and unexpected death of Steve Jobs would have had a measurably impact on Apple’s performance.
But these other people? Bill Gates hardly plays a role at Microsoft anymore, and most major companies have contingency plans to recover from losing their CEO anyhow.
Oh please (Score:2)
Killing Bill Gates would only affect his gardener and the pool cleaning staff.
I suppose it's possible that the local Ferrari dealership may see a slight drop in sales. Other than that, no impact on the US economy.
We build mountains. They build flag poles. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the West, we have built very strong enduring institutions. For people who grew up in the USA, they seem to be slowly decaying becoming corrupt. But only when you come in from a different society, after growing up there, you would see the difference. The level of honesty and trust in the government, in the institutions, private or public, is very high in America. It would take India a century or more to build such institutions of integrity. I told my bond broker cousin in Bombay, "As the Watergate scandal was picking up steam, IRS audited the sitting President of the USA, found him in violation of tax code, and assessed half a million dollars in taxes and penalties. It cut Nixon's net worth by half. Nixon paid without complaining or creating a ruckus. Nixon!". He was stunned beyond belief. Such things do not simply happen there. Despite all the insider trading and the banksters becoming fraudsters, SEC and Wall Street is light years ahead of regulation and disclosure of Indian capital markets.
Here in USA we build mountains. Someone is on top of the mountain, but there are several who could replace him/her, and that person, single handedly does not achieve any thing big. In the Middle East and in India, probably China, it is all personality cult. Build one pedestal, put a flag pole on it, and put their leader on top of the flag pole. Leader goes down, there is no one to step and continue the system. The leader actively undermines and sabotages the career of anyone who could replace him. Surrounded by sycophants and flatterers, the leaders live in bubbles. India is way better than Pakistan in this respect, and Pakistan is better than Bangladesh and the Arab countries. But none of them even come close to USA, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and NZ in terms of governance and public integrity.
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If we buy you a plane ticket, will you go tell them in person?
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These guys are so out of touch it's like Dr. Evil. Hold the whole world hostage for "One Million Dollars"! Bwaahh Haa Haa Haaa!
There Internet connection is a 300 baud modem. Takes a while for the news to catch up from the 1980's.
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The cigarette-smoking man, the reptiloids ...
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It is is a double standard since most of those wonderful ISIS folks continue to throw gays off of tall buildings. I don't hear of any bakers doing the same. We're focused on the wrong issues in the US because of all the false flags.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
There were millions of hits for my google search, so I just grabbed the top two. How many would you like, and why are you unable to use Google yourself?
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Al-Qaeda killed thousands on 9/11 and is calling for more attacks. ISIL is also carrying out tremendous amounts of violence in the Middle East. Yet anyone who points out that Islam is inherently violent is called a bigot.
However, Christians who refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding are put out of business and have threats made against their lives. Somehow society thinks it's okay to threaten Christians and claim that Christianity isn't a religion of peace.
Why is there a double standard?
Islam is inherently violent. Christianity is inherently peaceful. Christianity says to love your enemy. Islam says to kill Jews and Christians.
But anyone who points out these facts is labeled a bigot.
This is so out of touch it's painful to read. If Christianity is inherently peaceful, why did the crusades happen? Why did the Spanish Inquisition happen? Why does the Klu Klux Klan exist? Christianity is no more innherently peaceful than Islam is, but we are fortunate enough to live in the nicer parts of the world where we don't have to kill each other for control over the region's only watering hole. Back to the KKK, that's right, they claim to represent Protestants, and more generally see themselves as
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Maybe because you are framing the question as a bigot would? Al-Qaeda and ISIL are terror groups using Islam to try and justify their actions. There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. If it wasn't a religion of peace then there would be a lot more violence in the world. Also groups in Ireland, Africa, and the KKK have all used Christianity as a reason for their violence but you don't group all Christians in together with them. Why not? You have no problem grouping all 1.6 billion Muslims to
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No one is forgetting it, but that was how many hundreds of years ago? Was Christianity more militant and violent then, sure. The question is why is Islam violent NOW? Given the same amount of time to grow up, why have they refused?
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Given the same amount of time to grow up, why have they refused?
You'll have to ask that again in another 500 years, when it's been the same amount of time as Christianity now.
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I forget, when is it the KKK disbanded again?
every religion has it's nuts.
Re:Double standard (Score:4, Insightful)
soooo, getting children a better education in the language of their country of residence, the US of A, is somehow comparable to ISIL and AL-Qaeda's slaughters and rapes and maimings? boohoo, the native american alaskana can no longer practice bits of their culture like euthanizing the middle aged?
go back to tumblr, you SJW whiner
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There are many places in both Koran and Hadith that orders Muslims to kill non Muslims (or Muslims with the same interpretation):
Quran (8:39) - "And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion is all for Allah"
Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with wil
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This is radical fundamentalist FOMO.
Re:Top people are completely replacable (Score:5, Funny)
Top people in Western society are completely replaceable
Perhaps the one thing our economic policy ensures: the wealthy are almost criminally worthless and the most replaceable of the lot, to the point of being huge boat anchors.
Knock yourselves out Al Qaeda, purge us of our parasites, that'll show us!
Re: (Score:2)
Top people in Western society are completely replaceable, next runner-up would be 99.99% as good. Our society isn't driven by genius, but by merit (aside: unfortunately merit also happen to include a lot of sociopathic behavior).
Actually, most replacements would be better. Yes, there are a few people like Steve Jobs that really are better at the job then anyone else. But in most cases, people who have "made it" are very risk averse. And growth does not come from avoiding risk. So they could just end up replacing the old guard with a bunch of new aggressive CEOs to stimulate the economy. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Not so much merit as the right combination of psychopathy and dumb luck.
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Re: (Score:3)
Apparently mosquitoes are more dangerous and kill more people... and it's easier than stopping cancer.