| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Sean C" |
| Date: |
05 Feb 2006 08:06:16 PM |
| Object: |
Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
With all the hysteria over the Muslim reaction to racist cartoons
equating Muslims with terrorism, a little perspective is in order:
TERRORISM:
There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Every year, on average,
around 1,000 people worldwide die in all terrorist attacks, including
those by non-Muslims. Compare this to the total number of murders in
the US alone, typically between 22,000 and 26,000 yearly.
More people are murdered every year in Washington DC, Detroit or
Baltimore than are killed worldwide by terrorists. More people are
killed evey year in the US than have been killed in the last 40 years
by terrorists worldwide.
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
MURDER:
The US doesn't have the highest murder rate in the world, but it is one
of the highest among developed nations, and vastly greater than that of
most Muslim countries:
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_percap
Russia 61
United States 4.3
Yemen 3.3
Tunisia 1.1
Saudi Arabia 0.4
Qatar 0.1
INCARCERATION:
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the
world at 715 per 100,000 population.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_cap&int=-1
United States 715
Russia 584
Kyrgystan 390
Khazakstan 386
Tunisia 253
Iran 226
Oman 81
Denmark 72
So Americans kill and incarcerate more of their own people by far than
any Muslim country, not to mention the people we kill through our wars
and through our support of right-wing disctatorships throughout the
world, including those in the Middle East. Arab Americans, it should be
noted, have the lowest crime rates of any ethnicity in the US. And it
isn't because of the harshness of Islamic justice, obviously, since
they don't have to face it here, and 75 percent of them are Christians,
not Muslims.
Yet, we Americans are supposed to be a people who believes in peace,
justice and the rule of law, and which supposedly holds "freedom" to be
our highest virtue and goal. The Arabs, by contrast, are supposed to be
murdering fanatics immune to peace and civilized behavior.
We're supposed to be as "brave" as we are "free," but if a bunch of
Muslims become outraged by a blatantly, deliberately provactive racist
insult against themselves, and their religion, and erupt in violence no
more severe than you'd see at the end of a typical British soccer
match, than this is cause for worldwide panic, and preparation for
WWIII and the end of the world as we know it. This is reason to label
every single Muslim in the world a fanatic, a terrorist and an
ignoramus incapable of handling dissent--and by people who are calling
for blood over seeing their nations' flags being burned, no less.
Jesus...Fucking...Christ.
"Barbarians" indeed. Look at the facts, and ask yourselves who the real
barbarians are. All those of you who want to join the tin-foil hat
brigades in their jihad against the Muslims, be my guest. But it looks
to me as if we Americans have a lot of cleaning up to do at home,
first.
--Sean C
.
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| User: "Rick" |
|
| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
05 Feb 2006 09:30:46 PM |
|
|
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
Sean C wrote in message
<050220062106165262%redhawk@burnspammersalive.com>...
With all the hysteria over the Muslim reaction to racist cartoons
equating Muslims with terrorism, a little perspective is in order:
TERRORISM:
There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Every year, on average,
around 1,000 people worldwide die in all terrorist attacks, including
those by non-Muslims. Compare this to the total number of murders in
the US alone, typically between 22,000 and 26,000 yearly.
More people are murdered every year in Washington DC, Detroit or
Baltimore than are killed worldwide by terrorists. More people are
killed evey year in the US than have been killed in the last 40 years
by terrorists worldwide.
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
MURDER:
The US doesn't have the highest murder rate in the world, but it is one
of the highest among developed nations, and vastly greater than that of
most Muslim countries:
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_percap
Russia 61
United States 4.3
Yemen 3.3
Tunisia 1.1
Saudi Arabia 0.4
Qatar 0.1
INCARCERATION:
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the
world at 715 per 100,000 population.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_cap&int=-1
United States 715
Russia 584
Kyrgystan 390
Khazakstan 386
Tunisia 253
Iran 226
Oman 81
Denmark 72
So Americans kill and incarcerate more of their own people by far than
any Muslim country, not to mention the people we kill through our wars
and through our support of right-wing disctatorships throughout the
world, including those in the Middle East. Arab Americans, it should be
noted, have the lowest crime rates of any ethnicity in the US. And it
isn't because of the harshness of Islamic justice, obviously, since
they don't have to face it here, and 75 percent of them are Christians,
not Muslims.
Yet, we Americans are supposed to be a people who believes in peace,
justice and the rule of law, and which supposedly holds "freedom" to be
our highest virtue and goal. The Arabs, by contrast, are supposed to be
murdering fanatics immune to peace and civilized behavior.
We're supposed to be as "brave" as we are "free," but if a bunch of
Muslims become outraged by a blatantly, deliberately provactive racist
insult against themselves, and their religion, and erupt in violence no
more severe than you'd see at the end of a typical British soccer
match, than this is cause for worldwide panic, and preparation for
WWIII and the end of the world as we know it. This is reason to label
every single Muslim in the world a fanatic, a terrorist and an
ignoramus incapable of handling dissent--and by people who are calling
for blood over seeing their nations' flags being burned, no less.
Jesus...Fucking...Christ.
"Barbarians" indeed. Look at the facts, and ask yourselves who the real
barbarians are. All those of you who want to join the tin-foil hat
brigades in their jihad against the Muslims, be my guest. But it looks
to me as if we Americans have a lot of cleaning up to do at home,
first.
--Sean C
.
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| User: "quibbler" |
|
| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 11:26:21 AM |
|
|
In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>,
pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com says...
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
There is no "logic" being applied and that's the problem. Abortion is
something between a woman and her doctor. It is not a "provocation"
against the theocratic rabble who think it is their gawd-given right to
control women. Abortion doesn't not injure the anti-abortionist cretins.
It only arguably injures an tiny lump of cells that is not meaningfully
sentient and it does it based upon the princiiple that, when the rights
of an unformed fetus and an adult, female citizen conflict, then the
person carrying the trespassing organism in her body should make the
decision. She is the one who will be responsible for raising it for
decades, after her health has been compromised and her body disfigured,
and should be the one to make the decision, since the non-sentient fetus
cannot make such a decision itself. After birth, theocrats insist that a
parent has abolute control over the child to beat the ***** out of it,
indoctrinate it and even execute it for disobedience, as per biblical
policy. Why then does the parent lack any sort of agency before the
birth? Unlike arabs, who can't change their race, anti-abortionists are
simply ignorant fools who simply haven't adequately thought about the
issue. Those who do actually turn to violence should be jailed for as
long as it takes to neutralize their threat to society.
Oh and one last thing about the "logic". Redneck, idiot, bible humpers,
unlike arab immigrants, have high crime rates to begin with.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
.
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| User: "Rick" |
|
| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 05:19:01 PM |
|
|
quibbler wrote in message ...
In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>,
pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com says...
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
There is no "logic" being applied and that's the problem. Abortion is
something between a woman and her doctor. It is not a "provocation"
against the theocratic rabble who think it is their gawd-given right to
control women. Abortion doesn't not injure the anti-abortionist cretins.
It only arguably injures an tiny lump of cells that is not meaningfully
sentient and it does it based upon the princiiple that, when the rights
of an unformed fetus and an adult, female citizen conflict, then the
person carrying the trespassing organism in her body should make the
decision. She is the one who will be responsible for raising it for
decades, after her health has been compromised and her body disfigured,
and should be the one to make the decision, since the non-sentient fetus
cannot make such a decision itself. After birth, theocrats insist that a
parent has abolute control over the child to beat the ***** out of it,
indoctrinate it and even execute it for disobedience, as per biblical
policy. Why then does the parent lack any sort of agency before the
birth? Unlike arabs, who can't change their race, anti-abortionists are
simply ignorant fools who simply haven't adequately thought about the
issue. Those who do actually turn to violence should be jailed for as
long as it takes to neutralize their threat to society.
Oh and one last thing about the "logic". Redneck, idiot, bible humpers,
unlike arab immigrants, have high crime rates to begin with.
Thank you for illustrating my point by completely dodging the issue.
People get all upset about a few dead abortionists, when we have far more
serious problems to deal with and far more significant and prevalent causes
of death. And still, especially in a situation like now, people have to
continue to remind us "The Christians Are Terrorists Too!!!" Considering
how many children die drowning in buckets every year, shouldn't folks worry
more about that than a few dead doctors?
Violent protest is breaking out around the world, and some folks are more
worried about Donald Wildmon encouraging some people to send him money and
write some letters to various media.
Remember the Christian Terrorists!!!
- Rick
.
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| User: "quibbler" |
|
| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 10:33:31 PM |
|
|
In article <lfadnZ-IEsn5RHrenZ2dnUVZ_v6dnZ2d@giganews.com>,
pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com says...
quibbler wrote in message ...
In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>,
pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com says...
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
There is no "logic" being applied and that's the problem. Abortion is
something between a woman and her doctor. It is not a "provocation"
against the theocratic rabble who think it is their gawd-given right to
control women. Abortion doesn't not injure the anti-abortionist cretins.
It only arguably injures an tiny lump of cells that is not meaningfully
sentient and it does it based upon the princiiple that, when the rights
of an unformed fetus and an adult, female citizen conflict, then the
person carrying the trespassing organism in her body should make the
decision. She is the one who will be responsible for raising it for
decades, after her health has been compromised and her body disfigured,
and should be the one to make the decision, since the non-sentient fetus
cannot make such a decision itself. After birth, theocrats insist that a
parent has abolute control over the child to beat the ***** out of it,
indoctrinate it and even execute it for disobedience, as per biblical
policy. Why then does the parent lack any sort of agency before the
birth? Unlike arabs, who can't change their race, anti-abortionists are
simply ignorant fools who simply haven't adequately thought about the
issue. Those who do actually turn to violence should be jailed for as
long as it takes to neutralize their threat to society.
Oh and one last thing about the "logic". Redneck, idiot, bible humpers,
unlike arab immigrants, have high crime rates to begin with.
Thank you for illustrating my point
You had a "point'? That's news to everyone else.
by completely dodging the issue.
I didn't dodge anything. I wrote more than you did and said more of
substance, though that's not hard.
People get all upset about a few dead abortionists, when we have far more
serious problems
What might that be? How is abortion a problem for women who choose it,
except, perhaps, if there are complications. Have you even thought about
the severe and often irreversible changes that occur to a woman's body
during pregnancy? What if you had an alien organism trespassing inside
of you, assaulting you, demanding food and making it over ten times more
like that you would die, as compared to aborting? A woman is under no
obligation to have children just because she is biologically capable.
The sex act, by itself is not sufficient, especially with the advent of
contraception, to establish that a woman intended to become pregnant in
the first place. So let's see you dodge the issue of why it is wrong to
abort an organism, such as yourself, that isn't meaningfully sentient.
to deal with and far more significant and prevalent causes
of death.
Go cry a river for the 3/4 billion fetuses aborted in the last century.
It will only get higher. If it is so "wrong" then show where
meaningfully sentient beings are actually being harmed.
And still, especially in a situation like now, people have to
continue to remind us "The Christians Are Terrorists Too!!!"
It's quite easy to show that in many of their actions. It's certainly
not just found in the fact that their hypocritical death cult claims to
be "pro-life".
Considering
how many children die drowning in buckets every year
I've mainly heard of xians doing that, or perhaps hindus who have
religious and cultural biases toward male children. Chinese might still
do that to and no, it's not because they are godless commies. They
practiced female infanticide far before they became communist.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
.
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| User: "Rick" |
|
| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
07 Feb 2006 12:39:39 AM |
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Thank you for missing the point again.
quibbler wrote in message ...
In article <lfadnZ-IEsn5RHrenZ2dnUVZ_v6dnZ2d@giganews.com>,
pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com says...
quibbler wrote in message ...
In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>,
pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com says...
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
There is no "logic" being applied and that's the problem. Abortion is
something between a woman and her doctor. It is not a "provocation"
against the theocratic rabble who think it is their gawd-given right to
control women. Abortion doesn't not injure the anti-abortionist
cretins.
It only arguably injures an tiny lump of cells that is not meaningfully
sentient and it does it based upon the princiiple that, when the rights
of an unformed fetus and an adult, female citizen conflict, then the
person carrying the trespassing organism in her body should make the
decision. She is the one who will be responsible for raising it for
decades, after her health has been compromised and her body disfigured,
and should be the one to make the decision, since the non-sentient fetus
cannot make such a decision itself. After birth, theocrats insist that
a
parent has abolute control over the child to beat the ***** out of it,
indoctrinate it and even execute it for disobedience, as per biblical
policy. Why then does the parent lack any sort of agency before the
birth? Unlike arabs, who can't change their race, anti-abortionists are
simply ignorant fools who simply haven't adequately thought about the
issue. Those who do actually turn to violence should be jailed for as
long as it takes to neutralize their threat to society.
Oh and one last thing about the "logic". Redneck, idiot, bible humpers,
unlike arab immigrants, have high crime rates to begin with.
Thank you for illustrating my point
You had a "point'? That's news to everyone else.
by completely dodging the issue.
I didn't dodge anything. I wrote more than you did and said more of
substance, though that's not hard.
People get all upset about a few dead abortionists, when we have far more
serious problems
What might that be? How is abortion a problem for women who choose it,
except, perhaps, if there are complications. Have you even thought about
the severe and often irreversible changes that occur to a woman's body
during pregnancy? What if you had an alien organism trespassing inside
of you, assaulting you, demanding food and making it over ten times more
like that you would die, as compared to aborting? A woman is under no
obligation to have children just because she is biologically capable.
The sex act, by itself is not sufficient, especially with the advent of
contraception, to establish that a woman intended to become pregnant in
the first place. So let's see you dodge the issue of why it is wrong to
abort an organism, such as yourself, that isn't meaningfully sentient.
to deal with and far more significant and prevalent causes
of death.
Go cry a river for the 3/4 billion fetuses aborted in the last century.
It will only get higher. If it is so "wrong" then show where
meaningfully sentient beings are actually being harmed.
And still, especially in a situation like now, people have to
continue to remind us "The Christians Are Terrorists Too!!!"
It's quite easy to show that in many of their actions. It's certainly
not just found in the fact that their hypocritical death cult claims to
be "pro-life".
Considering
how many children die drowning in buckets every year
I've mainly heard of xians doing that, or perhaps hindus who have
religious and cultural biases toward male children. Chinese might still
do that to and no, it's not because they are godless commies. They
practiced female infanticide far before they became communist.
- Rick
.
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| User: "Sean C" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 05:41:15 AM |
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In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>, Rick
<pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com> wrote:
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
Abortion clinic bombings are not a big enough problem to be worth
spending $230 billion and 150,000 lives to fix. There, the logic has
been applied. Happy?
--Sean C
.
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 11:30:42 AM |
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In article <060220060641155933%redhawk@burnspammersalive.com>,
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com says...
In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>, Rick
<pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com> wrote:
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
Abortion clinic bombings are not a big enough problem to be worth
spending $230 billion and 150,000 lives to fix.
Abortion clinics produce a positive good. All the famines in Africa
could be cured by existiing technology. It's called family planning,
including contraception and, in some cases, abortion. There have been
3/4s of a billion abortions in the last century, which would have
translated into as many as several billion new people at present, without
abortion technology. If you think the world is fucked up with 6 billion,
8 billion now would certainly be worse. Without contraception technology
we'd probably have 16 billion or have died trying.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
.
|
|
|
| User: "Sean C" |
|
| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 03:48:25 PM |
|
|
In article <MPG.1e5135afd5d523b298974b@news.readfreenews.net>, quibbler
<quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote:
In article <060220060641155933%redhawk@burnspammersalive.com>,
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com says...
In article <Q9SdnQYyVNV5X3veRVn-qw@giganews.com>, Rick
<pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com> wrote:
Excuse my top-posting, but try to apply this logic to something like
abortion clinic bombing, and liberals will go completely nuts.
Abortion clinic bombings are not a big enough problem to be worth
spending $230 billion and 150,000 lives to fix.
Abortion clinics produce a positive good. All the famines in Africa
could be cured by existiing technology. It's called family planning,
including contraception and, in some cases, abortion. There have been
3/4s of a billion abortions in the last century, which would have
translated into as many as several billion new people at present, without
abortion technology. If you think the world is fucked up with 6 billion,
8 billion now would certainly be worse. Without contraception technology
we'd probably have 16 billion or have died trying.
No argument there.
Sean C
.
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 11:10:30 AM |
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In article <050220062106165262%redhawk@burnspammersalive.com>,
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com says...
The US doesn't have the highest murder rate in the world, but it is one
of the highest among developed nations, and vastly greater than that of
most Muslim countries:
Except when you count the state sponsored murder for violation of koran,
or the "freedom fighters" that muslim countries sponsor. If one counted
everyone that Al Quaeda killed in Afghan under the Taliban, or everyone
that Hezbollah "disappears", it would be a lot more than 1000. A
thousand per year are only the overt terrorist killings we hear about.
Not that the US military and our secret agencies don't do much the same
thing, but it's still important not to minimize it.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_percap
Russia 61
United States 4.3
Yemen 3.3
Tunisia 1.1
Saudi Arabia 0.4
Qatar 0.1
Does that include honor killings, or do those not count? Does it include
the excution (often by stoning or other primitive means) of adulterers,
homosexuals, blasphemers, addicts and drug dealers? How about those who
commit shirk? (The abandoning of islam, which is punishable by death)
How about theives who die during the "amputation" punishment prescribed
under sharia? I will grant that some muslim countries probably have
lower petty crime rates for things like theft. Many draconian and
authoritarian states have lower crime rates, compared to free societies.
INCARCERATION:
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the
world at 715 per 100,000 population.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_cap&int=-1
United States 715
Russia 584
Kyrgystan 390
Khazakstan 386
Tunisia 253
Iran 226
Oman 81
Yeah, when the punishment for many crimes is death, or when the secret
police kidnap you and nobody ever finds your body then the official
incarceration rate will be lower. Policies of official torture probably
also give an incentive for lower incarceration rates.
Denmark 72
So Americans kill and incarcerate more of their own people by far than
any Muslim country
At least officially and excluding all the the provisos I've listed above.
If those categories were included, or estimated where firm numbers aren't
published, I suspect that muslim countries would be higher than the US in
terms of total people killed and incarcerated by the state. Of course,
the Bush administration is trying to make the US #1 again, through its
own system of secret jails, lethal interrogation, secret police and
criminalization of victimless offenses.
, not to mention the people we kill through our wars
and through our support of right-wing disctatorships throughout the
world, including those in the Middle East.
Granted though (1) this admits that there are US sponsored and financed
death squads in Kuwait, Saudi, the Emirates, etc and (2) muslim countries
also support their own hardline political extremist groups.
Arab Americans, it should be
noted, have the lowest crime rates of any ethnicity in the US. And it
isn't because of the harshness of Islamic justice, obviously, since
they don't have to face it here, and 75 percent of them are Christians,
not Muslims.
Yes, that is rather a more popular choice for Arabs coming to the states.
My brother's roommate is a christian arab, though everyone things he's a
"mexican" ;)
Yet, we Americans are supposed to be a people who believes in peace,
justice and the rule of law, and which supposedly holds "freedom" to be
our highest virtue and goal.
We do, but many of our elected officials don't or are corrupted by power
and corporate lobbying. But we are working on changing that, unlike some
other countries where it is simply how business is done.
The Arabs, by contrast, are supposed to be
murdering fanatics immune to peace and civilized behavior.
You get really bad PR when idiots run around with signs that literally
say things like, "We hate democracy" and "Europe, your 911 is coming".
We're supposed to be as "brave" as we are "free," but if a bunch of
Muslims become outraged by a blatantly, deliberately provactive racist
insult against themselves, and their religion, and erupt in violence no
more severe than you'd see at the end of a typical British soccer
match, than this is cause for worldwide panic,
Do soccer hooligans really threaten "911" style reprisals? Do they call
for the abolishing of democracy and the assassination of the opposing
team? Do they actually raise money to pay for the assassinations?
Because you folks do and have done things like this.
Jesus...Fucking...Christ.
Indeed, he is as much to blame as your Allah.
"Barbarians" indeed. Look at the facts, and ask yourselves who the real
barbarians are.
At the moment, the idiots on your side calling for the assassination of
cartoons are the barbarians. Period. Stop trying to spin it with
irrelevant "you too"-isms. You don't have to like insults against
mohammed, but the fact is that you have absolutely no legal recourse.
Suck it up. Walk it off. Too bad, so sad, tough *****, it sucks to be
you.
All those of you who want to join the tin-foil hat
brigades in their jihad against the Muslims,
Ummm....jihad is your term and it doesn't take a tinfoil hat to say that
someone who holds a sign that says, "Europe, your 911 is coming" should
be incarcerated instantly out of principle alone, not because of speech
issues but because of overt support for the violent attack of the state.
You don't make those kind of threats and remain a civilized member of
society.
be my guest. But it looks
to me as if we Americans have a lot of cleaning up to do at home,
first.
Perhaps, but it's not an excuse for you all to fail to clean up your
riff-raff. Frankly, we'd rather than you guys did start soccer riots
than making terrorist threats. Maybe if you weren't so damn reprepressed
then you'd get some of that pent up, murderous rage out of your system.
It can't be healthy to keep all that ***** bottled up inside you.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
.
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| User: "Sean C" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 03:45:06 PM |
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In article <MPG.1e5130eee651f5b9989748@news.readfreenews.net>, quibbler
<quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote:
In article <050220062106165262%redhawk@burnspammersalive.com>,
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com says...
Except when you count the state sponsored murder for violation of koran,
or the "freedom fighters" that muslim countries sponsor. If one counted
everyone that Al Quaeda killed in Afghan under the Taliban, or everyone
that Hezbollah "disappears", it would be a lot more than 1000. A
thousand per year are only the overt terrorist killings we hear about.
Not that the US military and our secret agencies don't do much the same
thing, but it's still important not to minimize it.
Right. No one really knows how many "hidden" killings occur, but
terrorism, by definition, is something that is designed to inflict
terror into a given population through attacks against civilians, and
therefore is generally overt in nature. If Hezbollah executes someone
for say, collaborating with the Israelis, this is not terrorism. Nor is
it terrorism if they fight it out in a gun battle with the PLO or the
Israelis. Terrorism is when they fire rockets at civilians in Israel.
Does that include honor killings, or do those not count?
The UN estimates the number of "honor" killings wordlwide to be around
5,000 per year, and that includes non-Muslim countries like India,
Spain, Italy and much of Latin America. Since they are so spread out,
as a percentage of the total murder rate in most countries they are
probably not very high.
Does it include
the excution (often by stoning or other primitive means) of adulterers,
homosexuals, blasphemers, addicts and drug dealers? How about those who
commit shirk? (The abandoning of islam, which is punishable by death)
How about theives who die during the "amputation" punishment prescribed
under sharia? I will grant that some muslim countries probably have
lower petty crime rates for things like theft. Many draconian and
authoritarian states have lower crime rates, compared to free societies.
Yes and no. Crime rates seem to be tied to poverty more than anything
else, and poor countries also tend to be authoritarian. But the issue I
am contending here is not that the governments of Islamic countries are
benign--far from it, they are particularly brutal and repressive--but
that the citizens of those countries are all murderous fanatics because
of Islam. The relatively low crime rates among the citizenry of those
countries, irregardless of the brutality of their rulers, would suggest
that is not the case.
INCARCERATION:
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the
world at 715 per 100,000 population.
Yeah, when the punishment for many crimes is death, or when the secret
police kidnap you and nobody ever finds your body then the official
incarceration rate will be lower. Policies of official torture probably
also give an incentive for lower incarceration rates.
I would imagine there is quite a bit of extra-judicial justice in most
countries, state-sanctioned or not. And a quick glance through Amnesty
International's site will reveal that torture and abuse is commonplace
in the US prison system as well, though not "official" policy. On paper
at least, China executed over 3,000 people in 2004, Iran 159, and the
US 59, so as a percentage of total convictions, I don't think those
executions put much of a dent in the incarceration rate. That the US
has the highest incarceration rate in the world ought to be serious
cause for concern for anyone interested in democracy and justice, and
not for a lot of "yes, but" speculation about the rest of the world. We
have 2 million people in prison. That fact speaks for itself.
Denmark 72
So Americans kill and incarcerate more of their own people by far than
any Muslim country
At least officially and excluding all the the provisos I've listed above.
Which may or may not add up to much.
If those categories were included, or estimated where firm numbers aren't
published, I suspect that muslim countries would be higher than the US in
terms of total people killed and incarcerated by the state. Of course,
the Bush administration is trying to make the US #1 again, through its
own system of secret jails, lethal interrogation, secret police and
criminalization of victimless offenses.
, not to mention the people we kill through our wars
and through our support of right-wing disctatorships throughout the
world, including those in the Middle East.
Granted though (1) this admits that there are US sponsored and financed
death squads in Kuwait, Saudi, the Emirates, etc and (2) muslim countries
also support their own hardline political extremist groups.
You wouldn't have to poke me too hard to get me to admit that. But
these are governments that have often been foisted on them against
their will--like the Shah, or Saddam--and not a reflection of the
character of the people who have to live under those regimes. But since
our government has allegedly been democratically elected, it stands to
reason it *is* a reflection of all the people who voted it into
existence.
Arab Americans, it should be
noted, have the lowest crime rates of any ethnicity in the US. And it
isn't because of the harshness of Islamic justice, obviously, since
they don't have to face it here, and 75 percent of them are Christians,
not Muslims.
Yes, that is rather a more popular choice for Arabs coming to the states.
My brother's roommate is a christian arab, though everyone things he's a
"mexican" ;)
Yet, we Americans are supposed to be a people who believes in peace,
justice and the rule of law, and which supposedly holds "freedom" to be
our highest virtue and goal.
We do, but many of our elected officials don't or are corrupted by power
and corporate lobbying. But we are working on changing that, unlike some
other countries where it is simply how business is done.
I hope so. But most of the people I see working to change the situation
seem hopelessly enamored of the Democrats, who are arguably only a few
steps beneath the Republicans in corruption and venality. Real change
will involve a major overhaul of the way the US does business both
inside and outside its borders, and that is not going to come from
Democrats like Clinton or Lieberman.
The Arabs, by contrast, are supposed to be
murdering fanatics immune to peace and civilized behavior.
You get really bad PR when idiots run around with signs that literally
say things like, "We hate democracy" and "Europe, your 911 is coming".
Yeah, that's true, but it's also bad PR to make some right-wing rag's
irresponsible, provactive display of anti-Muslim bigotry the symbol for
the struggle for freedom of speech worldwide.
We're supposed to be as "brave" as we are "free," but if a bunch of
Muslims become outraged by a blatantly, deliberately provactive racist
insult against themselves, and their religion, and erupt in violence no
more severe than you'd see at the end of a typical British soccer
match, than this is cause for worldwide panic,
Do soccer hooligans really threaten "911" style reprisals? Do they call
for the abolishing of democracy and the assassination of the opposing
team? Do they actually raise money to pay for the assassinations?
Because you folks do and have done things like this.
What "you folks" are you talking about? I am an atheist, and an Irish
American. I don't support or condone the fanatics who are out there
calling for blood because of an insult to the prophet or the obvious
bigotry of portraying all Muslims as terrorists. That's the part that
pisses me off. The media-generated hysteria on all sides of this issue
is frankly revolting to me, but I have chosen to address the one side
the press is ignoring--that this was an obvious provocation designed to
elicit the very reaction we're seeing, and thus serve as an opportunity
to defame all Muslims as terrorists and thus legitimize the behavior of
the West toward the Muslim world. That there are always going to be
loons on the Muslim side who can be counted on to play along with this
***** doesn't negate the essential sleaziness of it all, nor does it
mean every Muslim or Arab is a fanatic waiting for his chance to rise
up and slit throats.
Jesus...Fucking...Christ.
Indeed, he is as much to blame as your Allah.
He's not my Allah. My god is reason, and I see nothing reasonable about
bigotry.
"Barbarians" indeed. Look at the facts, and ask yourselves who the real
barbarians are.
At the moment, the idiots on your side calling for the assassination of
cartoons are the barbarians. Period. Stop trying to spin it with
irrelevant "you too"-isms. You don't have to like insults against
mohammed, but the fact is that you have absolutely no legal recourse.
Suck it up. Walk it off. Too bad, so sad, tough *****, it sucks to be
you.
Once agin, this isn't my side, and the reality is that the portrayal of
Muslims and Arabs as terrorists and fanatics has been oging on for as
long as I can remember and this relentless propaganda campaign, of
which this is but the latest extreme example, is designed to
rationalize and legitimize the West's aggression against the Islamic
world, and to provide a smokescreen for Isreali repression of the
Palestinians.
And you're right: the Arabs have no legal recourse, because the UN is
powerless to enforce sanctions against the Israelis or the US. Is it
any wonder then, that some in the Arab world might chose to employ the
one weapon they do have?
All those of you who want to join the tin-foil hat
brigades in their jihad against the Muslims,
Ummm....jihad is your term and it doesn't take a tinfoil hat to say that
someone who holds a sign that says, "Europe, your 911 is coming" should
be incarcerated instantly out of principle alone, not because of speech
issues but because of overt support for the violent attack of the state.
You don't make those kind of threats and remain a civilized member of
society.
It takes a tin foil hat, or at least a lot of exposure to the mass
media, to believe that a handful of protestors are representative of
the whole Islamic world and constitute the vanguard of an inevitable
Islamic invasion that threatens to destroy Western democracy and leave
us all wearing the burqa in the end.
The real threat to our democracy, right now, is coming from within our
government and the power structures of our society, and not from some
psychos in London or Damascus holding up signs.
be my guest. But it looks
to me as if we Americans have a lot of cleaning up to do at home,
first.
Perhaps, but it's not an excuse for you all to fail to clean up your
riff-raff. Frankly, we'd rather than you guys did start soccer riots
than making terrorist threats. Maybe if you weren't so damn reprepressed
then you'd get some of that pent up, murderous rage out of your system.
It can't be healthy to keep all that ***** bottled up inside you.
It's kind of funny, Quibbler, but you seem to have quite a bit of
repressed rage yourself. I have lived with poor, working class Arabs in
an apartment building full of them, and by far, they are the quietest,
most respectful people I have ever met anywhere. Somehow, all that pent
up anger didn't have them slamming doors, blasting music at 2am,
yelling, fighting, leaving garbage all over the place or breaking into
my car--you know, all that stuff you get when you live next door to
"real" Americans.
--Sean C
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| User: "Rune B" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
05 Feb 2006 09:26:56 PM |
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On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:06:16 -0500, Sean C
<redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote:
TERRORISM:
There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Every year, on average,
around 1,000 people worldwide die in all terrorist attacks, including
I guess israeli, iraqi civilians etc. don't count huh?
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
Except for all you know, the war on terror might be just what's
keeping it in check. There are also some problems you can do something
about, and some which are out of your control. Equating terrorism to
bee stings shows a *lack* of perspective.
The US doesn't have the highest murder rate in the world, but it is one
of the highest among developed nations, and vastly greater than that of
most Muslim countries:
It's usually a function of socioeconomics.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_percap
Russia 61
United States 4.3
Yemen 3.3
Tunisia 1.1
Saudi Arabia 0.4
Qatar 0.1
Laff... first of all the numbers are fudged, secondly, more people
than that are tortured, die, executed or dissappear in those
totalitarian countries you mention, which seems to bring it into
question.
Also, as far as civilization goes, does having 0 murders in your
country make it civilized, when it prohibits women for voting,
driving, punishes homosexuality with death etc. ?
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the
world at 715 per 100,000 population.
Again, american problems. Not democratic problems or cultural
problems. Social economic problems. Religious problems.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_cap&int=-1
United States 715
Russia 584
Kyrgystan 390
Khazakstan 386
Tunisia 253
Iran 226
Oman 81
Denmark 72
Denmark 72 per 100,000? How is that possible when less than 50 people
get murdered there every year? Shouldnt it be more like 9? Or do I
just suck at math?
"Barbarians" indeed. Look at the facts, and ask yourselves who the real
barbarians are. All those of you who want to join the tin-foil hat
brigades in their jihad against the Muslims, be my guest. But it looks
to me as if we Americans have a lot of cleaning up to do at home,
first.
Yes, yes, we get it. SO MOVE TO SAUDI ARABIA if you think it's so
brilliant and you really believe those statistics, and that statistics
can truly give a measure of a society.
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| User: "Sean C" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
05 Feb 2006 11:32:46 PM |
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In article <tvfdu1dq22bk0jvbgjjdpd1aaq5sto3if9@4ax.com>, Rune B
<nobody@nowhere.net> wrote:
On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:06:16 -0500, Sean C
<redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote:
TERRORISM:
There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Every year, on average,
around 1,000 people worldwide die in all terrorist attacks, including
I guess israeli, iraqi civilians etc. don't count huh?
Nice strawman, but the point I was making was not that Iraqis or
Israelis don't count, but that the murderous Islamic bugaboo isn't
quite as deadly as portrayed.
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
Except for all you know, the war on terror might be just what's
keeping it in check.
No offense, but anyone who actually believes this needs to lay off the
glue. Terrorism is an international problem, and you can hardly stop it
by invading a country. Look at how successful the British were at
controlling the IRA despite occupying the tiny province of Northern
Ireland, having a 2/3 loyalist majority, control of the police and
Army, and a relatively small, very local terrorist force to contend
with. Al Qaeda is international, and not focused in one little area,
like Falujah, or Belfast, but able to attack from anywhere.
The WTC bombers didn't hijack a plane from Baghdad to New York, they
hijacked a plane from Boston to New York. They could have come from
anywhere in the world, slipped across America's highly permeable
borders, and staged an attack from anywhere within the US. The idea
that killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis has somehow made it more
difficult to attack the US or anywhere else is ludicrous.
The only defense against terrorism is to defeat the conditions that
breed it.
There are also some problems you can do something
about, and some which are out of your control. Equating terrorism to
bee stings shows a *lack* of perspective.
Really? I imagine spending $230 billion to develop a more effective
antidote to bee stings might just work. Spending that money on
America's highway system would save thosuands of lives a year, and
without having to slaughter a single Iraqi. Imagine that: a peace
dividend. Meanwhile, what has this war and the explosion of anti-Muslim
bigotry accomplished but to breed more potential for violence and
strife?
The US doesn't have the highest murder rate in the world, but it is one
of the highest among developed nations, and vastly greater than that of
most Muslim countries:
It's usually a function of socioeconomics.
Yeah, the usual rule is the poorer the country, the higher the murder
rate. The US and the Islamic countries appear to be the exceptions.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_percap
Russia 61
United States 4.3
Yemen 3.3
Tunisia 1.1
Saudi Arabia 0.4
Qatar 0.1
Laff... first of all the numbers are fudged, secondly, more people
than that are tortured, die, executed or dissappear in those
totalitarian countries you mention, which seems to bring it into
question.
Then provide some cites. Many of those dictatorships were installed and
or backed by the US, and do not reflect either Islam or the character
of Muslims, but of their governments. In fact it is usually the
Islamists who are fighting the government, which is one of the factors
that has made Islamic fundamentalism so powerful. You can see this with
Iran, where the US overthrew the secular, relatively progressive
elected government of Mohammad Mossadeq and replaced him with the Shah.
Since the Islamists were the primary players in the struggle to
overthrow the Shah, they developed support from the people and a degree
of power that most Iranians would later come to regret. Most Iranians
clearly want a more secular, democratic society, but with Bush knocking
at their gates, they felt compelled to go with the Mullahs again.
Nicely done.
Also, as far as civilization goes, does having 0 murders in your
country make it civilized, when it prohibits women for voting,
driving, punishes homosexuality with death etc. ?
No, but it rather calls into question the notion that Muslims are
inherently more violent than Westerners, particularly Americans. I
don't regard any Islamic country as civilized, but then, I don't think
the US is civilized either. We have more rights and freedoms here, and
more opportunities to succeed than in the Muslim world, but we also
have an enormous amount of ignorance, injustice and a culture of
violence.
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the
world at 715 per 100,000 population.
Again, american problems. Not democratic problems or cultural
problems. Social economic problems. Religious problems.
No, these are at least partially democratic problems. The drug war is a
big source of our high incarceration rate (though it would still be
humongous without it). If this country adhered to democratic
principles, it would respect the will of the majority and plain common
sense and legalize drugs. Most of America's problems can be solved with
democracy: we ought to try it some time.
Murder rate per 100,000 people by country:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_cap&int=-1
United States 715
Russia 584
Kyrgystan 390
Khazakstan 386
Tunisia 253
Iran 226
Oman 81
Denmark 72
Denmark 72 per 100,000? How is that possible when less than 50 people
get murdered there every year? Shouldnt it be more like 9? Or do I
just suck at math?
I wrote "murder rate" instead of "incarceration rate." Those figures
are for incarceration.
"Barbarians" indeed. Look at the facts, and ask yourselves who the real
barbarians are. All those of you who want to join the tin-foil hat
brigades in their jihad against the Muslims, be my guest. But it looks
to me as if we Americans have a lot of cleaning up to do at home,
first.
Yes, yes, we get it. SO MOVE TO SAUDI ARABIA if you think it's so
brilliant and you really believe those statistics, and that statistics
can truly give a measure of a society.
The inevitable "if you don't like it here, then leave" speach we've
come to know and love from the fascists here in America. Pointing out
that Muslims are not as violent as racist fanatics portray them doesn't
constitute an endorsement of Islam or Saudi Arabia. Pointing out that
the US is one of the most militaristic, aggressive nations on the
planet doesn't constitute hatred of America, either.
--Sean C
Sean C
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| User: "Rick" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
05 Feb 2006 09:34:29 PM |
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Rune B wrote in message ...
On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:06:16 -0500, Sean C
<redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote:
TERRORISM:
There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Every year, on average,
around 1,000 people worldwide die in all terrorist attacks, including
I guess israeli, iraqi civilians etc. don't count huh?
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
Except for all you know, the war on terror might be just what's
keeping it in check. There are also some problems you can do something
about, and some which are out of your control. Equating terrorism to
bee stings shows a *lack* of perspective.
We need to understand why the bees hate us.
- Rick
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| User: "Sean C" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 05:38:04 AM |
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In article <wrednYSwVs1CXnveRVn-vw@giganews.com>, Rick
<pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com> wrote:
Rune B wrote in message ...
On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:06:16 -0500, Sean C
<redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote:
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
Except for all you know, the war on terror might be just what's
keeping it in check. There are also some problems you can do something
about, and some which are out of your control. Equating terrorism to
bee stings shows a *lack* of perspective.
We need to understand why the bees hate us.
That's pretty simple: because we keep fucking with their hives.
We need to kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
Sean C
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 11:13:41 AM |
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In article <060220060638044488%redhawk@burnspammersalive.com>,
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com says...
We need to understand why the bees hate us.
That's pretty simple: because we keep fucking with their hives.
In general, we should not be fucking with the hive nearly as much, though
that doesn't mean giving Islamic theocrats carte blanche either.
We need to kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
I place traitors like Ann Coulter in the exact same category as muslims
who advocate terrorism against the state. Ann Coulter also advocates
terrorism against her fellow americans who happen to not be right-wing
whackjobs.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
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| User: "Woden" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 07:57:11 AM |
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Sean C <redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote in news:060220060638044488%
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com:
In article <wrednYSwVs1CXnveRVn-vw@giganews.com>, Rick
<pl1_alpha_geek@juNOSPAM.com> wrote:
Rune B wrote in message ...
On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:06:16 -0500, Sean C
<redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote:
The facts are clear: terrorism isn't a major problem by any rational
standard. We would be better served declaring a war against
lightning
strikes and bee stings than against Islam.
Except for all you know, the war on terror might be just what's
keeping it in check. There are also some problems you can do
something
about, and some which are out of your control. Equating terrorism to
bee stings shows a *lack* of perspective.
We need to understand why the bees hate us.
That's pretty simple: because we keep fucking with their hives.
We need to kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
Sean C
Yeah, that'll work. Substitute one hate-filled religion with another.
--
Woden
"religion is a socio-political system for controlling people's thoughts,
lives and actions based on ancient myths and superstitions, perpetrated
through generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing."
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| User: "Sean C" |
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| Title: Re: Some perspective on the Muslim "problem" |
06 Feb 2006 03:50:23 PM |
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In article <Xns97625B94FEDE6wodencharternet@69.28.186.121>, Woden
<woden@charter.net> wrote:
Sean C <redhawk@burnspammersalive.com> wrote in news:060220060638044488%
redhawk@burnspammersalive.com:
We need to understand why the bees hate us.
That's pretty simple: because we keep fucking with their hives.
We need to kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
Sean C
Yeah, that'll work. Substitute one hate-filled religion with another.
What religion is that, Apoideism? We were talking about bees.
Sean C
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