Reply With QuoteHe wore a big ol' turban wrapped around his head and a scimitar by his side
And every evenin', about midnight, he'd jump on his camel named Clyde
Proving Chomsky's point that all US soldiers are TERRORISTS!!!!!Originally Posted by Bahimiron
(seriously, though, you're right based on the reports I've seen -- where did this arab garb crap come from?)
He wore a big ol' turban wrapped around his head and a scimitar by his side
And every evenin', about midnight, he'd jump on his camel named Clyde
Wow, what an ignorant portrayal of Chomsky's views.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/06/...ect/index.html
But it also reports that he was a nice, polite man who helped at least two soldiers recover from PTSD - so ..An owner of a 7-Eleven at Fort Hood said Hasan -- whom he knows as "Major Nidal" -- came in for coffee and hash browns most mornings, including the morning of the shootings. Surveillance video from the store obtained by CNN shows a man who according to the store owner is Hasan at the cashier's counter at about 6:20 a.m. Thursday, about seven hours before the mass shooting. He was carrying a beverage and dressed in traditional Arab garb. Another surveillance video from Tuesday showed the man in scrubs.
Puts me in mind of the Carlin routine addressing the 'it's the quiet ones you gotta' watch' line.
He was just the easiest "American foreign policy = teh bad" that I could come up with on short notice. While he's a great linguist, let's just say that he tends to be extremely selective about which facts he chooses to accept when writing about foreign policy. Much like Michael Moore, the arguments can be compelling, but they're not particularly intellectually honest.
But -- enough thread derail.
There are others who insisted his religion should not even be mentioned! Not until you first discovered and disclosed his family history with cancer.
Between scrutinized and ignored, you could use words like "reported".
Or it needed to be considered as a possible factor.
Of course, having someone go batshit insane in this thread and be backed up by her ex managed to fuel 16 pages of people trying to point out the same things over and over, so I guess it all worked out for QT3 in the end.
Good call, JM. However, you were wrong on just one thing. I'm not here in this thread to agree with mmalloy because I used to sleep with her. I'm here in this thread to agree with zengonzo because I'm currently sleeping with him!
(Yeah. There's more people here agreeing with mmalloy than just me. Weird, huh? Maybe they're all sleeping with her, the strumpet!)
I'm still holding out hope for a threesome.
And that we might even get Jose in on it to 'work out some of our differences'.
I'm on standby if you guys need someone to hold the video cam.
The other people agreeing with mmalloy managed to not be completely obnoxious about it, and were able to have a coherent discussion with people who disagreed with them.
I think we reached the nadir of the thread when mmalloy tried to claim that race and religion are factors on a person only because of racist attitudes displayed in this thread.
I admire the others in this thread for their willingness to try and engage in a coherent discussion with people who'd say shit as silly as...
I mean, you completely failed to grasp what she was saying. I'm supposed to take you seriously? zen, mmalloy, Kraaze and the others are goddam American heroes for standing in the face of that sort of willful ignorance. Trust me, it's much easier for me to roll my eyes and make a fart noise while waving my hand to emulate an airplane crash landing.
Here's the quote, you jackass:
There's even a group photo of us standing up to willful ignorance.
I'm the one on the right.
Those pajamas might look goofy on some folks, but zen really pulls the whole look off.
Shrug. Thought you might like to actually argue the point. Instead you act the prick and pretend your girl never said anything stupid in this thread.
What has she said that was stupid?
Am I allowed to ask? I've never slept with her though I did spend a few breathless moments once starting at the public version of facebook profile.
Kraaze,
The idea that race and religion are only factors because of people's attitudes like the ones in this thread.
Apparently the idea that racial groups could shape a person's life outside of other people's opinion, or that religion in itself is a powerful tool for changing the way people think and act is utterly irrelevant.
Incidentally, this thread would be half the size if people credited NWJ with a little bit of smarts - he's very careful not to say what you think he's saying, but he'll drop in a line or two specifically to piss the shriller people off. And it works.
God, I was honest when I said earlier I wasn't actually interested in arguing with you, just as I'm not exactly interested in taking a field trip to Tartarus to help out Sisyphus with his boulder problem, but you aren't making this easy.
This? The above in the quote blocks? That's you misunderstanding her. You think she's saying that Hasan could not have been shaped by his experience as a Muslim, but that's not at all what she's saying. She's saying that Hasan's experience as a Muslim was the experience he had because of 'people's attitudes like the ones in this thread'.
If being a Muslim negatively affected his worldview, it wasn't anything inherent to Islam that did it. It is the way people percieved him because he was Muslim. It's been reported on in various articles that he felt harassed because of treatment of him due to his religion. It wasn't HIM who felt differently because of his religion. It was OTHERS who treated him differently because of his religion. That same kind of treating him differently is the same kind of thinking that leads the news media to report him as a Muslim terrorist first and a crazy guy with serious problems second.
Would this have played out differently if he were a Christian? Probably. At least it would have here in Christian-dominated America. People would have seen him differently and treated him differently, so maybe he never would have reached his admittedly defectively short breaking point. Or maybe one day he would have decided God was telling him to kill and he would have done so, but that's not a problem with God or Christianity, that's a problem with Hasan himself. And when dealing with a situation like this, it's more important to look at the causes, the actual causes, than it is to shriek 'Muuuuuusliiiiiiiiiiiim!' and go with the assumption that he was a terrorist.
I don't know if a comparison between 'he did it because of religion!' and 'he did it because of video games!' has been made in this thread yet, I think it may have been referenced, but while I'm not sure it has direct parity, it is a good call in one way. This case isn't nearly as similar to acts of terror like 9/11 or the WTC bombings or any number of suicide bombings as it is to the Columbine massacre, where two kids, who felt they had been picked on, who were disturbed and depressed to begin with, decided to take out the turmoil they felt inside on the people outside. That's pretty close to what Hasan did, and Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did not need Allah or Jesus or anything else to do it.
Elsewhere in this thread mmalloy was accused of writing fanfic because she suggested there may be other factors involved. As it turns out, according to an article linked earlier by myself, then by zengonzo, then by myself again (and I think it's zen's turn after this post) there were other factors. His mother had died. He felt abused by his fellow soldiers. He was having little luck finding a wife. He was distressed over the dismissal of his notion that Muslim soldiers should be allowed to be consciencious objectors. Now Hasan was a disturbed guy, no one who was wholly sane would have done this, but it was irresponsible for the media (and some people in this very thread) to jump on board the Muslim terror train when there was potentially, and in fact factually, more to it than just 'he was a Muslim extremist, so he hated America'.
That's what mmalloy's talking about. By treating him differently they affected the experience he had, not just as a Muslim, but as a person. And now, by irresponsibly calling it out the way the media is, by the way some of us are, we're making certain that the cycle will continue and other people will look twice at Muslims they come across in their daily lives. And as a result, more people will have negative experiences.
Religion (and race) end up having factor because we (as Americans) have allowed it, and continue to allow it, to.
Last edited by Bahimiron; 11-13-2009 at 10:40 AM. Reason: Specified 'we'.
Well said, sir. But somehow I doubt the next post is going to be "Ohhh ... I get it now."
Mox: Don't do that. It's not clever.
Thank you, Bahrimon. It was worth the effort and so much better than the rest of the responses you've managed throughout the thread.
Anyway.
No to both of these.You think she's saying that Hasan could not have been shaped by his experience as a Muslim, but that's not at all what she's saying. She's saying that Hasan's experience as a Muslim was the experience he had because of 'people's attitudes like the ones in this thread'.
While most of your points are very true and cannot be argued with, you have to realise that she was not throwing out that line in isolation. It followed mmalloy's capslock rant about "skin colour / religion does not make you a bad person" (the suggestion being that that was the gist of the argument NWJ + co was putting forward). She was misrepresenting his views and putting forward some pretty suspect and narrow-minded interpretations of his words.
As a result, I said this: "It is not smart to ignore factors, whatever they may be, and religion, race, ethnicity, etc, are all factors. They all shape who we are; skin colour may only be a difference of pigmentation and nothing else, but it sure as hell makes a difference to your life."
That is what drew the response from mmalloy. We had moved on to discussing race and religion as factors that influence people, not specifically Hasan. There is nothing in that particular exchange to suggest that your interpretation of her words is what she was getting at. Instead it's a pithy response at the end of a rant about NWJ being a racist, and her following posts prove the point.
I'd have much preferred your response.
Even without negative experiences, race and religion are factors. Surely you can't disagree with that?Religion (and race) end up having factor because we (as Americans) have allowed it, and continue to allow it, to.
I honestly debated about posting this, but here I go again since we're just taking one liners from people and holding them up as their entire arguments:
I guess I am being pretty unfair here. I mean, Lieberman didn't even post in the thread. Clearly I was making shit up about people thinking that Hasan's religion made him a bad person/his religion defined him as a person more than, say, being an American did. Certainly people and the media were not using his religion to jump to terrorism conclusions and NWJ wasn't using the article 'the' to dehumanize the guy and 'Muslim' to further ensure he was not confused with a regular old American.
I honestly don't know why you took such offense to that one line of commentary because it is true. Maybe not on the brilliant shores of England where racists, like dentists, don't exist, but here in America they do and you are missing the forest for the trees. And it's not the big, loud, yelling guys lighting crosses on fire that perpetuate things (though they certainly don't help), cause people shy away from that. It's the people who say 'the Muslim' or who jump from Muslim to terrorist without any cause or the people who call an American Citizen a 'U.S. Citizen of Palestinian descent' and don't blink an eye because this is a time of fear and it's okay to start pushing the boundaries of taste and freedom around a group of people that have been labeled as 'suspicious' because of their religion or how they dress. And it's totally, totally okay because doing so will somehow keep 'us' safer.
It's dehumanizing. And the use of those terms is perpetuating the cycle. The argument 'religion was a factor' is disingenuous. The argument that 'he was teased for being a Muslim so clearly that is the reason he snapped and so the media has a right to run with it' is disingenuous. If he had been teased for being bald and fat, we would not have seen the instant leap to terrorist that happened. And it's not just the backwoods redneck whatevers that don't even have a television. That's god damn Lieberman. Who should know better.
You might think I'm being nitpicky or wanting to be 'too PC' but that's really not it. I want America to move past this tired racial ideology we have ingrained into our every day lives and I do not want us instead going in the opposite direction and adding to it. We go through waves of people 'becoming white' and, as Malcolm Gladwell said, 'Somebody always had to be the nigger.' We love to make excuses for why it's okay to look at a certain aspect of a group of people and decide that it's cause for alarm. Be it skin color or religion, the two big things here in America. And you don't do that by pretending that words aren't hurtful or that the way things are reported don't have an impact. When people think about or report on the George Tiller murder, they don't think or say terrorist. When people think about or report on the shootings at Fort Bragg, they don't think or say terrorist. When people think about the shootings at Fort Hood, they do. There is something severely wrong with that, moreso because people just do not see it.
All of my points have been directed at the way the media is handling things and how people are reacting to it. I have tried to be very clear on that. Terminology is especially, especially important. Focus is important. You may not think so, but it is. To understand the racial lines and biases in American society and how they are perpetuated? It is integral. And this some responses in this thread, along with lots and lots of comments on all the articles you can find on say, CNN, have been a prime example of why.
I am really glad that there are people on here who see it. I am not surprised at all that there are people who do not. There's a reason that race is still an issue in America and this is a great example and a great way to open up discussions on something that is still extremely taboo to talk about.
This thread is pretty much failure at this point but I thought it was worth posting this pre-shooting paper on psychological profiling of terrorists.
http://jcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/3
It's just totally bizarre to me that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamme...zar_SUV_attack +
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naveed_Afzal_Haq +
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulha...ahaid_Muhammad +
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_Akbar_case +
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidal_Malik_Hasan
are completely unconnected and unrelated events by psychologically disturbed people with no common ideological motivations, and you're a bigot if you say otherwise.
But..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Robert_Rudolph +
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buford_O._Furrow,_Jr. +
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...useum_shooting +
McVeigh
constitutes a trend and are connected and are homegrown terrorists and so on and on
I mean you have articles like this just days ago, and then two days later "Oh no, Hasan isn't a terrorist couldn't POSSIBLY be a terrorist, because he's not a member of Al-Qaeda!"
It's funny that you continue to post some of NWJ's comments which were specifically worded to piss you off. I'm sorry, you really missed the point of those - not that that says anything bad about you, just that you're a little naive about his intentions.
NWJ was saying "the Muslim" because you were going nuts that anyone was even mentioning his religion. As soon as you did that he made a point of responding in this way. How can you not see this? He tugged the string and you danced till your heart exploded.
On these shores... heh.I honestly don't know why you took such offense to that one line of commentary because it is true. Maybe not on the brilliant shores of England where racists, like dentists, don't exist, but here in America they do and you are missing the forest for the trees. And it's not the big, loud, yelling guys lighting crosses on fire that perpetuate things (though they certainly don't help), cause people shy away from that. It's the people who say 'the Muslim' or who jump from Muslim to terrorist without any cause or the people who call an American Citizen a 'U.S. Citizen of Palestinian descent' and don't blink an eye because this is a time of fear and it's okay to start pushing the boundaries of taste and freedom around a group of people that have been labeled as 'suspicious' because of their religion or how they dress. And it's totally, totally okay because doing so will somehow keep 'us' safer.
1) We have had race riots too
2) We have been a target for terrorist campaigns a hell of a lot longer than you
3) We still manage to be a pretty multicultural society, especially in London which is one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
Back in the times of the Troubles, had a similar event occured in England then their nationality would've been relevant if they were Irish. It might not have been the reason why they did what they did, but it would've made no sense to pretend it wasn't anything worth looking at.
Likewise today, when there's been a spate of terrorist attacks with the common thread of an adherence to a particularly vile and twisted strand of Islam, religion should be considered as a possible factor. This is not racism or bigotry, it's common sense.
We are capable of admitting that there's a group of people espousing a brand of their religion which encourages violent acts against Westerners. This does not mean that all followers of the overall religion are the same.
My sister lost close friends on 9/11 as her company had a big meeting in one of the towers; one of my friends was on the top deck of one of the buses that got blown up in London (and survived to tell the tale). I'm not stupid enough (or ignorant, the catchword for the thread) to believe that all Muslims are the same as the fuckwits who committed the acts, and it's not changed my opinion of the religion as a whole. What it has done is made very clear that a particular brand of the religion is used as a device to brainwash people into believing they have a holy war to wage. And this is a religion that seeks converts, so it's something to at least consider when an atrocity occurs.
You will not achieve your aim of racial harmony by ignoring the realities of the modern world. I understand your objection to the way this has been reported but you cannot claim that religion should not be mentioned and that it's unimportant, nor can you dismiss the argument against that as 'disingenuous'.
Fair enough and I will not argue with your view on the media portrayal. As an Englishman I don't get the US news reports firsthand - I get it filtered through our press and via you lot as well.All of my points have been directed at the way the media is handling things and how people are reacting to it. I have tried to be very clear on that.
That must be why there is so little attention being paid to his religious connections to more extremist elements by the investigators in charge. They realize that there is no one out there with whom he had communication would praise the FT. Hood killings as a great thing for Muslims to do. It's not like people were concerned a few years ago about his growing religious intensity and arguments or that those people tried to moderate his extremist view of religion. Clearly, investigators and many people have just jumped to conclusions based on no evidence whatsoever.
My favorite bit is some of the same folks in this thread so quick to jump on the "you're biased weeenies" train are some of the same folks to jump on the Glen Beck loonie right wing hung a Census worker in KY with even less evidence.
Time to link to the article again, zen.
Oh, I didn't miss the point of those. But the worst part is? I'm sure there was someone nodding when they read those comments and thinking 'right on!' NWJ was not without his supporters. And troll or not? There's a lot of people thinking about this whole situation that way. Common sense is not as common as it should be.
I was being sarcastic. I'm pretty knowledgeable about race in the Americas, but not in other parts of the world. I know enough that our form of racism is different than yours, though. Came about different ways, was explained differently, has had different terms associated with it, etc.
Not everyone has common sense. In fact, a whole lot of people don't. And it's one thing for investigators to keep this in mind when trying to get to the bottom of something. Hell, I would not have even been as annoyed as I was if the media had just mentioned in passing that he was Muslim. But, and this is what honestly gets me the most, the biggest part of the story in the beginning was that he wore 'traditional Arab grab' when he bought his morning coffee. Apparently Eni didn't even realize that Hasan was in his military uniform when he shot everyone. That's the power of the media.
Now, really guys. Someone step up and tell me how that is relevant. That video was all over the news. It was all over the web. It was linked on every news source. What was the benefit of that? To...show how to identify a terrorist? Cause lots of people are going to take it that way. If you want to say that his religion is a contributing factor in this attack, do you really think the media is portraying it in a helpful way?
As for Islam seeking converts, so does Christianity. Yet again I'll site Fort Bragg and the George Tiller murder. There wasn't so much a concern for that there.
I actually think I'm doing the opposite: I'm trying to expose the realities of the modern world to people who don't even realize they're just glossing over them. And you know, I am guilty of this all the time and I even know what to watch for. I think it's weird that white faces dominate television shows set in New York. I think it's weird that (and I've said this before) 'man' means 'white man' without anyone having to specify. I think it's weird that 'Muslim' means 'Terrorist' and not 'domestic terrorist' when it's an American citizen that's involved in something like this. It's little things that people take in stride day to day that if they stopped and started thinking about it, they might realize are things that keep the racial lines we have around in place.
I don't actually expect everyone to definitively agree with me. But I do hope that by bringing this up, some people will be a little more aware the next time they read an article about how certain people are classified and certain people aren't, and then maybe give things some thought.
Specifically people in America. Cause I think Europe is way better at using the word 'terrorist' than we are, as evidenced by Anti-food's last article.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Reuters news service make it a point not to use the word terrorist?
edit: yeah, found the quote.Reuters global news editor Stephen Jukes wrote, "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist."
mmalloy,
I'm sorry, you don't get to play the "I was talking generally" card when you specifically go after individuals on this forum. You went ballistic at NWJ for calling Hasan "the Muslim"; trying to say "oh I got that he was only doing it to wind me up" is dishonest and is not backed up in the slightest by your reaction to him and the way you labelled him as a result.
It's OK to get trolled. Really. Just don't lie about whether you got it or not - it doesn't make any statement about your mental faculties so there's no need to do it.
Other stuff:
What's the current percentage of whites to non-whites in New York, roughly? I have no idea these days.And you know, I am guilty of this all the time and I even know what to watch for. I think it's weird that white faces dominate television shows set in New York. I think it's weird that (and I've said this before) 'man' means 'white man' without anyone having to specify.
Edit: Completely agree about the use of the word "terrorist", which over here has history to it and some pretty obvious definitions, whereas in the US it's become a politically-charged word used for all kinds of purposes.
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