Tokyo Rose 2.0: White House Asks Silicon Valley For Terrorism Help 184
theodp writes: While past U.S. Presidents have had to contend with radio propaganda, President Obama also has to worry about online propaganda. On Friday, U.S. national security officials met with leaders in Silicon Valley seeking ideas for ways to curtail terrorists' use of social media and to use technology to "disrupt paths to radicalization to violence." The closed door meetup, which included Apple CEO Tim Cook and top execs from Facebook, Twitter and Google, occurred on the same day the White House also announced the creation of the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force, which will focus on using social media to counter online propaganda by Islamic State and other terrorist groups, and the State Department promised to revamp its online counter-messaging campaign.
Opening line... (Score:4, Informative)
Obama's opening line of the meeting. "Gentlemen, how much privacy and how many rights of your users are you willing to sacrifice in the name of patriotism and the fight against terrorism?"
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The thing I'm always concerned about is when up front they claim it's to counter Middle Eastern Terrorists like the Daesh, Taliban, whatever you want to call them, maybe Saudi's and the CIA. But then the gov uses their resources to try and counter any one who opposes the agenda of the Corporate, Government, and Banker Tyranny. People who want to live in peace, have clean water, air, healthy food that's not polluted with toxins, etc. which often puts them at odds with all kinds of large interests get treated
UK, KSA, Turks (Score:3, Interesting)
Know what UK stands for? Ummah Kalifate
The UK has been a butt smoocher of Muslims for the longest time. In the Crimean war, they chose to pick Turkey over Russia, since it was such a great idea to back Muslim powers. Same thing in the Indian subcontinent - backing myriad Muslim kingdoms, like Afghanistan, against non-Muslim kingdoms, like the Sikhs, to bolster their empire. And going head to head against Russia in the so called 'Great Game', when Russia did the world a service by destroying the savag
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Obama not a fan of 1st nor 2nd amendment ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obama not a fan of 1st nor 2nd amendment ... (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? It took like 5 minutes to find former students who TALKED about his lectures and in fact showed reporters notes from lectures he gave.
Here's one example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07... [nytimes.com]
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Not so good for the rest of us though. Maybe if they had made him a professor, we'd have had a different President the last 7 years. Of course, it'd probably have been Hillary, so it wouldn't have been any better, probably worse in fact.
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Obama's opening line of the meeting
Is that really true, or are you making it up? Please, provide a link if it's real, I need to know this, and if it's real: I officially want my votes back, for both elections.
Obama is a TRAITOR, no better than the Bush family of traitors. He does not and in retrospect did not deserve to be POTUS. Someone please remove him from Office as soon as possible, today if possible. Where's a time machine when you need one?
**********
Now, on to more productive subjects: How to counter online propaganda? Here's my id
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Just look at the facts and you will see. Nuclear is the safest form of power generation in terms of dead people per kWh, including all the victims of Tshernobyl.
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Truth be told I didn't have that sparkling of an opinion of the man back in 2008, either, but it's not like we were given any other viable choice; was I supposed to vote for yet another Republican, after we'd be fucked in the ass by the Bush family of traitors for so many years?
"The other side was worse" is the worst excuse in the book. And now it turns that in your opinion, you voted for a traitor. You made your bed.
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Here, I voted for Romney because he wasn't the one in office. He did turn out to be the better choice as the last four years demonstrated (for example, he wouldn't have almost lost Iraq and then crept back into a conflict with terrible strategic positioning with ISIS; he wouldn't have backstabbed allies for another fo
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"Abroad" is an adverb, as are all adverbs of position beginning in a- such as "aside", "above", "aboard", "ajar", "astride", and a-so on.
Adverbs modify actions, not things.
For an adjective, try the possibly less exciting but more suitable "foreign".
Contests (Score:5, Interesting)
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Recruits that find out the reality is 72 virgin sheep
Sheep hell. 72 virgin men is what awaits them.
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Female fighters posing over ISIS dead ... (Score:2)
Everyone likes contests with prizes. Simply have awards for the best parodies, photoshopped terrorist photos, and terrorist videos that make ISIS look stupid. Recruits that find out the reality is 72 virgin sheep (after all, that's where virgin wool comes from), stuff like "Achmed, the 'Stop! I kill you!' dead terrorist", etc. Translate the best into as many languages as possible.
Everyone likes contests with prizes. Simply have awards for the best parodies, photoshopped terrorist photos, and terrorist videos that make ISIS look stupid. Recruits that find out the reality is 72 virgin sheep (after all, that's where virgin wool comes from), stuff like "Achmed, the 'Stop! I kill you!' dead terrorist", etc. Translate the best into as many languages as possible.
ISIS probably would not care. You know what ISIS would care about, what would frighten likely recruits ... dead ISIS fighters on the ground with Kurdish female fighters standing over them posing victoriously with their weapons, the ISIS fighter's weapons.
Hey we have the much publicized female grads of the US Army Ranger school (*). Perhaps its time to have some night raids by Rangers and photos in the morning too. Female Rangers a much publicized part of the team. Keep in mind that there need be no quagm
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...dead ISIS fighters on the ground with Kurdish female fighters standing over them posing victoriously with their weapons, the ISIS fighter's weapons, eating pulled pork sandwiches, drinking Budweiser, and smoking Marlboros.
TFTFY. :D
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...dead ISIS fighters on the ground with Kurdish female fighters standing over them posing victoriously with their weapons, the ISIS fighter's weapons, eating pulled pork sandwiches, drinking Budweiser, and smoking Marlboros.
TFTFY. :D
Lets not be disrespectful of the Kurds who are mostly muslims, muslims who are moderate, friendly to others with different faiths, who do not subjugate women and whose mindset is otherwise in the 21st century and not stuck in the 14th century like ISIS.
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Crap, I missed the "Kurdish" part.
Thanks for pointing out my error.
*walks away pretending nothing had gone wrong*
Re: Female fighters posing over ISIS dead ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Muslims who are moderate is like saying the US Christians who are moderate. If your faith matters to you, you're no longer a moderate. There are several sects of Islam as there are of Christianity, taking the side of the Kurds over the Syrians because of their faith is 'more advanced' is like taking the side of the Jehovah's Witnesses over the Westboro Baptist Church. Both are relatively harmless in their "small delusional group" positions but give them the political power and their internal delusions would
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Muslims who are moderate is like saying the US Christians who are moderate. If your faith matters to you, you're no longer a moderate. There are several sects of Islam as there are of Christianity, taking the side of the Kurds over the Syrians because of their faith is 'more advanced' is like taking the side of the Jehovah's Witnesses over the Westboro Baptist Church. Both are relatively harmless in their "small delusional group" positions but give them the political power and their internal delusions would become enforced law pretty quickly.
You do realize that you sound very much like the Westboro folks, very intolerant and convinced that your way is the only way.
...
By the way, its not Kurds vs Syrians. Its Kurds vs ISIS. Some Kurds are Syrians, Many non-Kurdish Syrians are also moderates - that's why ISIS murders them too,
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Do you have any proof otherwise?
Catholics had the power in the Middle Ages - Inquisition, Holy Wars
Protestants came to (some) power after that - Puritans exterminated Native Americans, Europe is divided in war between Protestants and Catholics
After that came a string of baptist and millennial churches at the turn of the last century. You got Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists... all of them require you to sacrifice your life savings, any free time and with some even your children (
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True fanatical believers are a rarity in both Christianity and Islam. What it different about ISIS compared to the other things you mention is that a very small group of fanatics has power in proportion far beyond their numbers. Mo
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But in all cases the fanatics go unchecked because the argument goes that "they're Christian/Muslims too" so God must approve their cause.
There are very few Muslim religious leaders that outright condemn extremist Muslims because their holy books support them, to say anything against them would put them on the chopping block as 'unbelievers'.
There are much more but still few Christian leaders that go against their own churches or even the ones leaning a bit further to extremism than themselves. The Mormons
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On the topic of middle eastern history, you are again woefully ignorant. ISIS-type fanatics have alway
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Clinton had a push to get females in as well. Let's hope it doesn't get under qualified people killed.
Yeah but if I recall correctly they were opening up combat roles where anatomical differences were not really important. And yes, of course, standards should not be lowered to get politically correct percentages. Its possible that some women could pass current infantry standards but they will be a far far smaller percentage of the female population than the percentage of the male population who could pass. If the politically correct people can accept that then we may be OK.
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Clinton had a push to get females in as well. Let's hope it doesn't get under qualified people killed. Kara Hultgren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You mean that there are qualifications to getting killed??? Does having black skin make you more qualified to get killed, like in Vietnam and today's urban US centers?
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Clinton had a push to get females in as well. Let's hope it doesn't get under qualified people killed. Kara Hultgren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You mean that there are qualifications to getting killed??? Does having black skin make you more qualified to get killed, like in Vietnam and today's urban US centers?
In this and so many other things people conflate "being black" with "being poor". Its poverty, not race.
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Then how come the white poor aren't proportionately represented in police killings? It's about race.
The whites are. Look at the FBI stats rather than what some activist falsely claims on TV. If I recall the FBI stats whites actually are slightly overrepresented in police killings, blacks slightly underrepresented. The massive death toll in the black community is not due to the police, it is largely due to criminal violence.
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The US government does not currently keep a comprehensive record of people killed by police. Instead the FBI runs a voluntary program for law enforcement agencies to submit numbers of “justified homicides” if they choose.
and
Of the 547 people found by the Guardian to have been killed by law enforcement so far this year, 49.7% were white, 28.3% were black and 15.5% were Hispanic/Latino. According to US census data, 62.6% of the population is white, 13.2% is black and 17.1% is Hispanic/Latino.
More than one in of five those killed so far in 2015 - 119 people in all - were unarmed. While 31.6% of black people killed were found to be carrying no weapon, that was true for only 16.5% of white people. This stark disparity has stayed roughly constant since The Counted began publishing at the beginning of June.
On a per capita basis, you're several times more likely to be killed by cops if you're black.
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This data will also be incomplete. And it will be skewed by those participating in this project, not that those participating are falsifying anything but there is likely to be unequal regional and demographic participation in the project.
Furthermore the FBI data may still be a
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The data is far better than what the government has. Even the government admits it.
No. What the government admits is that their data is incomplete. What makes data better is how the sample pool of the total population is selected. That is an unknown. What is known is the "The Counted" is using a sample technique that involves self selection of the data, this is generally considered a warning sign.
Go read the series.
I did read the citation you supplied. I noticed other problems with their data too, for example with "unarmed" people. "Unarmed" suspects sometimes start out armed. "Unarmed" only refers to the e
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FBI chief: 'unacceptable' that Guardian has better data on police violence
James Comey tells crime summit that ‘it’s ridiculous’ Guardian and Washington Post have more information on civilians’ deaths at hands of US police than FBI
So your claim of "superficial is total BS. Even the FBI admits they have worse records. And no, it's not mandatory to report police shootings to the FBI.
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No. What the government admits is that their data is incomplete.
As I said, the chief of the FBI admits that the Guardian has better stats than they do [theguardian.com]:
FBI chief: 'unacceptable' that Guardian has better data on police violence
James Comey tells crime summit that ‘it’s ridiculous’ Guardian and Washington Post have more information on civilians’ deaths at hands of US police than FBI
Read your own cited article and the sentence above. They are clearly using "better" in the sense of a numerical count and **not** the quality of the sampling. Again, good statistics is not about more data points in your sample, its about your sample being a more accurate representation of the total population. Fewer data points in a more representative sampling is better and more accurate than than more data points in a skewed representation of the population. Self-selected data points is a big warning sign of a skewed representation.
So your claim of "superficial is total BS. Even the FBI admits they have worse records. And no, it's not mandatory to report police shootings to the FBI.
Re-read, you are mixing two different points. Its superficial in both the sense of self-selected data points and in the sense that it does not adjust for critical pieces of information like justifiable shootings. How can one use these numbers as evidence of police misconduct when you are not even considering if the shooting was justifiable or not. So yeah, "The Count" is superficial until it addresses these issues. Its methodology and analysis would get a mediocre grade in Statistics 101.
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As long as you conflate "more" with "better" you are the one not getting it.
"The Counted" i
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The most notorious departments are the ones that are NOT going to self report to the fbi.
We don't know that.
Therefore, the FBI figures are badly skewed because of self-selection bias.
To be comparable to "The Counted" the decision to report or not would have to be made on a death by death basis, not a department by department basis. There is no evidence of "selection" being made is a racial context.
The Counted, on the other hand used tons of volunteers to check up on every police shooting.
False. The Guardian is soliciting tips.
You shouldn't be the the one lecturing on ignorance of statistics without first verifying in detail how it was done.
A quick visit to the Guardian's web page demonstrates you do not know how it is being done.
This technique yielded much higher figures, not because of a wrong implementation, but because the stats you and the FBI use collected in a totally invalid way, rendering their figures worse than useless.
Wrong. Whether the FBI data is skewed or not depends upon why the decision to report or not is made, and we don't know that. What we do know is t
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Yes, we DO know that the most notorious department that do not self-report. That's why the guardian had people on the ground getting the real stories. So quit making up stuff. And no, the guardian wasn't "soliciting tips." They went through every news report, even those from hick towns to find shootings, including those not reported to the FBI. And the decision not to report was not done on a case-by-case basis - ever. You obviously have done zero research, And no, I didn't do a "quick search" of the Guardi
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Yes, we DO know that the most notorious department that do not self-report. That's why the guardian had people on the ground getting the real stories.
Departments do not report for a variety of reason. Most common of all is that it is an extra effort and expense. They already have enough to do without adding to their workload. This includes many departments that are not "notorious". You are starting from the biased assumption that departments are trying to hide something, the fact is that they are often avoiding something unnecessary.
And no, the guardian wasn't "soliciting tips."
"The Counted"'s web site is soliciting tips. The "About" page describes their crowdsourced efforts. Clue: Crowdsource is ti
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Your claim was that the FBI had better stats - despite the fact that the FBI itself says otherwise. Do you really want to continue beating your dead horse?
Re-read, you are confused. I said that its premature to claim that The Counted has "better" stats. That you erroneously confuse a larger set of data with "better". That even with only a small statistical sampling one can get good data, it depends entirely on how well the sample data represents the entire population. To claim that the FBI has bad data you have to show that there is something unrepresentative about the reporting departments, not that only some departments are reporting. I also pointed out tha
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The fact is the FBI says that the Guardian has better stats.
No, the FBI says that the news media has more comprehensive data. And I have already explained that more data is not necessarily better data. Its about how representative the sample is, not its size. The FBI sampling has not been shown to be unrepresentative and The Counted sampling has not been shown to be representative (demographically skewed tips being a potential problem). Conclusions about who has better data are premature. Well, from a mathematical perspective. From of political advocacy perspective
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Data is part of stats. You fail.
Uh, no, and no. Seriously, borrow a Statistics 101 book, good quality data is what stats is all about, not quantity of data. They have a phrase about data that lacks quality, is skewed away from being representational of the population: "garbage in, garbage out".
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It's not directed as ISIS, but at their potential recruits. You want to stop the flow of people joining, not affect those whose minds are already made up.
As I said, this would also affect likely recruits. It destroys the cool jihadi image, the victorious image, the notion of being powerful given their defeat by those they would subjugate. Images such as I described are entirely motivated by mindf*cking the living, the dead themselves are irrelevant.
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No, all that would do is further anger potential recruits, as well as all muslims, for desecration of a dead body.
There is no desecration. Just standing over the body with a captured weapon. Besides, its already been shown that being killed by a female fighter is something that jihadis actually do fear.
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72 virgins. It's like a 90s LAN party that never ends.
Whether that's heaven or hell is debatable. Mostly it depends on whether you like the smell of Cheetos.
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For some reason, I'm reminded of the once-popular T-shirt that read, "To all the virgins in the world--THANKS FOR NOTHING".
reactions (Score:5, Interesting)
i know they like to describe it as "response", but the "response" to terrorism is actually a "predictable reaction". these "predictable reactions" are what the psy-ops teams behind terrorist groups use to extend their reach well beyond what they would otherwise be able to achieve. kill a few people in a public place, get a MASSIVE reaction, governments predictably react in a 2-dimentsional zombie sleep-walking way, calling it a "response", and the damage is magnified and furthers the aims of the terrorists: to terrorise as many people as they can.
blunt and simple question. why are governments HELPING terrorists?
even this "news" report - where the U.S. govt is now holding talks with the companies that hold the most information about people in the history of humanity - far more than IBM could ever hold on punched-cards when it was commissioned by the Nazis to track the jewish population - is yet another example of the terrorists WINNING.
i didn't approve of it at the time, but there was significant censorship of the bombings that occurred in dublin in the 1980s. TWELVE bombs - set off in ONE DAY by the IRA - reached all of the Irish newspapers... but not a single word reached us in the UK or anywhere else. the only reason i got to hear about it at all was because we had some irish workers who would have newspapers specially shipped over.
this kind of "non-reaction" - non-reporting - i can see now is much more sensible than any kind of "reaction" dressed up with the words "response" or "proportionate response". it however takes extreme bravery to not react in the face of this kind of thing, and that, really, should be the role of governments: to say, "look: our current approach, to try to reassure you that we're 'taking care of this' for you by "reacting", isn't working. everything we try to do just makes things worse. instead, what we'd like you to consider doing is a VOLUNTARY censorship of terrorists. if you see something illegal on a social media site, report it. but DO NOT re-tweet it. do NOT send messages to your friends 'oh dear look at this, isn't it horrible'. take a deep breath, be compassionate, feel SORRY for these people that they're so deluded that they have to kill other human beings, but don't react in fear and loathing, because that's exactly what they want you to do".
sounds naive, maybe? but look, historically, at what's worked. the current "policies" aren't working, are they? so maybe it's time to try something different, yes? remember: definition of madness - to do the same thing over and over again, given the exact same conditions, expecting every single time a different outcome...
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> why are governments HELPING terrorists?
To appease radical Islam. A strategy which has been proved not to work.
Japan does exactly the opposite. Japan allows very few Muslim immigrants, and does not put up with any of their bullshit.
Not only has there not been a Muslim terrorist attack on Japanese soil in 30 years. Not only are there no Muslim riots in Japan; but Japan has far better relations with mid-eastern Muslim nations than does the US.
Radical Islam sees appeasement as weakness, and will never stop
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easy way to handle things when we catch Daesh inspired attackers
IF the evidence is Zero Doubt
THEN haul the suspect before a judge at 09:00 and before a hangman at 12:00
and the news outlets just get a monthly "X suspects were given JUSTICE in the past 30 days" statement no names no other news reports. (details should be kept as local as possible)
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To appease radical Islam. A strategy which has been proved not to work.
Yeah it did. Didn't you see Rambo 3?
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Translation: censor all criticism of Islam (Score:3)
House Democrats introduce legislation condemning anti-Muslim bigotry
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/30/house-democrats-introduce-legislation-condemning-a/
Why just Muslims? Why single out one religion for special treatment? What ever happened to free speech for everybody?
Do Muslims get to continue their hate speech, and outright death threats? Why is that not being addressed?
Who decides what is "hate speech" against Islam? Muslims tend to consider the slightest honest criticism to be hate speech. They kill over cartoons.
My understanding is that most religious hate speech, and hate crimes, are against Jews.
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This Is Not A Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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The US and UK governments have opened the domestic propaganda pipes. Expect a lot of "good" news stories on social media, web 2.0 and the free online portals sites, walled sites.
Their own domestic audiences are now been subjected short term and long term psychological operations online by their own mil.
'Anti-Propaganda' Ban Repealed, Freeing State Dept. To Direct Its Broadcasting Arm At American Citizens (2013/07/15)
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
British Army To Create 1500-Stron
Is the story of "Tokyo Rose" true? (Score:4, Interesting)
Below is a story from cracked.com. Not the best source, but better than wikipedia.
I am curious, does anybody know the truth about this?
In the U.S., whenever people openly criticize American troops or side with the opposition in a military conflict, they're accused of being like "Tokyo Rose" (anti-war protester Jane Fonda was called this during Vietnam, or snidely referred to as "Hanoi Jane"). If you've seen the movie Flags of Our Fathers, there's a scene where the American GIs stationed in Japan hear a sexy English-speaking lady on the radio taunting them with the fact that, while they're being blown to pieces, back home their wives are probably blowing other dudes. That's "Tokyo Rose" -- she would broadcast anti-American propaganda aimed at demoralizing troops overseas.
After the war, two journalists actually found this traitor and the government threw her in jail.
But It Turns Out ...
The only problem is, the U.S. military had an agency monitoring enemy broadcasts 24/7 during the war, and they declared that there was no "Tokyo Rose." It was just a catchall name soldiers gave all English-speaking Japanese women on the radio. So wait, who the hell did they arrest, then? A California-born woman, Iva Toguri, who actually did the opposite of what we just described.
It's complicated. War isn't science, OK?
In 1941, Toguri was in Japan, taking care of an aunt. She was set to return to the U.S. on December 9 of the same year, but a little thing called "Japan bombing the shit out of Pearl Harbor" made that impossible. So she stayed there against her will and eventually got a job in Radio Tokyo, where she worked under a captured Australian major who had been tasked with broadcasting propaganda in English. However, since their Japanese superiors/captors didn't actually understand what they were saying, the major and Toguri began slipping pro-American messages into the broadcasts, which were always done in a playful tone.
Toguri never went by "Tokyo Rose" (her moniker was "Orphan Annie"), and you'll note that her voice was anything but sexy. When the war ended, reporters desperate to confirm the rumors found Toguri, thought she fit the profile, and basically conned her into admitting that she was the real deal. As a result, she was convicted of treason, fined $10,000, and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and she had her citizenship revoked. Toguri was finally given the old presidential "Whoops, our bad" by Gerald Ford in 1977.
http://www.cracked.com/article_20408_5-famous-people-you-wont-believe-didnt-exist_p2.html
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For most of us who served back then, she still is and always will be Hanoi Jane. If the US had actually declared war on North Viet Nam, she would have been guilty of treason for giving Aid and Comfort to the enemies of the United States, and while we can't send her to prison as she deserves, we can, and mostly do boycott her movies.
More speech? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why isn't the solution to terrorist speech more speech? Why are we looking for ways to censor people? I'd much rather they were dicking around on Facebook rather than killing people. And if they're dumb enough to use social media to plot things, then their information is available for the police to find.
So I'm not sure I get the point of this at all. Isis' use of social media isn't what concerns me. The way they oppress and kill people is what I truly hate. Far from censoring beheading videos, I think
Tokio Rose? (Score:3)
You want to stop radicalization? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop sending troops to kill people all over the world, in their own countries, people that are of no conceivable threat to America, and they will stop wanting to kill us.
Mostly we do this in our economic interest. In essence, terrorism is a cost of the way we do business. If Global corporations and countries were to change to doing business ethically, no longer supporting dictators and corruption to get resources cheaper or with more assurance, their profits would go down but so would the need to strong-arm people all over the world with our armies.
Because we don't want to stop doing business this way, we need to seek advice on how to create better ways to hold back the animosity and hate we create by our actions. But until we stop creating the animosity and hate, it will always plague us.
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Really? The U.S. helped the Islamic nutjobs take Afghanistan from the Russians. Then, just to show us how much they appreciated the effort, they provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda and the rest is history.
You also ignore that Saudi Arabia has been exporting the most virulent form of insane Islam for a long time.
The U.S. took Iraq away from a brutal dictator. The Iraqis decided to turn their country into shit...home grown Islamic shit. The U.S. helped take Libya away from a brutal dictator. The Libyans decided
No Kidding. (Score:2)
You also ignore that Saudi Arabia has been exporting the most virulent form of insane Is
lam for a long time.
No kidding.
Like since Muhammad, who had a lot to say about them. For instance:
"The confusion [fitna] comes from there. (and he pointed to the East = Nejid in present
No kidding. (But also from touchpads...) (Score:2)
(Confusion also seems to come from the touchpads on Lenovo laptops, which seem to be able to hit "Submit" on partially composed postings, while simultaneously erasing part of the text...)
You also ignore that Saudi Arabia has been exporting the most virulent form of insane Is
lam for a long time.
No kidding.
Like since Muhammad, who had a lot to say about them. For instance:
"The confusion [fitna] comes from there (and he pointed to the East = Nejid in present-day Eastern Saudi Arabia)"
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In essence, terrorism is a cost of the way we do business.
A benefit of the way we do business. It is essentially harmless (less dangerous than peanuts), but keeps the public in line and ready to give up their freedoms and tax money.
Papers please (Score:2)
comrade popups on every site we visit?
Make the statements ineffective (Score:4, Insightful)
Radical extremist messages don't resonate with people who have a comfortable life. Every time the middle class gets pushed down, every time a full time job doesn't make ends meet, every time a simple medical problem costs several years income, the radical extremist messages come through a little louder and a little clearer.
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Radical extremist messages don't resonate with people who have a comfortable life. Every time the middle class gets pushed down, every time a full time job doesn't make ends meet, every time a simple medical problem costs several years income, the radical extremist messages come through a little louder and a little clearer.
Only if you're an idiot. In real life, it's the radical extremists who are responsible for poverty and misery in the Middle East. By preventing the stability and rule of law necessary to run a country in a way that allows an economy to actually grow, and by making the region extremely unattractive to investment from abroad, they guarantee the continuation of the very conditions you're complaining about. This is what they want. They're not being extremists because of those conditions, they're being extremis
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Yup, well his premise does apply to the 'home grown' terrorism here and in other western countries. Radical islam sounds more attractive to westerners under increasing external economic and social pressures to give up more and more liberty for less in return. Of course, fixing this requires washington (and other governments) to acknowledge flaws in their own ideologies, which they won't do until things get bad enough affect the ruling class. By then, it may be too late.
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Since TFA was about preventing radicalization in the West, that was the issue I addressed.
As for extremism in the Middle East, we already did the big don'ts there like propping up bloody dictators with weapons and money then destroying people's homes and infrastructure to take our puppets down a notch, so even if we stop now it will take a while to improve matters. It's funny how nobody likes to talk about when the Taliban and Saddam were our bestest buds. If we quit laying down with dogs, we will quit gett
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Even then, it's wrong. There have been several memes about Jihad, all of which are easily busted. Joblessness? Well, why don't unemployed Christians or Jews or Buddhists or Hindus go around assaulting women in Europe or trying to assassinate cops around the corner? Poverty? Same question - why don't non-Muslims on unemployment or food stamps go aggressively after cops? Osama and most of the al Qaeda leadership were well to do Arabs who had no financial issues, and the same go for several Muslims who j
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You're munging different conditions and problems together. That will only obscure the issue.
The issue of immigrants in Europe is not relevant to HOME GROWN terrorism, or even any terrorism, it's violent crime. For grins though, much of it is due to a well decayed culture in many parts of the Middle East. I know Muslims who grew up in the U.K. that other than not drinking alcohol seem much like other people from the U.K.
As for the U.S., I guess you've never heard of gangs (which often leads to prison which o
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I addressed the 2 separately. I first asked how was it that lack of education or poverty wasn't a factor among similar non-Muslim populations. I then addressed the foreign aspect, and debunked a part of your claim that we supported the Taliban/Osama.
The last part of what you wrote - violent gangs - is something that can be prevented as far as Jihad goes: simply BAN ANY dawa activity in prison.
The issue of immigration to Europe is closely tied to Jihad. The goal of both terrorists as well as Muslim im
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The last part of what you wrote - violent gangs - is something that can be prevented as far as Jihad goes: simply BAN ANY dawa activity in prison.
We can't even prevent rapes and shooting up heroine in prison, how do you propose to prevent subversive communication? In particular considering that freedom of speech and religion are inalienable rights.
Meanwhile, as long as it's safer and more profitable (or seems so) to join the criminals than fight them, we'll have a population open to jihadist sentiments.
As for the U.S. supporting jihadists, you made a distinction with little difference. We supported a group of jihadists that soaked up all of the resou
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So, tell them no. Give them a list of countries that have it and suggest they ask around.
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Not true. For instance, the September 11 terrorists were rich or at worst middle class, and had at least a college education. The idea that terrorism is caused by poverty is just a convenient excuse to blame the West. It sounds plausible, but it's not actually supported by the facts.
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Again, we're talking about terrorism sparked in the west ("home grown terrorism"), not terrorism that comes from the middle east.
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Reason for this has been our deliberate blindness to the fact that all the terrorism that we face today come from Islam. Whether it's from migrants or refugees or citizens converted either within jailhouses or schools or elsewhere in society.
We do have laws that allow us to go after neo-Nazis, Communists, KKK and so on. There is no reason the same laws can't be used against Muslims. Just re-define Islam as a politically ideological cult - something easily established from the Islamic texts - and state
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Can we do the same for Christians? The same criteria applied to Christians would put the entire government in prison including our President.
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