Mojo_PeiPei

Yeah that's one thing I am just really getting sick of seeing here on the boards. Everytime an the issue of radical Islam, people always interject what Christians did nearly a milenia ago... like myself, or my catholic sect, is somehow cupable today for what went down then. Outside the fact that it doesn't factor in the time (see:relativism), how wars were fought, how immensly different politics were, how power broke down, and that even then the blood wasn't solely on the hands of christians; it has no relevance to the conversation today, at least how it is interjected.

Christianity has a long stemming tradition, a lot of it is dark. What I don't like is how we get no props for admitting to our sins of the past, how we asked for forgiveness (see: PJP II), and how nobody even recognizes the reforms tht have been made in the last 40 years even.

Bottom Line, Islam has a couple hundred years to catch up before it can even hold a candle to the Christian tradition as far as reform, dogmatic praticality, and relevance is concerned.

__________________
To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

roachboy

here martinguerre gets to the heart of the matter. everything written in the vaguest way supportive of the article at the start of the thread stages an understanding of "fundamentalism" as linked to some bizarre understanding of islam in general by essence. this kind of argument seems to work to the exclusion of information about islam that does not reduce it in its social complexity to a series of propositions from the texts around which the religion was elaborated. it works by partial quotation, combined with television imagery and material derived from a particular ideological context to generate imaginary views of islam and of its variants.

much of what i have been arguing by trying to push debate toward a more historically oriented view of this thing called islamic fundamentalism has been about trying to show just how huge the gap is that seperates understnding that is rooted in taking seriously contextual situations, in taking seriously differences between them, and the signifier "islamic fundamentalism" when it comes to thinking about the ostensible object in the world (the referent).

since the distance is pretty much insurmountable, then you have to think about this signifier "islamic fundamentalism" in other terms--what i wanted to argue was that it only makes sense as a function of the ideology of bushworld, it only is functional in that context.

given this, i do not see why the digression into dueling anecdotes about religions you like as over against religions you do not like is of any interest.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Locobot

Ah, thanks for letting me know what my response to your yet-unseen ideas will be. That's a relief whew!
If you can't answer, just admit it. You'd lose much less face than you do by accusing me of trolling.

You won't corner me by getting me to admit that there are real biological differences between various groups of people that we understand as "races." Thus far, all attempts to define races quantifiably without exception have met with failure. Are you suggesting we perform various surgeries on people to determine their race before they're allowed on a plane? Streetcorner blood tests? Mandatory truth serum injections? What is the plan? Is this or is this not a thread attempting to justify racial profiling?

I recommend you read Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson. Oh and do it in the bathroom because I'm fairly sure your head will explode in the process.

powerclown

When there are no logical answers, it's understandably tempting to turn on the smoke machine ASAP. I can't say I'm surprised.

Ustwo

Back in my college days, we used to have a big party at least once every two weeks, and often would have a smoke machine. I don't know what was in it to make the smoke, but I doubt highly it was good for us. Didn't get me laid either. On the other hand the hot tub parties

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

roachboy

that's fascinating, ustwo.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

powerclown

Nope, not healthy for you, body or mind. It's a good thing you got through college with your intellect intact...some never make it out with any sense left whatsoever.

sob

Additional troll noted, then ignored.

Which is why I didn't try. If you weren't so busy trying to discredit statements I didn't make, you would notice I said "most."

Here's an example for you: If I were stocking a medical clinic in an impoverished area of the US, and most of the residents were black, I would normally stock it with more than the average amount of armamentarium to treat diabetes, since it is more prevalent among blacks.

However, by your reasoning, that would be "racist."

While I'm sure you're very proud of the plan you created above, what I'm suggesting is common sense, something lacking in your idea.

If I saw an urban black kid in a health clinic, and he/she was complaining of fatigue and achey joints, I'd be likely to test for sickle-cell anemia.

If it were a white kid who lived in a rural area of Minnesota, I'd be likely to test for Lyme disease. But then again, I'm a racist.

No, that's a conclusion you jumped to. If you recall, I didn't post a comment on the lead article. Since you were embarrassed by the article, you attempted to get the thread locked, even though it has now generated 987 views in less than five days.

In fact, my point is essentially the opposite of racial profiling. The ACLU, by injecting issues of race, is compromising the safety of air travel. Chief among their idiocies is that we must celebrate diversity by investigating prospective airline passengers with no consideration of the likelihood of their planning an attack.

It would not take a mental giant of a terrorist to arrange for ten or twelve of his cohorts to be on the same flight. If he was really determined, he could bring along his own ACLU-endorsed attorney to protest loudly if anyone wanted to search more than two or three of his team.


Undoubtedly based on your personal experience.

Locobot

Further inability to answer noted.
Ha, nice try but no. You won't corner me by getting me to admit that there are real biological differences between various groups of people that we understand as "races." I admit that freely. That's not racism.

My plans were suggestions based on what I gathered from your posts above about what you mean by "common sense." Common sense is not a plan by the way, it's not something that can be taught or tested and apparantly from your inability to elucidate further it means nothing.
Again these are real biological differences between different groups of people, this isn't racism. The problem comes when you start using racial signifyers to decide who is and isn't more likely to commit a crime. An example of this might be if someone says they're so certain that people from a particular asian country are harmless and non-threatening based on their race alone.

Was that the reason I gave for asking for the thread to be locked? Let's review. I said, "there is a policy against posting content without comment, mods please lock the thread" I posted that under the false assumption that there was a policy against posting articles without commenting on them. Although this is a de facto policy that has resulted in the locking of many threads here, it is not a part of the rules (I believe this is what Rekna was implying as well). I actually hadn't read the article yet at that point. If I was only interested in locking threads I find disagreeable why did I praise the "masters of war" thread and then ask for it to be locked?
Well you haven't yet elaborated on your ideas of "common sense" so it remains to be seen if it is racial profiling or not. The ACLU is only interested in keeping race from being the only factor for determining who is likely to be planning an attack.
The ACLU would have no interest in proactively creating instances of discrimination, this possibility exists only in your dreams. In any case an attorney, ACLU or not, would have no basis to challenge any search, only detainment. And even then only if the only criteria for that detainment was race. If racial profiling wasn't being used there could be no problem. The rule you're so upset about does not exist as any DOT guideline. I thought I made that clear when I was thoroughly discrediting the allegations in the original article. But apparently you missed that so I'll post it again:

"
This isn't even the policy that you just quoted, nor is this policy to be found in any official DOT guideline. It seems to exist solely as a fabrication of right-wing "news" outlets. It is based on the testimony of one Michael Smerconish, an attorney and radio talk show host from Philadelphia who heard it from Southwest airlines executive Herb Kelleher who supposedly heard this in a discussion with Norm Mineta. So the allegations are hearsay. Hearsay is legal jargon refering to "Statements by a witness who did not see or hear the incident in question but heard about it from someone else. Hearsay is usually not admissible as evidence in court."

Why hasn't Herb Kelleher made these allegations himself? Is he afraid he might perjure himself in doing so?
Indeed, that book made me radically rethink how I understand race. Twain had a more advanced sense of what race actually was than most people do today, and that was 125+ years ago.

kutulu

I hate when people use "statistics" or "data" to back up their racism. What "statistics" are we talking about here? One in a million vs. one in a billion? A brown arab-looking guy may be 1000 times more 'likely' to be a terrorist than an average white guy but the likelyhood that either are trying to board a plane with the intention to blow it up is still statistically insignificant.

It's not as if the terrorists haven't recriuted any white guys from America to join their army. We've captured a couple and there is bound to be more of them.

roachboy

source link:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/20/234230/07

this is obviously summary, but the data it talks about is interesting.

the complete results are available here:

http://www.comm.cornell.edu/msrg/report1a.pdf

and are, if anything, more alarming than the summary version.

notice the correlation between folk who watch tv is and those who favor restricting the civil rights of muslims....restrictions that extend to the stuff debated on this thread. for some reason, i am less surprised by the correlation of christian beliefs and favoring restrictions. so much for brotherly love and all that.

this correlation between support for restrictions on civil liberties and television viewing is interesting, and is not a little alarming. i wonder if similar results would be had here. i suspect so. similar patterns seem to obtain for support for the iraq war, the belief that saddam hussein had something substantive to do with "terrorists" and so forth.

given indices like this, it is hard to hear conservative complaints about the "liberal media" and not laugh.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

sob

Thank you for acknowledging one of my points.


Childish insult noted. However, I never called common sense a "plan."

Once again, a deliberate misquote. I said CULTURE. Do you need a link to the post where I said it?


That's an interesting position for an "anarchist" to take.

Since you like to misquote me, it isn't surprising that you feel entitled to represent the ACLU as well.

As soon as you feel like discussing CULTURAL differences, instead of trying to invent racism where none exists, your posts might elicit some interest.

Until then, it looks like your repeated off-topic posts have pretty much killed the interest in the thread.

zen_tom

The American political machine has clearly whipped up plenty of fear, neurosis and paranoia - that certainly isn't news - It didn't take long for communists to be replaced by terrorists in the national psyche. Has anyone here read 1984? Try looking at what is going on here from a detached point of view. Who benefits from a scared populace the most? As roachboy said,

Doesn't that remind you of the communist infiltrationist paranoia of the 50s? The only people who benefited from whipping up that sorry mess were those trying to win on a National Security ticket. It's a whole lot easier to look as though you've succeeded in solving a problem you've inflated and exaggerated out of all proportion.

filtherton

I think we should start detaining every fifth person who doesn't claim chinese citizenship. After all, statistically, around one out of every five people is chinese. If a quick look at the citizenship of a random cross section of travelers doesn't reflect this ratio than something fishy is obviously afoot.