raw-r-evolution:

exallamsehtfes:

thepoliticalfreakshow:

peach-and-lime:

thebadassperger:

justinhoskie:

whatpath:

Yes, lets imagine a world WITHOUT MUSLIMS, shall we?

Without Muslims you wouldn’t have:

• Coffee

• Cameras

• Experimental Physics

• Chess

• Soap

• Shampoo

• Perfume/spirits

• Irrigation

• Crank-shaft, internal combustion engine, valves, pistons

• Combination locks

• Architectural innovation (pointed arch -European Gothic cathedrals adopted this technique as it made the building much stronger, rose windows, dome buildings, round towers, etc.)

• Surgical instruments

• Anesthesia

• Windmill

• Treatment of Cowpox

• Fountain pen

• Numbering system

• Algebra/Trigonometry

• Modern Cryptology

• 3 course meal (soup, meat/fish, fruit/nuts)

• Crystal glasses

• Carpets

• Checks

• Gardens used for beauty and meditation instead of for herbs and kitchen.

• University
• Optics
• Music
• Toothbrush
• Hospitals
• Bathing
• Quilting
• Mariner’s Compass
• Soft drinks
• Pendulum
• Braille
• Cosmetics
• Plastic surgery
• Calligraphy
• Manufacturing of paper and cloth

It was a Muslim who realized that light ENTERS our eyes, unlike the Greeks who thought we EMITTED rays, and so invented a camera from this discovery.

It was a Muslim who first tried to FLY in 852, even though it is the Wright Brothers who have taken the credit.

It was a Muslim by the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan who was known as the founder of modern Chemistry. He transformed alchemy into chemistry. He invented: distillation, purification, oxidation, evaporation, and filtration. He also discovered sulfuric and nitric acid.

It is a Muslim, by the name of Al-Jazari who is known as the father of robotics.

It was a Muslim who was the architect for Henry V’s castle.

It was a Muslim who invented hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes, a technique still used today.

It was a Muslim who actually discovered inoculation, not Jenner and Pasteur to treat cowpox. The West just brought it over from Turkey

It was Muslims who contributed much to mathematics like Algebra and Trigonometry, which was imported over to Europe 300 years later to Fibonnaci and the rest.

It was Muslims who discovered that the Earth was round 500 years before Galileo did.

The list goes on………..

Just imagine a world without Muslims. Now I think you probably meant, JUST IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT TERRORISTS. And then I would agree, the world would definitely be a better place without those pieces of filth. But to hold a whole group responsible for the actions of a few is ignorant and racist. No one would ever expect Christians or White people to be held responsible for the acts of Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma bombing) or Andreas Brevik (Norway killing), or the gun man that shot Congresswoman Giffords in head, wounded 12 and killed 6 people, and rightly so because they had nothing to do with those incidents! Just like the rest of the 1.5 billion Muslims have nothing to do with this incident!

Sources:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-islamic-inventors-changed-the-world-469452.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-29/world/muslim.inventions_1_hassani-inventions-muslim?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.ummahedinburgh.co.uk/radio/files/Muslim-Invention-Article.pdf

Always reblog.

THIS.
And once again, learning more from tumblr than school and forcefully accepted understandings of the world

Here’s a novel idea: Imagine a world without bigots!

even better imagine a world without morons who never bother to study cultures other than their own so that they know better than to state dumb shit like this here 

co signed^

===

Or, according to the logic of the original image, we could imagine a world without Christians. Hmmm, what would that look like.

Well, the Americas would still belong to the Native population, since there would never have been a genocide in these lands which killed tens of millions of people. Africa would be a prosperous land mass, as there never would have been tens of millions of slaves stolen from that continent, thus depriving the region of its most valuable resource, human labor. There would never have been World War I or II, as both were fought between Christian nations, and which caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

We could really go on like this all day …

Of course, in truth, it is just as wrong to exclusively attribute all of these atrocities to a single heterogeneous religion such as Christianity, just as it is wrong to associate all atrocities that happen to be committed by those professing to be Muslim with the entire religion of Islam. There are many political, cultural, and social factors at play in any historical event.

[TW: Violence, photo of dead body]

Don’t hold your breath waiting for these massacres committed by the US military in Afghanistan to be remotely treated in the same way as the Boston violence. No one will question the religious background of these soldiers, nor whether their terrorism indicts military culture itself. There will be no moments of silence held for their victims, nor will most Americans even know that this tragedy had taken place.

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Three years ago, the U.S. was stunned by a horrific story that emerged from the front lines of the war in Afghanistan: Several members of an Army platoon had killed at least three unarmed Afghan civilians, apparently for sport. The soldiers referred to themselves as ‘the Kill Team”—a nickname that seemed tailor-made for television news, which devoted hours of coverage to the case.

Simultaneously, over in China … apparently attacks on schools are a growing phenomenon there, too.

Whether it’s a gun, knife, or homemade explosive, a broken society with too many cracks in its social infrastructure will inevitably let fall through countless people suffering from mental, social, and/or economic dislocation who give release to their despair in the most sadistic and violent ways possible.

===

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, December 14, 3:17 AM

BEIJING — A knife-wielding man injured 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China as students were arriving for classes Friday, police said, the latest in a series of periodic rampage attacks at Chinese schools and kindergartens.

The attack in the Henan province village of Chengping happened shortly before 8 a.m., said a police officer from Guangshan county, where the village is located.

Is All That Turkey and Stuffing a Celebration of Genocide?

By Laura Elliff, Vice President, Native American Student Association

Thanksgiving is a holiday where families gather to share stories, football games are watched on television and a big feast is served. It is also the time of the month when people talk about Native Americans. But does one ever wonder why we celebrate this national holiday? Why does everyone give thanks?

History is never simple. The standard history of Thanksgiving tells us that the “Pilgrims and Indians” feasted for three days, right? Most Americans believe that there was some magnificent bountiful harvest. In the Thanksgiving story, are the “Indians” even acknowledged by a tribe? No, because everyone assumes “Indians” are the same. So, who were these Indians in 1621?

In 1620, Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower naming the land Plymouth Rock. One fact that is always hidden is that the village was already named Patuxet and the Wampanoag Indians lived there for thousands of years. To many Americans, Plymouth Rock is a symbol. Sad but true many people assume, “It is the rock on which our nation began.” In 1621, Pilgrims did have a feast but it was not repeated years thereafter. So, it wasn’t the beginning of a Thanksgiving tradition nor did Pilgrims call it a Thanksgiving feast. Pilgrims perceived Indians in relation to the Devil and the only reason why they were invited to that feast was for the purpose of negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands for the Pilgrims. The reason why we have so many myths about Thanksgiving is that it is an invented tradition. It is based more on fiction than fact.

So, what truth ought to be taught? In 1637, the official Thanksgiving holiday we know today came into existence. (Some people argue it formally came into existence during the Civil War, in 1863, when President Lincoln proclaimed it, which also was the same year he had 38 Sioux hung on Christmas Eve.) William Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chair of the anthropology department of the University of Connecticut, claims that the first Thanksgiving was not “a festive gathering of Indians and Pilgrims, but rather a celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children.” In 1637, the Pequot tribe of Connecticut gathered for the annual Green Corn Dance ceremony. Mercenaries of the English and Dutch attacked and surrounded the village; burning down everything and shooting whomever try to escape. The next day, Newell notes, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declared: “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.” It was signed into law that, “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots.” Most Americans believe Thanksgiving was this wonderful dinner and harvest celebration. The truth is the “Thanksgiving dinner” was invented both to instill a false pride in Americans and to cover up the massacre.

Was Thanksgiving really a massacre of 700 “Indians”? The present Thanksgiving may be a mixture of the 1621 three-day feast and the “Thanksgiving” proclaimed after the 1637 Pequot massacre. So next time you see the annual “Pilgrim and Indian display” in a shopping window or history about other massacres of Native Americans, think of the hurt and disrespect Native Americans feel. Thanksgiving is observed as a day of sorrow rather than a celebration. This year at Thanksgiving dinner, ponder why you are giving thanks.

William Bradford, in his famous History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the Pequot massacre:

“Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.”

The Pequot massacre came after the colonists, angry at the murder of an English trader suspected by the Pequots of kidnapping children, sought revenge. rather than fighting the dangerous Pequot warriors, John Mason and John Underhill led a group of colonists and Native allies to the Indian fort in Mystic, and killed the old men, women, and children who were there. Those who escaped were later hunted down. The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot “War” killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe.

Proud of their accomplishments, Underhill wrote a book (above) depicted the burning of the village, and even made an illustration (below) showing how they surrounded the village to kill all within it.

ISRAEL IS raining death and destruction from the skies on the people of Gaza.

After assassinating Hamas military chief Ahmed al-Jabari on November 14, Israel followed with a massive assault—under the benign sounding name “Operation Pillar of Cloud”—on Gaza.

 … In the single deadliest strike since Israel’s military operation began, the Israeli navy fired at a home where they claimed a member of the Islamic Jihad was hiding (if he was ever there, he was apparently away at the time). The four-story apartment building in Gaza City was reduced to a pile of rubble.

As Israeli drones flew overhead, a crowd of men dug at the wreckage with their bare hands, hoping to find survivors. The Associated Press described the scene:

Frantic rescuers, bolstered by bulldozers, pulled the limp bodies of children from the ruins of the house, including a toddler and a 5-year-old, as survivors and bystanders screamed in grief. Later, the bodies of the children were laid out in the morgue of Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital. Among the 11 dead were four small children and five women, including an 81-year-old, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

 … BUT FROM Israel’s top leaders, there was no concern about civilians dying. On the contrary, many called for a grotesque collective punishment for Gaza’s population.

Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai of the Shas party, for example, proudly proclaimed, “We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure, including roads and water.”

This is an explicit call for Israel to commit war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, which forbid deliberate targeting of civilian populations, including “drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.”

 … Such attacks are not the actions of a nation “seeking peace” with Palestinians, as Israel repeatedly claims. They are designed to provoke a Palestinian response, which is then used to unleash an overwhelmingly brutal assault under the pretext of “fighting terrorism.”

The Israeli state has been targeting Gazans ever since they dared to democratically elect Hamas in Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. For the act of daring to stand up to continuous, repeated brutality, all Gazans are now paying a heavy collective price.

It will take a mass outcry—here in the U.S. and around the globe—to make Israel stop its latest assault on Gaza.

“In all, 87 Palestinians, including 50 civilians, have been killed in the six-day onslaught and 720 have been wounded.

“Three Israeli civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded.”

===

The Palestinian civilian death toll mounted Monday as Israeli aircraft struck densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip in a campaign to quell militant rocket fire menacing nearly half of Israel’s population.

An overnight airstrike on two houses belonging to an extended clan in Gaza City killed two children and two adults, and injured 42 people, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra.

Shortly after, Israeli aircraft bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby, al-Kidra said. Five farmers were killed in two separate strikes, al-Kidra said, including three who had been identified earlier by Hamas security officials as Islamic Jihad fighters.

Civilian casualties began to shoot up on Sunday, after Israel said it was stepping up attacks on the homes of suspected Hamas activists. After that warning, an Israeli missile flatted a two-story house in a residential area of Gaza City, killing at least 11 civilians, most of them women and children.

It remained unclear who the target of that missile attack was. However, the new tactic ushered in a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the crowded territory of 1.6 million Palestinians. The rising civilian toll was also likely to intensify pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Hundreds of civilian casualties in an Israeli offensive in Gaza four years ago led to fierce international condemnation of Israel.

A moment of silence for the 3,000 killed on 11 September 2001.
 
Followed by 1,000 moments of silence for the millions killed by US ‘retaliatory’ aggression…
 
It’s called balance.

Let us remember today all those killed by the militaristic machinations of power-hungry forces the world over, be they non-state or governmental actors.

Let us talk about all the innocent civilians killed by the ill-conceived plans of history’s “Masters of War.”

Here in the U.S., let us also remember the countless people killed in Latin America by US funding of death squads and brutal dictatorships throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; the approximately 2 million people killed by the US in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the 60s and 70s; the hundreds of thousands of people instantly killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. when it dropped two nuclear bombs on those heavily-populated civilian cities in 1945; the millions of Native Americans killed by US colonialist expansion; and the millions of Africans either killed at sea as a result of the TransAtlantic slave-trade, or murdered during the roughly two centuries of legal African slavery in America?

Anniversary of September 11th coming up … 1973. When General Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile through a coup organized with direct help from the CIA. Tens of thousands of Chileans were murdered, tortured, and “disappeared,” in the subsequent weeks and months at the hands of Pinochet’s military regime.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/06/chile.shtml

Capitalism kills. Then blames it on the innocent friends and co-workers of its victims …

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State prosecutors have charged 270 strikers arrested at Marikana platinum mine with the murder of 34 colleagues. The arrests went ahead despite confirmation that the victims were shot dead by police, in the latest setback to prospects of peace in the South African mining industry.

The strike at Marikana that called for 3,000 rock drillers to have their monthly pay increased to 12,500 rand (£940) has led to a total of 44 deaths, including those of two policemen and two security guards. In shocking scenes on 16 August, police opened fire on a group of miners, killing 34 and injuring 78.

Class war. Workers of the world, unite against exploitation and state repression!

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POLICE IN Marikana, South Africa, killed at least 34 striking miners and injured 75 more on August 16, sparking outrage across South Africa and around the world. The workers had staged a wildcat strike a few days earlier and were protesting outside the mine when police opened fire with live ammunition in the first massacre of the post-apartheid era.

Mining has long been a crucial battlefield in the struggle between workers and capitalists in South Africa, yet last week’s police shooting was nevertheless shocking for the scale of the bloodshed. At least 10 more people died in other clashes in the region in the days leading up to the massacre.

The massacre also exposed the class inequality that still sharply divides post-apartheid South Africa. In the words of an editorial published by the anti-capitalist magazine Amandla!:

No event since the end of apartheid sums up the shallowness of the transformation in this country like the Marikana massacre. What occurred will be debated for years. It is already clear the mineworkers will be blamed for being violent. The mineworkers will be painted as savages. Yet, the fact is that heavily armed police with live ammunition brutally shot and killed over 35 mineworkers…

This was not the action of rogue cops. This massacre was a result of decisions taken at the top of the police structures. The police had promised to respond with force and came armed with live ammunition. They behaved no better than the apartheid police when facing the Sharpeville, 1976 Soweto uprisings and 1980s protests where many of our people were killed.

Just days after the massacre, the Lonmin platinum mine resumed operations with what it claimed was 30 percent of its workforce of 28,000 and issued an ultimatum that workers must return to work by August 21 (the original deadline was August 20) or face termination.

But media coverage suggests that most workers will continue to stay away from the mines. “People have died already so we have nothing more to lose,” miner Kaizer Madiba told a reporter. “We are going to continue fighting for what we believe is a legitimate fight for living wages. We would rather die like our comrades than back down.”

An anonymous drill operator told Africa’s Mail & Guardian, “It’s better to die than to work for that shit…I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won’t move.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of women gathered outside a courthouse in Marikana anxiously searching for husbands, sons and brothers missing since last week’s massacre. The protesters are hoping to find their loved ones among 259 miners detained at the courthouse while awaiting trial for “public violence.”

Today is the anniversary of one of the biggest war crimes in modern history.

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(Photo Source: http://dashboardnews.tumblr.com/post/28850258093/in-pictures-360-panoramic-view-of-hiroshima)

Approximately 60 years ago in August, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here Mikki Smith looks at how President Harry S. Truman reached his deadly decision. 

 … On August 6, 1945, a single uranium bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later—and despite the likelihood of an immediate surrender by Japan—a plutonium bomb, “Fat Man,” was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Now the whole world—in particular, Russia, the other main contender for postwar dominance—could see the devastating power of these new kinds of weapons. The United States had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that it would not hesitate to annihilate countless civilian men, women, and children in order to accomplish its aims. The U.S. hoped that such “atomic diplomacy” would secure its position as world superpower in the postwar period.

The New York Times yesterday conveyed important and exciting evidence of American progress in Afghanistan which I believe we can and should all find inspiring; it concerns the reasons the protests in Afghanistan over the slaughter of 16 villagers by a U.S. soldier were not as intense as feared:

Many observers say, the Americans have had a lot of practice at apologizing for carnage, accidental and otherwise, and have gotten better at doing it quickly and convincingly.

I don’t mind admitting that I beamed with nationalistic pride when I learned of our country’s impressive evolution: our nation’s government is so practiced in “apologizing for carnage” that it’s becoming a perfected art. This pride become particularly bountiful when I heard NPR’s Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep yesterday talk to The Washington Post‘s Rajiv Chandrasekaran about the same topic and I learned how much worse the Afghans are by comparison (h/t dubo6254). First, Chandrasekaran observed that the level of anger in Afghanistan over their dead civilians isn’t nearly as intense and widespread as it is among Americans:

INSKEEP: Rajiv, you were noticing that the response to this in Afghanistan has been a little bit less than with the Quran burnings, say, in which no one was killed.

CHANDRASEKARAN: Yes. At least in the first few days, the level of protests have been far lower over there than there have been in the immediate wake of that. And it poses an interesting question. Obviously, over at home here in the United States I think people’s sense of revulsion at this act, the shooting, has been far greater. And you’re wondering why aren’t we seeing that same sort of reaction in the streets of Kabul, for instance.

Yes, “obviously”: the angry protests in American streets over the killing of these Afghan civilians were scary indeed. Unlike in Afghanistan, where they really don’t seem to mind, almost every American city was engulfed this week by turmoil and disruption as infuriated Americans took to the streets to rail against the ongoing slaughter by their government of civilians in Afghanistan. Indeed, “people’s sense of revulsion at this act” in civilized, life-cherishing America is “far greater” than in Afghanistan: Americans are just up in arms about it, besides themselves with rage, just like they always are when their government yet again extinguishes the lives of innocent civilians. The unrest sweeping America this week over this incident is probably the most tumultuous since that dark week of frightening protests back in December, 2009, when violent anti-war marches broke out in American cities over Obama’s cluster bomb and Tomahawk missile attack in Yemen that killed dozens of women and children. Kevin Drum this week accurately recalled the levels of American rage over the ending of that innocent human life:

Obama has suffered, as near as I can tell, literally zero embarrassment from this episode. The al Majala attack got a small bit of media attention when it happened and has been completely forgotten since [in the U.S., that is; it caused intense rage in Yemen and is still very well-remembered there].

So as we can see, while Afghans don’t seem to mind civilian slaughter — as evidenced by the less-than-robust street protests in Kabul — Americans actually cherish human life and thus will simply not tolerate it. Indeed, many Americans still suffer nightmares over the society-threatening disruptions that resulted in their country from the news that a U.S. drone attack killed 16-year-old, Denver-born, American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and his teenage cousin in Yemen a mere two weeks after another drone killed his American father. The citizen fury over the killing of that innocent American teenager, incited by wall-to-wall coverage of Abdulrahman’s death on MSNBC and CNN righteously denouncing the attack, raged for weeks on end, shutting down U.S. businesses and threatening oil routes.

NPR’s Inskeep explained the underlying reason why Afghans, in contrast to Americans, appear to care more about the mere burning of Korans than these heinous deaths:

INSKEEP: Human life is already cheap, is what you’re saying and religion is something that’s a little more intense.

Totally: to those primitive, excessively religious Afghans, “human life is cheap,” in contrast to Americans, who “have a lot of practice at apologizing for carnage.” Chandrasekaran, a good reporter, did explain that Afghans have “become accustomed to news of Afghan civilians dying at the hands of American forces in the middle of the night” and that this most recent massacre is therefore nothing aberrational for them. But that’s the point: there is a country here whose government is continuously extinguishing innocent human life, whose policies are grounded in the belief that “human life is already cheap,” and whose population is largely indifferent when it happens. That country is not Afghanistan.

WTF. First of all, leave it to the New York Times to accuse the Taliban of “depicting” incidents such as these as “atrocities.” As if it’s somehow a terrorist sleight-of-hand to refer to the cold-blooded massacre of 9 children as an atrocity.

Secondly, just imagine for a moment if you will, American audience, that a foreign power was occupying you country, burning copies of the Bible, pissing on the graves of your dead, and stalking the night killing your children.

And now tell me that you wouldn’t seek the violent expulsion of those foreign occupying forces from your land. Tell me you wouldn’t do everything in your power to avenge your dead children.

The U.S. needs to leave Afghanitsan. Now. The longer the U.S. stays as an alien, occupying, repressive force, the more such atrocities (if you’ll allow the term) will continue to happen.

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Stalking from home to home, a United States Army sergeant methodically killed at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan on Sunday, igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility, Afghan and American officials said.

Following the attacks, the Taliban threatened vengeance, as the insurgents often do after Western actions they depict as atrocities. A Taliban statement posted online on Monday denounced the killings, saying they were the latest in a series of humiliations against the Afghan people and denying that any Taliban fighters had been in the area.

Coming after a period of deepening public outrage, spurred by the Koran burning by American personnel last month and an earlier video showing American Marines urinating on dead militants, the possibility of a violent reaction to the killings added to a sense of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described growing concern over a cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge.

I don’t know what’s worse:

That the US has been engaged in the targetted assassination via unmanned drones of “people on a terrotist list” — none of whom have been judicially charged or properly found guilt of anything — within the borders of Pakistan, despite the non-existence of a formally-declared war and its concomitant protocols between the two nations …

 … Or that Obama has admitted that the drone strikes are “kept on a very tight leash,” by his administration, meaning that he can’t claim ignorance or non-responsibility in the face of the mountain of evidence proving the U.S. has committed untold war crimes by slaughtering hundreds — if not thousands — of innocent people in Pakistan with the strikes.  

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US President Barack Obama has confirmed that unmanned drones have regularly struck Pakistan’s tribal areas in his government’s efforts to dismantle what it alleges are al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the region.

Obama’s rare public acknowledgement of the US drone programme in Pakistan came on Monday during an hour-long online video chat with users of the Google+ social network.

Obama said the strikes were a “targeted focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists”.