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There are over a billion Muslims. Mostly in India and Indonesia. If you don't think that the ones committing all the violence are a fringe group, then you are vastly underestimating the damage a billion people could do, if they really wanted to.

Based on polls, it isn't fringe group of muslims who support violence. By definition, fringe group would constitute a fraction of a percentage of the people. Here's just a sampling of the opinion polls:

Pew Global: 68% of Palestinian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
43% of Nigerian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
38% of Lebanese Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
15% of Egyptian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
13% of Indonesian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
12% of Jordanian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
7% of Muslim Israelis say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
http://cnsnews.com/node/53865 (Pew Global Attitudes Project September, 2009)

Center for Social Cohesion: One Third of British Muslim students support killing for Islam (Wikileaks cable)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

Policy Exchange: One third of British Muslims believe anyone who leaves Islam should be killed
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/...

NOP Research: 78% of British Muslims support punishing the publishers of Muhammad cartoons;
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories...
http://www.webcitation.org/5xk...

NOP Research: Hardcore Islamists comprise 9% of Britain's Muslim population;
Another 29% would "aggressively defend" Islam;
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories...
http://www.webcitation.org/5xk...

Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/0...

Uninsured numbers weren't cut in half, and premiums increased at the same rate as prior to Obamacare.

You also conveniently ignore that President Obama had complete control for a good chunk of the first two years of his Presidency (Chuck Schumer was Senate Leader, and Nancy Pelosi was Speaker).

Despite being given $350 billion by President Bush (as then-President Elect Obama requested) to stimulate the economy, the economy was starting to slink back to recession when President Trump was elected, with GDP plunging back down. Thankfully that's been arrested, and interest rates (which were at 0% for most of the Obama Administration) have started to come back up (which will strengthen the economy long-term). All while racking up more debt than pretty much all previous Presidents combined. He even got Congress to amend President Bush's 2009 budget by adding another $900 billion to it - and his supporters love to pin that $900 billion back on President Bush (which is completely disingenuous).

Now, you forgot things like his own self-described "worst mistake" of Libya, failures in Syria, drove world opinion of the USA down (thankfully it's rebounding back up), assassinated US citizens without due process, knowingly illegally selling guns to Mexican drug gangs (one of which was used to kill a US border patrol officer), and many, many more things which could be considered abject, Administration-destroying failures.

And before trump decided to rat-fuck President Moon, the ROK people had only 17% confidence in trump. Is it possible to have negative confidence?

When it comes to EU decision-making, the prevailing view in five of nine European nations is that Germany has too much influence. This view is most common in Greece, Spain and Italy.

There's the general state of things.

This pretty much came from Germany, and they're trying to fine nations not doing it

On top of that the U.N. is really trying to put the screws to us to do the same. It was happening under Obama, outside of our own law through end-runs and dictates. It's not happening anymore The U.N. is not happy about it.

There's your one.

People always talk about the small percentage of Muslims that are terrorists. Less spoken about is, depending on the country, up to 62% of all Muslims say suicide bombings against civilians are often or sometimes justified. Among Muslims in the US and western Europe, 13-35% support suicide bombings at least some of the time. Large majorities of Muslims support Sharia Law to be the law of the land (and large percentages support then having it apply to non-Muslims as well). From country to country, support for stoning as a punishment for adultery runs from 25% to over 75%, and at least 6 countries with large Muslim populations they support the death penalty for leaving Islam.

It's still not fair to paint everyone with the same brush, but support for extremism is a major problem in the Muslim faith, and it's not limited to a small minority. (And no, there's not parity with Christian support for their nutjob fanatics).
And you know what's sad? I think things don't have to be this way, and think we can move past it. But that begins with acknowledging the problem, and for refusing to stick my head in the stand and pretend this issue doesn't exist, I'll be painted as an evil racist.

If he meant, men his age in Finland, then that has very little to do with the people generally posting about Trump; pro-Trump posting on Facebook is going to have a lot more people from the US than Finland for a whole bunch of reasons. These include simply differences in the size of the populations of each country, US people more likely to focus on their own politics, and Trump being generally unpopular almost everywhere outside the US http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-around-world-question-trumps-leadership/ (That data set doesn't include Finland but it does show a broad general pattern through a whole variety of countries, including Sweden).

As for the issue of their age, it isn't just the 18-29 bracket. The same data set I linked to earlier shows also more support for Clinton among the 30-44 bracket, although not as extreme as in the younger age bracket. It is possible that they are older, but the phrasing doesn't really suggest that.

Third, people tend to self-segregate into groups with similar belief structures. Odds are you're going to be friends with a people who are more similar to you on average than dissimilar. That's not to say that you can't have friends with differences, just that if you're a strong Clinton/Trump supporter, most of your friends are probably the same.

Sure! But this is precisely why anecdote is not a good source of data, and why data is more important than anecdote. It is precisely because self-segregation occurs that actually asking what the data shows is important.

It is apparent that you do not live in Russia, as Putin's support at home is genuine. He does not need any rigging to win. http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/...

The sheer magnitude of innocent people caught in that ginormous net is extremely unjust by any measure. That some Americans are terrified of a tiny minority of people from those countries wearing towels on their heads does not make it any more rational or just.

The United States is not under any international or domestic legal obligation to allow travelers or immigrants from elsewhere. We have that right as a sovereign nation to control our borders. As for "innocent people" and "unjust"......How's that White Man's Burden working out for you? Do we elect our public officials to do what is in the best interests of American citizens, or the best interests of foreigners? The two are often not overlapping on a Venn diagram.

That some Americans are terrified of a tiny minority of people from those countries wearing towels on their heads does not make it any more rational or just.

How tiny is the tiny minority? Is it 1% of Muslims? That's 18 million jihadis. Even if it were 1% of the 6 Travel Ban countries, that's 1.8 million jihadis. If we add those 1.8 million to the US population of ~326 million, they would be about 0.5% of Americans. Would you still shop at Wal-Mart if 1 out of every 200 customers was just waiting for the best time to blow himself up at the checkout line? Are you willing to accept that risk? For what purpose? What do we really lose by saying "You know what, I think we're just NOT going to let you guys come here until you get your shit straight." What are the second- and third-order effects of increasingly frequent terror attacks attributable to radical Islam? Effects on the economy? Effects on overall quality of life from the inevitable security theater?

Thing is, it's NOT a "tiny minority". Check out the data from the Pew Research Center: 2014 study. Look how many are at least kinda-sorta ok with the idea of using suicide bombings against CIVILIANS. Bangladesh? 47%. Turkey? 18%. Egypt? 24%. That means those 3 countries alone have 100 MILLION Muslims who think it's okay to blow up women and children in defense of Islam. Is that your idea of a "tiny minority"? Let's also throw in the 25% of American Muslims who agree with them: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Ya know if we were really smart....we would filter a Muslim ban by allowing women 16-30 a fast track to immigration. Women are usually politically radicalized by th

Why is it so hard to understand that just because a religion or an interpretation of it in theory requires a violent act doesn't mean all followers actually follow through? This speaks more about bigotry.

What speaks more about bigotry is how liberals will get their panties in a bunch when someone mentions jihadist mass murderers, as if acknowledging the problem is the same as not making the difference between "normal muslims" and radicals.

Here's real numbers for you. Around the world, there are roughly 75 million muslims that condone and/or support terrorist activities. It's a small percentage (there's around 1.5 billion muslims total) but there's no other religion with such a massive following of fanatics.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2006/...

Now if you want to make your mission in life to defend the honor of the remaining 1.425 billion (that nobody except for their own lunatic fringe is putting on trial by the way), go for it. Maybe if someone you care about happens to be in a stadium or supermarket when "freedom fighters" show up with bomb vests and AK-47 your perspective will change. One thing is for sure, if that happens, it's not a Bible or a Torah that those "freedom fighters" will carry with them.

But it's ok, coward. Go on and make me (or anyone who doesn't embrace the politically correct bullshit) the bad person while ISIS is out there burning, raping, torturing and killing people. I'm not a real threat and I don't have bombs so it's easier to focus your anger on people like me while safely draping yourself in the cloth of the self-righteous.

Seriously, with this attitude is any wonder that no one likes the US anymore.

USA! USA!

And I could buy Stolichnya at the height of the civil war.

Fact Check. We investigate the claim made by a Slashdot poster "Ol Olsoc", that he could buy Stolichnaya at the height of the civil war.

Because it is unclear, which civil war the poster was referring to — and he did not respond to our request for clarification in time for this publication — we give the poster a benefit of the doubt and examine both relevant civil wars: that of the United States and in Russia.

Stolichnaya brand of vodka, according to Wikipedia, was first introduced in 1901. This is four decades after the American Civil War ended.

To be able to buy alcohol during the Russian Civil War, which ended in 1922 (its "height" taking place even earlier), the poster would've had been born in 1901, which would make 115 years-old today, when he made his claim. No people that old are currently alive, however, and scientific consensus is that living beyond that age is impossible. Maybe, the poster was buying alcohol illegally at younger age, but even then he'd have to be above 100 years of age, which is exceedingly unlikely given his manner of speech and presence on the Internet technology web-sites such as Slashdot.

Thus, we rate Ol Olsoc's claim as mostly false and assign it three out four Pinocchios.

Putin to the US is probably kind of like G.W. Bush was to the rest of the world 15 years ago.

Probably-shmobably. There is no obvious difference between the world's sentiment towards America since 2000. The only profound change is among Russians, actually, from 37% approval in 2000, to 46% in 2008, to 15% in 2015.

The engines, which are sound technology

It is called "economic sanctions". Look it up. You impose them to make the manufacturer suffer financially from being unable to sell their goods.

are irrelevant to the relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Trump

They are irrelevant, because no such relationship exists. But the holes in Obama's sanctions-regime remain unexplained. If buying RD-180 engines was wrong, why is it Ok to RD-181? Even more generally, if Russia should suffer under sanctions, why did it require an Act of Congress to stop buying those RD-180ies last year?

Why didn't Obama stop the practice himself? The answer is simple: NASA's rocket would not fly without those, and Obama — who's never seen a problem, which was not best solved with government money — would not allow NASA, the state enterprise, to fall further behind private space firms... Even if that meant helping Putin finances — a small price to pay for "fundamentally changing America".

I might be convinced that it's somehow earth's method of population control, that if lifespans are shortened so the overall population is more manageable or something along those lines;

Doesn't really work that way, if people reproduce at 30 and die at 50 or 100 or 200 that only adds a constant factor to the total population. It might lead to one-time "fill-up" effects where new children are born and old people die later because of longer lifespan adjusting that factor, but the only long term control on population is the reproduction rate. And during reproductive growth the young outnumber the old simply because there's more in this generation than in the last.

This is why people are no longer so extremely worried about population explosion, birth rates are way down and trending down but due to an aging population and advances in healthcare we will become closer to 10 billion. Europe and North America is below replacement fertility but still growing because of this, Asia and Latin American spot on, Oceania slightly above and then there's Africa which is still way high but below the world average from 1950-1970.

High reproduction is also related to extreme poverty, basically if you need many children to support you when you grow older it is "necessary" to have many. Sure most people still like to have kids but only a few and not a whole bunch. China and India seem to be pulling people out of extreme poverty quite quick, so I think they're moving into "safer" territory there. Africa is again challenging, you have countries like Nigera still in explosive growth and GDP per capita barely increasing, only 60% of the population is even literate.

That said, they're seeing a communications revolution in the last decade in Africa, from almost nobody having a cell phone almost everyone has one, smartphone penetration is low but not absent. I think that'll have a big effect on education and literacy but it'll take a few decades to really show net results. With the exception of certain retards in the Middle East that want to bring us back to the Dark Ages, things are actually progressing quite well. A bit worried about mass surveillance and authoritarian states, but not overpopulation and lack of basic necessities.

As mean-spirited as some people will interpret this statement, it must be said that the human population has outstripped the resources and as such a massive correction will eventually restore the natural balance. Meddling by developed countries has exacerbated the problem. The low morality and barbaric societies plaguing the planet will be purged by nature and it would be better if we allowed death to swallow the weak, the stupid, the over reproducing.

I might be convinced that it's somehow earth's method of population control, that if lifespans are shortened so the overall population is more manageable or something along those lines;

Doesn't really work that way, if people reproduce at 30 and die at 50 or 100 or 200 that only adds a constant factor to the total population. It might lead to one-time "fill-up" effects where new children are born and old people die later because of longer lifespan adjusting that factor, but the only long term control on population is the reproduction rate. And during reproductive growth the young outnumber the old simply because there's more in this generation than in the last.

This is why people are no longer so extremely worried about population explosion, birth rates are way down and trending down but due to an aging population and advances in healthcare we will become closer to 10 billion. Europe and North America is below replacement fertility but still growing because of this, Asia and Latin American spot on, Oceania slightly above and then there's Africa which is still way high but below the world average from 1950-1970.

High reproduction is also related to extreme poverty, basically if you need many children to support you when you grow older it is "necessary" to have many. Sure most people still like to have kids but only a few and not a whole bunch. China and India seem to be pulling people out of extreme poverty quite quick, so I think they're moving into "safer" territory there. Africa is again challenging, you have countries like Nigera still in explosive growth and GDP per capita barely increasing, only 60% of the population is even literate.

That said, they're seeing a communications revolution in the last decade in Africa, from almost nobody having a cell phone almost everyone has one, smartphone penetration is low but not absent. I think that'll have a big effect on education and literacy but it'll take a few decades to really show net results. With the exception of certain retards in the Middle East that want to bring us back to the Dark Ages, things are actually progressing quite well. A bit worried about mass surveillance and authoritarian states, but not overpopulation and lack of basic necessities.

The only agenda that gay people have is the right to equality and the right to not be discriminated against based on sexual orientation. We want the same equality that's (rightfully) given to Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Jews, women, and going back even further, the Polish, Greeks, etc...

Equality goes beyond the law. It goes into how people treat each other on a day-to-day basis. To those who say we're already there and to shut up: only 60% of people in the US accept gay people. This is shocking when you consider that people would be outraged if only 60% of Americans accepted women. Gay people have a long road ahead before they see equality in the US.

Having a service where you are cheating customers by not revealing a major part of how a service works is a serious problem. Countries where people are more trusting of other people, corporations and their governments do better economically, and are better by a variety of other metrics (such as Gini coefficient). While there are serious correlation v. causation issues here, it is likely that a big part of this is that people are more willing to engage in transactions with people or institutions they aren't directly familiar with. See e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/trust-wealth_n_851519.html, http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/04/15/where-trust-is-high-crime-and-corruption-are-low/, https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/10/how-trusting-are-european-nations/, and http://www.oecd.org/forum/the-cost-of-mistrust.htm. This means that large corporations bilking customers is damaging to all of us at a large scale.

Outside of the USA, the USA doesn't have a great image.

Pew polls say that you are wrong.

"America's overall image around the world remains largely positive. Across the nations surveyed (excluding the U.S.), a median of 69% hold a favorable opinion of the U.S., while just 24% express an unfavorable view."

Collectively, immigrants -both legal and illegal- send tens of billions of dollars back to their respective countries every year, removing that currency from US markets. How again is that a "good deal" for the US economy? Besides, according to Pew research, North American nations are already more welcoming than European ones: http://www.pewglobal.org/2007/...

Actually in identifying some solar/wind promoters as anti-nuclear --- just a few but boy are they shrill --- I think I've hit the nail on the head.

Let's take a look at nuclear power in Japan, shall we. Japan is a small, energy-resource-poor country which has leveraged its technology to become a financial and industrial giant, in many areas out-producing the United States even before we outsourced to China. Some ~50 nuclear reactors were supplying ~30% of the nation's electricity in 2011. But that 30% is a misleadingly small figure in terms of estimable value, for even as rural Japan was finally being electrified those nuclear plants had been powering the factories and steel mills that put it on the world map. From being the first victim of nuclear war to putting its first reactor on-line in 1966, Japan is one of the world's greatest success stories and owes a great deal of its meteoric rise as a world power to those nuclear plants.

The Japanese are aware of this. It is why they responsibly reprocess their spent fuel, it is why they continued to expand their nuclear base even after the US Three Mile Island mishap, even after a pseudo-environmentalist sect (coal barons by proxy) in the United States began to suppress the advancement and innovation of this technology. The Fukushima Daiichi plant went on-line in 1971 and not one person in this part of the world seems to find it appropriate to recognize the many gigawatt-years of service it has contributed. We will honor a retired warship for its years of service, but if a nuclear power plant has fallen on hard times we will kick it like a dying dog and stamp the life out of it. Perhaps my allusion shocks you.

I go even further to describe as twisted and sick the way world press marginalized the unfolding tragedy of ~15,000 deaths to dwell on the minutiae of radiation release, and (worse yet) gathered anti-nuclear celebrities to continually supply worst-case scenarios, most of them absurd, scientifically deceptive and some outright dishonest. It represents a tabloid moment of which the entire human race should be ashamed. And yet? Even in the immediate aftermath of the disaster when all were in shock, merely 70% of Japanese believed that Japan should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy. There is reason to believe that this percentage is falling as the years pass, as they have re-elected a Prime Minister who vows to restore nuclear power to its previous levels. Perhaps the Japanese, for all this tragedy, are possessed of a certain clarity that is slipping away in the United States.

The second issue is nuclear weapons. One reason that the government wants nuclear power is so that it can build weapons at short notice.

Dissing conventional nuclear power on the grounds that it supports weapons manufacture is complicated. Suggesting that it is 'easy' or 'quick' or even 'feasible' (as opposed to refinement of natural uranium) is disingenuous. Rod Adams attempts to dispel this pervasive myth here and more recently here, and it is an uphill battle because politicians take their talking points from anti-nuke celebrities, not scientists or nuclear engineers. When the claim that terrorists could produce true fission weapons from nuclear plants breaks down, many seek refuge in the idea of a so-called 'dirty

> Gartner gives the numbers the group contracting the study want.

It doesn't work like that. Gartner publishes the numbers the group contracting the study want.
If the study had produced less useful numbers, it would never have seen the light of day.

That may seem like a subtle distinction, because the end result is still the same, but what it means is that are probably a ton of unpublished studies out there that contradict the viewpoints of the powerful. Kind of like the way drug companies cherry pick test results. In both cases the long term result is to erode institutional trust and trust is directly correlated with the health of a society.

Then basically what you have is a chicken or egg problem. No powers to EU until it's even more democratic. And EU will stay powerful and less democratic as a result with no real motivation to democratize because they will never be democratic enough for naysayers.

We have been transferring a lot of subjects from member states to EU, and it never improved on the democratic front. I had been in favor of EU ten years ago, but now I would say I just learned from the experience: EU construction had just being about removing subjects from the democratic field and I oppose that

I suspect that your point of view is "common" mainly in UK, which is a notable outlier in EU when it comes to this issue.

It is not just UK. Like it or not, most EU member state citizen are now opposed to EU, as the Pew institute taught us.

Nah, you're just ignorant and intolerant of new ideas. Ironically, you're the bigot because you're prejudged me without understanding anything.

Allow me to open your beady little eyes:

That is the president of Egypt agreeing with me:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Guess he's a bigot too, huh? Shit for brains :D

And here is an example of what is going on in many of these mosques since you're apparently fucking clueless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Notice all the moderate muslims raising their hands agreeing with death penalities for various infractions against their religion? Yeah. Maybe the real difference is that when they mean moderate, they don't mean something tolerant of western values but something rather where they'd be less inclined to actually kill them personally. But they sure as hell approve of it apparently.

And because you're pretty fucking thick, lets get some stats from the Pew polling service. I have other ones from both Pew and Gallup if you'd like:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/...

So you see, shithead? You're wrong. Suck it. Suck it long. Suck it hard.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/...

Any one that has done any looking at all could find these statistics and better.

Pew and Gallup polls both agree that over 20 percent of the total islamic population of the planet is radicalized. It varies a bit. You have some areas where its over 90 percent and you have some areas where it drops down to about 15 percent. But 20 percent is pretty common.

One in fucking five. That is not a tiny minority.

I am not a fascist. I am just not a fucking retard like you. You WANT things to be better. And so you close your eyes and BELIEVE it because you just can't handle the truth.

I don't want this to be true. I really don't. But it is true. Accept it so that something can be done about it.

Bullshit.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/...

""At least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favor making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion. Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favor these harsh punishments.""

I can show you respected stats showing that contrary to asshats like yourself, there is wide spread adoption of extremist ideology in Islam.

Do I feel Islam is irredeemable? No. I think it can be saved. But it will take an effort on Islam's part to reform.

People like you are not helping. You say there is no problem and we need do nothing. That is not only suicidal it is also counter productive. Islam should be pressured to do what they should have done on their own. Fix themselves and prepare their culture to coexist with the rest of the world. Absent that... it is only a matter of time before the other cultures of the world take steps to protect themselves from a toxic element. You likely don't credit this outcome. But it is building like a coiling spring. Every time something like this happens... it gets wound a little tighter.

If you want to preserve the status quo, you'd do well to see that the spring does not get wound any tighter. The outcome should the spring unravel are... unpredictable... and likely very bloody.

Time to break the EU into several different countries.

According the Pew institute study, this is what the People of EU member states want. We also have the 2005 referendums in France and Netherlands that told us People had enough of this mess. That votes have been ignored.

Give us democracy, break up the EU!

This was not an "ad hominem". This was an insult. Don't you know the difference?

There distinction you are trying to make, idiot, is without difference. When you switch an argument from the topic being argued to the person doing the arguing — whether it is name-calling or discussing his hygiene — it is an argumentum ad hominem — a fallacy.

Chickenhawk is perfectly fine carnivorous bird, by the way — can't really insult anyone with such a comparison, unless you are trying to use the term policitcally:

a political term used in the United States to describe a person who strongly supports war or other military action, yet who actively avoids or avoided military service when of age.

You don't know anything about me to be able claim, I took active steps to avoid military service in any war the US fought, nor do you know my age.

Your having committed an ad hominem first, and an idiocy of misusing a term that your fellow idiots have misused too, thus established, let's get back to the other topics.

assuming that Obama would be somehow mine

If you are from Europe, then Obama is "yours" even more — whereas his popularity in the US in 2008 barely exceeded the 50% necessary for being elected, he was and remains more popular in the corrupt continent (80+%). For all I care, you can have him any day of the week — the sooner the better. Just be sure to take Joe Biden with him.

The current mess in Iraq has been caused by toppling Saddam Hussein.

Yeah, nothing like a strong leader for those unwashed sand-niggers, is there? Some peoples may have a democratic government, but certain untermensch just need a strong hand, right?

And then by arming the crazies who were rebelling against Assad.

Right. Because only a crazy could rebel against the kind and benevolent king (masquerading as elected President) such as Assad. Sure. But even if that's the problem, in your opinion, it was Obama's doing — and he was never called "chickenhawk" in his life.

You are seriously calling the Southern regime back then "kindler gentler"?

No, you dimwit. If you can't read English, stay out of English arguments. I challenged you to explain, how the things would've been better in the North Korea, if the South Korea's regime was kinder and gentler.

Without American intervention a way less radical government for an united Korea would be quite possible

Sure. And Palestine would've been a united and calm, if America had not given Israel any support. And China would've unified into a calm Confucian existence long ago, had the US not defended Taiwan. And Germany too would've united much earlier — under Eric Honecker (or even Ulbricht), of course. Wouldn't such have been a better world? If only the US war-mongers didn't resist Communism, huh?..

Sorry, but I'm rather glad there are enough of my countrymen still supporting that earlier chickenhawk's doctrine:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that

Oh you want precise data? Like large support across muslim countries, where terrorism is supported. 20% of muslims support the 7/7 bombings 1:4 muslims in the UK say the bombings were justified 31% of muslims in turkey support suicide bombings against westerners 32% of palestinians support the murder of jews, including children. 55% of muslims support hezbollah 26% of young muslims in america believe suicide attacks are justified 26% of egyptian muslims believe that suicide attacks are justified

You're now enlightened to this "tiny minority." Which is roughly 25% having extremist views, out of 1.6 billion that would be a "mere" 400,000,000 individuals. You know, I could keep going and posting, so again--there is something fundamentally broken with islam and muslims. And I haven't even gotten to the stuff on specific groups, which vary between 6% as a low to 51% support across muslims. Or the 50-75% that believing that killing apostates is a good idea. I guess none of that is large swaths.

According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.

Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?

That's how many soldiers ISIS has, where did they get money for weapons, outside support. Where are they getting rations, outside support. Where are they getting vehicles, outside support. It was 20 years ago but I don't remember a Guns for Murders program, I do remember a Jail for Murders program that still continues today. Again it was a long time ago but I don't remember there being support for murders, even congress has better approval numbers then murders. When you look at Muslim support for terror groups and their activities it is much higher then 1994 US support for murders, 32% of Palestinians support Itamar attack which was a brutal murder of 5 family members including a 3 month old. 89% of Palestinians support attacks on Israel. 20% of British Muslims sympathized with the 7/7/7 bombers, 16% of French Muslims support ISIS, 51% of Pakistanis grieved for the death of Osama Bin Laden, only 16% though the killing of Bin Laden was justified, the majority of Muslims in the middle east have positive or mixed feelings of Bin Laden. This is not a small percentage that approves of this behavior it's 25-50% of all Muslims.
sources
http://www.ynetnews.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org
http://www.pewglobal.org
http://www.pewforum.org

Particularly since the majority of cell phone owners worldwide earn about $3,000 per year. The article is about The Battle for the "Good Enough" Market. I would doubt either Firefox or Android has a stranglehold on Baidu. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/...

I don't see much difference between Islam and Christianity.

That being said, terrorist organizations have moderate widespread support in the muslim communities, particularly during the Iraq war: http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2013/09/EXTREM15.png

I think the sentence makes more sense if you substitute "autonomy" with "democracy", or "people sovereignty". The European Union objective for a few decades has been to destroy that. And now that unelected leader are obviously incompetent at running the continent, it may explain why a majority of EU citizen reject the EU project. It does not work and citizen cannot fix it, therefore our best option left is to get rid of it.

does not fit generally known facts

The set of facts you prefer, anyhow.

Prior to 1991 there isn't a lot of credible data about the preferences of citizens in communist nations. That was by design. Immediately after, however, there is. Then we learn that women were consistently less enthusiastic about abandoning their failed economic order and state paternalism. All I assert is that women are more prone to statism. The data supports this.

Anecdotally, Nostalgia for Communism among women is widespread.

misogynist

Any view of women that fails to flatter is automatic misogyny, as per your training.

Consider this Pew Research poll, which found that in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, there were 84%, 86%, and 76% of the populace, respectively, who favored the death penalty for leaving Islam. How does that fit with your characterization? Poorly, it seems to me. Fundamentalist Islam is no less "Islamic" than modern liberal Islam. They are both Islamic religions and can both make very credible-sounding arguments from their religious texts. Recall that Mohammed wasn't above lopping off people's heads for trivial reasons.

Sounds more like a USA problem than a USPS problem, this being an outlier of religious beliefs among wealthy nations. Atheist Shoes needed to send packages via FedEx and UPS in the same way to actually test this, and apparently didn't.

Politicians and press are still afraid to offend jews and muslims, so they kowtow to their brutish blood rituals. But the general populace of Europe is increasingly antipathetic to them, so there's still hope for a future in which we stop listening to those nutjobs and have the damn thing banned.

84% of Egyptians support killing people who no longer wish to be a Muslim. How many Christians do you think would support the killing of those who no longer wish to be Christian? http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2010/12/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Muslim-Report-FINAL-December-2-2010.pdf

It is very much mainstream if not majority thought among Muslims that those who convert away from Islam to another religion should be executed by the state.

This survey found 84 percent support for such measures among Egyptian Muslims.

During the time of Islamic colonialism in Spain some Christians intentionally criticized Mohammed to make a point; they were executed.

72% vs 62% for the entire population. Shades a little more towards drone use but not over and above Republican sentiment.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/global-opinion-of-obama-slips-international-policies-faulted/
"Americans are the clear outliers on this issue – 62% approve of the drone campaign, including most Republicans (74%), independents (60%) and Democrats (58%)."

This is true. There is a lot more to debate though regarding the significence of fundamentalist islam vs moderate islam - remembering that even moderate Islam has much the same social attitudes as the far-right Christian political movement. On the one hand, the percentage of Muslims who violently oppose the infidels is vanishingly tiny - a fraction of a fraction of a percent, and it wouldn't be fair to judge them all by the actions of such a small minority. On the other hand, even in places like Egypt, which is considered one of the most modern and westernised Muslim-majority countries, one recent PEW survey found 84% of the Muslim population believes anyone who leaves Islam should be executed*. Just because they aren't taking up arms doesn't mean their values are compatible with western notions like freedom of religion. These are very different cultures, and even the ideals that one consideres the most fundamental and self-evidently good are in another seen as advancing evil.

It's all very fuzzy. There are no clear boundries or definitions to even say what 'fundamentalist' Islam is, and views which could be considered abhorent and extremeist in one country are mainstream in others.

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2010/12/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Muslim-Report-FINAL-December-2-2010.pdf - Page 14

Incidentally, that's also true of the Islamic world. If you are a Muslim, you are far more likely to be the victim of an Islamist terrorist than you are to be an Islamist terrorist or sympathiser thereof. That's partly because Islamist terrorists mostly target Muslims.

This just isn't factually correct. A Pew research poll shows that across 7 Muslim countries, support for Al Qaeda ranges from 3% to 49%, support for Hamas from 9% to 60%, and support for Hezbollah from 5% to 55%. In those same countries, between 20% and 46% of Muslims say "suicide bombing and other acts of violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam from its enemies" are justified. At least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favor making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion. Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favor these harsh punishments.

I think you may be narrowing it down too much to the Republican field. The mindset of the crusades is alive and well in the currents of American (and European) political history. Sure, the Republicans took special advantage of the Evangelical revolution, and now they talk a good game of crazy, but it's everywhere.

Kind of depressing, actually, since the US had about the best possible start as far as enlightened secular government, with the founders basically parleying mutual distrust among quite similar protestant minorities into real freedom of religion, on principle. Now you hear center Republicans saying a lot of things that can't be explained without reference to Christian v. Muslim tribalism, e.g., hating on the Ground Zero mosque. (Reasoning : how often did you hear suggestions that it would be offensive to build a Baptist church in a town where an abortion clinic was bombed by Baptist terrorists, back when? And that's even avoiding the generalization from "Baptist" to "Christian", which is essentially what's happening now.)

That said, I don't think the problem here is our government. There's broad-based religious hatred in America, the rest of the Christian world, and many parts of the Islamic world (http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/07/21/muslim-western-tensions-persist/). Yeah, it's geopolitical in nature, and there are good colonialism-based reasons on the Islamic side, generally, but the masses are ignorant and hateful everywhere. We, the masses, are the problem, and religion figures into it, I think mainly as an excuse. Politicians and governments just take advantage of the hate and fear, maybe whip it up a little, but, honestly, this hate seems to be good, old-fashioned, grass-roots hate.

That said, I think we sometimes overstate the equivalence of Christianity and Islam. Yeah, historically, the two have been at each others' throats since they existed, and each side has had its golden ages and dark ages. However, right now, it's kind of clear, objectively, that the Christian world is in a golden age and the Islamic world is in a dark age, and not entirely due to colonialism and imperialism. I'm not one that buys American or Christian exceptionalism, but, at the same time, there are some differences between Christian and Islamic teachings, and right now (in history) they're being interpreted in such ways as to create a lot non-fictional, objectively enemy Muslims. We just can't generalize from terrorists to all Muslims as we seem to like to do, or use religion as a rationale for imperialism or terrorism, etc.

If we, the masses, were to think things through, our politicians would stop talking and doing crazy. I'm at the point where I think religion is more a symptom of us not wanting to think, and not a cause.

Senegal

Haven't heard much about them, so perhaps you have a point there. Wikipedia says that they're mostly Sufi, which would help a lot - these folk tend to be much more liberal on many issues.

Albania

I wonder why Albania is the primary European hub of human trafficking (especially sexual slaves). Not saying that it has something to do with Islam - I simply don't know enough about Albania, though I do know that Islam explicitly permits female sexual slavery - but it certainly stands quite apart from most other European countries, even in Eastern Europe.

Bangladesh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Bangladesh#Persecution_of_minority_communities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Bangladesh#Societal_abuses_and_discrimination

Indonesia

You've got to be kidding me. Indonesia openly practices Sharia law in one of the provinces, not to mention all the stuff it has been sneaking in quietly elsewhere.

Also, I've already given that link, but I'll do so again, and specifically this table. So much for progressive Indonesia.

Senegal

Haven't heard much about them, so perhaps you have a point there. Wikipedia says that they're mostly Sufi, which would help a lot - these folk tend to be much more liberal on many issues.

Albania

I wonder why Albania is the primary European hub of human trafficking (especially sexual slaves). Not saying that it has something to do with Islam - I simply don't know enough about Albania, though I do know that Islam explicitly permits female sexual slavery - but it certainly stands quite apart from most other European countries, even in Eastern Europe.

Bangladesh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Bangladesh#Persecution_of_minority_communities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Bangladesh#Societal_abuses_and_discrimination

Indonesia

You've got to be kidding me. Indonesia openly practices Sharia law in one of the provinces, not to mention all the stuff it has been sneaking in quietly elsewhere.

Also, I've already given that link, but I'll do so again, and specifically this table. So much for progressive Indonesia.

You might want to update your info on Turkey though. Things are changing, and not for the better. You're also overlooking a lot of necessary "upkeep" (it wasn't just in "Ataturk's time").

Oh, I'm well aware of that. I suspect it'll end up the same way it did the last two times, eventually - when things will start trending too much Islamist, the army will make another coup, hang the populist leaders as traitors, then step back and "reset" democracy again. I don't even know how I feel about it, to be honest - it's fighting evil with evil. From a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, looking at the progress Turkey has made (especially compared to other parts of Ottoman Empire, and other Muslim lands) in the last century, it looks like it's a better choice in the long term. Still makes me feel uneasy, though. Also doesn't look like a viable long-term solution - they only have to fail once...

Still, so far, things aren't that bad in Turkey.

The West won a huge battle with the Arab spring, which will ultimately reshape the geopolitical balance far more than the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan ever could. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria could have risen up and chosen the vision of al Qaeda, they could have chosen to follow Osama bin Laden's dream. They didn't. They decided they want what we have- freedom, equality, justice, opportunity- and not the barbaric vision that Osama bin Laden has provided.

Sorry, but you're obviously not paying close attention to what's going on. They are choosing democracy, yes, but the democratically elected systems that are forming right now probably don't reflect the kind of values you'd expect. Here. Take a look at this recent pew poll. Not everybody has the same interpretation of freedom that westerners do. Think women will have equality? Think they'll stop killing Gays? Think they'll suddenly stop preaching death to the Jews? Think the honor killings will stop? Sorry, but think again. All democracy ensures in these countries is a tyranny of a fanatical (by our standards) religious majority which will likely escalate into to a regional war. This barbarity might not be reflected at the moment, but just you wait until after the Muslim Brotherhood wins elections in all of those countries without any significant secular opposition.

Do you judge the US by the KKK?

I'm pretty sure 98% of Americans don't agree with the ideals of the KKK. If Pew is to be believed, Egyptians do tend to take a rather harsher view.

Please link me to those polls. I want to see them.

It's all trivially googled, but there you go:

1 in 4 young American Muslims condone suicide bombings against civilians, at least sometimes.

13 per cent of young Muslims said they "admired" organisations such as Al Qaeda which are prepared to "fight the West" ... While only 17 per cent of over-55s said they would prefer to live under Sharia law, that increased to 37 per cent of those aged 16 to 24. ... If a Muslim converts to another religion, 36 per cent of 16-to-24-year-olds thought this should be punished by death.

In Morocco, just 26% of the public now say they have a lot or some confidence in bin Laden ... In Indonesia, the public is now about evenly split, with 35% saying they place at least some confidence in bin Laden ... In Pakistan, however, a narrow majority (51%) places some measure of confidence in bin Laden (by the way, there's a lot of other interesting related statistics, on many other aspects of this issue, by that link).

Enough?

Then also, some of it can be assessed indirectly, for example from what was uncovered in "Undercover Mosque" - keeping in mind that mosques involved in the controversy are some of UK's biggest.

And was before and is now. Nothing has really changed. Those most loudly cheering on this administration are Chavez and group. Not the litter picks I would take home.

You're entitled to your opinion, but the facts show otherwise.

Before 9/11, many Americans were ignorant of the fact that they are largely hated around the world. The media spun the situation, claiming the world hating Americans is a new phenomenon due only to Bush.

Taking a look at some of the international polling data:
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=264

I'd have to say that calling it spin is unjustified. The media was perhaps simplified as usual, but did indeed reflect accurately what was happening abroad. To say that America-haters existed before Bush is entirely correct, but misses insight into the magnitude of the shift; the degree to which it affected the mainstream public in various countries, and how it included countries that historically had been friendly or at least neutral.

Individual America-haters have always been able to make a spectacle; perhaps make some embarassing speeches, set off a few bombs. In a few countries, they even happened to be the head honcho in charge. In either of those cases I'm sure nothing much changed.

However, when the countries we're dealing with are democracies (we like those, right?), such major opinion shifts can have large impacts indeed on how foreign policy works, or doesn't.

Fortunately you're wrong-- they didn't decide it in 11 days. They just *nominated* him then. They decided much later after evaluating how much he had already done towards global cooperation, nuclear non-proliferation, strengthening international organizations, etc. No one has changed international attitudes faster than Obama in the history of the world, as far as I can see.

(Pew report showing changing world opinions this year)

Judging from the international polling and studies to date, most notably the most recent global Pew poll (more details here), you're completely wrong. Obama has, in fact, genuinely changed the perception of both the United States and our interests. And the Nobel committee unanimously agreed that Obama has exemplified and personified the approach to world matters that the peace prize is meant to award.