I was more skeptical about conservatives suddenly affecting a deep concern for the treatment of livestock. Usually they're the ones telling animal rights people to give it a rest.
There's economic necessity and then there's cruelty. Battery farming is an unfortunate economic necessity in the modern world, as an example.
In Sweden neither halal nor kosher meat is banned, but the slaughter process is because of how it falls under inhumane treatment of animals, and it would be for everyone, regardless of religion. You can still produce either as long as you follow proper standards. My father used to work as an animal health/safety official, among other things he inspected a butchery that produced halal - the livestock went through the exact same procedure as the non-halal stock, the only difference was that they would have an imam come in and bless/approve the meat at the end of the production line.
Then it's not halal. By definition.
There's questioning, and then there's "WAKE UP SHEEPLE! MSM is all in a conspiracy to hide Muslim atrocities right in front of our eyes because....well, just because!"
When you have to rely on obscure, questionable, highly biased "media" sources to build your argument, that might be a sign there's something wrong with your argument.
A few months ago I would have agreed with you. Then these stories (English) started surfacing, and it turned out that the sources I had dismissed out of hand as "obscure, questionable and highly biased" had been the ones telling the truth all along.
The
guy saying "Muslamic ray guns" got laughed at until it turned out
he was trying to say "Muslim rape gangs".
Then it suddenly became very unfunny.
Vaguely related: I've found this interesting theory on how to deal with things that are very uncertain, and it seems to be potentially applicable to dealing with figuring out this "which media source to believe" business.
Weird that's pretty much what I've been using. You find the points where the two sources collide and it falls to either side of it.
As an example from the 13-year-old girl stuff from before:
1. Media source alleges gang rape. Police state no rape occurred. Police do not state that no sexual activity occurred. Likely that child was involved in sexual relations in some way.
2. Media source alleges kidnapping. Police state that the child went missing but no kidnapping occurred. Child definitely went missing for a period of time.
So, the facts we have are:
- No confirmation that sexual activity did not occur, police state rape did not occur.
- Child definitely went missing for a period of time.
- Child was 13, this is the legal definition of rape unless the other person was under 18 (and even then that's a very gray area).
So, we have three logical choices:
- Police are covering up the deliberate kidnapping and gangrape of a 13-year-old child.
- Parents are upset by their 13-year-old child going out and having sex and are stating that what happened was rape (which it likely was under legal definition). Police have elected not to class it as rape because of reasons.
- Kid went missing for a period of time and then made up a story about what happened to not get in trouble.
In terms of likelihood, I'd rank them 25/60/15. European police have a history of disagreeing with parents on what the rape of a minor is.