Manchester Terrorist Attack

Your last sentence is 100% correct. Racism, bigotry and hate are absolutely social constructs. However, they are each motivated by fear, which isn’t.

You’re also right about the child studies that seem to contradict evolutionary theories. They do exist and have shown outcomes that suggest an acceptance of “the other” by children as young as two, but not a great deal younger.

A two year old has already had millions of experiential learnings so when you study them it is invalid to assume they are a “clean slate” psychologically. They are already impacted by the rules of society to an extent, even if just through day to day interactions.

It’s differences like this though that make the field of psychology fascinating. It’s still very young in terms of science (bear in mind it is still taught in Australian universities as an “Arts” degree). It is also informed by societal situations and topics such as “racism”, therefore you see a lot of studies recently like the ones you mentioned above appearing in response to “hot topics”. It’s another reason why I give more weight to the evolutionary theories that have been studied properly for nearly a century than to the relatively small body of studies around the “racism” questions, which itself is a relatively new concept for humans. (by which, I mean, exclusion of people based on race has until very, very recently been accepted as valid by society and therefore not investigated).

Like I said, Fascinating bunch, us humans.

I’m not interested in turning this thread into another exercise in partisan political point scoring (Obomber / Killary - really? please spare us this juvenile drivel), but my understanding is that the US put a hold on arms sales to SA under Obama due to concerns over civilian casualties in Yemen. Presumably, this is not a concern to the Trump administration. Regardless of whether the GOP or Dems are in power, arming the Saudis to the teeth and painting Iran as the black-hatted bad guys seems like a cynical and grossly hypocritical exercise.

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And yet here you are again. I do agree with you arming the Saudis is a pointless exercise, however the Saudis will just buy from whomever they can. It is not only the US that sells arms.

So Obama put a hold on the arms sales? Must have been after Hillary had got these deals through, hey?

On Christmas Eve in 2011, Hillary Clinton and her closest aides celebrated a $29.4 billion sale of over 80 F-15 fighter jets, manufactured by U.S.-based Boeing Corporation, to Saudi Arabia. In a chain of enthusiastic emails, an aide exclaimed that it was “not a bad Christmas present.” While Clinton’s State Department was deeply invested in getting weapons to Saudi Arabia, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the weapons manufacturer Boeing. The very same jets that were used in 2015 and more recently to bomb the crap out of the poor old Yemenis.

The most recent Saudi weapons deal was made in November 2015, a deal worth $1.29 billion that included 22,000 smart and general purpose bombs, and over 5,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits to convert older bombs into precision-guided weapons using GPS signals. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency justified the sales, saying they helped “sustain strong military-to-military relationships between the United States and Saudi Arabia.”

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

Eight years of bombing and continuing conflict and making record arms deals, yeah Obomber and Killary fits nicely. You do know that they aren’t used for keeping the rabbit population down, don’t you?

As someone who has been on the other end of US provided arms I can tell you that it is not much fun.

We start to screw kids over when we send them to pre-school and then school. The beginning of really learning about fear and hate; especially for poor little catholics.

On a side tangent aren’t F15s primarily only for air superiority/interceptors? The F16s and F18s more for bombing runs?

The cynic in me sees the US & Russia fueling, and profiting from, an arms race between Saudis & Iran respectively. Otherwise, as I say, I’m not interested in debating partisan politics, though I find Trump repulsive as a person.

They’re all multirole fighters these days. Initially F-15s and 16s were primarily fighters but upgrades over 3-4 decades have given them lots of ground attack capabilities.

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Yeah, I do agree with that. I think the example of spiders/snakes/dragons holds true, but not ‘you look different’ example - at least not today, for whatever reasons. Children simply do not have this inbuilt - or if they do, it is re-written within minutes.

Edit: ok, I just read the next Dingus post.
Yep, I was not considering children under 2.

Ive been keeping a close eye on that for a while for personal reasons. Duterte declared a state of lawlessness across all the philippines not long after he was elected. The recent clash in Mindanao was just what he wanted I suspect. Since declaring Martial Law in Mindanao human rights abuse has excalated further across the whole Country. Now only a few hours ago he is hinting of Martial Law for the whole place. I fear for the poor Filipino’s. Most of them saw Duterte as some shining saviour.

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But we’re led to believe he has +80% support of the population for his agenda. Or has he employed S Hussein’s former polling company? You’re guaranteed a favourable result when they’re doing the numbers.

It depends, of course, on who’s telling the story. I got sent one the other day claiming those kind of approval figures. On closer inspection the figures actually came from the Police department.

No doubt he won the election easily. I think it was mainly from the young voters. All the older Filipinos I know…the ones that remeber Marcos and his martial law, didn’t.

I found this interesting. The world keeps on focusing on refugees as if it is going to solve the problem. As stated earlier by someone else, the problem isnt coming from outside. Much like in Australia, it is homegrown. We continue to focus on everything except funding for mental health, meanwhile ISIS and the like are happy to give people somewhere to turn who may have been just as happy to accept legitimate help.

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Actually Sal, while there may be some evidence for this theory, I would still maintain that Fark Carlton is something that continues to grow and fester as you are subjected to this vile entity. In fact, in my very early days of footy, we had Carlscum players regularly attend our pie nights; John Nicholls (when he wasn’t in jail), Sergio Sausage and a few others. I quickly found that the kids on our Team who were 'Scum supporters were mostly showboats, never went in for the hard ball and ran the other way when the fight started.

I never hated them when I first attended AFL with my Dad, and we went to many games at Princes Park as it was on the tram line to our home. The "Scum supporters in the outer were drunks and not very nice, and we stopped going to games there because of it. It was safer in the outer at Vic Park or even Punt Road.

So while there could be a genetic influence; I like it is more environmental.

Human nature.

That is not the case in France though, those I believe have all been external rather than home grown. Certainly here and US, and even in the UK most seem to be home grown though.

So are a huge amount of things we have ‘socialised out’ though. Just because competition is human nature does not mean we cannot adapt to far larger and diverse social structures.

So, A teenage concert and now an ice-cream parlour. Oh the courage of these people.

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Very sad and despicable. Attacking people as they celebrate their holy month is pathetic.

ISIS are just full on terrorists/thugs who hide behind the cloak of Islam - They are as Muslim as you or me.

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And most of the disillusioned misfits they recruit just yearn to fire machine guns and cut off heads.

Lord of the Flies in real life.

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