206 Responses to Open Thread Friday

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  1. Jeff Waters says:
    May 6, 2013 at 1:38 pm

    Any chance of a new open thread please?

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  2. Louis Robinson says:
    May 6, 2013 at 1:44 pm

    Is there is no sense of irony left in Beebland? In a tweet. Mark Mardell has linked to an article written by Alan Strathern who comes from Oxford University (so it must be true).

    The article deals with Buddhists who attacked Muslims in Burma and Sri Lanka. I don’t quibble with Prof Strathern’s premise. “However any religion starts out, sooner or later it enters into a Faustian pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings, the ultimate wielders of violence, for the support, patronage and order that only they could provide. Kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only such a high moral vision can confer.” (For the purposes of this exercise please replace “Buddhist” for Muslim”).

    Ooops! That’s not acceptable, is it?

    But what is ironic about this? It’s Mardell’s tweet. He asks: “Can ANY religion be a ‘religion of peace’?” Excuse me while I pick myself off the floor wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22356306

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  3. noggin says:
    May 6, 2013 at 2:49 pm

    obama on assad … any use of chemical weapons, will be a red line not to be crossed/game changer etc, as the narrative was pushed that the goverment was using them with no evidence.
    obama on jihadis actually using chemical weapons .. we need much more time to collate information, vigorous investigation … ya da ya da ya da.

    the news this morning says there is evidence the jihadis have used them and that the assad gov has not.
    then we have the bbc report.

    bbc
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188

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