Apple's Tim Cook takes hardline stance against consumer data sharing, government snooping and terror

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  • Reply 101 of 122
    steven n.steven n. Posts: 1,229member
    Precisely.

    Either Muslims say that the Koran counts for nothing, and by extension their religion, or they hold what is written in the Koran to be correct and believe that all non-Muslims must die. Even if most Muslims reject this teaching of the Koran, the terrorist atrocities committed in the past year by those calling themselves Muslims indicate that only a tiny minority of Muslims need to believe this in order for it to be a grave threat to the safe being of non-Muslims around the world.

    This is why a large proportion of the non-Muslim world see Islam as such a threat. There is no call from Christians to destroy all other faiths or peoples, as one of the Commandments of the Bible forbids the killing of our fellow men.
    I won't even go into how you don't have the first understanding of what is in the Christian bible. You really should read the book in its entirety before making patently false statements.
  • Reply 102 of 122
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    .

    Really? What love and care and understanding was 'Jihadi John' (I detest that term, makes him sound like a cartoon character like 'Joe Camel') lacking?

    I had to leave a lot out of a late night, too-long post, and I knew this morning I would get jumped on for "knowledge, understanding, more history and empathy."

    The time to block the formation of this round of fascism may be past, we shall see. Instead of preventing, we once again enabled and actively created. The brutal sanctions and the final betrayal and beheading of Iraq, and the botched occupation, are what created this fascist moment—just as the vengeful and humiliating terms of the treaty of Versailles created German fascism only 90 years ago. Everyone acknowledges this, but the American neocons ignored it when they trumped up excuses to invade Iraq.

    Now that we've created this Hydra, violence is going to be used to suppress it, but a parallel investigation should go with the violence, aimed at understanding our failure to prevent, and aimed at an attempt to avoid, further recruiting to the fascist cause.

    You are the one who introduced the slippery terms of "love and care." These might be worthy reprogramming methods to try on prisoners, but I can't imagine them as mass psychological tools. The thing to recognize, though, is that we have already been using mass psychological tools for producing fascists, and that's why we're in this mess. Mass promulgation of historical understanding could be a tool of prevention, and the Atlantic article is a step, even though it falls short in the psychology department. But we now have the tools, and as Tim Cook says, they have to kept private to work.
  • Reply 103 of 122
    steven n.steven n. Posts: 1,229member
    flaneur wrote: »
    No, the point is that Dick and George's War on Terror is what created the opportunity and motivation for the rise of the extremists of whom you speak. If you deny that, you will be staying in character as a deluded, naive ideologue.
    If you believe that, you really are narrow minded and poorly educated on the history of the world and the rise of this conflict. It predates "Dick and George" by generations.
  • Reply 104 of 122
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    steven n. wrote: »
    If you believe that, you really are narrow minded and poorly educated on the history of the world and the rise of this conflict. It predates "Dick and George" by generations.

    How far back you want to go? The Crusades? I'm game. How about the loss of Khazaria to Judiaism? Mohammed's encounter with monotheism while hanging out with a Nestorian Christian on caravan? The betrayal by the British assisted by "Lawrence of Arabia"? Name your era and let's go head to head.

    I was speaking of immediate cause and effect starting in 2003. The illegal invasion of Iraq will go down as the worst mistake yet made by an American hubristic foreign policy, and it led directly to this particular resurgence of parriarchal frenzy. The origin of patriarchy, by the way, parallels the spread of a male war god, and that dates from 4,000 BC and the rise of the Indo-Europeans in the central Asian steppes. Want to go there? That's where you find the origin of the Abrahamic religions.
  • Reply 105 of 122
    mr omr o Posts: 1,046member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Steven N. View Post





    If you believe that, you really are narrow minded and poorly educated on the history of the world and the rise of this conflict. It predates "Dick and George" by generations.



    To be fair,

    America and its allies have made a big mess in the Middle East for the past 20 - twenty that is - years:

     

    Gulf War One

    Gulf War Two

    Afghanistan

    Syria

    ...

     

    We ended up with more - not less - terror. Heck, they treat us all as likely terrorists now! 

    Wouldn't it be better to invest the tax money on renewables instead? The ? car won't need oil ;)

  • Reply 106 of 122
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post



    I had to leave a lot out of a late night, too-long post, and I knew this morning I would get jumped on for "knowledge, understanding, more history and empathy."



    The time to block the formation of this round of fascism may be past, we shall see. Instead of preventing, we once again enabled and actively created. The brutal sanctions and the final betrayal and beheading of Iraq, and the botched occupation, are what created this fascist moment—just as the vengeful and humiliating terms of the treaty of Versailles created German fascism only 90 years ago. Everyone acknowledges this, but the American neocons ignored it when they trumped up excuses to invade Iraq.



    Now that we've created this Hydra, violence is going to be used to suppress it, but a parallel investigation should go with the violence, aimed at understanding our failure to prevent, and aimed at an attempt to avoid, further recruiting to the fascist cause.



    You are the one who introduced the slippery terms of "love and care." These might be worthy reprogramming methods to try on prisoners, but I can't imagine them as mass psychological tools. The thing to recognize, though, is that we have already been using mass psychological tools for producing fascists, and that's why we're in this mess. Mass promulgation of historical understanding could be a tool of prevention, and the Atlantic article is a step, even though it falls short in the psychology department. But we now have the tools, and as Tim Cook says, they have to kept private to work.

    I am astounded by the shallowness and facileness of your post, despite all its big words. I'll grant you that the Iraq war was a massive, neo-con led disaster. Many, many people said so at the time. But that doesn't excuse a damn thing.

     

    Wtf does that have to do with, say, Yazidi women getting raped and men getting slaughtered? Mass butchery of Egyptian Christians? The Jordanian pilot getting burned alive and filmed in glee dying a horrible death for the world to see? Recruiting child soldiers? The barbaric massacre of Kurds -- and reportedly, hundreds of orphans left behind -- in Kobane? Want me to go on?

     

    Honestly, I am revolted by your moral relativism.

  • Reply 107 of 122
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    I am astounded by the shallowness and facileness of your post, despite all its big words. I'll grant you that the Iraq war was a massive, neo-con led disaster. Many, many people said so at the time. But that doesn't excuse a damn thing.

    Wtf does that have to do with, say, Yazidi women getting raped and men getting slaughtered? Mass butchery of Egyptian Christians? The Jordanian pilot getting burned alive and filmed in glee dying a horrible death for the world to see? Recruiting child soldiers? The barbaric massacre of Kurds -- and reportedly, hundreds of orphans left behind -- in Kobane? Want me to go on?

    Honestly, I am revolted by your moral relativism.

    And I'm amazed by your lack of historical and moral insight. The Nazis were as bad or worse, probably worse, but that should only encourage one to understand the origin of such evil. Seriously, check out the literature. There's not only Reich, there are Hanna Ahrendt, Arthur Koestler and a slew of eyewitnesses into the process of how fascism was last created in mass form.

    Who's talking about excusing the murderers? Only you. I'm just talking about not making it worse or creating them again. And it has to do this time with the instrument of "revolution" in the Middle East, the Net-connected pocket computer. The tool that helped further the fascist reaction could also help us defuse it, if we were smart enough. I don't pretend to have that worked out, but it should be part of the discussion, as it is (barely) here in this thread.
  • Reply 108 of 122
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post



    And I'm amazed by your lack of historical and moral insight. The Nazis were as bad or worse, probably worse, but that should only encourage one to understand the origin of such evil. Seriously, check out the literature. 

    What 'literature'? Empathy and understanding is what destroyed the Nazis?

     

    Seriously, what arrant nonsense.

  • Reply 109 of 122
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    What 'literature'? Empathy and understanding is what destroyed the Nazis?

    Seriously, what arrant nonsense.

    One more time. Lack of historical understanding is what produced the Nazis. Once they were able to invade Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, it was too late, and the remedy was to become more destructive than they were militarily. Tragic and avoidable, the more we learn. So that's it. I'm through laying out this generally received basic stuff.
  • Reply 110 of 122
    flaneur wrote: »
    What 'literature'? Empathy and understanding is what destroyed the Nazis?

    Seriously, what arrant nonsense.

    One more time. Lack of historical understanding is what produced the Nazis. Once they were able to invade Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, it was too late, and the remedy was to become more destructive than they were militarily. Tragic and avoidable, the more we learn. So that's it. I'm through laying out this generally received basic stuff.

    The heart of man is what produced the Nazis.
  • Reply 111 of 122
    I'll pass on his platitudes and deceptive practices. He seems to be doing a lot of scare mongering himself without giving any consideration to Freedom Of Choice for customers on how much customers can share with others. He is already thinking like a corporate monopolist and a totalitarian dictator.
  • Reply 112 of 122
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,403member
    I'll pass on his platitudes and deceptive practices. He seems to be doing a lot of scare mongering himself without giving any consideration to Freedom Of Choice for customers on how much customers can share with others. He is already thinking like a corporate monopolist and a totalitarian dictator.

    He makes what he makes. If that doesn't suit your Highness, go and consume something else. Or nothing, for all we (or Apple) could care.
  • Reply 113 of 122
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,403member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post



    One more time. Lack of historical understanding is what produced the Nazis. Once they were able to invade Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, it was too late, and the remedy was to become more destructive than they were militarily. Tragic and avoidable, the more we learn. So that's it. I'm through laying out this generally received basic stuff.

    I am afraid you're seriously misrepresenting things. The Nazis were a state actor. ISIS, Al Qaida, etc were/are not. They are lawless, stateless entities.

     

    So, even if one wanted to reach out with understanding (which I think will amount to a hill of beans with these thugs, who'll probably just send the messengers' heads back on a platter), with whom does one negotiate? About what?

  • Reply 114 of 122
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    carthusia wrote: »
    Not every form of terrorism is "extreme" terrorism. Where do you draw the line? Not being a victim of terrorism, I assume, you have no basis to make such a claim.The Klan prefers to tie them up behind trucks and drag them to death and are thoroughly infiltrated into law enforcement departments  and other positions of almost absolute power all over the country. They terrorize people of color and non-Christians all-the-time. Right now. Whole parts of the South and pacific Northwest, in particular, but not exclusively, are Klan controlled; non-White Christians do not stand a chance. You don't hear about this in the mainstream media. Check other sources, educate yourself. You'll be startled. 

    According to Wikipedia, those people peaked in the 1920s and are now down to something like 6,000-8,000 members. That wouldn't even fill a 1/10th of the seating capacity of the average NFL football stadium. I refuse to even post a link to information on such an organization.
  • Reply 115 of 122
    dunksdunks Posts: 1,254member
    Tim Cook is a champion. He absolutely gets it. This is why I'm more than happy to spend my money supporting this company.
  • Reply 116 of 122
    waterrocketswaterrockets Posts: 1,231member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post





    Yes, there's a clear statement of this point in the article. The US invasion of Iraq created the space for ISIS to move in. Of course, this turns out to be a minor point, given the scope of the rebirth of the caliphate as a fulfillment of Islamic destiny, self-described, based on their fundamentalist interpretation.



    But the article barely addresses a broader and more useful question that concerns us here, including Tim Cook and all of us who care about the topic at hand. The pocket computer/communicator arrives at the very moment when we have a re-emergence of fascism, this time based on the broken psychology of the last and most radical of the patriarchal, male-dominated religions. This is no coincidence.



    Fascism appears when a marginalized, humiliated group with a hegemonic ideology gets a new and powerful mass communication medium. For Hitler and Mussolini it was radio, cinema, and public address systems. For North Korea, television. For ISIS, it's the Internet and cell phone.



    The exact nature of the ideology, its eschatological details, don't matter as much as long as it contains the capacity for final victory and triumph of the previously humiliated patriarchal warriors. For the Italians, a mixture of Roman glory and Catholicism would do. For the Nazis, it was Teutonic mythology derived from Berserker shamanic warfare. These revival cults have no relation to ordinary contemporary people living with the evolved cultural inheritance of the distant tribal past.



    Whether they know it or not, Germans in their beer halls are living out the old ways of Wotan/Odin, leaving out the going-into-battle part, just as modern Muslims have outgrown the beheading of unbelievers.



    American Puritanical Protestants no longer burn witches, but as someone here pointed out, they do kill doctors and bomb abortion clinics. It is both technically correct and viciously wrong to see anti-abortion killers as Christians. They are better thought of as fascists who haven't yet found their mass medium and audience.



    The most interesting and useful approach is that pioneered by Nazi-era psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich in his Mass Psychology of Fascism. The emasculated son of a patriarchal warrior society is the source of the pathology, where the breaking of the normal bonds of human empathy occur and the vital force of the individual is misdirected into destructive behaviors like beheading and mass murder. Our Atlantic author might want to go beyond poor George Orwell, who lacked the psychological breadth to deal with the mind of a Hitler, as the quotes show.



    The real antidote to this round of fascism is the continued expansion of knowledge and understanding, via the same medium of communication that made the perversion possible. We are failing at the understanding part. The Internet is a cacophony of simplistic, adolescent-male memes. We need more history and more empathy.



    By the way, Tim Cook said "eliminate," not "exterminate." I twisted his words earlier. Let's see how he explains the word he used.

     

    Yeah, this is not a simple situation, and not historically unique to any faith. The striking thing to me in the article is how simply ISIS boils down. The article made it really easy to understand.

     

    Then there was the SNL satirical ISIS ad this weekend. I thought it was really funny, and really offensive. Probably the only great bit in that episode. Still highlights the how simple ISIS is, that so many teens can grasp and align with their cause. Scary stuff.

  • Reply 117 of 122
    kovacmkovacm Posts: 59member
    "These people shouldn't exist. They should be eliminated."

    you should not exist! you are terrorist from my point of view and you should not exist.

    - how that sounds? who will eliminated whom first?

    ---

    if you use such rhetoric, what do you expect that will happen?
  • Reply 118 of 122
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    ISIS, Al Qaida, etc were/are not state actors. They are lawless, stateless entities.

    So, even if one wanted to reach out with understanding (which I think will amount to a hill of beans with these thugs, who'll probably just send the messengers' heads back on a platter), with whom does one negotiate? About what?

    Saudi Arabia implements some of the same actions as ISIS:

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/01/raif-badawi-could-be-retried-and-beheaded-family-ensaf-haidar-apostasy

    "Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger who was sentenced to a decade in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, now faces being beheaded for renouncing the religion, his family have said."

    http://www.inquisitr.com/1458897/as-far-as-beheadings-go-saudi-arabia-appears-to-be-competing-with-the-isis-why-is-u-s-turning-a-blind-eye/

    Countries where people can be punished or killed for homosexuality are listed here:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-25927595

    Every country in red is nearly 100% Muslim and most of the ones in orange are too.

    Countries where people can be killed for atheism are listed here:

    http://www.thewire.com/global/2013/12/13-countries-where-atheism-punishable-death/355961/

    "Atheists living in 13 countries risk being condemned to death, just for their beliefs (or non-belief) according to a new, comprehensive report from the International Humanist and Ethical Union out on Tuesday. All 13 countries identified by the study are Muslim majority.

    The countries that impose these penalties are Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. With the exception of Pakistan, those countries all allow for capital punishment against apostasy, i.e., the renunciation of a particular religion. Pakistan, meanwhile, imposes the death penalty for blasphemy, which can obviously include disbelief in God."

    One reason that these countries don't conduct genocide like ISIS is that they aren't mobile. When you have nearly 100% of the population in compliance, you don't need to kill them.

    This doesn't apply across all Muslims worldwide but nobody knows how many it does apply to. These laws are coming from the religion but as with all religions, they are open to interpretation.

    What makes ISIS a terrorist threat when they behead people in the name of Islam but Saudi Arabia an ally when they do the same?

    http://news.sky.com/story/1283751/iraq-accuses-saudi-arabia-of-promoting-genocide

    I'd say that part of the solution to these problems has to be for countries to stop being ruled under religious law. Hundreds of millions of people are living their whole lives under systems of law that promote the idea that murdering people for atheism or homosexuality are legal and appropriate. It's not easy to make that change because the countries are close to 100% part of the religion so they want it like that. Changing it means forming a dictatorship. It's difficult to change people's minds inside the country to eventually become a majority as they can be murdered for this.

    Eliminating the worst offenders is necessary to prevent widespread violence but as long as people are being raised with these ideas, the problems will continue to appear.
  • Reply 119 of 122
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by kovacm View Post



    "These people shouldn't exist. They should be eliminated."



    you should not exist! you are terrorist from my point of view and you should not exist.



    - how that sounds? who will eliminated whom first?



    ---



    if you use such rhetoric, what do you expect that will happen?

     

     

    I agree.

     

    Although you would be hard pushed to find a supporter of terrorism, to say that anyone should be eliminated is dictatorial language reminiscent of fascist regimes. We may feel individually that terrorists should be killed or shouldn’t exist, but when Cook uses those words, it becomes a political statement.

     

    What terrorists do is deeply wrong; but we should not fight evil with evil.

  • Reply 120 of 122
    kovacmkovacm Posts: 59member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost View Post

     

     

     

    I agree.

     

    Although you would be hard pushed to find a supporter of terrorism, to say that anyone should be eliminated is dictatorial language reminiscent of fascist regimes. We may feel individually that terrorists should be killed or shouldn’t exist, but when Cook uses those words, it becomes a political statement.

     

    What terrorists do is deeply wrong; but we should not fight evil with evil.


     

    Like everything in life we should understand problem as deep and wide as possible

    - not to look only on surface.

    I live in Serbia and we all been manipulated to hate muslims and croats 20 years ago - we start war on each other in order to eliminated each other.

     

    It pass 20 years since war. What we accomplished individually for us? Absolutely nothing.

    There are still people that hate opposite side but they usually was NOT in front lines but in warm homes watching RTS (I would say it is equal to today USA FOX news: example); and those who survive hell of war... they are changed for ever (try to make them to go in another war - no way; obviously man need to go through war personally to understand world around him).

     

     

    but let's go back, to first sentence: "we should understand problem as deep and wide as possible". Here is short (and concise) video about todays events and world today: 

     

    btw

    regarding killing. I personally could not kill animal for food, I think it is wrong. But that is my opinion. Reality is that we live in time when we produce more weapons than ever in entire our history.

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