https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/world/asia/islamic-state-tajikistan-bike-attack.html

Of course, being the NY Times, the article failed to mention they were all stabbed after being run over.

Evil does exist.

Throughout history, it has been courageous people, like these two, who have chosen (or, in many cases, have been chosen by others) to put their lives in danger, and who (voluntarily or involuntarily) sacrificed their lives, to demonstrate that there are other, better, ways to live.

That legacy, spread among all of those disparate peoples that this couple interacted with, will live on.

This is not in any way an excuse for their murders, but recognition that sometimes (like battlefield deaths) these tragedies are not, in the end, entirely in vain.

[EDITED TO ADD: I just heard this on a You Tube video I put on while I am doing some re-organizing work: "The purpose of life is not to write history, but to BE history." By: David Solomon. This is close to what I was trying to say in my post above.]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2019 05:28PM by Tevai.

I don't read the NYT (paywall, all that), although I do pick it up once in a while in the coffee shop discard bin (cheapo, here). Were the bikers going through Tajikistan to make a cultural or political point, or just bikers doing Asia? Awfully naive, either way.

Has the NYT covered the Islamist murder of Christians in Nigeria and the Congo?

On the bright side, the Islamic State (Middle East, at least) has finally been extinguished. And in Italy, police were able to rescue a schoolbus full of children which had been taken over by a terrorist, seconds before he spread gasoline over the floor and ignited it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2019 05:30PM by caffiend.

> On the bright side, the Islamic State (Middle
> East, at least) has finally been extinguished.

Are you familiar, my friend, with Gus Avocado's brilliant Tale of the Zen Master?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2L1-TgfKb4

It's worth considering in the IS case. Who fills the vacuum between Iraq and Syria now that IS is gone? Assad, the mad chemical bomber, from the west; and Iran from the east, both with close assistance from Russia. And what of the Kurds, the best army in the area, who are now exposed directly to Turkish and Syrian forces.

The Greek Avocado was speaking of the Russian retreat from Afghanistan, of course. A good thing? We'll see. The same applies to a solution that expands Iranian power all across the northern tier of the Middle East to the Mediterranean.

We'll see.

Religion has been the cause for evil and war, slaughters of millions.

What I keep hearing over and over is the lament " he/ she was such a nice person. Generous and kind to a fault. You couldn't find a more generous and thoughtful person on this earth.

What I was taught when I first went biking after being almost run over in the kind state of California by another biker was to carry a piece of heavy chain with me at all times. That was so I could break the windshield of any car trying to run me over. The person who told me this was not a kind person, a degenerate if one just looked at how he dressed. He wasn't a kind person but he acknowledged that there was evil in the world and if you did not take action, evil will win. He showed me his scars from when he was a nice guy and let evil win. To me, he was extremely kind, tho he did not feed me nor shelter me from rain. He taught me about the wild world.

I later saw the windshield of a person who got hit with a chain from a biker who the driver decided to squish since he had a bad day. His day was made horrific with glass in his face and eyes from a shattered windshield. His car had to be towed. Police were called. It was noted that the biker was saving his own life.

I am not victim blaming. In the story he said that there was evil out there. So many people were nice to him, helped them, cared about them. He returned the kindness. But if there is evil out there, you have to respond in kind. Be a Bastard. Its hard for kind, nice, wonderful people to do. But, especially with religions( watching cults on tv and the horrific beating from Tony Alamo given to children 150 beatings with a paddle to a child of 10) when youre in an ultra religious area, people are going to be bastards. Survive.