Rice urges calm, calls Koran desecration abhorrent

[elSicomoro]

Whether this is true or not, we're fucked either way. If it happened, the folks that did it are total pieces of shit, and we've pissed on the Muslims again (though I wouldn't call desecrating the Qu'ran torture). If it didn't happen, we're still gonna get the evil eye, primarily b/c of Abu Ghraib.

Of course, if everyone would just give up organized religion...

[jaguar]

bruce, you don't think Christians would be rioting in the same circumstances? Philippino christians fucking crucify themselves.

[elSicomoro]

Hell, I'm all for giving Muslims a bunch of Bibles to fuck up...why not?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by jaguar

bruce, you don't think Christians would be rioting in the same circumstances? Philippino christians fucking crucify themselves.

Absolutely not. Possibly a protest, more likely a pray-in, but burning buildings, looting, killing...no way in this country and I doubt in the Philippines either.
Especially on unsubstantiated rumors and I doubt it even if was televised live.
It seems the Koran is more venerated than it's contents. If they paid more attention to the contents they wouldn't be rioting, burning, looting, et al.

[elSicomoro]

From what I've read, the Qu'ran is more sacred to Muslims than the Bible is to many Christians. It's considered the untainted written word of God. Still...I don't think desecrating it compares to waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, etc.

[jaguar]

From my experience and understanding I'd wonder how much was genuine outrage and how much just might possibly be people taking advantage of the protest to do a little looting. But of course that gets in the way of the oh-so-easy muslims are savages theory doesn't it? 10 people died in Afghanistan - at the hands of police. Considering a few hundred died at the hands of police a few days earlier in Uzbekistan one might suggest that the police might be the problem rather than the protesters. Even in Afghanistan protest in most regions were peaceful. In Pakistan most protets consisted simply of marching around with banners and stamping on the US flag.

But lets not let the facts get in the way, right?

[elSicomoro]

Newsweek says, "Blame the Defense Department."

[Undertoad]

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

So the original complaint came from a lawyer taking allegations from his Yemeni al Qaeda prisoner.

[jaguar]

"If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

Does he think he's any more credible after everything else that's come out of that hellhole? I don't know whether it happened or not but shit, they need to hire better PR people. Consider what the Koran says about suicide. Consider how devout most of these people are. Consider: 'mass suicide'.

[mrnoodle]

Saw "Kingdom of Heaven" over the weekend. Visually cool, but the characters weren't so great. They were trying to make sure that the "voice of reason" character was present in the Christian camp, the Muslim camp, and to a lesser extent, the Jewish side. What ended up happening instead was a whole range of people who were indistinguishable from one another save for the style of their headgear.

The scene where the Muslims breach the wall but can't make it through was shot from overhead and showed a mass of ant-like people hung up at the breach and unable to move in any direction...kind of a visual interpretation of the whole fight for Jerusalem over the years.

Not sure where I was going with this. No point, really. But they figuratively flushed the bible and the koran a long time ago, at least from a moral standpoint...why are we giving two hoots about physically destroying them? And when is America going to stop walking on eggshells when it comes to politically correct garbage? We have no problem with deliberately and/or wantonly offending every religious faith on the planet -- just turn on MTV for 10 minutes to see an example.

Even more importantly, would it kill our own media to have an occasional outbreak of pro-American bias? Anyone who dares say anything positive is immediately branded a Bush apologist and a shill for Rupert Murdoch. There are too many fronts in this war as it is without making more on our own soil.

Bleh. I really did have a point, I think.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by sycamore

If it didn't happen, we're still gonna get the evil eye, primarily b/c of Abu Ghraib.

From MSNBC: The firestorm of anger continued Monday over Newsweek's handling of a story that alleged U.S. interrogators desecrated the Quran as Muslim leaders and the Bush administration both blasted the magazine’s partial retraction of the piece.

Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan said that U.S. pressure was behind the magazine's shift while presidential spokesman Scott McClellan called it "puzzling" that "while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refuse to retract the story." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the story "appalling."

[Happy Monkey]

What facts did Newsweek get wrong? They'd seen multiple reports of the event, and then got confirmation from one of their sources. Once the furor started, their source backed off the claim, and Newsweek reported that.

[elSicomoro]

Technically, none...although one could argue that Newsweek should not have taken this to be confirmation of the event:

Whitaker wrote that the magazine’s information came from “a knowledgeable U.S. government source,” and writers Michael Isikoff and John Barry had sought comment from two Defense Department officials. One declined to respond, and the other challenged another part of the story but did not dispute the Quran charge, Whitaker said.

IMO, they should have gotten confirmation from at least one more source.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by jaguar

From my experience and understanding I'd wonder how much was genuine outrage and how much just might possibly be people taking advantage of the protest to do a little looting. But of course that gets in the way of the oh-so-easy muslims are savages theory doesn't it?

Actually, the whole rioting to be able to loot notion you bring up reinforces the the idea that Muslims = Savages.

Obviously, in large measure they do not.

[jaguar]

I remember the big anti WTO riots in melbourne in 2000, the area around the building it was being held in and half the CBD was full of protesters, the vast majority of whom were peaceful. The serious action was throwing eggs at cars and sit-down roadblocks. Then there was the fringe who threw bricks at police, broke windows and generally used it as an excuse to get away with doing criminal damage. I don't think that all of us involved should be judged by their actions, same applies here.