Or they could just be pissed off Brummies.
The islamist terror threat - an massive lie?
- Thread starter rockwool
- Start date
Well, we need a new scare, we got a new PM.
I didn't vote for him.
just curious, do you have a quick check list of what would qualify as a bonafide climate of islamic terror threat? seems to be have been creeping up to some imaginary line that you lot keep moving back.
my 2 pence.
Maybe it's a result of my having grown up in the UK during a time of IRA activity and having lived and worked in London during times of IRA bombings that has made me rather less impressionable than some.
When your day is regularly disrupted by such events you come to see them as not that much different to muggings, train crashes and motorway pile-ups; more people die on the roads of the UK each year than in all of the terrorist attacks in the UK added together.
I also feel that one should balance the Islamic terror threat against the Judeo-Christian military threat in Islamic countries; on that basis they are no threat at all, simple a minor thorn in our side.
Does that make car-bombs in London OK? No, it does not. Nor does it justify the countless (and uncounted) Iraqis killed as a result of an illegal invasion.
We started this, they didn't, but if we expect no blowback then we're kidding ourselves.
this merely demonstrates you have confidence in your ability to deal w/ the every day threat. good to see you have pluck.
targeted vs. accidental/negligent
obvious exception being muggings, but does the mugger hope to have a grass roots impact upon you, or just get some quick cash from a soft target w/ no lasting effect (i.e. establish a caliphate)?
you seen the way "brother" treats brother in gaza? this is very much an islamic threat w/in an islamic state. i also view the crushing mandates of islamic life by the state to be far more than just a "thorn in the side".
again, toward fellow muslims. imagine what they would inflict upon us lesser people (even for those of us who are in their eyes in the book of life).
and how does that compare to the death rate as the result of the policies of the previous administration? point is, i see us (the west) as the clearly lesser of the 2 evils. what's more odd: you seem to go out of your way to avoid mention of who the real murders are in the region. is this by design?
what did we "start"? i guess i need to know what for now appears to be an arbitrary point on a yet-to-be-defined timeline.
and let me try to understand one last thing: is it a cop-out to say "he started it", unless the 'he' is 'we'? there's only so much to be gained from navel-gazing.
He didn't do that in the middle of a crowded airport.edit: yesterday's incident in glasgow demands we consider this lot
What about the Branch Davidians? I bet they are making a comeback...
ok, here's what we have to go on (from the sunday mail)
right?
...or it could have been nick cage:
either way, i'm sure this is all just deserved blowback on the scottish people for an illegal war, right?
right?
Dead on. Stinkle, go hug Jesus.
I see it more as a realistic assessment of the relative probability.
In none of those situations am I likely to be targeted particularly - it will only ever be down to circumstance - wrong place, wrong time.
Come on, it's not just Palestinians who suffer civil wars, most nations on Earth have a violent struggle for power at some point in their history. This particular struggle could arguably be resultant from the West's hypocracy regarding democracy; push democracy as the way forward and then block the elected party from achieving anything when you think the wrong people won. There is nothing to like Gaza to the recent events in the UK either, except to try and score more points in a racist argument.
As for you comments on Islamic life, there is no threat of that happening in your country or mine, if you believe there is then I am wasting my time talking to you as your grasp of reality would indeed be tenuous. A debate on the merits of Islamic life in Islamic countries would be another matter, worthwhile perhaps, but certainly out of place in a debate on the 'Islamic Terror Threat' as they are unrelated.
Well, the UN maintain that the sanctions demanded by the US/UK resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis; the morality of which is hard to defend. The current invasion has cost more than 50,000 Iaqi lives by a conservative estimate and more than half a million by a less conservative one. How many people did Saddam kill each year?
Sure, he was an evil bastard, but if you want to talk about the lesser of two evils and justify the extra dead caused by The West I'd liketo hear how you intend to balance the scales.
I'll let you define the timeline; maybe you can start with the time an Islamic nation invaded the US or the UK?
Cop-out? The point I was making is that if you meddle in the affairs of the nations of an entire region, engineering coups, fixing economic policy, invading and occupying states, decrying the religion and crushing democratic results you disagree with then you should not be surprised if people try and fight back.
The current scenario in the Middle East has nothing whatsoever to do with defending ourselves. If you cannot grasp that then you have need for a great deal of navel-gazing.
I guess this is aimed at me - fine. You do need to point out where I mentioned that it was deserved.
If Blair and Bush were the victims I'd have no argument with it being deserved though.
so you see the likelihood of being a victim as arbitrary ("wrong place; wrong time" excuses human blame to fate/nature, as in a lightning strike), yet the perpetrators are indeed selective as to their targets. that's what 'target' means. maybe the victims were viewed as carrying the hegemonic foreign policy irons, tempting fate during a thunderstorm.
quite telling that you would use "suffer", as there is some invisible hand which randomly dealt their hand. you do realize the powers who are fighting both refuse to recognize israel, & see them as the cause for all their ills, all their suffering, all their frustration. i don't recall ever hearing a cross word about their erstwhile leader arafat, who was a billionaire & could have eased quite a bit of their suffering & even lifted them up to be a legitimate nation/state. sidenote: i'm as confused as i am troubled fatah & hamas are fighting to such a degree against (what i perceive to be) their own kind. they appear to be fighting for power just for powers' sake.
what is it you believe fatah was trying to "achieve"?
were these goals permissible? (yes, i'm thinking of the ending of the nation of israel & everything else on down)
how did we block them from these goals? (-2 if you invoke the u.s./jewish cabal)
do you see them as a powerless to our wishes (i.e. yet another instance of victimhood, unable to govern)?
if my grasp on reality is tenuous, then how would you explain this?
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9111542
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007050177,00.html
additionally, there's scores of undercover videos taken in mosques all around londonistan depicting the ever-increasing uprising. do you not recall your 7/7 bombers were homegrown citizens?
looks like you've been reading this blog: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/1/124231/4715
(caution: may cause seizures & moral relativism)
yes, b/c seeing other people as descendants of monkeys & apes, women as property, compulsion as a necessary component of membership, categorizing pantheists & atheists as unspeakably evil & deserving of smiting would certainly have no causality - or at least influence - in a rich breeding ground for exploitation into terrorists, who find the attributes above as just a few of the justifications for their actions.
yet you wrote this:
once you get done doing this, explain to me what we did to cause islamists to run wild in thailand, india, philipines, saudi arabia, pakistan, the horn of africa...fluff said:
nothing to see here - move along.
you come just up to the point of saying it, then stop. so let me ask you point blank: who's to blame for the deaths of 1.5 M iraqis during the period of sanctions? who killed the 50K+ during the latest iraqi conflict?
i want you to start naming names, & calling things what they are.l
we're still find out.
when you read about 3 u.s. marines found guilty of war crimes, understand this is news for a reason: it's so rare. so tell me: what extra dead were caused by the west?
first barbary war, 1801
by my count, you just named everyone with a GDP greater than paraguay, or at least most of africa. but like you said, it's been happening throughout history; this is just another season & we should just deal with it on a personal level, and avoid being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
please forgive us (and yourself) for following through on our pledge to defend those in need of defending, and our allies. we should, however, hang our head in shame for what's happening in the darfur.
yeah, ya kinda did:
http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2590610&postcount=85fluff said:
quit watching greg palast docu-dramas; he's micheal moore's jizz-trough
Every last one of your posts is laden with red herrings not worthy of response...seriously dude, stop posting vague links and references to the brown heathens and explain why your worldview is so goddamned fascist and fvcked up. Your ideology is lockstep with neoconservatism, a word becoming synonymous with imperialism and American reich.
It's terrifying to know that there are a lot of people that think exactly like you (though most not nearly as eloquent or as concealing).
That was all white jesus fearing terr'rism funded by Americans so it was OK.
opposing opinions are a real threat to cult leaders and their followers.
they wouldn't want anyone to think twice before downing the kool-aid.
the links are vague to you b/c you don't have a proper worldview.
and i like how you bookend your reparte with 'fascist' & 'neocon', which are incompatible. no doubt you got your vocab on at byu, where you lost your virginity in a pact w/ some other girl who also wore a promise ring. (here's a tip for you: she wore it out of guilt & to get her parents to stop going through her stuff, lest they find her depo provera). and i hate to be the one break it do you, but you were the only virgin in the most awkward deflowering since the fast times scene in the dugout, if we can discount fingering your own hoop in a suspiciously well-rehearsed 9th grade dare in a roller-rink parking lot.
you're terrified of an interwebz posting, but not the specter of an islamic uprising? do you not realize you & i are more aligned in our live-and-let-live philosophy?
Depo provera is a shot, you moron. Not something a young girl is going to keep around the house, unless she's the female Doogie Howser...
The only thing even remotely interesting about that is Fox didn't use sub-titles.
So is it an urban-legend? Was Trainspotting sub-titled in America?
nope, and the wife took high offense to "gratuitous" use of "cunt"
i tried to explain there's a little begby in all of us, but she was having none of it.
$tinkle,
Please note:
The difference between random and targeted:
Terrorist attacks can be summarised into the following categories:
Attacks designed to ensure destruction of buildings that are in some way symbolic (eg 9/11)
Attacks that are designed to cause maximum loss of life (eg the attempted car bombs last week in London)
Attacks aimed at powerful groups (eg the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, attack on US base in Beirut)
Attacks aimed at powerful individuals (otherwise known as assassination).
In the first example any casualties are those people who happen to be in the vicinity of the attack. They are what the US has genteelly termed collateral damage. Not targeted as individuals simply an inevitable result of the attack. In the second example they are not targeted as individuals but as numbers, again whoever happens to be there.
In both of these examples there is more of a random factor than in a mugging and no less than in any road traffic accident. If you cannot see that then you really do not understand the difference in meaning between random and targeted.
The latter two examples do not apply to me; hence if I were to be a victim of a terrorist attack it would simply be due to my being in the wrong place at the wrong time: much like a train crash, a lightning strike, a car accident or food poisoning at a restaurant.
That you should try and twist such arguments to indicate that I absolve the perpetrators of blame is facile and misleading, that the threat is exaggerated and no greater than many other dangers has nothing to do with the perpetration of a violent act. The fact remains that the risk to the greater populace is minimal and exaggerated for political purposes.
As to civil wars, suffer, endure, engage therein; use any term you like its still far from a uniquely Islamic phenomenon. That you profess confusion as to what the Palestinian factions are fighting about illustrates your lack of knowledge on the subject. There is no point my addressing your ignorance, only you can do that. I suggest you do so. At the same time educate yourself on Fatah and Hamas; there is clearly much you have to learn.
As to the home-grown terrorist question, I fail to see how this is linked to the possibility of either of our homelands becoming Islamic states. There is no danger of that happening whatsoever.
Any debate on the relative values of Christianity and Islam should be taken separately, as I said before; thats a whole other question and totally irrelevant to discussion of extremists, unless of course you wish to promulgate a lopsided world view. You wouldnt want to do that would you?
The deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis are directly as a result of sanctions imposed by the US; hence the US is to blame. Clear enough? The deaths as a result of the invasion are also the responsibility of the US. If you cannot grasp that, understand this, without those acts by the US those people would not be dead.
As for your mention of the 1st Barbary War did you read my question? I find it hard to believe you did as your answer fails to cover the salient point. Of course you could never admit that you are wrong so I should not be surprised to see yet more total rubbish posited as valid argument.
Contrary to your statement the current invasion of Iraq has nothing to defending anyone. It simply suits the strategic vision of the capitalist west.
You also need to check the definition of, difference between, the meaning of the words expect and deserve. That you willingly confuse the two to suit your own purpose is emblematic of your entire approach to this discussion; high on prejudice and short on fact.
I cannot waste any more time with further rebuttals of your increasingly irrelevant, inaccurate or simply incorrect statements, so your inevitable, bile-filled reply will go unanswered.
Please note:
The difference between random and targeted:
Terrorist attacks can be summarised into the following categories:
Attacks designed to ensure destruction of buildings that are in some way symbolic (eg 9/11)
Attacks that are designed to cause maximum loss of life (eg the attempted car bombs last week in London)
Attacks aimed at powerful groups (eg the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, attack on US base in Beirut)
Attacks aimed at powerful individuals (otherwise known as assassination).
In the first example any casualties are those people who happen to be in the vicinity of the attack. They are what the US has genteelly termed collateral damage. Not targeted as individuals simply an inevitable result of the attack. In the second example they are not targeted as individuals but as numbers, again whoever happens to be there.
In both of these examples there is more of a random factor than in a mugging and no less than in any road traffic accident. If you cannot see that then you really do not understand the difference in meaning between random and targeted.
The latter two examples do not apply to me; hence if I were to be a victim of a terrorist attack it would simply be due to my being in the wrong place at the wrong time: much like a train crash, a lightning strike, a car accident or food poisoning at a restaurant.
That you should try and twist such arguments to indicate that I absolve the perpetrators of blame is facile and misleading, that the threat is exaggerated and no greater than many other dangers has nothing to do with the perpetration of a violent act. The fact remains that the risk to the greater populace is minimal and exaggerated for political purposes.
As to civil wars, suffer, endure, engage therein; use any term you like its still far from a uniquely Islamic phenomenon. That you profess confusion as to what the Palestinian factions are fighting about illustrates your lack of knowledge on the subject. There is no point my addressing your ignorance, only you can do that. I suggest you do so. At the same time educate yourself on Fatah and Hamas; there is clearly much you have to learn.
As to the home-grown terrorist question, I fail to see how this is linked to the possibility of either of our homelands becoming Islamic states. There is no danger of that happening whatsoever.
Any debate on the relative values of Christianity and Islam should be taken separately, as I said before; thats a whole other question and totally irrelevant to discussion of extremists, unless of course you wish to promulgate a lopsided world view. You wouldnt want to do that would you?
The deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis are directly as a result of sanctions imposed by the US; hence the US is to blame. Clear enough? The deaths as a result of the invasion are also the responsibility of the US. If you cannot grasp that, understand this, without those acts by the US those people would not be dead.
As for your mention of the 1st Barbary War did you read my question? I find it hard to believe you did as your answer fails to cover the salient point. Of course you could never admit that you are wrong so I should not be surprised to see yet more total rubbish posited as valid argument.
Contrary to your statement the current invasion of Iraq has nothing to defending anyone. It simply suits the strategic vision of the capitalist west.
You also need to check the definition of, difference between, the meaning of the words expect and deserve. That you willingly confuse the two to suit your own purpose is emblematic of your entire approach to this discussion; high on prejudice and short on fact.
I cannot waste any more time with further rebuttals of your increasingly irrelevant, inaccurate or simply incorrect statements, so your inevitable, bile-filled reply will go unanswered.
fluff, a little patience while i try to suck the wheel of your dizzying intellect, pregnant with cancer-curing morsels & red-shifting with every thought.
to start:
next, this:
suppose by your logic the hundreds of kids in beslan would be alive if it weren't for those pesky military ruskies outside. their islamist captors could have ended it & spared lives, as well as saddam if he had allowed weapons inspectors unfettered access (to which he had previously agreed). this is to say nothing of the scurrilous charge of 1.5 million iraqis dying as a result of sanctions. i'd like to point you toward "morbitity & mortality among iraqi children" by CU's richard garfield, or "sanctions and childhood mortality in iraq" by the lancet (certainly no friend to "pro-war" types). both of these studies put the toll far south of 1.5M.
finally on this topic rife w/ selective morality: saddam's legacy of terror, which depicts over 400,000 killed in mass graves.
yeah, we're evil in a bottle. why don't you go ahead & blame us for the genocide happening in north korea, too? that would make as much sense.
lastly, the differences tween hamas & fatah are insufficient to give me clarity as to which one the average mo living in the west bank or gaza would prefer (outside of personal interests like reimbursement for lost olives in israeli rocket attacks). so while i'm ignorant on these 2 groups, it's not absolutely such. if there's something relevant which you think even a knave like me could appreciate, spood-feed little oliver here some more porridge.
to start:
while i did not imply this, i can see where you could reasonably infer it. but let me state it is a necessary - but not sufficient - condition. to suggest its impossibility also suggests a binary state. how do you think the current collection of islamic states were birthed? in our societies, a sufficient proportion of the population claims suffrage, imposing their values upon others through representation. if it remains in plurality, then you have a fine example of a healthy democratic society, which we both enjoy currently. so i will concede there is no short term chance of a caliphate engulfing any democratic nation, as these 2 are wholly incompatible. however, this does not equate to the dearth of domestic terrorist breading grounds. france, seriously.fluff said:
next, this:
i should have addresses this the first time, but got lazy.fluff said:
suppose by your logic the hundreds of kids in beslan would be alive if it weren't for those pesky military ruskies outside. their islamist captors could have ended it & spared lives, as well as saddam if he had allowed weapons inspectors unfettered access (to which he had previously agreed). this is to say nothing of the scurrilous charge of 1.5 million iraqis dying as a result of sanctions. i'd like to point you toward "morbitity & mortality among iraqi children" by CU's richard garfield, or "sanctions and childhood mortality in iraq" by the lancet (certainly no friend to "pro-war" types). both of these studies put the toll far south of 1.5M.
finally on this topic rife w/ selective morality: saddam's legacy of terror, which depicts over 400,000 killed in mass graves.
yeah, we're evil in a bottle. why don't you go ahead & blame us for the genocide happening in north korea, too? that would make as much sense.
lastly, the differences tween hamas & fatah are insufficient to give me clarity as to which one the average mo living in the west bank or gaza would prefer (outside of personal interests like reimbursement for lost olives in israeli rocket attacks). so while i'm ignorant on these 2 groups, it's not absolutely such. if there's something relevant which you think even a knave like me could appreciate, spood-feed little oliver here some more porridge.
fluff, would you kindly splain this to me:
BROWN: DON'T SAY TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIMS
and then this jaw-dropper:
and how do i reconcile the fact that p.m. brown is to meet w/ leaders in the muslim community on how to "combat terrorism" (now there's an awkward double entendre w/ a sprinkle of irony), if muslims aren't the primary perpetrators?
the bloody hell is going on over there? death by 1000 cuts or boiling a frog?
BROWN: DON'T SAY TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIMS
so he'll admit there's a crisis, but not dare point toward the elephant in the room? have there been other bombings since the IRA dust settled years ago associated to some other group? have ETA spilled over from spain?
and then this jaw-dropper:
what's the penalty if violated? pay the jizya?p.m. Brown said:
yes, avoid inflammatory language, lest it be met with inflammatory jeeps. and by all means, don't even think about pointing any one of your 15,399,205 cameras anywheres near a mosque. don't want to offend, you see.again said:
and how do i reconcile the fact that p.m. brown is to meet w/ leaders in the muslim community on how to "combat terrorism" (now there's an awkward double entendre w/ a sprinkle of irony), if muslims aren't the primary perpetrators?
the bloody hell is going on over there? death by 1000 cuts or boiling a frog?
So what this thread proves is that combating Islamic extremism and the resultant terrorist acts is very simple. If you tweak the language, you can make it go away, and if you draw a smaller and smaller exclusionary box around yourself, you don't have to face up to it because you can say "It's not in my continent/country/neighborhood/city block!!"
Solipsism wins the day! (Rockwool...and his erstwhile illiterate brownnoser...)
I mean, let's not focus on real issues...like the fact that it's not even a military conflict at heart, but a matter of fostering conditions in the world that will isolate the extremism from its fuel and let it die away.
Some might not want to believe it, but if we'd spent all the cash we've thrown into the negative-sum Iraq inferno on helping people around the world, there'd be a hell of a lot less terrorism all around. (Stinkle...maybe...but at least we see the problem and will articulate it, even if we might have differences in how to combat it or wherein the origins of the problem actually lie...)
Solipsism wins the day! (Rockwool...and his erstwhile illiterate brownnoser...)
I mean, let's not focus on real issues...like the fact that it's not even a military conflict at heart, but a matter of fostering conditions in the world that will isolate the extremism from its fuel and let it die away.
Some might not want to believe it, but if we'd spent all the cash we've thrown into the negative-sum Iraq inferno on helping people around the world, there'd be a hell of a lot less terrorism all around. (Stinkle...maybe...but at least we see the problem and will articulate it, even if we might have differences in how to combat it or wherein the origins of the problem actually lie...)
From the BBC:
Today 23 People have been found glued to the walls and roof of a train in Dublin
Police believe that Irish Muslims have set off the first No More Nails Bomb
Today 23 People have been found glued to the walls and roof of a train in Dublin
Police believe that Irish Muslims have set off the first No More Nails Bomb
Seriously stinkle...I'd think you'd be in favor of a Muslim genocide from the content of your posts.
i wouldn't want that any more than you'd want to outlaw religion in general.
forgive me if i purposefully avoid measured tones; i tend to call things what they are. that does not, however, translate into "final solution" reactions. the problem doesn't lie within the person genetically, but culturally.
genocide doesn't allow for replacement.
There is a difference between casually mentioning "heey hippie brethren, religion is lame" and actively advocating a policy that forces a wholly bastardized form of Jeebus down the throats of millions through violence, death, and destruction (not to mention economic rape and exploitation).
We call the latter nasty big words like "inquisition", "ethnic cleansing", and "genocide".
ExACTly.
Save me from the brown invaders! RING THE CHURCH BELL, PAUL REVERE!
You're utterly deluded if you think Muslim fundamentalists are a threat to your way of life.
You're a ****ing idiot if you think there's a violent attempt to export Christianity from this country. Globalized capitalism, yeah, if you're cynical (which can be healthy in this day and age).
But I'm utterly deluded because I know there's a chance that I could have my ass blown up in an office building in the US, a newspaper publishing firm in Denmark, or in a disco in Malaysia by a Muslim with a bomb? Please. Get over your hatred of the Bush administration (to which you're entitled) and realize that there are Muslims who want to kill you, too. They don't exist? Or we should just ignore them and they'll go away...?
But I'm utterly deluded because I know there's a chance that I could have my ass blown up in an office building in the US, a newspaper publishing firm in Denmark, or in a disco in Malaysia by a Muslim with a bomb? Please. Get over your hatred of the Bush administration (to which you're entitled) and realize that there are Muslims who want to kill you, too. They don't exist? Or we should just ignore them and they'll go away...?