London Bombing

[Queen of the Ryche]

no, it was A FEW SELECT EXTREMISTS who warp the name of Islam by using it as an excuse for their atrocious actions. Repeat after me: NOT ALL ISLAMISTS / MUSLIMS ARE MURDERING WACKOS - JUST A FEW WHO GIVE THE REST A BAD NAME. got it? good. class dismissed.

[mrnoodle]

I suppose some people here are dimwitted enough that I need to say:

"NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE BAD"


fucking A.


You actually think I'm full of hate and ignorant right-wing propoganda, don't you? You actually think that I get off on people dying. Retards. If the Muslims wanted their religion to be one of peace, they would take it back from the people who are running it now. They don't, so they won't.

It is not a handful of extremists. It's the party line.

I'm going to have a stroke. Chill time. I get mad at the bastards waging war on our country, and everyone else gets mad at the people who get mad.

[mrnoodle]

I guess I know that on some level.

But I'm scared, because a large chunk of the world wants me dead. And whether or not the original intent of Islam was good or evil, we see what it has become. Arafat was a demi-god. bin Laden is a rock star. al Jazeera lies, and people hang on its every word.

Who the hell are we supposed to be profiling here? If you go to Iran, and scratch any muslim, underneath you are likely to find...if not a terrorist, someone who believes what the terrorists are doing is just.

That's just the way it is. Our view is colored by the fact that we live in a tolerant state. We just can't imagine that a whole people would want us dead. But most of em do. They just do. I didn't make it up.

[lookout123]

maybe your mistake is in believing that most of the people you meet on a daily basis aren't of the very same nature. if you scratch the surface of the average american, do they wish death or at least a bad case of athlete's foot upon someone? i think you might be surprised.

there are some rabid "kill all the dark skins" types, that we choose to ignore. there are more vocal "kill the muslim" types, even more "kill the muslim extremist" types, and so on. we are people. people across the globe aren't all that different.

and "profiling"? i don't know that we should be profiling anyone. be aware of everything around you. be aware of the people around you. is that guy with the dark skin a friendly siek or a rabid wahabbist with a stick of TNT jammed up his rectum? what about that white guy? is he an accountant moving into a new home, or is he a nutjob with a van loaded with explosives intended for a government building?

be aware. be wary. don't be paranoid.

whole people would want us dead. But most of em do

no they don't. they don't know you or give a damn about me. they are living their lives. a bunch of people want a bunch of other people dead. the trick is to separate those with ill intentions from the rest, and that is impossible if you think they are all the same.

This is horrible, horrible news. In addition to the dead, 700 people were injured. I am so glad Jag is okay. I beleive that DanaC lives in the English countryside somewhere, so she should be OK unless she chanced to visit London that day. My heart goes out to the people of the UK.

We cannot hate the people of any given faith just because of the actions of some extremist element. The families of innocent civilians killed in Iraq hate all Christians. The people of the Western World hate all Muslims. Such blanket hatred is only a recipe for more attacks and more deaths of innocents.

The mistake, if it is indeed a mistake, of the Bush administration is that they have not gone after Bin Laden. The conflict in Iraq has become a quagmire with no real purpose that I can see other than to secure our interests in oil supplies from the Mid East. In the process, we are only sowing more hatred for the West in the Muslim world. Terrorist attacks such as the one in London are the result.

I very much hope the authorities in the UK track down every last person who had responsibility for what happened in London today. The UK doesn't have the death penalty, so I hope they all end up in a maximum security prison for life with few amenities. I have no sympathy for ANY group which commits acts that lead to the deaths of children and women and male non combatants. People who carry out such atrocities should be dealt with no mercy.

[lookout123]

if that's true, where's the outcry from the muslim rank and file? where are the blogs, the radio and TV interviews, the books and magazine articles from muslims denouncing the killing?

i think i've been pretty clear about my own faith in the cellar. i'm a Christian. one of those "double belly button types" and whatever you want to call us. so keep that in mind here.

if christians don't support blowing up abortion clinics and shooting doctors where was the outcry from the christian rank and file? where are the blogs, the radio and TV interviews, the books and magazine articles from christians denouncing the killing?

we live in a society that is full of small c christians so when a "christian activist" kills a doctor, or taunts an abortion patient we look at them and say "look at that stupid, asshat, activist." and then we groan at the ribbing we will get from those that like to ridicule christianity on the basis of an individual's actions. when a dumbass tv evangelist announces that FL will be destroyed because of our decadent society's acceptance of homosexuality, we don't call the newspaper for an interview, or hold a protest to clarify what most christians think. we turn the channel, roll our eyes and wait for the idiot to die and the whole thing to blow over.

these people live in a society that is 99% muslim. when a "muslim extremist" blows something or someone up they say "look at that stupid, asshat, exremist." and then they grimace at the way the rest of the world will look at them the next day. when a cleric calls for "death to all ____" they... see where i am going here?

keep things in context.

[Radar]

Islam is no more or less violent than Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, or any other religion. Islam does not teach hate anymore than Christianity does. Those who claim such only prove their ignorance of the subject.

This has nothing to do with Islam and has everything to do with U.S. foreign policy and sticking our noses into areas where it doesn't belong. It has to do with the U.S. invading nations that never posed a threat to America and murdering hundreds of thousands of people, and trying to force a government of our choosing on them. It has to do with decades of U.S. intervention resulting in millions dying in the middle-east.

The U.S. is not a Christian Nation, it's not a Muslim Nation, it's not a Jewish nation, etc. and it's about time the morons out there trying to spread U.S. Policy abroad got that through their thick skulls.

For the record there have been at least 100 Muslims murdered by Christians for every Christian murdered by a Muslim.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Radar

For the record there have been at least 100 Muslims murdered by Christians for every Christian murdered by a Muslim.

Citation please?

[lookout123]

c'mon Dar you should know that 87.63% of all statistics in the cellar are made of whole cloth.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by dar512

Citation please?

Crusades + 2 wars in Iraq + Afghanistan + putting people like Saddam, Khadafi, etc. in power, training Bin Laden, arming Israel = far more Muslims than any Christians killed in the WTC bombings, other bombings, etc.

Lookout's comments about statistics got me to checking and I discovered a very cool site with all kinds of statistics from a variety of sources, "Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century"

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20centry.htm

Here's a sample from some of the most recent Mid East wars and conflicts:

Gulf War:
The US lost 147 killed in battle and 289 dead otherwise. The other Coalition members lost 92 dead.
Shortly after the war, the US Defense Intelligence Agency made a very rough estimate of 100,000 Iraqi deaths, and this order of magnitude is widely accepted.

So that's 528 of "us" versus 100,000 of "them" according to the bleeding hearts over at the Defense Intellience Agency. Comes out to 200 of them for every 1 of us.

Afganistan/Soviet Invasion
Britannica Annual (1994): 1,500,000 Afganistan combatants plus civilians
(20 May 88 Chicago Tribune) Soviet deaths: 12-15,000 killed
100 of them for every 1 Soviet

Iraq Invasion
ESTIMATED TOTAL KILLED (12 June 2005)
USA, Coalition and contractors: 2,131 (ICasualties.Org)
Iraqi military during invasion: 7,600-13,500 (Proj. Def. Alt., NY Post, Guardian)
Iraqi insurgents: 10,000-15,000 (CNN)
Iraqi security forces, post-invasion: 1,300-2,267 (NY Times, CNN, ICasualties.Org) Civilians: 22,248-25,229 (Iraq Body Count)
I used a middle number from each estimate to come up with a conservative total of 52,131 Iraqi dead as of June. This does not take into account the high number of deaths due to the UN embargo during Saddam's regime.
So an extremely conservative 25 of them for every 1 of us.

You know, when it comes to killing, the West does seem to be doing a pretty good job.

Radar may have grabbed his statistic out of the air, but he does seem to be good at catching fly balls.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Radar

Crusades + 2 wars in Iraq + Afghanistan + putting people like Saddam, Khadafi, etc. in power, training Bin Laden, arming Israel = far more Muslims than any Christians killed in the WTC bombings, other bombings, etc.

Oh yeah. Those are hard numbers, those are.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by dar512

Oh yeah. Those are hard numbers, those are.

Even with the most conservative estimate taking those things into consideration, would prove me right. I can understand that you don't like the fact that I'm right, but don't even try to claim I was wrong just because you're ignorant of history.

[warch]

What these particular murderers do have is a powerful weapon in their religious perversion. It provides them human ammo, their sense of justification, and a mutated PR hook. So how do you promote Islamic moderation and squelch the extreemist expressions? What gets often dissed as wimp ass "therapy" is actually an important tactic here. I'm not saying you shouldnt fight back strong, take out the murderers, but fight smart, on lots of fronts. its not war vs police, its war and police and intelligence and economics and media and politics and global will and...

[mrnoodle]

First, let me apologize for calling names. It's dumb.

Secondly, let me reiterate that I don't hate anyone. Nor do I think that all muslims should be eradicated (although they feel we should).

But the sooner we realize that we are ALL targets, and 9/10 muslims in ANY part of the world wouldn't so much as shed a tear at our death, the safer we will be.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. I can see this kind of reaction after Pearl Harbor.... "hey now, let's not become hateful, like the handful of extremists who bombed our military base. What did the president do to make them mad and CAUSE them to do this?"