Moonbat alert: Chomksy condemns Bin Laden kill.

I'm trying to compare apples and apples.

The reason I chose 9/12 is because, if I had gone back before, I would have had to include 9/11. 9/11 is obviously not only a statistical outlier but something organized outside the US and orchestrated by people who were not permanent residents of the US. So it is obviously more complicated than simply "Islamic terrorism" and may have political factors involved, many of which have been presented.

I could have picked another time frame, such as the 1990s, but first, a lot of people would consider that too old to be particularly relevant, and second, 9/12 is when the accusations of huge amounts of Islamophobia in the US really got going.

So I concentrate on a limited time, 9/12 to the present, with a limited population, citizens of the US, and crimes committed within the US, during a period when there haven't been any supreme statistical outliers. I'm also limiting it to actual killings between people of different religious groups that can reasonably be judged to be reiigiously motivated in significant part, with a particular concern to how groups like CAIR would judge something a hate murder if the victim were Muslim.

So, yes, I have excluded Right Wing Christian militia groups and Christian White Supremacist groups, unless someone actually killed somebody. I've also excluded acts of vandalism, assault, and even attempted murders. The thing is that I've done this for everybody, not just Christians. I've done it for Muslims, atheists, Jews, Sikhs, and any other religious or non-religious group you could name. In that process, I've had to exclude a lot of acts of aggression by Muslims. Just as one example of many, I excluded one case where a Muslim shot a Jew in the back six times, because I could not confirm that the guy died. I've also excluded the several "honor killings" because they were not obviously between people of different religions.

You seem to be impatient with that. You want to take a group, say Christians, and count up all the murders and attempted murders and threats and attitudes and so on. You can do that, if you like, but I am not doing this. One reason I am not doing this is that there are plenty of groups who do exactly the same thing about Muslims. They have been accused of special pleading in order to put down Islam, and I quite agree with the criticism. So I'm not doing that for any group, and I'm only looking for the most severe crime, murder. (Which is what Chomsky alleges, so it's relevant to this thread). This is because it is much more difficult to compare instances of special pleading, and the strength of the special pleading is persuasive, so the data get hidden.

Now, it is almost impossible to be completely fair. There are a lot of cases that should obviously be excluded (BTW, I excluded far more cases of Muslim aggression than of any other group), and there are a lot of cases that clearly should be included. In the few cases that were on the cusp, I made the decision to include based on generosity to Muslims, that is, what decision would make Muslims seem as peace-loving as possible, and other groups as violent as possible, given the data. I also applied this to other ambiguous estimates. So I took the largest estimate for the number of Muslims in the US I could find (7 million from CAIR) and the smallest estimate of the number of Christians (200 million, lower than the estimates I've seen).

Doing that, I get the following (these are preliminary numbers).

1 Christian hate killing of an abortion doctor
1 Christian hate killing of a Muslim
1 Christian hate killing of a Sikh
1 Christian hate killing of an Egyptian Copt
1 Christian hate killing of an Egyptian Christian (other, but I'm being generous)
35 Muslim hate killings of non-Muslims (mostly Jews)

Note: I only counted the 10 beltway murders, not the 3 the same people killed in Louisiana, because they were not as clearly linked to the principal perpetrator's writings about Jihad. Also, since this is a preliminary count, the number 35 could be as low as 30 or as high as 40, but with not much variance beyond that.

At a very minimum, these findings refute the idea that Islamophobia is rampant in the US, at least out of proportion to other hate motivations, such as Judenhass amongst Muslims. For all we know, vast numbers of Americans bear secret grudges against Muslims, but as far as hatred that is strong enough to kill, Muslims are winning clearly in terms of absolute numbers, and certainly in terms of killings per capita (5 out of 200 million versus 35 out of 7 million; you can do the math.)

It would be extremely hard to fudge this to support the idea that unwarranted Islamophobia is a particular epidemic, which is probably why polemic and dazzling with bovine fecal matter are so popular. What has actually happened does not support the idea that non-Muslim Americans are, relatively, so hugely murderous of Muslims.

But, talk about Christian killers of abortion doctors, put in a history of the KKK, talk about the Inquisition and the Crusades, Christian missionaries in Africa, and maybe you've got something. I am not accusing you of doing this, but I've seen it a lot, and when it happens, all we get is a shouting match between those people and people who do the same thing on "the other side."

I would agree with just about everything in your post except for the exclusion of "honor killings" (and those killed for being gay or for blasphemy) in your tally of terrorist acts because of your justification that it is terrorism acted upon between people of the same faith.

The point of my previous post was that no terrorist act or groups that support terrorist acts should be ignored or whitewashed. This would include taking the threats by fundamentalist abortion clinic killers and White supremacist groups seriously. Also to that point however, I would agree that a situation or argument that concluded that people are doing "the same thing on the other side," without noting that the vast majority of terrorist acts are committed in the name of Muslims or Islam would be effectively ignoring and whitewashing the causes and reasons for the vast majority of terrorist acts committed worldwide.


The thing I believe we would both seem to be agreeing on is that because of the enormous levels of terrorist acts that are committed in the name of Muslims or Islam, it would be dishonest and irrational to call those who note this connection to be "Islamophobic" (not that I am denying that the genuine Islamophobia exists, just that it is not a valid label for this case).

Not acknowledging this overwhelming link and calling those who do acknowledge it "Islamophobic" as Chomsky and others have done is not being politically correct. It is just a way of sentencing thousands of innocent people to death under the banner of "political correctness."


I would argue that there is a direct link between the legal and social support for terrorist acts and the number of terrorist acts that are committed. If this premise is correct, than that would mean that one of the best ways to fight and prevent terrorist acts would include understanding the reasons in all of the different countries for the support and definition of terrorism (see the Pew Research studies I posted), political lobbying for the retraction of laws that support terrorist acts, as well as the continuation in fighting terrorist cells, organizations, and leaders.
 
I look forward to the video of Virus being waterboarded to demonstrate to us softies how it's all been blown out of proportion.

Go for it Virus! Dtugg, who shares your delusion that waterborading is having water poured on your face, failed, perhaps you will succeed! I can't wait!


Seen Christopher Hitchens?

 
"Moonbat alert" indeed.

23 chalkboard-screeching pages and counting. Because an enemy thug, wanted dead or alive, was killed in a military operation.

This is the fruit of the Chomsky spawn. Endless, convoluted, nit-picking finger-pointing. It's almost enough to make a guy want to go read a few turgid tomes of progressive post-modern dweezleblabber, just to unwind from the molar-grinding stupidity of Chomskyism.
 
Seen Christopher Hitchens?


My first thought too. Good on him for being up for it in the first place, though I'll concede that an actual terrorist might have lasted longer. The real fanatics would die before giving up information, of course, so you may as well just shoot anyone who isn't 100% squeaky clean and keep the minimum necessary workforce in strictly controlled camps, where you can keep an eye on them.
 
I agree 100% with that. Good post (the rest of it too).

Thank you.

I agree with you 100% on the facts, but the problem is it's used by some people as a trump card in a rhetorical game -- e.g., any time someone points out the risk of Islamic extremism, someone else say, "oh yeah? Well, Christians are terrorists too!". They are -- but by a factor of 1:100, or 1:1000, or more, less than Muslim extremists are.

But pointing out the risk of Islamic terorrism isn't saying there is no risk of non-Islamic one at all, or that such risk should be ignored. It is simply noting that by comparison the risk is far less. Nobody is suggesting Christian terrorists should somehow get a get-out-of-jail card just because Islamic terorrists are far more numerous and dangerous.

You are absolutely right on this. I do not think that anyone should get a pass for engaging in or supporting terrorist acts, but I agree that concluding that 'Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and many other religions all engage in terrorism' is primarily a way of framing the problem in the most PC way possible so that one group is not singled out, but that this tactic ignores the fact that the large vast majority of all terrorist acts are carried out in the name of Islam.

By framing the debate in a way that purposefully overlooks the fact that the majority of terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam, and from Muslim countries that have high support for terrorist actions, this effectively prevents an honest analysis for why the support and use of terrorist acts is so high in certain Muslim countries and why it is so low in Muslim countries such as Turkey as well as being so low in all other countries around the world.

Ignoring or shunning the debate on why support for terrorist acts and groups such as Al Qaeda is so high in certain Muslim countries is not a way of being politically correct. It is instead quite simply a tactic that condemns thousands of innocent, men, women, children, gays, and those accused of blasphemy to death each year so that people like Chomsky can feel better about themselves for not having to approach an uncomfortable subject or run the risk of being seen as insensitive.

This problem is primarily rooted in the fact that official State support for terrorist acts when performed for religious reasons are given a free pass by the UN Human Rights Council, and these actions will continue until we address that fact. Until we require protection for the women, gays, and those accused of blasphemy from signatory members of the UN Human Rights Charter, and honestly address why the support for terrorist acts and groups are so high in many Muslim countries, than we are effectively ignoring the causes of this problem.

Some people like Chomsky have even gone beyond actively excusing groups that support terrorism, and have attacked the people that have risked their lives to work to prevent terrorist acts while giving no real alternative to combat the problem himself. That goes beyond being extremely dishonest into being callously and maliciously negligent just to make himself feel better.
 
I noticed that you claimed to love human rights while supporting torture. My rhetorical question (not an accusation) was designed to highlight the irony of this contradiction.

Human rights apply to everybody, without convenient exception, or else they are not human rights.
You support Gaddafi.
wow.....
streeeeeeeeetch.

A stretch, how so?

I would say that those three words very accurately and succulently represent the contradictions of Jihad's position.

The over sensualization of the torture of three people from the person who's screen name glorifies those who engage in murdering thousands of innocent people, and whose posts excuse and downplay terrorist groups and dictators who also murder thousands of innocent people is very contrary to the "Human Rights Standards" that she claims to support.

No Country anywhere can claim that they have no violation of the UN Human Right Charter, but that does not mean that every country who is a signifying member of that document should not do everything possible to meet the standards agreed to in that Charter, and that they should not be penalized for failing to meet those standards. This includes torture.

However, there is something inherently wrong in spending 95% of your time focusing on the physical and emotional abuse of three people who were tortured while ignoring and even excusing groups that kill, mutilate, and torture thousands.
 
... so that people like Chomsky can feel better about themselves for not having to approach an uncomfortable subject or run the risk of being seen as insensitive.

Did you dream this?


A stretch, how so?

I would say that those three words very accurately and succulently represent the contradictions of Jihad's position.

Jihad's positions in the position of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The over sensualization of the torture of three people from the person who's screen name glorifies those who engage in murdering thousands of innocent people, and whose posts excuse and downplay terrorist groups and dictators who also murder thousands of innocent people is very contrary to the "Human Rights Standards" that she claims to support.

....blah, blah, random blah...

No Country anywhere can claim that they have no violation of the UN Human Right Charter, but that does not mean that every country who is a signifying member of that document should not do everything possible to meet the standards agreed to in that Charter, and that they should not be penalized for failing to meet those standards. This includes torture.

How is the US being penalized for using torture?

However, there is something inherently wrong in spending 95% of your time focusing on the physical and emotional abuse of three people who were tortured while ignoring and even excusing groups that kill, mutilate, and torture thousands.


Those are three people that the CIA has admitted torturing...

The central plank the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the declaration upon which the concept of human rights rests, is that human rights apply to all human beings, without exception.
 
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The central plank the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the declaration upon which the concept of human rights rests, is that human rights apply to all human beings, without exception.

Yet you support Gaddafi. Forgive me for not taking your protestations seriously.
 
Yes, sure, ticking time bomb scenario i'm probably with you. But when making the ticking time bomb argument, you need to keep in mind that it doesn't actually happen.
The point of the ticking time bomb argument is that there are slightly less obvious situations that you could still support torture in that do actually happen. If you don't draw the line at the ticking time bomb, where do you draw the line? That's an open question, it's not the point, the point is to debunk the existence of a complete argument against all torture.
 
The point of the ticking time bomb argument is that there are slightly less obvious situations that you could still support torture in that do actually happen. If you don't draw the line at the ticking time bomb, where do you draw the line? That's an open question, it's not the point, the point is to debunk the existence of a complete argument against all torture.

Well, my point is that I can draw the line against all torture, even if I agree with it during a ticking time bomb situation, because the ticking time bomb situation never actually happens. Yes, hypothetically I could support torture if it would save the lives of millions a la 24, but in the real world I can oppose all torture because it never has that effect.
 
But isn't it blown out of all proportion since were talking about 3 mass-murdering terrorists over the space of two years, while totalitarian regimes in Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea use worse things everyday, on innocent people as a matter of regime survival? And aren't people blowing it out of proportion because they have pathological hatreds of America?

It's banned by the US now anyway so what's the point bitching about it? Besides propaganda.
 
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But isn't it blown out of all proportion since were talking about 3 mass-murdering terrorists over the space of two years, while totalitarian regimes in Iran, Syria and North Korea use worse things everyday, on innocent people as a matter of regime survival? And aren't people blowing it out of proportion because they have pathological hatreds of America?

Has anyone claimed the US is worse than those countries? Is "not as bad as north korea" really a great standard to run a country by?

It's banned by the US now anyway so what's the point bitching about it? Besides propaganda.

Yes, why ever discuss the past? Not like we can learn anything from it.
 
Well, my point is that I can draw the line against all torture, even if I agree with it during a ticking time bomb situation, because the ticking time bomb situation never actually happens.
It rarely happens, you don't get to magically insert the word never in there, interrogators will admit that it happens.

I've heard of one scenario that basically applies.

Yes, hypothetically I could support torture if it would save the lives of millions a la 24, but in the real world I can oppose all torture because it never has that effect.

Never eh? I know people like to twist words in order to support their case but this is way too obvious. How would you know? I don't know, I would think knowing something like that would be difficult if not impossible. The CIA can't even carry out research because that would break ethics laws.

We do have reason to believe that "enhanced interrogation" (please refrain from assuming my use of these two words means I'm an Orwellian propagandist) works sometimes (a number of people are having a laugh over the fact Assange leaked pro-American documents in this case)

Even the threat of torture works.

As good as your arguments are against torture, you can never totally overwhelm it, I don't know why people try, there is enough for you to criticize about torture already.
 
It rarely happens, you don't get to magically insert the word never in there, interrogators will admit that it happens.

I've heard of one scenario that basically applies.



Never eh? I know people like to twist words in order to support their case but this is way too obvious. How would you know? I don't know, I would think knowing something like that would be difficult if not impossible. The CIA can't even carry out research because that would break ethics laws.

We do have reason to believe that "enhanced interrogation" (please refrain from assuming my use of these two words means I'm an Orwellian propagandist) works sometimes (a number of people are having a laugh over the fact Assange leaked pro-American documents in this case)

When are you going to stop claiming to love human rights?

It doesn't matter what you mean by "enhanced interrogation" The phrase is Orwellian at source. It is a euphemism for torture:

QUOTE:
The Washington Post reported in January 2009 that Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of military commissions, stated in response to the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the so-called "20th hijacker" of the September 11 attacks:

"The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent.... You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge", i.e., to call it torture.

The reason Crawford decided not to prosecute al-Qahtani was because his treatment fell within the definition of torture.

/QUOTE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques

Even the threat of torture works.

As good as your arguments are against torture, you can never totally overwhelm it, I don't know why people try, there is enough for you to criticize about torture already.


When are you going to stop claiming to love human rights?



"Enhanced interrogation" techniques:

Yelling

Loud music, and light control

Environmental manipulation

Sleep deprivation/adjustment

Stress positions

20-hour interrogations

Controlled fear (muzzled dogs)

How they were developed:

QUOTE [my bold- JJ]
The CIA interrogation strategies were based on work done by James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in the Air Force's Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) program. The CIA contracted with the two psychologists to develop alternative, harsh interrogation techniques. However, neither of the two psychologists had any experience in conducting interrogations. Air Force Reserve Colonel Steve Kleinman stated that the CIA "chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation... to do something that had never been proven in the real world."Associates of Mitchell and Jessen were skeptical of their methods and believed they did not possess any data about the impact of SERE training on the human psyche. The CIA came to learn that Mitchell and Jessen's expertise in waterboarding was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was medically safe or effective. Despite these shortcomings of experience and know-how, the two psychologists boasted of being paid $1000 a day plus expenses, tax-free by the CIA for their work.

The SERE program, which Mitchell and Jessen would reverse engineer, was originally designed to be defensive in nature and was used to train pilots and other soldiers on how to resist harsh interrogation techniques and torture were they to fall into enemy hands.The program subjected trainees to torture techniques such as “waterboarding . . . sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to extreme temperatures, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds at extremely damaging decibel levels, and religious and sexual humiliation.” Under CIA supervision, Miller and Jessen adapted SERE into an offensive program designed to train CIA agents on how to use the harsh interrogation techniques to gather information from terrorist detainees. In fact, all of the tactics listed above would later be reported in the International Committee of the Red Cross Report on Fourteen High Value Detainees in CIA Custody as having been used on Abu Zubaydah.

Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson wrote an article describing how the techniques used mimic what was taught in the SERE-program: "the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program that trains US Special Operations Forces, aviators and others at high risk of capture on the battlefield to evade capture and to resist 'breaking' under torture, particularly through giving false confessions or collaborating with their captors".

The psychologists relied heavily on experiments done by American psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1970s on learned helplessness. In these experiments caged dogs were exposed to severe electric shocks in a random way in order to completely break their will to resist. Mitchell and Jessen applied this idea to Abu Zubaydah during his interrogation.Many of the interrogation techniques used in the SERE program, including waterboarding, cold cell, long-time standing, and sleep deprivation were previously considered illegal under U.S. and international law and treaties at the time of Abu Zubaydah’s capture. In fact, the United States had prosecuted Japanese military officials after World War II and American soldiers after the Vietnam War for waterboarding and as recently as 1983. Since 1930, the United States had defined sleep deprivation as an illegal form of torture. Many other techniques developed by the CIA constitute inhuman and degrading treatment and torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

/QUOTE

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques
 
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When are you going to stop claiming to love human rights?

I don't, I hate human rights. I hate humans too. But not as much as I hate concern trolls, they get right under my skin.

Honestly why would you ressurrect this argument we already had days ago? Don't you have something better to do?
 
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It rarely happens, you don't get to magically insert the word never in there, interrogators will admit that it happens.

I've heard of one scenario that basically applies.

I don't doubt that torture has on occasion worked in the past, though i've already shown you that the information can be unreliable. But I stand by my claim that the ticking time bomb scenario doesn't happen. You've got one purported case, from the sri lankan police (not my favourite source of information given their antics), where two people gave up information under threat of death. For me, even if it is true it's not the same as the 24 scenarios, and it most certainly does not outweigh the risk of incorrect information, the risk of getting the wrong guy, the ammo you give to dictatorships and the danger of torture use by future, more extremist leaders.

I'm not trying, as you accuse me, to make a "100% argument against torture". I consider myself a rule utilitarian, and in my eyes the cons seriously outweigh the pros, even if there are pros and if there are hypothetical scenarios where it could be the act-utilitarian decision.

However, at this point we'll probably just have to agree to disagree.
 
But I stand by my claim that the ticking time bomb scenario doesn't happen.
Your claim is wrong. Interrogators, even ones who are against torture like Bob Baer, will not say "never" they say "almost never" Baer even goes to say "never" stops himself and says "almost never" in this clip (linked to the exact timestamp. Just admit it.
I'm not trying, as you accuse me, to make a "100% argument against torture"
Than you shouldn't be arguing against me because I don't dismiss your considerations.
I consider myself a rule utilitarian, and in my eyes the cons seriously outweigh the pros, even if there are pros and if there are hypothetical scenarios where it could be the act-utilitarian decision.

However, at this point we'll probably just have to agree to disagree.
Then that is why we disagree because I've been forming arguments against rule utilitarianism for years. Actually I think there are biological differences behind and evolutionary reasons for some of the spectrums of politics and philosophy, so agreeing to disagree can be a positive thing.

ETA: For example: Perhaps liberals and conservatives are evolved to *gasp* work together in a strategy that succeeds better over time.
 
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I don't, I hate human rights. I hate humans too. But not as much as I hate concern trolls, they get right under my skin.

Honestly why would you ressurrect this argument we already had days ago? Don't you have something better to do?


It is an unresolved argument. You have yet to explain how it is possible support torture and human rights simultaneously.
 

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