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Darwin Award of the Decade??


41chevy

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From the  DAV News Letter , originally  aired on CBS News

Evil is make believe?? Original story link   https://www.dailywire.com/news/34581/american-couple-believing-evil-make-believe-hank-berrien

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A young American couple who took a year-long bike trip around the world, believing that evil was a make-believe concept, took a fatal route in Tajikistan near the Afghan border, where alleged ISIS terrorists stabbed them to death.

Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, 29, quit their jobs last year in order to make their trip. Austin was a vegan who worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Geoghegan, a vegetarian who worked in the Georgetown University admissions office.

Austin had a personal blog on which he wrote in June 2017, “I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige. I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned. Too many thunderstorms went unwatched, too many gentle breezes unnoticed.”

Their trip, which lasted 369 days, took them from the southernmost tip of Africa in Capetown, South Africa, to Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Montengro, Kosovo, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and finally Tajikistan, where they were murdered along with two other cyclists, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands.

While in Morocco, Austin wrote:

You watch the news and you read the papers and you're led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse.

I don't buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own—it's easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that's quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.

Austin also had some contemptuous words for President Trump:

On the television across the room, Al Jazeera plays softly. Donald Trump has just announced his plans to move an embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the Muslim world is visibly upset. Leaving Rabat a week earlier, we'd pedaled right by a massive peaceful demonstration against the relocation. The television broadcasts footage of protests just like that one stewing up all across the Maghreb, the Middle East, and beyond. As a clip plays of a sullen Trump waddling across the screen, I do my best to disappear into the soft plush of the couch cushion behind me. But American as we may be, no one here seems to mind.

Then, on July 29, 2018, as they were riding their bikes with two other cyclists in Tajikistan, five men exited their car and stabbed all the bicyclists to death.

The New York Times reported:

A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men’s Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back, and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands. Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill “disbelievers.”

CBS News added, “ISIS followed an initial claim of responsibility in print with a video showing the five purported attackers pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

Update: This article originally said the bikers rode through ISIS territory. They were biking through an area of Tajikistan which is "near ISIS territory"

 

Note to self: biking near ISIS-held territory is never a good idea.
Edited by 41chevy
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"OPERTUNITY IS MISSED BY MOST PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS DRESSED IN OVERALLS AND LOOKS LIKE WORK"  Thomas Edison

 “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy shit, what a ride!’

P.T.CHESHIRE

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At least no one can say they lived in fear, be it oh’so short lived. R.I.P. 

On 8/18/2018 at 3:50 AM, mrsmackpaul said:

Well when I read the word vegan I new this was gunna read about some people who think they are far more enlightened than anyone else in the world and from what I have learnt are delusional at best 
I have had to deal with a vegan of late and my goodness what a challenge , I learnt I raped my dairy cows, caused many years of suffering by taking their calves, also learnt Im a cruel person for having dogs or my horses and on and on they go 

So turns out the world isnt as kind as he thought, perhaps if he had spent more time in the real world rather than hiding  behind his "glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige" he would have learnt that the world has plenty of people that will kill ya as soon as look at ya and you need to have your wits about you in the real world 

One good thing about people like this is that even i look sane compared to them 

Biking thru ISIS held territory, yeah thats smart, they wanna kill all of us, you gunna be safe as houses there for sure LOL

 

Paul 

   

Agree. This brand of dilusion may become popular as the virtual world of the “glowing rectangle” blood-sucks people’s common sense. They live on internet cerebral junk food and decide one day to seek a “real, non-virtual, experience”. It’s not like the issues of the Middle East are a best kept secret? Pick up any Bible, read the Book of Judges and you will gladly pedal the extra 500 miles to bypass the Fertile Crescent. 

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How could those two not acknowledge all of the isis, al quaida etc attacks here in the US and other European countries. Talk about your head up in the clouds. 

The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by the people who vote for a living.

The government can only "give" someone what they first take from another.

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Wasn't really thinking up their heads quite up there.. Thinking?? I do believe there may be a bit of frayed wires or dead air in the old skulls.You know Peace, Love and a Vee for victim sign.
Kind of like the lady explaining to me about the gun laws needed in Virginia ( in front of  T and T Gunnery). She asked if I needed a back ground check to buy a "thing" of bullets. Told her no not yet. Her reply was that then you don't need one to even buy a nuclear bomb?
Told her I hope not! I've only got a case of 12 and need at least 40 more to remove some stumps in my back yard.
She thought it was terrible that anybody can go into a gun store and buy an Atomic Bomb with out a back ground check.
 
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Funny

I would have had some fun with her. Tell her that you can buy all of the components at 7-11, the drug store, the grocery store, Home Depot, lowes etc and the instructions are in the high school chemistry and physics book.

Just ask her why you can't bring liquids on a plane.

There are a lot of clueless people out there and it is scary.
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51 minutes ago, Quickfarms said:

 


You don't want to get me started on these crazy politicians and I live in California

Don'T feel bad you don't have the market cornered by a long shot!

"OPERTUNITY IS MISSED BY MOST PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS DRESSED IN OVERALLS AND LOOKS LIKE WORK"  Thomas Edison

 “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy shit, what a ride!’

P.T.CHESHIRE

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Image result for here's your sign

 

Yup, saw the "vegan" description and knew it was not going to end well.   Guess all that "Fake' news wasn't all Fake?  You just have to be smart enough to know which is which.

Edited by Freightrain

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Larry

1959 B61 Liv'n Large......................

Charter member of the "MACK PACK"

 

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7 hours ago, Mack Technician said:

Fine line between bravery, stupidity and insanity.

Neither brave or insane, those are valid reasons for being an idiot. "Don't worry son, I had the hot wax done on it, we have climate control ,two big bottles of Evian, four granola bars and two pairs of Tactical Sun Glasses...What could go wrong? '' This was just plain moronic to take his kid with him like it is a run through a video game. Only plus is the fire is so hot there wouldn't be any remains to fuss with.

Edited by 41chevy

"OPERTUNITY IS MISSED BY MOST PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS DRESSED IN OVERALLS AND LOOKS LIKE WORK"  Thomas Edison

 “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy shit, what a ride!’

P.T.CHESHIRE

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Think they had limited options. My understanding is they were back against the wall and ended up backing out of the fire and up against the lake. Eventually a boater got them out and the car was destroyed. Why they were up there during a fire threat puts them back in the fool's bracket.   

I'd like to know who built that car. As much fuel control jargon as is on the average engine I'm shocked it didn't fold up and die from inhaling 300+ degree ambient into the intake. Engineers don't map the engine to those conditions. Thing didn't seem to miss and beat and wasn't filling with smoke.

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13 hours ago, Mack Technician said:

Think they had limited options. My understanding is they were back against the wall and ended up backing out of the fire and up against the lake. Eventually a boater got them out and the car was destroyed. Why they were up there during a fire threat puts them back in the fool's bracket.   

I'd like to know who built that car. As much fuel control jargon as is on the average engine I'm shocked it didn't fold up and die from inhaling 300+ degree ambient into the intake. Engineers don't map the engine to those conditions. Thing didn't seem to miss and beat and wasn't filling with smoke.

Flo isn't going to pay off on this claim

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"OPERTUNITY IS MISSED BY MOST PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS DRESSED IN OVERALLS AND LOOKS LIKE WORK"  Thomas Edison

 “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy shit, what a ride!’

P.T.CHESHIRE

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