quote: I don't dislike the Iranians or the Iraqis. Just the people creating this culture, which exists almost entirely on the Arabian peninsula.
What I really really like about this sentence is that it lumps together a Sunni majority, Arabic speaking nation, and a Farsi speaking Sunni majority nation, and refers to their general location as being on the Arabian peninsula, where in fact on part of one of those countries is located, and which is majority Shia Muslim.
Just for perspective, Tittles, this is the cultural and geographical equivalent of the sentence:
"I don't dislike the English or Scottish. Just the people creating this culture, which exists almost entirely on the Iberian Peninsula."
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Excellent! An even better way to be a whale. Use a data set so constrained as to be near useless for predictive power.
Do you know where the only successful 'Muslim attack' occurred in the united states since 9/11?
Why are we constraining it to "since 9/11"? Is that as far back as you can remember? Weren't you still in grade school then?
Like me, I believe he was in high school. Since then he, like me, has become an adult member of society, measured by his conduct, and not by his relative age- except by people like you who, who think reminding someone of his youth will sting because you're insecure about your age.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: FEMA guy is saying they don't know what caused them.
BPD is saying devices have been found.
Media reaction has not been comforting. Feels like right wingers are almost enjoying it- in a we-all-understand-we-shouldn't-enjoy-this kind of way. But then, most of the media has that reaction when something like this- a tragedy that isn't a full blown national emergency happens.
Literally the first thing I saw this morning when I got up (we're 6 hours ahead so I missed it yesterday) was Bill O'Reilly's mug on Digg or somewhere saying: "IEDs were used... which is what are used in IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN."
This is like saying: "Bombs were used... which is what the Nazi's used."
Yeah the IED thing occurred to me too. How did homemade bombs become IEDs became ONLY IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
Have people forgotten that a molotov cocktail is an IED? Pipe bombs are IEDs? Any home made bomb that has gone off in America was an IED? How that acronym has become synonymous exclusively with the Middle East has really made using it domestically problematic.
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posted
Okay, enough time has passed that I'll skip right to the endpoints.
Cutting the data points down to only successful attacks is even dumber than the original "I bet it was a Muslim terror attack because it happened in the northeast", because it cuts you down to three data points and they're not all in the northeast. Why, 100% of identifiable successful Islamic terror attacks on the country have migrated out of the northeast since 9/11! Let's bet that on account of that limited data set that it is definitely NOT an islamic terror attack because it happened in the northeast AND it succeeded, ergo etc
This terror attack isn't even really much of a ringer for Islamic terrorism. A crude hotpot with some nails. It's already an even worse bet by now because no group has claimed responsibility for it; usually the taliban or various remnants of AQ and other extremist islamic fundamentalist groups are pretty quick to crow about this.
It honestly, given the bombs used and the targeting of a sports event, has more in common with attacks we have on record from low rent skinheads and far right loonies. The Spokane MLK parade in 2011, or the Eric Rudolph bombing.
If you absolutely had to put money up on this, like, absolutely had to, the "smart" money would be on a homegrown loner, white male.
But there is no "smart money" in this event because this is exactly the sort of wild speculative period which makes for a really stupid bet. If I guessed homegrown loner white male and won, I'd be lucky, but dumb for having made the bet in the first place.
It's a measure of faith in you (of sorts, anyway) that I immediately called the whole 'I'd bet my next paycheck' thing as something that was obviously a puffed-up lie; if you would actually bet your whole paycheck on a bet like that, you'd be a very dumb person and a whale.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote: I don't dislike the Iranians or the Iraqis. Just the people creating this culture, which exists almost entirely on the Arabian peninsula.
What I really really like about this sentence is that it lumps together a Sunni majority, Arabic speaking nation, and a Farsi speaking Sunni majority nation, and refers to their general location as being on the Arabian peninsula, where in fact on part of one of those countries is located, and which is majority Shia Muslim.
Just for perspective, Tittles, this is the cultural and geographical equivalent of the sentence:
"I don't dislike the English or Scottish. Just the people creating this culture, which exists almost entirely on the Iberian Peninsula."
I think there was a misunderstanding. I'm not lumping Iraq and Iran in with the culture that I detest. I knew many people's response would be "hur hur lookit dah racist hating brown people and Arabs" so I attempted to get ahead of it.
What I meant was that I have nothing against the countries not on the Arabian peninsula, that are part of this culture. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman.
Posts: 200 | Registered: Jan 2013
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quote:I think there was a misunderstanding. I'm not lumping Iraq and Iran in with the culture that I detest. I knew many people's response would be "hur hur lookit dah racist hating brown people and Arabs" so I attempted to get ahead of it.
You'll need to move more quickly, then.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: The person questioned in the hospital was a Saudi national, who was reportedly tackled and held by a bystander after he was seen running from near the scene of the explosion, said a law enforcement source who spoke with someone involved in the FBI’s investigation.
The Saudi man, believed to be a university student in Boston, is cooperating with the FBI and told agents that he was not involved in the explosions, and that he ran only because he was frightened. Investigators did not characterize the man as a suspect. No one had been arrested or charged by late Monday night.
posted
I look forward to mentioning this story to a coworker who, shall we say, shares a Steven or Tittles outlook on terrorism and for whom this story as it was initially reported-*Saudi in custody!!!*-was the subject for much pontification.
Incidentally, Steven, I know you won't complain if I ask you, "Have you answered Samprimary's question yet?" You know, the one that went into detail at some length pointing out how foolish your bet would have been, if it weren't just obvious trash-talking?
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posted
On a different note, I am a performer. I do magic and Santa and other simple kids parties (not an Actor or a famous headliner--just a low level kids performer).
Two months ago I was contacted by a retirement home I work with on occasion. They wanted me to dress up as Paul Revere for a reading of the Longfellow poem. I would mime the action as the director read the poem.
The date set for the reading was 4/16--yesterday. They were celebrating Patriot's Day on that day.
What was going to be a silly, lowly attended bumblestump of a poetry reading took on a deeper, more important feel after the events on Monday.
The costume I created, out of this and that and thrift store discards was worn with pride and power. The audience packed the hall in Red, White, and Blue outfits.
There is a point in the poem where they talk of those who Revere awoke that night, who would not live to reach their beds again the next night, and a room full of Americans looked over at a chair where an empty uniform lay folded, and tears began to form.
I can not come to Boston to help those injured. I can not help find the cowards and fools who did this terrible thing. I can Donate blood, and Donate money. Yesterday as I rode a stick horse around a cardboard crafted Old North Chuch of Boston I felt as if I might actually be donating something else--to those few in that room I was helping provide whatever is the opposite of the fear, panic and terror those cowards had thought to create.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
The reason I still doubt it's a right-wing crazy is that I've never heard of those guys attacking the Northeast. OTOH, Muslim crazies seem to love that area. Time will tell, though. I doubt such an inexperienced bomb-maker was all that careful about covering his tracks, and the FBI doesn't like to let terrorists get away, especially now.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: The reason I still doubt it's a right-wing crazy is that I've never heard of those guys attacking the Northeast. OTOH, Muslim crazies seem to love that area. Time will tell, though. I doubt such an inexperienced bomb-maker was all that careful about covering his tracks, and the FBI doesn't like to let terrorists get away, especially now.
As others have pointed out, there is far too little data to make the conclusion that Muslim crazies are more likely than right wing crazies to attack in the northeast. You are doing the equivalent of drawing a straight line through one data point.
If there is anything we should have learned from the violence of the past decade, it is the wisdom of waiting until the evidence is in before jumping to conclusions.
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posted
I'm holed up essentially ignoring all major newsmedia, because it's such a clownwreck after events like these. The NYPost has already demonstrated why it should be wiped from the earth.
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posted
Well, to be fair, the Post demonstrated that ages ago. It always amazes me when people cite it as if it were more reputable than, say, the National Enquirer.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
They had already demonstrated to what extent they were completely worthless as a news organization. Now we know they're way less than worthless. In this event they actually proved that they have the amazingly disproportionate capacity to poison and damage news reporting during a crisis. TWELVE DEAD. SAUDI NATIONAL ARRESTED AS SUSPECT.
wamp wamp
gonna take a page from the warhammer crazies and call for Exterminatus.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Now we know they're way less than worthless.
I figured their reporting on the whole Occupy Wall Street thing gave that away a while back. They hated having to walk past those protesters when going out for lattes, you could tell.
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posted
it's appropriate that one of the heroes of this whole mess has been an Occupy protester, and they're [the nypost] one of the badguys in this whole mess.
quote:Now we know they're way less than worthless.
I figured their reporting on the whole Occupy Wall Street thing gave that away a while back. They hated having to walk past those protesters when going out for lattes, you could tell.
More like hated waiting behind the occupy protesters who were getting their lattes. But it is first come first serve and when you have nothing else to do...
Posts: 570 | Registered: Sep 2009
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: More like hated waiting behind the occupy protesters who were getting their lattes. But it is first come first serve and when you have nothing else to do...
Bless your heart, you're going to even indirectly stand up for the NYPost today. You're very charitable.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: More like hated waiting behind the occupy protesters who were getting their lattes. But it is first come first serve and when you have nothing else to do...
you're going to even indirectly stand up for the NYPost today.
No. It's clear I'm not standing up for the Post, directly or indirectly. But I was making a statement about the occupy movement.
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posted
They essentially work on the principle of "Doesn't matter, got clicks." Get the stories out that say that twelve died, or that it was adam lanza. Or was it ryan lanza? Whatever, get it out there, it'll be the linked article and we win even if it's a missed shot from the hip.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: No. It's clear I'm not standing up for the Post, directly or indirectly. But I was making a statement about the occupy movement.
You're adorable.
Breaking news from the Capax Informer: occupy protesters do nothing, drink lattes.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: No. It's clear I'm not standing up for the Post, directly or indirectly. But I was making a statement about the occupy movement.
You're adorable.
Thank you
I was hoping you'd post, Parkour. Others are so predictable in their replies that it takes away from the amusement. Not the case with you. I never know when I'll get to enjoy a little patronizing quip from you so I relish them when they come.
Posts: 570 | Registered: Sep 2009
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quote:I was hoping you'd post, Parkour. Others are so predictable in their replies that it takes away from the amusement. Not the case with you. I never know when I'll get to enjoy a little patronizing quip from you so I relish them when they come.
Given your participation in this thread, are you really going to criticize Parkour for a 'patronizing quip'? Seriously, man.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Anyway in lieu of having much else productive to say regarding the investigation into this horrible crime (because right now all we have is armchair internet detectivery) here are some words by someone who is not a clown and who gets right to the heart of something that's really, really wrong here. I have entertained the silly side of the speculation or steven's willingness to 'bet his whole paycheck' that it's going to be a muslim, or the "oh I'm so completely unsurprised" coming from bigoted racists in the wake of hearing a saudi national was in custody, because it confirmed their preconceived notions about what profile the bomber was going to be. This is stupid in a way which terrorizes entire ethnic groups and practitioners of multiple religions here in the states.
quote:A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn’t alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,” as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a “phalanx” of officers and agents and two K9 units. He was the one whose belongings were carried out in paper bags as his neighbors watched; whose roommate, also a student, was questioned for five hours (“I was scared”) before coming out to say that he didn’t think his friend was someone who’d plant a bomb—that he was a nice guy who liked sports. “Let me go to school, dude,” the roommate said later in the day, covering his face with his hands and almost crying, as a Fox News producer followed him and asked him, again and again, if he was sure he hadn’t been living with a killer.
Why the search, the interrogation, the dogs, the bomb squad, and the injured man’s name tweeted out, attached to the word “suspect”? After the bombs went off, people were running in every direction—so was the young man. Many, like him, were hurt badly; many of them were saved by the unflinching kindness of strangers, who carried them or stopped the bleeding with their own hands and improvised tourniquets. “Exhausted runners who kept running to the nearest hospital to give blood,” President Obama said. “They helped one another, consoled one another,” Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, said. In the midst of that, according to a CBS News report, a bystander saw the young man running, badly hurt, rushed to him, and then “tackled” him, bringing him down. People thought he looked suspicious.
What made them suspect him? He was running—so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb—as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead—a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops. Was it just the way he looked, or did he, in the chaos, maybe call for God with a name that someone found strange?
What happened next didn’t take long. “Investigators have a suspect—a Saudi Arabian national—in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.” That’s the New York Post, which went on to cite Fox News. The “Saudi suspect”—still faceless—suddenly gave anxieties a form. He was said to be in custody; or maybe his hospital bed was being guarded. The Boston police, who weren’t saying much of anything, disputed the report—sort of. “Honestly, I don’t know where they’re getting their information from, but it didn’t come from us,” a police spokesman told TPM. But were they talking to someone? Maybe. “Person of interest” became a phrase of both avoidance and insinuation. On the Atlas Shrugs Web site, there was a note that his name in Arabic meant “sword.” At an evening press conference, Ed Davis, the police commissioner, said that no suspect was in custody. But that was about when the dogs were in the apartment building in Revere—an inquiry that was seized on by some as, if not an indictment, at least a vindication of their suspicions.
“There must be enough evidence to keep him there,” Andrew Napolitano said on “Fox and Friends”—“there” being the hospital. “They must be learning information which is of a suspicious nature,” Steve Doocy interjected. “If he was clearly innocent, would they have been able to search his house?”
posted
Yes. They teach their children that the Holocaust was just a good start, and they treat their women like dogs. Their young men set off bombs to intentionally kill as many civilians as possible, along with themselves if necessary. And their older men finance those plans.
There's nothing wrong with these nations. We just need to be more understanding, is all. We can all just be respectful "rivals."
Just so, Rakeesh.
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posted
Yes, they all do this. Every single Muslim in those countries forced into Shariah Law do all these terrible things. There are no Saudi's who actually love their wives and daughters, no Iranians who are beaten for laughing when their President says the Holocaust was a lie, no Jews in Pakistan. And it is a miracle that they are a threat to the US, because every single young man is or has strapped a bomb to themselves and blown up. Once the old men finally die off they should run out of ammo relatively soon.
Its so simple when we can point to a place and say, "There be Evil people." Main of them point to Israel and make stupid claims about Zionist Evil. Why can't we do the same? Wipe them all out.
Basically, the problem isn't Racism. Its Religious Intolerance. The guy was not singled out as the terrorist because of the color of his skin, but because of the way he worships God.
Decrying the way he was treated, then responding with more religious intolerance, is just....petty.
I don't like petty.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
You know, I really hate the platitude "they picked the wrong city." I mean, yeah, I know it's an empty platitude, but that's why it annoys me. I mean, what would the right city have been? If the terrorists had bombed, say, El Paso, would its citizens have just shrugged and said, "Yeah, well, that happens?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You know, I really hate the platitude "they picked the wrong city." I mean, yeah, I know it's an empty platitude, but that's why it annoys me. I mean, what would the right city have been? If the terrorists had bombed, say, El Paso, would its citizens have just shrugged and said, "Yeah, well, that happens?"
I get your point, but it was an empty platitude that those particular folks needed to hear. It spoke to the resolve of their particular community. Even if the logical follow-through to that is weird.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Yes, they all do this. Every single Muslim in those countries forced into Shariah Law do all these terrible things. There are no Saudi's who actually love their wives and daughters, no Iranians who are beaten for laughing when their President says the Holocaust was a lie, no Jews in Pakistan. And it is a miracle that they are a threat to the US, because every single young man is or has strapped a bomb to themselves and blown up. Once the old men finally die off they should run out of ammo relatively soon.
Its so simple when we can point to a place and say, "There be Evil people." Main of them point to Israel and make stupid claims about Zionist Evil. Why can't we do the same? Wipe them all out.
Basically, the problem isn't Racism. Its Religious Intolerance. The guy was not singled out as the terrorist because of the color of his skin, but because of the way he worships God.
Decrying the way he was treated, then responding with more religious intolerance, is just....petty.
I don't like petty.
Hmm, where to begin. Well, first off, it's not religious intolerance. I don't care about these Muslims being Muslim. We have Muslims in Western countries and they manage to act civilized just fine, for the most part. Once again, it's their culture.
There are likely genuine saints in these countries, just like there were likely genuine saints living in WW2 era Japan and Germany. But hey, maybe we should have just let Germany have Europe. After all, the Germans were capable of showing human kindness and affection, and even Hitler loved his cousin and his dog. Bombing them was obviously wrong, because some of them helped out the Jews or kept them hidden in the attic.
I have no doubt there are people in these countries who love their women. Guess what? I love my dog, too. I feed, play with, and provide for him and correct him if he acts too familiar with guests. Love isn't the issue here. It's how they show their love, and how they express their displeasure and hatred.
"I love my wife, this is why I make sure she wears a burkha and never leaves the house alone. I love my wife, which is why I make sure she's never put in a position to udo something a woman can't possibly do, such as drive a car. I love my wife, which is why I made sure we stoned her to death as quickly and painlessly as possible when she got raped."
Posts: 200 | Registered: Jan 2013
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You know, I really hate the platitude "they picked the wrong city." I mean, yeah, I know it's an empty platitude, but that's why it annoys me. I mean, what would the right city have been? If the terrorists had bombed, say, El Paso, would its citizens have just shrugged and said, "Yeah, well, that happens?"
Different two kids. The NYPost found images online yesterday and published them this morning, claiming they got them from law enforcement. The video and images I linked above are from the FBI press conference today.
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