Islamic Hacker Group Resumes Attacks On Banks 306
tsamsoniw writes "PNC, Bank of America, SunTrust, and other major financial institutions have experienced a wave of DDoS attacks and site outages over the past couple of days, and Islamic extremist hacker group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters is claiming responsibility. The group, which launched similar attacks earlier this year, reiterated its demands: that a controversial YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed "be eliminated from the Internet.""
Its becoming clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion is a disease of the mind, its victims need treatment, not mocking or pity or hate
Re:Its becoming clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion is a disease of the mind, its victims need treatment, not mocking or pity or hate
But the mocking is so much fun!
Re:Its becoming clear (Score:5, Insightful)
> Religion is a disease of the mind, its victims need treatment
It is not just religion, it is any kind of "us vs them" tribalism.
Re:Its becoming clear (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not just religion, it is any kind of "us vs them" tribalism.
Just remember the "us vs them" is not always the result of tribalism. In this case the "them" are muslim political fundamentalists that will accept no other system in the globe except the Caliphate and Sharia. If you would rather keep your freedoms and the principles of the Englightenment then you fall into the "us" group. These are not "tribes" in the nationalistic sense (which perhaps was what you meant) - it is a fundamental battle of civilizations between those that seek to embrace all cultures, or those that believe that God commands that impose a particular political system be imposed around the globe (and which cannot be questioned). Islam is not alone in this singular view, it just happens to be the most active in it at the moment and is growing more and more active.
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The prophet David Byrne once said " In the future it will be a relief to find a place with no culture".
This was corroborated by the prophet Jagger who said " You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you'll find, you get what you need."
Re:Its becoming clear (Score:4, Insightful)
religion is something people came up with to explain the unexplained. once we can explain stuff we're much better off (or at least feel more comfortable about it). think about the weird shit that's happened in the past.. all because we just "didn't know"
we don't have witch hunts any more - because we can explain a lot of things which were construed as witchcraft at one time. ...discovering things using science is awesome, but as you said, religion will always be around because science can't explain things what really happens to our consciousness after we die.
we don't sacrifice humans anymore because that's not really going to appease the gods and grant us a bountiful harvest the next season.
we don't name constellations anymore because we figured out.. they're just stars.
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It's not about 'religion'. It's about how easy it is to incite people into doing whatever you want them to. I present to you the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, all this is bullshit when you have Americans debating the merits of torture.
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The Crusades.....you mean a defensive war waged against muslims by christians? Palastine was settled by christians and muslims came and took it over (ie, the muslims invaded).
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Re:Its becoming clear (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of folks have diseases of the mind, but somehow manage to be only a minor annoyance or slight nuisance to others. Like the crazy lady who hurls cats at me.
Others seem Hell-bent on trying to make their sickness impact my personal freedom and values of liberal democracy as greatly as possible on my front lawn.
The Founding Fathers spoke of "Freedom of Religion," but they really meant "Freedom from Religion", of others, as well.
Democracy, not Theocracy.
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Re:Its becoming clear, insightful my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Islam extremists represent all religious minded folks.
What's that nerds are usually so adamant about? Something about not painting everyone with one brush?
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Trolling, but arguably with some truth. The only difference between religion and delusion is in the number of followers.
Different level of severity (Score:2)
Religion is a disease of the mind,
Diseases came in many forms and severity
Similar to diseases, religions came in many forms and have different levels of severity
That hacker group happened to be from one with the terminal effects - suicide bomber is but one of the many examples
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This includes the religion of atheism.
Religion can be anything from mild interest to obsession with any dogma right up to the Rocky Horror Picture Show or NASCAR.
Money worship is the most popular religion in the world.
Of course my tagline gives away my personal favorite. But where else can you get eternal salvation or triple your money back?
Mocking? We are the pros!
Someone tell me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Someone tell me (Score:4)
You can (some sites have before), but doing so takes up resources and won't necessarily stop all the different attack vectors. DDoS can use multiple approaches aside from just flooding the server with requests. You can, in theory, protect against all the known attacks, but that requires time and money before the attack starts, which might be wasted if you never get attacked (you don't typically want 10x your expected maximum load worth of bandwidth just sitting around unless you absolutely need it, for example).
No it's not wasted. (Score:3)
You can (some sites have before), but doing so takes up resources and won't necessarily stop all the different attack vectors. DDoS can use multiple approaches aside from just flooding the server with requests. You can, in theory, protect against all the known attacks, but that requires time and money before the attack starts, which might be wasted if you never get attacked (you don't typically want 10x your expected maximum load worth of bandwidth just sitting around unless you absolutely need it, for example).
What you need is enough redundancy so that DDOS is worthless. You also need near instantaneous recovery time. A cloud network could provide redundancy and virtualization could decrease recovery time. The attack vectors also aren't unlimited so unless it's some sort of zero-day it's going to be known.
Re:Someone tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well stated (sorry i dont have modpoints today)
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forget even being a liberal democracy.
This is the Internet. the only thing that get's lost on the Net are morals. And even that depends on the person.
Sure things come and go. but I googled a website I created 15 years ago. The severs and pages long ago stopped working, but I found it in 4 different caches.
Once it is on the NET it never goes away. Now think about that while posting that picture on Facebook
Re:Someone tell me (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because these terrorists are ignoramuses from countries where control of everything is centralized in a dictator or a theocracy, so naturally they can't comprehend of a liberal democracy where this might not be the case.
Ah, but they can comprehend a liberal democracy. Anything which challenges the fixed set of beliefs their cowardly windbag guides brainwash them into accepting without question is the enemy, particularly a place in this world where they could actually think for themselves, which is particularly cold and lonely if you've never never thought for yourself.
I once was astounded people chose to be prisoners of thought, until I began to understand the Stockholm Syndrom [wikipedia.org]
These people will do great harm to themsel
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Wag the dog. They've got us all shooting at each other.
Re:Someone tell me (Score:4, Insightful)
so naturally they can't comprehend of a liberal democracy where this might not be the case.
Wrong. They understand what liberal democracy it. It is just they reject it utterly because they believe they are commanded by God to do so (according to their teachings). Similarly, parts of the political classes in the West are starting to utterly reject the notions of the political Islamists, since it seeks to eventually replace all other systems. Please don't confuse each 'side' with not comprehending each other's point of view. Both positions are pretty well understood. It is just that each side rejects the other. Note, however, that liberal democracy can tolerate aspects of the religious myths of Islam (eg. Muslim Israelis are tolerated, even in the IDF, for example). What liberal democracy rejects is the political system of Islam and the tyrrany of some parts of the religion [eg. poor treatment of women, the non-egalitarian concept of dhimmitude, the inability to question the clerics etc]).
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That's also a question, but I'm not sure that's "the real question". To me, why a giant corporation with business-critical e-commerce systems can't withstand a DDoS is a more puzzling question than why there exists, somewhere in the world, someone with stupid opinions.
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My guess is that they feel if they can disrupt the services of banks it will in turn disrupt the functioning of many organisations that rely on those banks for financial services. This would have a negative effect on the economy as a whole (which is already in bad shape) and possibly get the attention of the government to do something to stop it.
Now, I don't feel this is actually going to work like that but that is my best guess at what they were attempting.
Or maybe they figured a lot of banks higher ups a
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The real question is, why do these hackers think the banks are responsible for this video or have any way to even take it down --from the internet, much less.
When the banks refused to process donations they very nearly destroyed wikileaks.
Maybe their reasoning isn't quite so far-fetched after all.
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The online services did a risk assessment and decided the risk was to great to continue accepting funds related to Wikileaks. At the time there were serious concerns about the legality of releasing some of the information. If the services had continued to accept funds they could have been charged as being complicit in distributing information protected under certain laws and regulations. Just being charged can require spending large amounts of money to defend a company even if the charges are bullshit. The
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I'm not sure if it's that, exactly, of if it's simply that they believe that financial institutions are the cornerstone of the Western system of global control and that by fighting banks they are striking the root of evil rather than wasting energy hacking away at its branches.
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... Does YouTube have a DDoS problem from this group, too?
DDoS probably but problem? No.
YouTube is a massively distributed service, like Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. and it is close to impossible to take out the entire distributed service. They may take out some parts if they're really good, but most of the service will remain. DDoS is only really efficient on sites hosted on single servers or small clusters with single points of failures.
The best DDoS looks exactly like regular traffic, but most tools do quantity, not quality. Duplicated packages, invalid chec
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It's quite obvious-- the decadence of the west, and the unwillingness of its peoples to embrace the joy that is to found in submission to a particular brand of monotheism, can only be properly understood by blaming the Jews, who through the banks and Hollywood, control the world. This also explains why an ordinary office tower bearing the name "World Trade Center" became a target. To truly understand, you must leave rationality behind, and embrace the conspiracy.
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you stop it before it crosses YOUR wan (or lan) link.
ie, push filters outward to your cooperative isp's so that its stopped there.
(no idea if anyone does that, but its how it should be done)
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Filtering takes more resources than just blindly passing everything on. Why would an ISP accept filters from non-customers? Especially a bank?
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A bunch of connections coming in from a large group of IP addresses with random timing. Each made to look like it could be a legitimate customer looking at the site. What is your suggestion?
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Based on what criteria? If everything, you're down anyway.
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I've had good results with piping to /dev/null
lol. disconnecting from the network usually brings system load back to 0.01, too.
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How does that get good results?
If you do nothing about the attack, your site is down. /dev/null, your site is still down.
If you pipe all traffic to
Being down is not better than being down, those two things are the same thing.
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A bunch of connections coming in from a large group of IP addresses with random timing. Each made to look like it could be a legitimate customer looking at the site. What is your suggestion?
Compared to the bandwidth available at their data centers a bazillion connections attempts ain't nothing at all. The problem is typically with the processing overhead to handle the connection attempts and the bandwidth consumed in giving them a fuill-blown response. All that can be mitigated with a front-end box whose job is simply to handle the 3-way tcp handshake and transmit a very light-weight page with some javascript on it that must run in order to get to the real processing heavy main page.
You risk
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That certainly does help, but javascript engines and browser libraries are widely available these days. If the javascript is TOO non-trivial, real customers with old PCs will start complaining.
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Yep, as are most things in life, it is a trade-off. In the case of a DDOS the goal is only to weather the storm, and then go back to a less intrusive set up once the DDOSers give up.
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I don't see why you would think Internet Explorer, all jokes about the browser aside, couldn't run some javascript.
Tens of millions of infected PCs are performing the attack, and the infection is using the same rendering engine as any other of the banks customers would.
The infected PCs are no different than the PCs their real customers use (outside of being infected), there is nothing what so ever about the two that looks any different.
Anything they add to prevent an infected computer from doing, they will
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Why do you think IE is even involved?
Re:Someone tell me (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked to help a company under DDOS attack mitigate the threat.
Their normal bandwidth usage was on the order of 400Mbps, they has about 1Gbps of capacity. They were peered to several regional NOCs that maintained about 50Gbps of connectivity, I believe. Keep in mind that 50Gbps with multiple peers costs on the order of $400,000 per year, if my math is correct.
Well, regardless, the DDoS attacks from a single individual (who was later identified) were pushing about 60Gbps (!?!) of attack bandwidth. They not only overwhelmed the provider and their small datacenter, but the upstream NOC as well. The other issue is that the DDoS attacks were coming from a huge number of endpoints, sometimes 100,000 or more, so it was not practical to simply blacklist all of their networks, especially since many were on cable modems, or other servers in major companies that had been infected with some botnet, or otherwise.
On the whole, a major financial institution CAN mitigate these attacks. You should note that the Bank of America website is still up.
However, I estimate it costs them in excess of $100,000 per month to do so.
Cloud computing is the easy way (Score:2)
Why can't these financial institutions stop a DDOS? I am being serious. Why can't these be mitigated at a data center?
DDOS isn't hard to stop. Cloud computing at a datacenter would stop it just fine. When one server goes down if the cloud is based on virtualization such as with VMWare then another instance of the OS would replace it instantly. It would make the DDOS attempts completely ineffective.
Of course there are more details in implementing this but this problem has been solved.
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It's not a question of systems of servers going down, it's a question of overloading the targets data transmission capability. If the attacker can push move data down the line than the target can handle, then even if none of the targets systems go down, you've still disrupted their ability to do business. Even if they only are able to send 50% to 75% of a targets capacity, they have still reduced the overall effectiveness of the target and have disrupted their ability to conduct business as usual.
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Re:Someone tell me (Score:5, Informative)
Because the DDOS isn't coming from those say... 10 computers. It's coming from god knows how many computers in a botnet made up of computers from probably every country that has computers connected to the internet.
That's a long name (Score:5, Funny)
...and Islamic extremist hacker group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters is claiming responsibility
Man, they really need a simpler name. A catchy logo would help, too.
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Man, they really need a simpler name. A catchy logo would help, too.
Who cares what their name is. Clearly they are doing this to get their 72 Interest Free Credit Cards on the other side... Wait, wut?
Re:That's a long name (Score:5, Funny)
Man, they really need a simpler name. A catchy logo would help, too.
I propose calling them Muhhackers and the logo could be Muhammad with a logic bomb in his turban.
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Mujahackeen!
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Simple: A cool turban logo with the words "I hack you!"
Duuuurrrrrr...... 'cos the ones with the turbans are the musilimsms riiight?! durrr..
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Simple:
A cool turban logo with the words "I hack you!"
Do they make turbans in the shape of a dunce cap?
Maybe we should make dunce caps in the shape of turbans?
Misdirected anger? (Score:5, Insightful)
The group ... reiterated its demands: that a controversial YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed "be eliminated from the Internet."
And these idiots think the banks are responsible and/or control the Internet and its content? - sigh
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And these idiots think the banks are responsible and/or control the Internet and its content? - sigh
Remember that some of these people live under regimes where no media is ever created without government involvement, or at least complicity.
they put the wacky in the www (Score:2)
one of these days, somebody is going to say fuck it, and once they find country of origin, are going to organize a targeted DDOS back to them that wipes their TLDs off the web for weeks, months, or years. maybe then we can get some international leadership to put these nitwits in a can with Prince Albert and lock them in the fridge to see how fast it's running.
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The group ... reiterated its demands: that a controversial YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed "be eliminated from the Internet."
And these idiots think the banks are responsible and/or control the Internet and its content? - sigh
Maybe that's not as far from the truth as you think.
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More likely they think the general public care what happens to big banks. Which is almost true kinda...
Well, I like to know my money is safe, so I think most people do care about the safety of banks, even if they don't trust those who run their banking system. Now that's a conundrum! Alas, if this group wanted to really make Americans upset, they would have targeted Netflix or Twitter ... or Facebook. Any service that people use a lot and find rather indispensable. Instagram??
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No they aren't. They've yet to kill a single person with this attack, nor is there any reasonable scenario where they possibly could. Don't libel.
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He does make some sense if we think according to these protesters calling for the Mohammad movie producers to be punished. The protesters' reasoning is that if person A embarks on a provocative act, and person B escalates by responding violently, then person A is responsible for the consequences. Responsibility is placed on the source of the provocation rather than the source of the escalation. That logic tends to backfire.
Re:Misdirected anger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, the "Innocence of Muslims" video was created by a Coptic (Egyptian Christian) to point out bad aspects of Mohammed (eg. marrying a 6 year old and ) and Islam. The video has terrible production values and is completely insensitive, but I think the core concepts actually come from the Qur'an itself.
The video was intended to show hypocracy, highlight the nastier aspects of the Qur'an, and show inflame Muslims (who are insensitive and increasingly violent to Copts). The real problem is not the video, it is: the oversensitivity of Muslims to any criticism, eg. they immediately turn to violence; and the craven cowardice of supposedly free societies who do not stand up for free speech and instead appease the violent who are clearly breaking local laws. This may sound harsh, but free speech requires the right to offend, even with a dumb and insulting (but scripturally accurate, AFAIK) video. Ignoring violent acts because of a video is not what the police should be doing - but they are currently cowed. How is this healthy in the long term?
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Fuck them (Score:2)
'nuff said
Re:Fuck them (Score:5, Interesting)
The muslims or the banks?
Snark aside, I think we should encourage the transition from real to this kind of financial cyber-terrorism - not only does it not get anyone killed, but the targets have almost certainly deserved it many times over. Heck, harassing the banks could well end up helping the economy by hindering their ability to parasite off it.
Two evils duking it out is great for the rest of us, who get a break from both, and some free entertainment on top of it. Make some popcorn, pop a few beers, and watch the fireworks.
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The muslims or the banks?
Snark aside, I think we should encourage the transition from real to this kind of financial cyber-terrorism - not only does it not get anyone killed, but the targets have almost certainly deserved it many times over. Heck, harassing the banks could well end up helping the economy by hindering their ability to parasite off it.
Two evils duking it out is great for the rest of us, who get a break from both, and some free entertainment on top of it. Make some popcorn, pop a few beers, and watch the fireworks.
Since the last part of your is ubiquitous here, I'm starting to wonder if people really are eating popcorn while reading articles.
Not that I'm into Islamist hackers or anything (Score:2)
Re:Not that I'm into Islamist hackers or anything (Score:5, Funny)
wrecking havoc
Oh, no! Our precious havoc!
"Hackers" who don't understand the Internet (Score:2)
A short sharp shock needed (Score:3)
If Islam is that threatened by a badly produced video from a religious group, maybe it just needs a bigger push to bring it down.
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Perhaps a demonstration of Islam and Rule 34 is in order. (Actually, it most likely already exists and many of these people know of it. The hypocrisy of many religious folks is pretty spectacular at times)
Extremist group? (Score:3)
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Not really. Anonymous either does it for the laughs, the "prestige", or just to release records that will increase government transparency or reveal corporate corruption.
Anonymous does not hack McDonald's and then demand that Toys R Us reduce the retail price of Barbie toys by 50%.
Retaliate! (Score:5, Funny)
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At 8pm EST Dec. 13 let's all DDOS God! Repeat Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah ...
Heaven.com replies: "I'm sorry but there is no one here by that name."
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lol! someone upvote parent.
the only sensible thing... (Score:2)
The only sensible thing is to give the video more exposure.. Anyone got a link?
Giddy Up! (Score:2)
Streisand Effect? (Score:2)
Explain to them the Streisand Effect. Then explain Babs is a Jew, and they are using Jewish tactics on the banks. Sit back and watch the circular hate shut them down.
How can you know enough to mount a DDOS attack... (Score:2)
...and not know how impossible it is to remove that video from the internet?
Most cyber attacks are simple to stop (Score:2)
Blah! (Score:3)
There are about a million good reasons why the banks should be attacked if not completely destroyed. That blasted movie is NOT one of them.
I wonder if the attackers are aware that their actions in this case work exactly against their interests.
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Better yet:
Throw pine cones at 24 Sussex Dr. in Ottawa.
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How about we just eliminate all of the Prophet Mohammed's followers from the face of the earth?
Maybe the banks should tell them if they don't stop the they'll retaliate by bombing Mecca with pigs.
I've really had enough of these shit-heads.
Re:How stupid do they think we really are? (Score:5, Insightful)
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How about we just eliminate all of the Prophet Mohammed's followers from the face of the earth?
...
So, I guess that means you're part of a non-Prophet organization.
(Nothing like a bad pun)
Cheers,
Dave
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These Islamists want to control you and your life. Convert or suffer. Yes, they are weak now, but that may not always be the case. All you pricks that crap on Israel need to know that millions of Muslims, perhaps not a majority, but millions of Muslims hate you.
Well, this is a good example of why religions are stupid and harmful. Hate? Is that what religions teach? Hate me because I'm different? Because I'm a white American? Or is it because I don't believe in religions? I don't hate you, I don't hate anyone. If being religious means I need to hate, I DO NOT WANT!
I don't care what you believe, but if you hate me because of your beliefs, then you have some serious problems.
Re:Islamism is the Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
When the Christians come up with government support to kill you for being an atheist I'll start to consider them a bigger threat. Until then you're neglecting the bigger picture. Most likely because you have a chip on your shoulder and haven't seriously considered how much your life would be totally fucked in a Muslim nation. And so it goes.
Why is it that every article about Islam brings out the Christian bashers in droves? I guess these kinds of people have no perspective. In some countries your post would get you jailed (and worse) for admitting to be an atheist. Tell me how the Christians are doing this to you again? Show me the great Christian theocracy is that you guys claim is just as bad as nations that openly support Sharia law.
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Currently, there is an insignificant number of Christians who will try to kill you for your beliefs. There is, in contrast, a rather significant number of Muslims who would love to string our atheist asses up. Well, they'd probably stone us to death.
Re:Islamism is the Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, yes. The Islamists are actively trying to kill the Israelis, and more specifically the Jews. That justifies self-defense, does it not? Truth be told, the Palestinians in Israel get better treatment than most Arabs in other countries. They only complain because of the Jews.
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Last I checked, Israelis weren't trying to kill all the Palestinians. Last I checked, most Palestinians were pretty keen on killing all the Jews. No matter what Israel does, from leaving Gaza to providing free hospital care, the Palestinians insist on trying to kidnap and kill Jews. Fuck them.
You're probably one of the idiots with his own personal definition of antisemitism.
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Someone should tell them the "whole internet" has a secret broadcast IP address and if you want to DDOS the whole fucking internet, you just enter "127.0.0.1" into "IP to DDOS" field and click "start attack".
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