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Overzealous AirTran Boots 9 Passengers Off
An anonymous readerwrites "On Friday the wonderfully customer centric AirTran decided to remove a family of 9 US born Muslims after a comment between two family members regarding how close to the Jet engine they had been seated. The wonderful part is that after the FBI cleared the family 2 hours later, AirTran refused to fly the family, and refused to rebook them on their way from Washington to Orlando, Florida. The family purchased additional tickets on US Airways later that day, after AirTran requested that the irate father be escorted from their booking podiums by security. This whole story highlights the pathetic customer service we are getting from the Airlines these days — they actually treat us like criminals first and ask questions later. Just don't get me started on Delta." It's nice to see that stupidity still knows no bounds.
And you deserved to be kicked off the plane. It's common sense and probably the only reason that this got reported and the ten thousand other incidents didn't is because they were muslim.
Apparently, they have now received a refund:
Linky
AT&ROFLMAO
I'm glad the summary specifies that they were born in the US. Because otherwise it would be okay to treat them like dirt, right?
That should be AirTran, not AirTrans.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I smell big discrimination lawsuit coming.. too bad airliners are broke as they are already.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
I was reading this earlier over at CNN. Apparently the group mentioned the words "bomb" and "attack" while they were talking to themselves, hypothetically discussing the safest part of the plane to be in. Understandably this caused some concern with other passengers.
The FBI cleared them of any wrong-doing. According to what I read, the group was happy with the FBI's response. They did request a later flight, which the Airline rejected.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Laissez-faire types will hate me for suggesting this, but this is exactly the sort of thing that should lead to anti-discrimination lawsuits. We make a big deal out of prohibiting racial discrimination in employment and housing, so why not in transportation? It's because Muslims are all terrorists... innit?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
..that the "real terrorists" didn't succeed in their plots to "terrorize" Americans.
I bet the xenophobic idiot who reported their 'suspicious comments' is pleased with themselves, having delayed their flight by 2 hours.
Be careful what you say at airports and on planes. Never get irate or argue at airports and on planes. My mother who is white, has made both mistakes and ran in to similar reactions from airline and airport employees.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010201695.html
The airline already apologized, refunded the money, and paid for the other flight the family took that trip. Just get over it. Plus really it was passengers on the flight who started the whole thing. Like that old lady on the plane in that movie about Harold and Kumar.
I read about this. Someone remarked that they were sitting right by the engine. That's all it took and 9 were booted off. Pathetic. So much for freedom of speech. They wouldn't let them rebook either. I know this I will never conform to what other people want me to be so you might as well just shoot me in the head like cattle and get it over with.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
But that was said in the old, innocent days. If he were still alive, probably would add something about the order of infinite that describes human stupidity.
Hopefully when they are done this family will own the airline.
My experience with AirTran was the worst flight I've ever been on. Bastards left us stranded in Atlanta for 8 hours.
I'd never fly on that airline again even if the ticket was free.
I just dread the day terrorists start pulling bombings of buses or trains or truck weigh stations or busy freeways or malls or what-have-you in the US. Because that day, all the stupidity we see in airports and airplanes will be copied into those venues too.
Unless, of course, we as a people finally pull our heads out instead.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
No knife signs in Britain...
Coz' that really cuts down on the knife crime.
I'm reasonably sure in Europe you could be sued if you refused to carry someone based on their religion or racial background - I have a feeling this is true in the US also ? If so, I hope they take this stupid airline to the cleaners. Even setting the obvious discrimination aside, there was no excuse for denying them travel given that the FBI had cleared them.
Is there any indication if the decision to not let them back on the plane after the FBI okayed them was made by a low or high level employee?
If some clerk/pilot made the call, then there's no indication it's "systemic" with the airline, and they can be fired and we can see if the problem goes away. However, if a higher-up in AirTran made the decision, there may be a real reason for backlash from the Muslim community (or anyone that disapproves of racism).
I was born in the 80s so I don't know what the days were like in this country when "blacks" had to sit at the back of the bus, but man this whole anti-muslim thing, while not believed by a majority of Americans, is still prevalent enough for me to not want to be a Muslim living in this country. And a race of people not wanting to live in this country due to prejudice is the opposite of the American Way, and is the opposite path to us maintaining our world strength.
That is what we should be thinking of. But what we often think of is if discriminating against 1000 of the 'other' is what it takes to save my family, my job, the status quo, then what do I care. As long as I am ok, the so be it.
I am sure that some in new york, as was posted in response to a recent Schneier blog, would say hey, you were obviously not around the twin towers when they fell, otherwise you would feel different. What if they had not allowed any dark people on the plane. Then it would have never have happened. QED, discrimination justified.
People, kids, family will say thigs. I see people praying, and it does not mean they are going to crash a plane. Just because you have nail poiish does not mean you are going to make a bomb. For some strange reason, we do not approach every redneck in a pickup truck loaded with fertilizers and take them down to the Homeland security for integration.
However, given that profiling does appear to be a recognized method to stop even the most rare of crime, and given that we want a security system that eliminates all crime no matter what, even at the cost of freedom, here is my suggestion to all those nations outside the US. The cities of Destroit, Baltimore, St. louis, Newwark, Washington, D.C., and Oakland, all have hugely high murder rates. to the point where maybe one out of every hundred people is a murderer, assuming that each person commits murder only once during their life, likely during 20 and 50. It would therefore be prudent to restrict travel by anyone who has ever lived in these cities. This shouldn't be a big problem, except for washington. Philidelphia is the only city with more than a million people who have an obscenely high murder rate. Most larger cities have about half the murder rate of Oakland. I certainly would feel much safer on an airplane knowing that I am not traveling with a passenger from these cities.
Of course, given that it is more likely that I will killed in a car accident than in a terrorist attack, we could chill and try to save democracy from the fear mongers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
They didn't use American Express.
if you are a Muslim and the Muslims are known for acts of suicide terrorism, its not too brite to say things that might be construed the wrong way. Just like you don t dress like a gang member if you dont want to be treated as such, or a Hollywood profile drug carrier etc
On one hand we are outraged by these events but on the other hand we allow our government zero tolerance for terrorist events or accidents to happen. If you want to be safe, you have have to sacrifice liberty.
I really hope this ends up being a landmark case for racial profiling. I'm rooting for colossal punitive damages, personally.
That's what they'd do!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them,
Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions.
So wait, you can't talk about airport security at the airport? That's all I talk about on the airlines. After hours of waiting, being stripped of liquids for no reason, having to take of your shoes, it kind of is the elephant in the room.
It seems likely that they were given special attention because of their appearance, accent, culture, et cetera. Personally, I'm not expecting anyone, especially the airline to admit this.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
I bet the xenophobic idiot who reported their 'suspicious comments' is pleased with themselves, having delayed their flight by 2 hours.
I bet it was a 9/11 hero Wanna Be who thought that he could foil a terrorist plot and get his 15 minutes of fame. Don't underestimate a person's desire to be a "hero", to feel important, and be a media whore.
Minnesota Public Radio's "The Story" show with Dick Gordon did a piece on Mohamed Fikry, an almost 5 million mile customer with American Airlines... and they pulled the SAME CRAP. Twice! Once because a customer heard him speaking "a foreign language on the phone" (it was Spanish) and once because a flight attendant thought she'd seen him "backstage". 5 Million Miles! with the same airline... And to top it off, they had the FBI pull him from the plane AFTER they flew to the destination! If he were such a threat, why let him fly at ALL... Gotta love airline customer service. Link to the story http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_669_Business_Class_Terrorist.mp3/view
Because us Whities never had our asses kicked and paper-route money stolen and routinely fucked with by all the minorities in the neighborhood!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
So how exactly is this news for nerds? If I want social commentary on non-technology related issues, I can visit any number of websites.
..as long as people keep putting up with it and standing in the big brother check-in line and handing over their money for an airplane ticket. Don't talk! Don't make eye contact with the darth vader goon! Don't do anything while your spouse and children are felt up by the pervos working there! Obey your superior humans, epsilon!
The only thing that is going to work to get some sanity back to airline travel is mass universal boycott and shun the airlines and their hired security goons and pathetic security theater policies. You certainly aren't going to "vote" for anything better. If millions put up with this creeping fascism, and keep getting on those planes and "willingly" subject themselves to all this crap, sure as shit you'll get full fascism eventually. You've -the still flying public "you"- have already proven you'll put up with half way there, no one who flies is showing any different to the global overlords, and they are pleased to have such willing and compliant subjects to rule over.
First off, I think this family needs to sue and they need to sue for a lot. Secondly, CUSTOMER SERVICE MY ASS. If you are being locked into a flying tube with me at 37,00 feet I want the airline to know EVERYTHING about you, including whether you had wheaties or corn flakes on the third tuesday of January 24 years ago, EVERYTHING that there is to know. There is no such thing as enough security or overly invasive security or poor customer service when you pose an immediate potential threat to 200 other people. I don't wanna die for the sake of good customer service and warm fuzzies. It is overwhelmingly safe to fly but I don't want to be on the one flight where they decided to let the bad guy fly for the sake of good customer service and warm fuzzies and I don't want anyone else on that flight either. I prefer that some people, like this nice family, get inconvenienced once in awhile. It is fundamentally wrong but it is the lesser of all possible evils.
If in this day and age if they havent got better sense than to walk around an airport talking about " safest place to sit " and "planes blowing up " they should be banned from flying forever be they muslim , christian , jew or athiest , they are too stupid to be turned loose in public .
All being born in America means to me is that it was more likely this family escalated this incident, rather than remaining calm and going through the indignities we all have to face sooner or later with air travel. I love the US and defend it from the usual haters here, but let's face it; "But I'm an American, you can't do this" is a cliche. Part of it is the freedom we enjoy (yes, relatively, we do, despite the constant barrage of YRO scare stories here). Another part is arrogance and ignorance caused by a lack of travel by the average American. And I do see a change in America in the last decade from "question authority" to "challenge it at every turn." Americans increasingly do not like authority, and I include myself in this.
One thing working for the legal office of a major city defending police lawsuits taught me is that there are often two sides: That which the media reports, invariably the plaintiff attorney's version (a role I have played as well), versus the rest of the facts that come out once the dust has settled. Often, the potential defendant does not comment to the media for liability reasons, letting the plaintiff side dominate the news cycle.
If the airline in fact acted as the article portrays, F them. But let's hear all the facts before we call this a vast racially-based evil act by the airline. My experience tells me that sometimes that can take years and a civil trial that ends with a defense verdict before all the facts come to light. And I say this as someone who has sat in a conference room with people literally screaming to tell their side to the media, only to be muzzled by counsel in anticipation of litigation.
Now once again mod me troll for a well-reasoned, informative post that dares dissent from the racist airline meme du jour.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Most likely, they are told by Homeland Security policies to "respond to all complaints" no matter how ridiculous.
AirTran would have called the authorities to report the incident. If they don't get an "all clear" back, then normal CYA procedure would dictate that they don't let the people fly. It sucks, it makes no sense, but that is probably the policy, that has been thrust upon ALL of our Airline agencies.
Blame the thought challenged leadership for our crap-tastic security that only seems to do anything where we can see them, and does nothing where we can't.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The slave trade was a free market, from what I can remember, and the government had to shut it down because it was still enormously profitable to capture and breed humans.
If the free market had no rules, there would still be segregated restaurants and buses in the south. That's a big difference between democracy and fascism. One the people can change, the other only the business elite can change. Without a bloody revolution, of course...
Whether allowing pilots that degree of individual unrestricted discretion is a wise idea or not should probably be debated.
This is racial profiling pure and simple. The irony is that any one of the Caucasian males between the ages 18 and 32 on the plane could very well have had a series of dead teenage girls buried in their back yard...
...are the new black.
Muslims aren't necessarily "white" and I've seen no physical description of them.
Or are we just being a wee bit racist in assuming racism?
Our intervention in the middle east over the past 200 years has bread suicide bombers who want us the fuck out of their lives. Not the religion.
Got a reference, bub?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_terrorism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-terrorism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist_terrorism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_violence
There are many terrorist organizations which are not religious.
In fact, one could argue that a majority of the religious terrorism in the middle east is actually nationalist terrorism disguised as religious extremism. If you look at the causes which drive people to the al-qaida bootcamps: oppression (by US forces or otherwise - AQ was not active in Iraq before we had a military presence there), lower standards of living, and so forth. People turn to religion when times get tough. Other people use that to twist the religion. They convince people at the end of their rope that the only thing that will make things better for them, their family, and their country is to go blow up the people fucking them over.
The fact that you ignorant asshats refuse to wake up from your delusional world of hate and bigotry, and perhaps read why people hate the US instead of believing the line "because we're not muslim" is why we've had muslim terrorist attacks on this country and its consulates. Look up the term blowback.
Throw them off. Better safe than sorry. Racist though it may be.
When coming back on leave from Iraq, I was flying in my ACU uniform. Being searched by a muslim TSA lady while coming through security I had to laugh at the irony.
But I kept my mouth shut aside from a sincere "have a nice day, ma'am" when it was over. Idiocy can strike anywhere, any time, to anyone.
Why is this on /.?
THL phish sticks
Did we just extend the War on Terror?
How many Muslims have you met wearing a 'towel' on their head?
durka jihad durka durka - was also overheard on the plane.
maybe they were whispering to each other,
If so, thank you! I can't stand a group of 9 people talking to each other and competing to be heard.
maybe they had no baggage,
What is so suspicious about this? Maybe they already checked it. Maybe they decided they'd save $15 x 9 (x 2 for both ways) and go to their destination bag-less. I do this if I want to save some time getting on and off the plane. Over-paranoia by others is probably what got them kicked off the plane.
Nobody would have gotten this treatment unless another passenger thought they looked dangerous. It was a frightened, idiotic, racist passenger who called a flight attendant. I'm glad the passenger who squealed was majorly inconvenienced as well, maybe they will think twice before opening their yaps next time. I mean, what did they think would happen, the family would be removed and the flight would leave on time?
I could talk all day about the safest place to sit on an airplane and not have problems. The fact that they looked 'middle eastern' is what caused them problems. You can bet your ass that if ANY nine people had been kicked off a plane anywhere in the US, it would be news.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
First off, this WAS DISCRIMINATION and RACISM!...PERIOD
Second off, NOTHING that the airlines are doing accounts to a RATS ASS at improving ANY air security. NOT THE TSA, NOT THE FBI, NOT THE AIR MARSHALLS...NOTHING!
What HAS helped are two things: First the cabin doors are hardened and second, the pilots have to IMMEDIATELY put the plane on the ground in case of ANY hijacking or other problem!
If these two policies wewre in place on 9/11/2001, both planes from Boston would have landed in Providence or Hartford and NOTHING would have happened to the Trade Center towers! NOTHING would have happened to the Pentagon and the plane that crashed in PA would have landed in Pittsburgh safely.
The whole thing of 'airline security' is a money wasting bullshit facade-and the people involved take themselves WAY TOO SERIOUSLY!!
http://spaz.mindstab.net/indian_orly.jpg
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I believe this has to do with the scarf-like accessory arab women wear. I saw the family in question, and if not for the garb, they'd look like any other (minority) American. When in Rome -- stay away from the 2-buck whores, right -- but otherwise, do as the Romans.
... the shoe bomber guy ... If you look like that, you will be searched and subjected to addition[al] security
Evidently you've forgotten what Richard Reid looked like. He's a white English guy - the most famous post-arrest picture of him has him looking like a nutter, but he's still a white English nutter.
I flew into JFK on an Air India flight in late September 2001, not long after the USA started admitting international flights again. The passengers were a mix of Indians, Americans, and Europeans who'd connected (like me) in London.
I remember it for a few reasons - one was that the Americans gave the pilot a round of applause for landing at JFK rather than in a building, another that the immigration staff at JFK (presumably fearing for their jobs) were genuinely welcoming.
The main one however was that the way that the "brown" passengers were screened on the jetway, whereas the "white" ones (including me) were waved straight through. India had at the time (and has since) suffered more at the hands of Islamic terrorists than any other nation - the cluelessness of the "profiling" was obvious to me at the time, and to everyone when Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane over the Atlantic.
Just for kicks, let's say they did blow up the plane, and later on the news, some passenger remarks "and they talked about it before the explosion and nobody did anything about it."
I mean, I know that's a totally ridiculous scenario and that this situation is obviously a case of racism, but I find it hard to believe that nobody has really addressed this side of it.
Just because your ancestors has been treated as low class citizens does NOT mean that now you have to be treated better than anyone else. Otherwise you are over using your ancestor's empathy to act like a self centred jerk.
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
Of course it's alright! They were only following orders!
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Where's the online aspect of this story?
There are about 30 other news outlets that aren't nerd-oriented that are carrying this story well. What is slashdot adding by featuring it?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The stated purpose of most laws, including gun laws, is the intention of reducing crime.
However, we have been given precedent, at the highest levels, that maybe laws (or the constitution) don't matter, if your intentions are good. For example, see how politicians try to satisfy the intent of certain rules, while ignoring the letter of the law.
Seems to me, a law abiding citizen ignoring a few laws that aren't intended for them are doing less harm than those politicians.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
For the record, I think that "terrorists" have seriously considered the airplane suicide bombing to be so 2001. If they were seriously thinking about killing masses of people they would go with the new trend of remote detonated car bombs. It's been "in" since the Iraq war, and there is NO security measures implemented against it (sound familiar?).
Help fight spam
1) A white family of nine people get on a plane.
Well, I tossed an exception right there. White family of nine . . . that's actually really funny!
Wait,
PolygamousRanchKid doesn't know about Mormons?
A bit of research through the Consumerist (just bought by Consumers Union, yay!) reveals that AirTran fouling up like this is nothing new.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Kaffiyeh. They're fairly fashionable at the moment round where I am (Manchester UK).
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
That's because Manchester is now an Arab country, similar to London where the national food is curry. England is a great example of how the west will subvert themselves.
Race = religion well mebby. Too bad. No Muzzis no bombings so dump-em-off on the runway. What don't you understand ?
Make everyone fly naked and mute. Problem solved.
"Irfan, 29, is a lawyer who lives in Alexandria, Va. He was traveling to a religious retreat in Florida with his wife, along with his brother and his family, including three children, ages 7, 4 and 2. They were joined by his brother's sister-in-law and a family friend." How is the guy going to explain this ordeal to his kids?
Since when did airlines become government property?
Just like any corner diner, the airlines can select who they wish to have as customers for any reason whatsoever.
I'd be happy to fly a "no weirdos" airline domestically. Set a dress code to be followed - all suites or all bikini briefs or whatever.
Unfortunately most of the security policies in place have been based on the knee-jerk reactions of the likes of TSA and FAA - remember the 2006 carry on liquids ban??? Until cooler heads prevail at these agencies (like that'll happen) we will all have to suffer the indignities they put on to us.
I personally think the names of the people who made the complaint that got them booted off the plane to BEGIN WITH should have THEIR names made public, so they can be properly ridiculed for abject stupidity.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Seriously, what's with that comment? Democracy seems to me a bad hypocritical joke. Do we really need to pick on each race/ethnic/religious group at a time and "free" them after years and years of degrading them and destroying their rights (if they had them in the first place)? Why do people hate others so easily? Is it the media, the propaganda, what? Just get over it, there are a lot people out there which are different than you but guess what, they mean you no harm. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Disclaimer: I'm not perfect by any standards and I'm not prejudice proof (I'm pretty sure I have some really 'good' ones) but outright hate against a minority, a nation, a race, or a religion is disturbing and infuriating.
ics
The Muslim community has brought this upon themselves, and unfortunately, others. Racial profiling, yes, so what, what other profiling can be used. If Arabic looking people with names like Muhammad, or Fatih act suspicious, that's three separate pieces of a puzzle. How many pieces do you need before you transition from unfair to fair profiling?. Is it fair, maybe not; but then neither is suicide bombing. Tough shit, I say. Clean your own house (Islam) before telling me how to clean mine (democracy).
Being a Muslim is a personal lifestyle choice, not a trait you have no choice of getting due to birth.
For posterity: Then named Godspeed You Black Emperor!, they were in Ardmore, Oklahoma in March, 2003, and got hassled at a gas station, not while eating pancakes at IHOP. They had just finished playing a (great) show at Ridglea Theater in Dallas with Bardo Pond, and were en route to St. Louis.
Wikipedia has a concise summary, and notes that the ordeal was also mentioned in Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country?
God bless AirTran for keeping our fellow Americans safe from these evildoers who clearly intended to take their entire family to the lowest pits of Hell. If their children weren't also spawn of the Devil, I would have asked them to be remove from their parents, but the obvious solution to this problem is to send the whole lot of them to Guantanamo Bay.
"Wow, the jets are right next to my window."
Must have been an MD-80/MD-88. I sat in the back between the engines on my trip back from LA last year. The flight attendant was offering earplugs. I am so glad I took them; That harmonic between the engines on takeoff would deafen Hellen Keller. The airline needs to apologize and refund their money. Oh, yes. To anyone who is bitching about profiling and how most hijackers or bombers are not dressed in Muslim garb, you are only suggesting that we need MORE security, not less. It needs to be revamped so $7.50/hr rent-a-cops are not in charge of security.
The party's over
Get the fuck out of MY country.
Signed
A native American
Sounds like the ideal airline to fly. Same as Delta: Don't Even Let Them Aboard. Unlike TWA: Travel With Arabs.
Being someone who sees merit and common sense in racial profiling, even *I* think that this was complete idiocy/stupidity/lunacy (though I still can't quite communicate how enraged I feel just by typing!).
Making a comment about how close you are to a jet engine IN NO WAY communicates ANYTHING about terroristic, hostile, or malicious intent.
Also, being one who hates to see frivolous and baseless/remotely baseless lawsuits, I think that they family should beat AirTran into the next decade with the fattest lawsuit they can get away with.
If I was US Airways, however, I would have given them free round-trip tickets (first class) and apologized for the inconvenience caused by AirTran, even though it wasn't my doing.
How stupid does a captain have to be to:
a) Feel so threatened that he has to kick a family of 9 off the plane,
b) Keep them off the plane even after the *FBI* tells them there is absolutely no problem.
If I was the FBI supervisor in charge, I would have yelled to the pilot how much of an idiot he was, in full view of the other passengers.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I'm definitely not a big fan of lawsuits but there is such a thing in the U.S. Constitution as protection against discrimination about origin.
What sane person wants to own an airline with the way that industry is going?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Very funny - shouting doesn't make you right. It makes you loud. And your point in my opinion is not the caseor the truth of the matter. It was fear - pure and simple. Fear and then doing something about that fear. I'd rather the people did something than remain all "PC" and do nothing.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Look, I appreciate the belief that all parties are good and kind until proven otherwise, but get over it. There are evil people in the world, and something has to be done to find them. Is this it? I doubt it, as do most here, but this is not necessarily racist although it is almost certainly profiling.
Profiling, for better or worse, is about the only tool around that has any statistic relevance. Are all Islamic people bad? Of course not. Nor are all Catholics, all Irish nor all Germans. Yet, each group has committed atrocities, and under certain circumstances, will be looked at askew. In this case, an innocent group was troubled, and doubtless has some legitimate right to at least be rebooked. If they had been terrorists, and made a successful attack, everyone would be screaming for security...get over it...there is a middle ground somewhere, despite us not having found it yet.
The system has issues, yes, but most of those issues were created by a combination of reality (17 Islamic terrorists seizing aircraft) and the reaction of a populace (US Citizens) to an incredibly unfamiliar event (mass terrorism). This will take a while to return to a more tolerant center position, just like it did during McCarthyism, or the North's occupation of the south during the Civil War (Or War of Northern Aggression if you prefer). It will take time, and the citizenry realising that not all Islamic people are bad. It will ALSO take the more militant Islamic culture realizing that Jihad is not an answer to the current world situation. As long as people are calling for the death of the US, it is unlikely that the US Citizenry will come to see Islam as a religion of peace...
is to speak in English to fellow Middle Eastern martyrs about safest spot on the plane. Right. Any Muslim who's going to suicide attack a plane isn't going to give a damn about the safest seat on the plane, let alone tell you in plain English what is on their mind. They're gonna want to be dead, in heaven with 70 virgins.
have you ever flown airtran? they have lots of Boeing 717's/MD95's. It is a nice plane a touch smaller than a 737. If you sit in the back few rows though your window armrest is literally one of the 2 engines.
Amazing how an innocent accurate comment gets taken way out of context. I hope they sue airtran and win a fortune. Middle Eastern or not they are (assumed to be) us citizens and have a first amendment right among others that were trampled.
Airtran was following TSA & FAA rules, people on the plane (not the crew) reported hearing them say something they construed as terrorist like and the FEDERAL air marshals removed them from the plane. FAA and TSA rule don't allow for those people removed from the flight to fly on ANY airline until they're cleared by the TSA. Some people on this board get really paranoid a little too easily.
Only a few Reef Sharks attack humans, statistically speaking it's really just a few. Keep an eye out for sharks when you see sharks? Horrible! Racist! or Sharkaphobic Ignorance! What you call Pathetic is common sense, and I sir, am constantly amazed at the level of ignorance and stupidity that some moon eyed idealists display rather than confronting reality and actual human behavior. Ideals are fine, but reality calls for the ability to hold onto your ideals but deal with reality. You sir, have no such ability. Pathetic.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I wonder if this qualifies as a hate crime on the part of airline personnel. The humiliation and harassment this family was put through was certainly abusive.
Seriously, saying "bomb" in an airplane can pretty much land you in the can. You think that if they had actually DONE something they would have been let go after two hours? No way they would have gotten out if anything could have been pinned on them...
Yes, this reeks of ethnic profiling. It is turning out to be clear that this family has no ill intent here.
Some of AirTran's mishandling sounds like generic bureaucratic screwing-up that is being viewed differently because of the nature of the situation. Surprising that they acted against what the FBI said, though. Not sure if this just one or a few asshats or a systemic problem at AirTran...
Yes, this was crap blown out of proportion. However, one has to have a no-nonsense response to security issues. It *was* misconstrued, but member(s) of the Muslim family *did* say something stupid; they weren't tossed off solely based on appearance.
Just think if something had happened and it was later found out that someone make this stupid comment
Yes, actual terrorists probably wouldn't let something slip, but nobody's perfect, even if heavily trained.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I remember a real life documentary on the BBC, where an older gentleman was bringing an expensive violin back for a family friend.
Sitting in the airport lounge, waiting for his flight, part of his conversation was overheard by another waiting passenger ~ he'd remarked that the violin case looked like one gangsters used to use in the olden days.
Two armed police officers detained him, questioned him, kept him overnight and let him continue his journey the following day with a warning.
I have not read the article, just commenting on the situation as I have read comments. It seems like in today's society we are always quick to play the racism card. I don't believe they were kicked off the plane the minute they stepped on now were they? Was it after some comment that they were kicked off the plane? I've flown over 90 segments in 2008 and many times with muslims, none of them were ever thrown off the plane. I see the only difference as comments that were made by someone, no matter what their race, were the grounds for throwing them off the plane.
I also believe that a company always reserves the right to refuse service to anyone in this country. IF the airline doesn't want their money or anyone else offended by this then that is their decision to make. To believe that any other airline would have treated this any other way is pure speculation at best. We only know how this airline reacted to THIS incident because it is the one the media chose to run with.
Just last month I was in an airport (Syracuse, NY) when a terminal was shut down for over 45 minutes when a white man opened a security door by accident while talking on his cell phone only for him to get escorted out and questioned and later denied to get on our flight as well. Is that racism towards a white man? The fact is that something was done by someone, no matter their skin color, that was inappropriate and uncalled for to provoke an airline to put their entire livelihood on the line. Anyone that has traveled since 9-11 knows that you don't joke about bombs or anything of the sort when you are flying, if you choose to ignore that, then in my opinion, you hold your future in your own hands. Yes the media doesn't have any mention of that, but I'm guessing they haven't interviewed the other people that were actually on that flight to get the entire story of what happened.
Blowing up a crowded security checkpoint at an airport would have a nice irony to it, in addition to the overreaction as all other airports shut down causing massive travel problems.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Good thing your name is not Rachid, or I would moderate you terrorist -1.
Despite the fact Israel has shown great restraint in dealing with the Palestinians (if it was me, Id bulldoze the entire Gaza strip into the sea and turn it into a resort), they are still labeled as evil and a terrorist state for finally retaliating after multiple rocket attacks and suicide bombers.
And up until the point I saw that the Israeli's get their children to sign and paint the missiles they retaliate with, I had some sympathy for them too.
Yes, we've certainly baked hatred deeply into their hearts.
If they win the airline, they can have their revenge by allowing the current ownership to keep it on the condition that they change its name back to ValuJet. Or has everyone forgotten why they changed their name?
They couldn't reboard the original flight because it had left before they were cleared by the FBI. An AirTran spokesperson claimed that the problem with rebooking on a later flight was that the family's data hadn't been updated in the computer file available to the gate agents. While this smells of blaming "the faceless nobody in the back room," it is well known that the airlines' chief weapon against their customers is the withholding of accurate information. In my experience the gate agents are frequently victim of such information control.
"The fact that you ignorant asshats refuse to wake up from your delusional world of hate and bigotry, and perhaps read why people hate the US instead of believing the line "because we're not muslim" is why we've had muslim terrorist attacks on this country and its consulates. Look up the term blowback."
So American consulates were attacked by muslim extremists because of blowback. Why were Danish consulates attacked by muslim extremists? Blowback as well? Making political caricature cartoons is an act of war now?
Why was Theo van Gogh killed by a muslim extremist?
Since you might be Canadian(inferring from GYBE! mention), maybe you'll appreciate this one. Why was Tarek Fateh attacked by muslim extremists? Being an apostate from Islam in an act of war now?
My opinion is that there are plenty of muslim extremists who do use violence on people pretty much just "because [they're] not muslim."
If you read Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, which at least Wikipedia, citing something, calls a "major influence" on Islamic terrorism, there is this message that violence should be used to destroy non-muslim institutions which output vulgarities like pornography, blasphemy, and other haram things.
From Milestones:
"But any place where the Islamic Shari'ah is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb) for both the Muslim and the Dhimmi. A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located.
And thus Muhammad - peace be on him - fought against the city of Mecca, although it was his birthplace, and his relatives lived there, and he and his Companions had houses and property there which they had left when they migrated; yet the soil of Mecca did not become Dar-ul-Islam for him and his followers until it surrendered to Islam and the Shari'ah became operative in it."
I would say that such an interpretation of Islam is basically the same for Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups: Use any means necessary to establish the rule of God.
Shows how much you know you lousy piece of shit! I've been supporting the welfare checks of your immigrant asses my whole fucking life. I've contributed more to this country, served in the military, paid full taxes for more than 25 years (I started working a full-time job and paying taxes when I was 14). So FUCK YOU! You lousy piece of shit. If I ever meet you or your "kin" I'll fucking kill you. Crap Bastard!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
KLM is a European company owned by Air France, which is also a European company.
White said the pilot, after being informed of the remarks, requested that two federal air marshals on board remove the individuals.
It's not reported what the people said. Example: "the jet is right here, we'd better move, it's not safe here when the jet blows up" (a possibly innocent easily misconstrued statement).
The airline said in a news release Friday that one of the passengers became irate, made inappropriate comments and had to be escorted away from a gate podium by local law enforcement.
If you abuse airline staff you get banned.
Incidentally it's interesting to note that IslamOnline ( http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1230650235063&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout ) mention one brother is an attorney (whilst all other sources exclude this, mentioning one as an anaesthetist) and also saying that all 9 family members were interrogated! Yeah, I bet the FBI interrogated those kids good and proper?!
In my view this has nothing to do with them being Muslim (if indeed they are) but everything to do with them saying something silly, it being miscontrued (by two separate people) and then them getting cross and wanting to sue someone.
I'd probably be pretty pissed too.
The court could allow the airline's judgment to stand unhindered.
Then, since the airline is now picking and choosing which passengers it will carry, it loses its common carrier status.
Sometimes, the best way to change somebody's mind is to give him exactly what he wants.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
the gentleman had nothing but praise for the professionalism of the FBI agents who questioned him and his family. he said the questioning took less than three minutes, and then the FBI agents went with them to the Airtran counter to insure that they were clear to board the aircraft, but Airtran said NO.
he also thanked the FBI for their intervention in getting them onto USAir. so, I'll mod you for speaking ignorantly without knowing the whole story...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
As reported by the Associated Press (via yahoo.com) (via fark.com)
You are correct but in this region (middle east) they are very popular and have mostly Muslim passenger/crew. If I knew how to edit I would; but thank you for you correction.
LOL!
WoW. You sir are proof positive of the "Bigger Asshole" theory. I have reviewed both of your (qbutler as well) comment histories and not only are you the bigger asshole here, but you are the better one.
Dear God, I want to see what you write next.
Dude, they fire 200 rockets per day at random
civilians in Israel. They are not innocent.
They wouldn't even be in Gaza except that they
voluntarily left Israel (giving up citizenship
rights and property) so that they could wage war
on Israel and kill all the Jews. Verdict: guilty.
You might argue that some of the people in Gaza
don't fire rockets at Israel every day. True, but
they clearly support it. We know this not only
from their own mouths, but also from the fact that
they sit by while it happens.
Similar: if you let a friend run a meth lab in
your house, do not be surprised if the cops
arrest you and take your house. Blaming your
friend will not significantly help your defense.
You let shit happen in your house, you face the
consequences.
Those hysterical girls who reported that family's comment are classic examples of stupidity and ignorance and I hope that they are embarrassed by what they caused to occur. If there was a suicidal terrorist family getting on board a plane with the intent of blowing it and themselves up, they would not have been airing out their plans, especially with a, "Where is the safest place to sit?" comment. That would be a little pointless wouldn't it?
Btw, the safest place to sit is presumably at the back of the plane, according to non-Muslim sources online. Apparently various religious/racial/scientific individuals have pondered that same question.
To the person who talked about 'painting a "big, fat" kick me sign on their person' you may not know that we have more than one culture/religion/country on the planet. Since we're such an individualistic/non-communist society, I thought you would've appreciated that. How much traveling do you do out of the country by the way, do you always conform yourself to your surroundings (wearing a salwar or sari in an India airport or not shaving in Europe-- this is not meant as a criticism) and how much of a jackass do you make out of yourself? This family was not wearing anything extreme anyways-- long sleeved clothing which is not uncommon in winter or to other modest groups such as the Amish, men with beards surprise!, and women with brightly colored hijab. It's not that uncommon an image and it wasn't that long ago that kerchiefs and hats were popular not to mention that nuns and Mary wear/wore head coverings. If you think only certain people are allowed to dress differently or that everyone should dress the same, that is either an extreme case of low-fashion sense or prejudice.
Use any means necessary to establish the rule of God.
The rule of their God. If it were just a matter of belief in God this would be a non-issue. It's the requirement that their particular dogma be accepted as fact, with death to those who don't.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That is very well reasoned and I agree but don't you think that instead of just detaining "millions" of people they should try to research better methods of screening and streamlining the detainment protocols?
AirTran used to be called ValueJet.
They only use the 717, they were the
launch customer and they were the final
customer. They have 86 of them.
What is exactly this "terror" thing? Suppose an extended family of nine Norwegians board a plane and make comments about the relative safety of each seat. Will anybody have a feeling of terror upon hearing those comments? No.
People born in Norway don't fit the model people associate with terrorists. Norwegians are Lutherans and Martin Luther never told his followers to kill people who don't follow Martin Luther's teachings. No one who was born in Norway and raised the Norwegian way believes he will have seventy virgins to serve him in Paradise if he blows himself up killing infidels.
Sure, the *vast majority* of Muslims don't believe that bullshit either. It's a highly debatable matter if the teachings of Mohammed can be interpreted that way. But you don't see Muslims protesting against suicide terrorists. And that's the big problem with Islam.
Islamists are at a delicate point. I knows some people who are so-called "moderate" Islamists, they are much like "moderate" Christians, they interpret the teachings of their religion in a rational way. I'd rather be a friend of a moderate Islamist than a fundamentalist Christian.
The big problem with Islam, IMHO, is that the moderate Islamists are so reluctant to make a stand against the fundamentalists. You won't find any Christian who's afraid to criticize David Koresh or Jim Jones, but how many Islamists are ready to make a critical comment about Mohammed Atta?
That's the big problem with Islam, there's a small but significant minority that accepts the more radical interpretation of their religion. And that's something that causes terror in people....
Kaffiyeh. They're fairly fashionable at the moment round where I am (Manchester UK).
And I wore a shemagh (same thing) I got from an SAS guy for two years in Afghanistan as a soldier in the US Army. I also sported a full beard and mustache* while there. You can bet your ass I shaved, got a haircut, and put that head-rag in my bag before flying home on commercial airliners. Everyone has the right to practice whatever damn fool religion they want, but the rest of the world should be under no obligation to ignore your chosen flavor of irrational belief in a magic sky man. It ain't Buddhists or Methodists strapping dynamite to their waists and blowing up people in crowded markets. If you want to avoid being seen as a threat, it might behoove you to not dress like one. Granted, it's idiotic to think a real terrorist would dress the part to get on an airplane (rather than showing up in a button-up shirt and slacks) but steadfastly sticking to your dang fool religious costume in the face of known public perception is asking for trouble.
Perhaps it's just my firm belief that organized religion is a dangerous habit that by all logic should be treated with the same disdain as any other self-indulgent delusion; that getting your lessons on morality and ethics from a 2000 year old book is as wise as getting your chemistry knowledge from writings of the same era; that the "bathwater" of religious dogma has long since drowned the "baby" of spiritual fulfillment. But whatever the reason, I think "tolerance" of religion is as silly a demand as tolerance of a belief that RED means GO and GREEN means STOP in traffic.
It'll be interesting to see how the mods go on this post. Most people here seem to agree that religion is bad when it says schoolbooks should contain christian fairy tales, but from the look of the mods so far here, it appears Islam is seen as some sort of underdog against the forces of ChimpyBUSHitler**.
* Locals don't take you seriously if you shave. Lack of facial hair symbolizes ignorance due to being young or female. Says a lot about their level of cultural sophistication, really. Most of those folks are the local equivalent of backwoods hillbillies.
** I won't pass on my full opinion of my former commander-in-chief, but I will say "not my favorite president"...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You have such a damn easier time than I do at airports even being a born Canadian. I avoid US travel and airlines now, except when absolutely necessary. One time in Chicago I got thrown in a windowless room for "observation" for four hours because they believed I was on a no fly list. Needless to say I missed my flight, and the connection I was to make after that, and I lost 36 hours in the process. Naturally they acted like releasing me for having done no wrong was equal to doing me a huge favour, which left compensation as a distant dream. It's a shitty time to be young, male and Muslim. Even a liberal, clean-shaven one. My full sympathy is with this family, and if I were them, I'd take advantage of the good ol all-'merican tort system and slap those people with a lawsuit.
I firmly believe that the type of people who are recruited to fill the positions in American customs and transport security(both TSA and airline staff) are some of the lowest, least human scum available. None of the other countries I've ever traveled to have so consistently hired such uncouth assholes, and this experience is culled from many tens of thousands of kilometers of travel. As a matter of fact, some of those countries actually had people who were *courteous*, that really surprised me considering the duffers I was used to seeing at US border crossings in NY and Michigan state.
heh, thanks for reminding me of Retief.
I need to dig up my old Keith Laumer books and flip them over to my kids. They read everything.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I doubt this will even get read given the number of comments already. But after reading some of the shit here, it needs to be said. What happened here was completely unacceptable. These people were clearly thrown off because of their appearances. The posters who have said that wearing traditional Muslin dress is a "kick me sign" or stupid need to GTFO of my country if you're here. This is AMERICA. You're supposed to be able to be whomever you want, and be treated fairly regardless of whom that turns out to be. I'm white. I'm about as boring and typical as we come in appearance, and if I had been on that plane. I would have told the idiot to calm down as there's no way a family of 9 are terrorists, or that terrorists attempt to survive their bombings by relocating to a different area of the plane. I would also have asked the family to refrain from talking about a sensitive subject given the reactions of other passengers. And when there people were removed from the plane, I would have left as well and I will never fly them again.
Post 9/11 and 26/11 (Mumbai), Islamic terrorists have just ended up putting their own religion - and the millions of innocent, law abiding citizens who practice it, into the center of a global maelstrom. The US just fuels it up with an intriguingly large population that is not only ignorant, but happy being so.
and people still live under the illusion that the nazis lost the war .. they just came to america ..
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/noon.html
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/steve.htm
Like, not giving them a flight after the FBI cleared them?
Have we all lost our minds? I remember a colleague of mine going to India about 15 years ago, then coming home complaining about how people looked at him in disgust as he ran around India in spandex shorts, and a tee shirt, with his "package" showing. His words, not mine. He was an ignorant son of bitch to do this, but he didn't think so. Do you?
So here we are after the most obvious atrocities in our collective and recent memories, caused by Muslims ... but criticized for hating Muslims? Seriously? Are you fucking people kidding me?
They've declared a Holy War. A Holy War. Do you fucking hear that? Do you get it? It means, if we fight clean, we lose. Do you think they're going to fight clean?
So what do all you liberal, equal rights, everyone should be treated like a citizen, Democrats think we should do? When they refuse to remove their traditional garb to enter our country? Say, OK, we understand, but it's not important enough for you to remove your inciting, hate signifying, bullshit filled clothing, but, hey, come on in?
Seriously? Are you people that stupid?
I love everyone. I mean everyone. Except some dumb ass that wants to rub my nose in our tolerance, our freedom, and our culture. If you don't want to play by our rules, stay home.
Yeah.. and we sent those 'friendship' medals that the Japanese gave us right before Pearl Harbor wired to the bombs that we dropped on Tokyo in Dolittle's raid (well, 5 of them at any rate).
I assume you are either Canadian, European, or one of leftie Americans. You sit in your nice little house, drive to work in your car, do your job, go home... maybe go out at night to a restaurant or a movie with friends or family. You don't have much to worry about apart from car accidents or maybe some crime.
Now imagine trying to live your wonderful life in Israel. Wondering if rockets are going to land in your office. Wondering if that kid on the bus clutching the bag is going to blow himself and the rest of the bus up with him for a intangible promise of something in the afterlife. Imagine having to live under that fear everyday of your life just because someone with a different religion than yours thinks that you should be wiped from the face of the earth.
You people who blame Israel fail to take that into account, but only seek to assign blame to them for retribution for many past attacks make me sick. They have tried on several occasion to make peace with those people, and what do the get? More rockets, more suicide bombers, and more hate from the enemies that surround you. And now they go forward into a future where it is uncertain on whether they can count on there staunchest ally in a few weeks.
While I don't agree with the way the OP expressed his or her ideals, there is a grain of truth to what they said. If you had green bugs, blue bugs, and orange bugs, and the blue bugs tended to carry a particular nasty disease ten or twenty times more often than the green or orange bugs, but all three types of bugs do have some agricultural benefit, you sample way more blue bugs looking for this disease than you would the orange or green ones.
So is the same with profiling. You are just simply narrowing down the pool of possible suspects because those that wish to do us the most harm tend to be of the Muslim faith. So you look at those more closely than you would those who do not match the profile. Is it perfect? Not by a longshot, but until they come up with a 'pre-crime' department, it works and we are all the better for it, despite the hurt feelings that may be caused.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
WTC in 1992. WTC in 2001. Richard C. Reid in 2002. And these are just a few
No, from a statistic POV (i.e. profiling), muslims are a MUCH BIGGER threat.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You dumb retard, if you see anyone in United States with a 'towel on head' it's most likely a Sikh, who definitely are not Muslims. It's ignorant white trash idiots like yourself who make us the laughing stock of the world.
I'm not condoning this in any way, but a lot of groups will probably kill you if you call them goat fuckers. Church of England will probably let you get away with it, anyone else is a risk.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Oh please. That was clearly a staged photo op by some douchebag journalist. I defy you to find five more examples. you won't find even two.
On the other hand, have a look at daily Palestinian television and see the sort of sick incitement of those children, to die for Allah.
Sure you had sympathy for the Israelis. Sure.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple choice test. The events are actual cuts from past history. They actually happened!!!
Do you remember?
1) In 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by
a. Superman
b. Jay Leno
c. Harry Potter
d. a Muslim male between the ages of 17 and 40
2) In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by
a. Olga Corbett
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3) In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
4) During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5) In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
a. A pizza delivery boy
b. Pee Wee Herman
c. Geraldo Rivera
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
6) In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davy Jones
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7) In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:
a. Captain Kidd
b. Charles Lindberg
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8 ) In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy
c. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9) In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
10) In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill' s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
11) On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers.Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
12) In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim males mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
13) In 20
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
...but why would a group of people hell-bent on crashing or blowing up or hijacking a plane really care where the safest place in said plane was?
People do not know enough about Islam, or Muslims, and they don't know enough Arabs in person...
Or about many other cultures other than their own.
And they do not know their history.
Human instinct is to be afraid of what you do not understand... a 10,000 years ago being curious and investigating the noise in bushes gets you eaten by the animal lurking there... running in terror at the slightest noise helped you're genes reproduce and survive.
The problem is that in the modern world these instincts aren't really appropriate any more (99.99 % of the time) and are being systematically exploited by people in power to feed and support a culture of fear and uncertainty.
We've seen this strategy in history again and again to use ignorance and instinctive fear to divide and conquer.
White against black, Christian against Muslim... whatever dividing lines you choose...
and while we are paralyzed with fear of each other the corporations and politicians do what they want.
They use the fear to justify taking away our basic rights in the name of security...
The truth is that with FREEDOM, comes RESPONSIBILITY and that the only difference between a police state and an open democratic society is the loss of YOUR rights. Neither are more secure against terrorists... (in fact the police state is already practicing terrorism against its own citizens).
I'm not afraid to travel to the US because of Muslim terrorists any more than I am of the plane I'm in getting struck by lightning...
Frankly US border officers or the idea of Armed Air Marshals and FBI officers with unlimited rights to arrest search etc scares me much more...
The reality is that extreme fanaticism (whether religious or otherwise) is usually a product of extreme poverty, lack of hope and/or desperation. Normal people with day jobs that can feed their families don't go strap explosives to themselves and blow up buildings or planes...
That is the real issue. If global hunger was eliminated and basic rights where there for everyone (including basic education) then fanatical cultures or religions would have a hard time finding anyone to follow their suicidal ideas.
This is a clear case of racial profiling and is just another sign of the lost rights of American citizens (in the name of security).
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98964887
Listen to this. As a person of a culture that been oppressed as well, I can understand this man's pain. But he should of known better to talk about the structural integrity of a plane when people are already racially profiling.
I agree with most of your post in a pragmatic sense, but it does raise some issues in an idealistic sense.
If you want to avoid being seen as a threat, it might behoove you to not dress like one.
This sounds an awful lot like "if a woman doesn't want to be raped, it might behoove her not to dress provocatively". On the surface there is some logic to it: if a potential rapist happens across a woman dressed in particularly attractive or revealing attire he may decide to attack her. So from a purely pragmatic point of view, it does make some sense. On the other hand, there's a good reason why "but she looked really, really hot" has never been considered a valid excuse for rape, and "blame the victim" mentalities in general are considered very poor form.
As you said yourself, it's idiotic to think a real terrorist would dress the part to get on an airplane. Yet for some reason it's okay to expect people to dress differently purely because lots of people have some idiotic notions about "what terrorists look like"?
Perhaps it's just my firm belief that organized religion is a dangerous habit that by all logic should be treated with the same disdain as any other self-indulgent delusion
It probably is. To find out, try a thought experiment: what if this discrimination wasn't occurring against people wearing clothing that implied a particular religious faith, but instead that they supported a particular sports team? Would you then say, "well supporting the Chicago Bulls is a dangerous habit and if you don't want to get kicked off planes you should keep your interest in basketball to yourself"? Or would you say "that's fucking ludicrous and I feel kind of embarrassed to be part of a society that tolerates such ridiculous and obviously ineffectual 'security' measures"?
Also, I think your comment about the mods here being pro-Islam and anti-Christian is a strawman. People aren't being persecuted and treated like terrorists because they wear a cross necklace or are dressed like a nun. Islamists aren't trying to get their religion's creation myth taught alongside evolution in schools. Apples and oranges.
You people who blame Israel [...]
At no point did I say I hold either side responsible, I was more stating that I don't find either side blameless.
I assume you are either Canadian, European, or one of leftie Americans.
I assume you're an arrogant asshole. Snap.
The world thinks Americans are a bunch of "morans." Really. We do. You deserve it.
I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that.
Tom Lehrer
Amen, bro'. Timothy McVeigh couldn't have put it better.
Just kiddin' on the 'Amen' because, after all, we don't want to offend the everyone-should-believe-exactly-like-me crew, do we now? Of course not.
By the way, have you ever been inside the Statue of Liberty? No? Well, there's a plaque on the thing with all this, "give us your poor, your huddling masses... blah, blah, blah... something about "yearning to be free." What a load of commie bullshit, eh? I say we change all that to: "Give us your white, your white, your white and your white." Has a nice American ring to it, doesn't it? I knew you'd like that idea.
Hey, do you know why those nutsacks strap C4 and stuff to themselves or drive the family beater into police barricades, etc? It's because they don't have F-18s and Stealth bombers. Well, fun's over, for now. See ya in Oklahoma City, cowboy.
hey they should have kicked them off the plane.. really . I mean why take a chance.. racial profiling.. yeah right . this people shoudl not be talking about airplanes and engines .. the airplane did the right thing.. now if they do not like the way they are treated then. tuff luck, move! we have to protect people from this bad people. now the people on the plane that we kicked off . turned out not to be bad. .but still BETTER TO BE SAFE THEN SORRY . glad to see americans staying up to these people. i hope they keep ding that to all of them.. because they are just out of control and if a few that might be good get held up along the way . sorry but times are not good , and we have to be checking all people from these countries..
And I wore a shemagh (same thing) I got from an SAS guy for two years in Afghanistan as a soldier in the US Army. I also sported a full beard and mustache* while there. You can bet your ass I shaved, got a haircut, and put that head-rag in my bag before flying home on commercial airliners. Everyone has the right to practice whatever damn fool religion they want, but the rest of the world should be under no obligation to ignore your chosen flavor of irrational belief in a magic sky man. It ain't Buddhists or Methodists strapping dynamite to their waists and blowing up people in crowded markets. If you want to avoid being seen as a threat, it might behoove you to not dress like one. Granted, it's idiotic to think a real terrorist would dress the part to get on an airplane (rather than showing up in a button-up shirt and slacks) but steadfastly sticking to your dang fool religious costume in the face of known public perception is asking for trouble.
Thank you for serving your country, but your logic is ridiculous and offensive. You're saying that Muslims who wear scarves on their heads in airports are asking to be persecuted because Muslims that did not wear scarves on their heads hijacked airplanes?
That is akin to being afraid of all black people because you know someone who got mugged by one. Or hating all US soldiers because of a few bad apples.
It's that type of fear-based, closed-minded ignorance that is directly against everything the US was built upon and is being harnessed by the politicians to destroy this country, all under the guise of protecting us. You can't really blame them either, because if they don't appeal to that side of our human nature, they don't get reelected. So they waste all their time in office dealing with silly shit and ignoring the real issues.
Back in the 80's there were jokes about TWA and DELTA... A comedian said he hated flying TWA because it stood for "Traveling With Arabs" and prefered DELTA because it stood for "Don't Even Let Them Aboard"...
Of course back in the 70's and 80's every other week about you heard about another TWA jet being hijacked...
One thing I learned in the service was, all it takes is one aww shit to screw up a hundred atta-boys... Basically 1 screw up can screw up a reputation after having a hundred good deeds... There have been terror acts by different groups, yes. I will not contest nor deny it. Sadly the vast majority has been by splinter groups of fanatics from the Muslim religion. Each time sprouting off justification of there action because of their religion. Which is doublely ironic since the Koran and Muslim religion actually promotes peace and non-violience. So most terrorist are flouting a perversion of the belief system. Regardless, its the terrorists that are making headlines as devoute Muslims... Thus creating the anti-Muslim atmosphere much of the Western World now lives in.
The U.S. and other NATO countrys fighting terrorism will never achieve the goals they want. The only true way to eliminate the splinter faction Muslim group based terrorism is for the other Muslim groups to actively go after the splinter groups and deal with it themselves. Which considering Muslim is the largest and fastest growing religion currently, it would be more effective for them instead of crying about being type casted to actually go after and eliminate the problems from within themselves.
You've let them win, you've enabled the extreemists. By reacting as scared kids who dont understand the real world, you are giving a huge and strong signal to the extreemists, that yes they have won, and the US generally has lost the war on terrism. thats right lost yet another "war". The US used to be the land of the brave and the home of the free !!! NOT ANY MORE. its the land of the scared and the home of the repressed. This family was born in the US, so they have a different religion to some others in the US, once was a time where the US had religious freedom, and freedom in general. The rest of the world looks upon the US now as a bunch of scared and reactive, ill informed hicks. Most of your congress dont even have passports !! they hardly know or understand what the world outside of the US is really like. The "war on terror" will go down in history as one of the most if not the most ill informed and poorly thought out campains in living history. and a huge loss to the US's standing on the world stage. Also due to this well stupid war on terror, the invasion of IRAQ (when they did not even do 911, or have WMD's), has initiated the biggest world wide financial crisis since the great depression. You cant expect to spends billions of dollars a week year after year after year in a failed war in Iraq and expect your economy to stay strong. (yes i do know about sub-prime, but that was not the causal problem to the crisis, it was the massive drain on the economy the war on terror that brought you down). Bush knew that a president had a better chance to gain re election if he had a cause and war, he did that in Iraq, he got his second term, and screwed the country and now the world to do it. Sometimes i wonder about the US mentality, also, raciasm, most people dont shy away from people we dont know, we are not afraid, we say "hello, where are you from" and we try to learn off them. but thats the rest of the world, seems not the US. Which is sad, **NOT** FREE,, ***NOT*** brave. and not being looked up to anymore. the US is a sad and hollow shell of what it used to be !!
I mean, seriously. You know, everyone continues to rip American culture for its reluctance to accept everyone else's quirks, but god forbid you know, you draw a picture of mohammed or ask a woman to dress, like, its the 21st century. Tolerance is a two way street, and I'm not seeing too much of it on the other side. I see muslims dressed up in full jihad regalia of those beards and stupid suits they were, and I just think, f-- them. I know that, if the power roles were reversed in the USA, muslims are and would be far less tolerant of christian culture than christian culture is of them. Mod me down for being politically incorrect if you want, but when you do, kindly point out the block of muslim nations that have the same level of civil advancement as the USA, Canada, UK, France, or even Germany.
This is my sig.
They really shouldn't have smoked a bong on the plain though, they should've waited til they got to Amsterdam!
Gays would be thinking man. Straight woman would be thinking man.
The problem you make is one of the one word: perfume. If you'd said "aftershave", WHO would be thinking of "woman"?
You're sooo sexist...
will gladly fly on that airline knowing that it is muslim free... finally someone has the balls to put them back in their place
others to do unto you.
I hope I don't sound anti-US, but a monolithic (if that's the right word) culture always finds it tough to be accomodate others simply because they haven't been taught or trained to do something like that since childhood.
Instead, crooks like CNN/Fox have tried to make money out of instilling the habit of fearing and suspecting every other idealogy.
Tolerance is what the American public on the street need to learn.
Multiple ethnicities are needed to collect intellectuals from everywhere to ensure maximum progress, but that also means that you cannot treat them like slaves or outsiders - the exact mistake that the American public is committing.
If you get good, you should give good, at the least, you should not give hurt.
Two words "Timothy McVeigh" Howcumzit white boys aren't being hassled like people of color? Because America is racist, always has been. If a white family had asked where is the safest place to sit on an aircraft, nothing would have happened. Its easier to persecute people who are different than your brother or sister. Just because things are the way they are doesn't make them right. We change when some people push the norm and make us look at our selves, or we don't, and stop maturing as a society.
I will attempt to avoid the whole of the airline industry if I possibly can, but if not, please be assured that there is absolutely no way whatsoever that I will be on a US aircraft or passing through US airspace. It's just too inconvenient, and frankly, dangerous.
Sorry folks, but the behaviour your government and its servants on the international scene is just the pits and I'd much prefer to put my travel dollars into a country which is actually a responsible member of the family of nations.
Is Slashdot the place for this political crap? The people got a refund and a free flight on another airline. I would rather err on the side of caution. Does this make you think of a rant about "it's a free country"? Tell it to the TSA agent who is yelling at you like you are 5 years old and have a bottle of water or a nail clipper. If muslims are angry, let them direct it at muslim terrorists who have killed people and blown stuff up.
Why do people hate others so easily? Is it the media, the propaganda, what? Just get over it, there are a lot people out there which are different than you but guess what, they mean you no harm. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
From the quran : "all non-muslims are the filthiest animals on the planet. When one irritates you, do not just kill one, but kill enough, so that they know their place".
(chapter 8, verse 55 and following).
This is not an isolated, lonely, out of context verse. The entire book is full of hate. About 2/3rds of the quran is devoted to hate against specific groups, including a few passages that institute hate of people with black skin.
And people think the bible is bad ... and that muslims should be "tolerated". Tolerating muslims is like "tolerating" Hitler. Not tolerant at all.
Just like you're within your rights not to buy tickets from them.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Really? I don't see you wearng a loincloth and trying to scalp people... If you ain't an Indian, you're an immigrant (and should go home and leave us alone)
>>Granted, it's idiotic to think a real terrorist would dress the part to get on an airplane ...
As terrorists are apt to blow themselves up, believe in faries etc, I think it's safe to assume that they're morons - rather than being simply idiotic. As such, and given that they're 'as thick as shit', I wouldn't put it past them!
@peetm
That is the real issue. If global hunger was eliminated and basic rights where there for everyone (including basic education) then fanatical cultures or religions would have a hard time finding anyone to follow their suicidal ideas.
In general I agree with your comments and the West (particularly the US) has to address the issues of hunger and education in the third world if it ever hopes to be secure. Having said that, the West can hardly be blamed for all, or even most of the hunger and lack of education in the third world. Dictators that interrupt food aid (Myanmar comes to mind most quickly), religious and cultural biases against education (girls are being threatened with death and disfigurement for the "crime" of going to school in Afganistan right now, under the very noses of US troops trying to enforce the opposite policy), religious and cultural norms that insist people have more children than they can afford for the perceived status it grants them, all of these and many other issue are to blame for hunger and lack of education in the world. There is nothing the West can do about these issues, or very little at the least (my Afghanistan shows that even direct enforcement of western style values doesn't help much).
I'm by no means trying to say that the US and other "first world" nations don't share some of the blame, but we can't "fix" the problem. Certainly the Israelis could be more reasonable to the Palestinians (though that would be easier to argue if Hamas would stop randomly lobbing rockets into Israel), but them doing so will not change the culture of Palestine to make it value peace and education over personal bravery and violent action. The US could get out of Iraq, but it can't make Sunnis and Shiites like each other. There's only so much that the "West" can do, though I will grant you that we could do more of what we can do.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
People of every religion on the planet (and atheists, too) have engaged in terrorism. Christians (both Catholic and Protestant, not too far from me), Buddhists, Muslims, the lot. Using someone's appearance as a way to judge whether they are dangerous or not is a terrible idea. As you said, all the "bad guys" have to do is look like someone not being targeted, and hey-presto, they'll get through with less scrutiny. It's a false sense of security. That's why profiling of anything other than actual threat (ie explosives/weapons on their person) is pathetic.
I understand your take on humanity (or at least one highly-publicised section thereof) might be somewhat skewed by your time in theatre, but it's a grave mistake to let that paranoia erode security, as it just ends up hurting your cause more than helping.
I was on the second plane back into the US after 9/11, sat next to 3 Muslim gentlemen, all speaking Arabic to each other. I didn't bat an eyelid. We sat on the tarmac and witnessed a 10-minute silence for those who lost their lives (it was an American Airlines plane). The Muslim gentlemen even asked to borrow my FHM after I was finished reading it (and this was a British FHM, not the US version :)). I wasn't scared - I trusted the Heathrow security enough to provide the best level of security possible, which they did. They swabbed every bag for explosives residue (twice), and didn't get their collective panties in a bunch when someone non-white person not dressed head-to-toe in Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch had the temerity to want to fly on a plane.
I don't blame you - paranoia is a disease that spreads rapidly through "us" when we feel threatened by "them". It's human nature.
In London the police used to give people with Irish accents a hard time, as they figured the terrorists blowing stuff up were all Irish. Funnily enough Irish people can change their accents too, and all that policy (as unofficial as it was) achieved was alienating the non-terrorist Irish (ie damn near every single Irish person), which increased their support for those conducting the bombings. It was about as counter-productive as you could get. If we want Muslim people to see that we're not the monsters we're portrayed as, we have to do everything we can to not rise to the bait, and treat everyone the same until there is actual real evidence of wrong-doing. Not a throwaway comment about the location of a part of an aircraft.
A christian in a voting booth can kill way more people than a muslim in a cockpit.
It would be very ironic. But then we'd end up with extra security checkpoints before the real security checkpoints, and end up with not just the TSA but the TSASA, and maybe even the TSASASA. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
That's ridiculous. Do all Christians really want to stone rape victims? Of course not. So how is this different from Muslims? Just because the Quran has an offensive (or many offensive) passages doesn't mean most Muslims use that passage in their daily life.
Here's a newsflash: most people don't read their religious texts and live by them word for word (as if that was possible). In fact most people takes bits and pieces and effectively throw out the stuff they don't like. If you don't believe me, do a study on how many Catholic women have used birth control.
Also Chapter 8, Verse 62 says that if non-Muslims incline towards peace then Muslims should as well.
MY GOD WHAT A HORRIFIC BOOK?! THEY WANT PEACE?!
Why do people hate others so easily?
Evolution. 100,000 years of distrust of unfamiliar things and pattern recognition have been profitable for the human race as a whole. A couple of decades of PC thought is not going to change that.
Not that I condone this particular situation. The airline was in the wrong and should have at the very least refunded their money and bought them a ticket on another airline.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Perhaps it's just my firm belief that organized religion is a dangerous habit that by all logic should be treated with the same disdain as any other self-indulgent delusion;
You're not alone. Jesus felt the same way, and several of his followers wrote extensively about it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If you ain't an Indian, you're an immigrant (and should go home and leave us alone)
American Indians are immigrants, too. They just got here first. Everyone who is not an indigenous species to the American continents should go home.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Exactly! I'm sick and tired of hearing about how everytone "Hates" foreigners or whatever.
My whole life I swallowed the lie that somehow I owed minorities and the poor oppressed foreigners something. My eyes have been awakened over the last year or so. I've come to realize I was duped (as have we all been). I've seen first-hand how our standard of living is being squeezed from above and below. I've seen first-hand the farce that is the H1B-Visa program. We all are having our livelihoods stolen away from us.
Everyone, inevitably trots out the old saw about "Native Americans" to point out that "we" are not the original Americans. So WHAT? All this proves is that we need to fight harder than the "Native Americans" if we want to keep what our ancestors fought and died for.
I've worked consistenly between 50 and 70 hour work-weeks my entire life (since I was 14) just to have and approximation of a decent life not living amongst a bunch of punks and dead-beats. I never received any special help from the vast conspiracy of "Whites Only" club. Wanna know why? It doesn't exist!
Our cities are crumbling messes of inept, hate-filled, lazy, minorities who are always looking for a hand-out. Companies are out-sourcing and in-sourcing (H1B) undermining all the fair-labor laws we fought for in this country. All these 3rd world bastards come here wanting to take advantage of what this country has built but then they want to reject our values and substitute their own.
NO! NO! NO! I say, gather your guns. Gather your strength. Gather your courage. Gather your emotions. Be ready to fight and fight hard. It's going to get messy. They want us to cower in the corner and feel guilty while they steal everything from us. Then, when everything is taken and used up and destroyed, then they will blame us.
Again, I say NO! Stand up! Stand up! Stand up!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
"One of the passengers removed, Abdur Razack Aziz, said he will consider a lawsuit. "
Even if this passenger has a legitimate complaint, the airline and FBI will be busy defending their actions. Good luck with that.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
Without Three Letter Acronyms (TLA's)
You mess with a Three Letter Agency ("TLA") and you will define Career Limiting Move ("CLM") to Oxford English Dictionary ("OED") levels
and that's what everyone outside and many inside the 50 states has to say - majority wins!
Secondly, the translation (by MAS Abdel Haleem from 2004) I have in front of me bears little relation to your quote:
The worst creatures in the sight of god are those who reject him and will not believe; who, whenever you [prophet] make a treaty with them, break it, for they have no fear of god. If you meet them in battle, make a fearsome example of them to those who come after them, so that they may take heed.
'Those who reject him' might not include Jews and Christians, I'm not sure. 'You [prophet]' means the translator is saying this was addressed to the prophet himself, rather that the 'whenever you make' being a modern version of 'whenever one makes'.
You've let them win, you've enabled the extreemists. By reacting as scared kids who dont understand the real world, you are giving a huge and strong signal to the extreemists, that yes they have won, and the US generally has lost the war on terrism. thats right lost yet another "war". The US used to be the land of the brave and the home of the free !!! NOT ANY MORE. its the land of the scared and the home of the repressed. This family was born in the US, so they have a different religion to some others in the US, once was a time where the US had religious freedom, and freedom in general. The rest of the world looks upon the US now as a bunch of scared and reactive, ill informed hicks. Most of your congress dont even have passports !! they hardly know or understand what the world outside of the US is really like. The "war on terror" will go down in history as one of the most if not the most ill informed and poorly thought out campains in living history. and a huge loss to the US's standing on the world stage. Also due to this well stupid war on terror, the invasion of IRAQ (when they did not even do 911, or have WMD's), has initiated the biggest world wide financial crisis since the great depression. You cant expect to spends billions of dollars a week year after year after year in a failed war in Iraq and expect your economy to stay strong. (yes i do know about sub-prime, but that was not the causal problem to the crisis, it was the massive drain on the economy the war on terror that brought you down). Bush knew that a president had a better chance to gain re election if he had a cause and war, he did that in Iraq, he got his second term, and screwed the country and now the world to do it. Sometimes i wonder about the US mentality, also, raciasm, most people dont shy away from people we dont know, we are not afraid, we say "hello, where are you from" and we try to learn off them. but thats the rest of the world, seems not the US. Which is sad, **NOT** FREE,, ***NOT*** brave. and not being looked up to anymore. the US is a sad and hollow shell of what it used to be !!
Well, AirTran has just lost forever the opportunity to sell me a ticket to anywhere... This sort of malicious idiocy should not be tolerated by anybody of any belief system and they (AirTran) should pay the price, by quietly going out of business!
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Actually, you need to change that to Jews. Jesus changed the stoning of adulterers in the laws of Abraham (Moses?) when he said let the ones without sin cast the first stone and no one could do it. So Christians haven't had that law ever. Jesus was a jew you know.
Here is two news flashes for you. Birth control is/was a church doctrine, not something mentioned in the bible. As for living the word of their religious texts, you need to look into Sharia law and how the theologies in the middle each (Iran) or the Taliban did things. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, a Muslim could just kill a non-Muslim or black person (Muslim or not) without fear of reprisal of law because the countries laws specifically stated it was ok if there was a reason. On the other hand, if you killed a Muslim for the same reasons, you would be tried and probably executed yourself if you lived that long. If you were a non Muslim, you wouldn't live long enough to see trial. In Iran, they too have different penalties depending on what your religion is. They do a lot better in tolerating other religions then the extremists in Afghanistan did, but the differences are there.
It almost seems as if your entire world view consists of the black man living down the road and some ill-gotten understanding of religions that you really have no clue about. Christian's aren't obligated to the old Abrahamic laws like the jews are. The old testament is included in the christian bible in order to provide the complete picture of the movement. It tells about God's elect and their struggles. Then when Jesus came into the picture, he showed that it was impossible to be pure and without sin and provided a way for salvation in the absence of purity. He also provided a way that others, could reach the kingdom of heaven who weren't one of God's elect. I think you should probably learn a little more about which your attempting to speak of before doing so.
Never under a different name or anonymously. I stand by all my words.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
...us whitey, crackers are never the target of racism!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Actually, Sayyid Qutub started out as an extremely liberal secular cultural thinker, but became somewhat disenchanted with Western Liberalism. However, he didn't begin writing such radical works until he was jailed under Gamal Abd an-Nasr, and tortured heavily. His philosophy was not actually aimed at the west per se, but rather at the secular government of Nasr, whose legitimacy he tried to challenge on the basis of the idea of "daar al-haarb" and "daar as-salaam."
The quote you show above is not about Western powers per se, but rather about the illegitimacy of the Nasr regime. The "daar al-harb" here is Egypt, not the US.
In fact, his ideas would probably have been better articulated had he NOT died from torture in prison. However, the important point here is that acts of torture actually significantly radicallized Qutub, and led to him producing this sort of highly malleable doctrine, something we should think about with respect to our own actions today (torture of possibly innocent people in Guantanamo, bombing of Gaza).
And IAGSIAS(I Am a Graduate Student in Arabic Studies)
I think your a little off on this. Getting kicked off a plane or refused service isn't really comparable to actually violating a woman's body. They weren't strip searched with their body cavities checked. It's more akin to if you don't want to get mugged, then don't flash your money, don't wear two hundred dollar shoes and don't load up with jewelry, Ipods, cell phones and such when going into certain places. You know, don't leave the $1500 camera on the dash of the car when parking on the side streets in downtown big city USA. It's true that it's the behavior of others that you are trying to control but it just isn't on the same level as rape.
I'm not the original poster but I think it is appropriate that if you expect people to treat you with respect, you can't dress like a hoodlum gansta when applying for a job or you can't dress in a $2000 three peace business suit while working at the unemployment office. People for whatever reasons, have impressions of others and what they should be like. You won't see someone dressed and talking like a pimp from a movie being elected as president of the US. If you dress in a way that instills fear into people, expect people to be scared in your presence. It really doesn't matter what rights you have or think you have, you know your dress and actions will cause issues when around strangers. You have to be willing to accept it or dress differently.
If fans of the Chicogo Bulls where know to blow themselves up or hijack air planes and crash them into buildings, I would say yes, it would be the same. There has been more then one incident where a Bulls fan or some other sports fan has been beaten or assaulted because they were wearing a shirt of the opposing team in an area of other fans. It used to be common to hear on the news about bar room brawls breaking out during the Ohio State- Michigan games where someone would wear a Michigan jersy into a bar in Ohio or vice versa and some of the locals didn't like it.
So yea, given different situations and scenarios, I think it is perfectly valid to expect people not to wear certain items at certain times. It doesn't matter if it is religious in nature or a sport logo or whatever.
Lol.. I love idiots like you. You really brighten my day up.
First, look at the definition if immigrant. It seems that once your born somewhere, your no longer an immigrant. Second, the Indians aren't indigenous to America, They came over just the same as us, just earlier. Finally, when we came over, we didn't do anything that the Indians weren't' already doing. We just done it better because we possessed technology that made our numbers more effective then theirs. If the Indians had the concept of the wheel when we arrived, things would probably have been completely different.
So based on what has been posted here, the message is "slaughter them till they learn their place, and when they come begging for peace it might be time to stop".
Yeah, Hitler did that too.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
...To find out, try a thought experiment: what if this discrimination wasn't occurring against people wearing clothing that implied a particular religious faith, but instead that they supported a particular sports team?...
This already takes place; in no. county San Diego schools, kids cannot wear sports teams apparel. this was the direct result of gang kids wearing [especially] Raiders gear.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Would that make it ok for every non-white to treat all whites as as problem culture, due to KKK violence?
Yes, it would, if we did not routinely speak out and act against the KKK in this country. That being said, as the years go on and I see how much we are being robbed blind in this country, I am starting to think, maybe I should never have, and in the future may not, speak out against the KKK. Maybe I'll join them.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I apologize about thinking the stoning of rape victims applied to Christians. You are correct.
Of course birth control is not in the Bible. (Interesting though that to you its "only" a church doctrine in the case of Catholicism) In Catholicism, while the Bible is primary, the Church does God's work on Earth and the Pope speaks the word of God in certain situations, including when it comes to the ban on use of birth control. (Oddly enough that ban is justified in part by the Old Testament but nevertheless).
Did I defend extremist Muslims, the Taliban or Iran? Please tell me where I did. Curious, I get involved in Amnesty International in part to stop discrimination against gays, women, people of all religions and political background.
I don't see why you bring up violent Muslim regimes. At no point did I bring up crimes committed by Christians, Jews, Hindus or others in the name of their respective Gods.
Some Christians disagree with your interpretation of Old Testament laws. It's not as cut and dry as you make it out to be. Which leads back to my original point that not everyone applies equally or even knows every religious doctrine. Muslims who don't view "non-Muslims as the filthiest animals on earth" shouldn't be viewed negatively based on that anymore than Christians and Jews who don't support the use of the curse of Ham to discriminate against Africans should be viewed negatively based on it.
Actually it doesn't say that and secondly its not relevant. It's ridiculous to compare people who don't support an offensive reading of a religious text as akin to Nazis. How is it that people who don't support inter-religious violence are Nazis because other people support inter-religious violence? I'm an agnostic who doesn't live by that verse from that translation of the Quran too. Apparently that's equal to being a Nazi.
I've never read the Quran, so I can't comment, but here's a little fact about the Bible that I feel is too often misunderstood both by atheists and the American evangelical; and, BTW, therein lies some different views on Christianity between its branches, because the Vatican, for one, does not hold the Bible to be "perfect", but a product of its time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUyiQufyiK0
The video, BTW, is with vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno and he tells his tale of attending to a request for a "Bible study group" for astronauts. It's hilarious...
So, to come back to my main point. Christianity is about the New Testament. Supposedly, Christ brought the world the Evangelion, i.e., "the good message", the "good announcement."
That basically means you can just about forget the Old Testament or, rather, keep only "the good parts" (Thou shall not steal, etc.). In fact, Jesus is quoted as saying something along those lines.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
FYI: David is not an alien name to arabs and other muslims.
This bigoted, racist trash of a comment is considered "insightful"?!?!?
Bark less. Wag more.
...like Americans.
Look like you're from an Islamic Middle Eastern state and you'll get treated like a terrorist.
These people by their dress and appearance set themselves apart from mainstream society. They have asked for different treatment.
There certainly is much disagreement about the importance of different parts of the Bible among Christians. I think its important for everyone to remember that most religions have very similar debates and disputes. That's why I responded to a comment implying that because something offensive was in the Quran it automatically implied all Muslims lived by it equally.
200 years ago, the USA's intervention in the middle east consisted of giving the Barbary pirates a damn good thrashing; which, frankly, they deserved.
FGD 135
Yeah, I know. But for some reason the Arab/Muslim terrorists are never named David. Maybe it would not sound foreign enough to the Americans ears.
Well, no. The pope doesn't speak for god. As for speaking the word of god, anyone can do that by reading the bible aloud or reciting it from memory. They have to be careful to understand it's meaning which is why the early churches objected to having the bible accessible in the common language. The church however, has become what Jesus railed against and there are many different churches out there beside the catholic church. While most other churches sprang out from the catholic church, that has more to do with controls originally in place then the word of god itself.
Actually, yes you did. You said "most people don't read their religious texts and live by them word for word" in replying to a comment about the quran. This is obviously false if you look a Sharia law. I listed a few of the extreme examples and now it appear that your taking offense. But you obviously don't understand the muslims or their ways. In Europe right now, you have politicians who think it might be good to put Sharia law in beside the public law so the Islamic Churches can govern and charge people who aren't even connected to it. The chief justice in England, Lord Phillips who is/was the top Judicial officer in the land before recently has said that Muslims in Brittan should be able to use Sharia law.
In other words, your totally conflating the situation with little knowledge about it and presenting it as something no different then modern Catholicism or Christianity.
You brought up an incorrect statement about comparing Christians to Muslims in response to a comment about Muslims and the quran. You used the words most which is complete hogwash as I have pointed out with Sharia law. The entire premise of your comment was flawed from the start and I pointed that out and gave some examples. The presence of Sharia law itself is enough to show your comment to be wrong, I just pointed to two of the most extreme countries I know of. There are quite a few more.
Some people call themselves christian just to fit in. Anyways, there are various sets of laws in the bible surrounding the time frames or people who introduced them. Only a few of them are in dispute and they aren't in the area of stoning adulterers. On the other hand, Sharia law encompasses a majority of non free countries and quite a few of those in the middle east and Africa which are considered free. This means that the law of the land is based on the literal readings of the quran as interpreted by a few people. This means that in those places, there is no room for d
The way your post is worded, it appears that you are hoping for this to happen and/or inciting it. Reported to https://tips.fbi.gov/
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Search "pact of Umar" for the definition of "peace". Google it.
The peace minorities have under muslim rule is like the peace jews had under nazi rule. It certainly was peaceful, in the end, on the many graveyards.
> Just don't get me started on Delta.
Well, perhaps you shouldn't have implied that Delta is worse than this AirTran fiasco if you didn't want to explain???
Seriously, I fly twice a week and 90% of the complaints I hear from casual travelers are absolutely ridiculous. I was on a flight from DTW to a small Pennsylvania airport. It was delayed a couple hours awaiting the inbound aircraft which had run into rough weather. Then it finally took off and by the time it got to the destination airport, a dense fog (1/8 mi visibility) had rolled in making it impossible to land. We circled for an hour or two and when the weather did not clear we had to turn back to DTW because we were running out of fuel. By this time it was quite late and there were no more flights to this airport that day, and due to the holiday there were no available seats on subsequent flights for two days. The airline would not spring for hotel. The Hawaiian Shirt Brigade on the flight WAS IRATE and screamed at both the pilots and the gate agents. They believed they were entitled to (a) free hotel rooms, (b) free tickets on an alternate airline.
Surprise, the airlines are currently unable to control the weather. There is no reason they should be responsible for paying for your hotel room in this instance. There is no reason they should incur the cost of seating you on a competing airline. What is the point of screaming at the PILOTS for deciding not to land in unsafe weather? If you're on a toll road and part of it is closed due to snow, would you expect the toll company to do anything at all?
In my experience, people who don't travel very often simply don't understand the complexities involved and turn all of their travel-related frustration into airline-directed anger. To be honest, the ignorance of infrequent travelers is my main personal annoyance with travel. I don't think asking for a little common sense is unreasonable.
Firstly, most religious people nevertheless seem to have a functioning system of morality. They're typically highly inventive when reconciling it with their religion, reinterpreting and ignoring it as necessary to enable themselves to function as normal upstanding human beings. And that's just the ones who've gone so far as to actually read the text they're supposedly living their lives by.
In order for this sentence to be true, there needs to be a universal, singular and unchanging (over time) definition of "upstanding human beings" in a moral context.
That definition would form, obviously, an ideology, and a religion.
So what you're saying, in essence, is that it doesn't matter that people profess hate, and keep killing one another, in the end they'll follow your religion.
And that formulation exposes the statement for the stupidity that it is. There is NO universal standard for human behavior. There are religions (and anything that actively steers human behavior is a religion in this view), with consequences. Communism would be a religion in this view, as would capitalism, in addition to the traditionally accepted ideologies. This obviously also means that there are consequences to following certain religions. This makes one religion better than another. There are also consequences to your neighbours/"society" following certain religions, which is what makes some religions totalitarian and others support freedom.
Islam is a bad (has terrible consequences/quality of life for it's adherents as evidenced by the many failed muslim states) totalitarian (will be imposed by society with physical violence if given the chance, again see any muslim country) religion.
So why don't you answer the question. WHAT is that magical description of a "upstanding moral human being" that you claim every muslim will spontaneously accept in lieu of islam and it's massacres ?
I hope you have a DAMN good answer. I really do. But I fear the evident is true : that you're unable to imagine situations you're not directly confronted with.
The sad thing is how well it worked. Of course, like the other leftist ideology of the beginning of the 20th century, communism, the real world interfered, with the obvious result :
Germany's economy collapsed. I would contend that it collapsed before America got involved in WWII, and that America would have faced considerably tougher opposition had it not.
Of course the same is true of islam. Know what the richest part of the Christian Roman Empire was ? It was a region, green and beautiful. Filled to the brim with black Christians.
This region was ... Northern Africa. From 700 on, blacks were systematically eradicated, and you will no longer find them there. Most of the green land is gone, a lot of it due to "predatory agriculture", and it's countries and peoples have known only misery ever since. They tried to solve said misery with slavery, but to say the least, weren't very successfull.
And still you get to kill black people in islamic countries without reprisal. A sane person would say "hmmmm". But that wouldn't be very politically correct, after all, racism is "forbidden" (between brackets in America, but quite literally outlawed in Europe with thoughtcrime laws). And outlawing islam is supposedly racist. But by NOT outlawing islam, one has to accept people following it's rules about killing blacks, which are racist.
So in reality one must choose, are all races equal, and therefore some religions, like islam, reprehensible ? Or are all religions equal, and therefore some races, like blacks, inferior ?
Did I defend extremist Muslims, the Taliban or Iran? Please tell me where I did. Curious, I get involved in Amnesty International in part to stop discrimination against gays, women, people of all religions and political background.
You defended the religion itself. The only thing that makes "extremist" muslims extremist is their adherence to that religion, and it's commands for massacring.
What makes a muslim extremist is islam. What may make a muslim moderate is, for example, capitalism (e.g. tourism).
The exact same goes for violent muslim regimes. What makes them violent is that specific religion.
So yes, you defended extremist muslims and sharia law. You defended the stoning of women. You see, they're both parts of what you defended.
You're like someone stating how he loves cars, and can't understand why people find it strange that you hate wheels and engines. The first does not exist without the other. There is no islam without sharia. There is no islam without stonings, "violent muslim regimes" and other reprehensible things. It just doesn't exist.
I wonder if you'd apply the same standard to nazis. After all, the nazis of today aren't the ones that gassed Jews. The KKK members of today aren't the ones that hanged Blacks. One can fill this list.
I assume you're perfectly tolerant of these ideologies too. And just because they scream "we'll burn your houses down in the night", in no way makes any black person nervous.
We should be tolerant.
"kill all blacks" should sound in every night. "Gas the Jews" should be allowed to be blown out of loudspeakers over every neighbourhood. Nazi propaganda should be spread on television.
Preventing that, after all, would be racist against KKK members and Nazis. (and yes freedom of political opinion and spreading said opinion is part of the human rights).
I assume you are either Canadian, European, or one of leftie Americans.
I do come from a place where people are fairly well-educated, yes.
Now imagine trying to live your wonderful life in Israel. Wondering if rockets are going to land in your office. Wondering if that kid on the bus... ...
Still beats the heck up of the life in the West Bank - more people killed, unemployment greater than the US and Europe have ever seen, foreign military checkpoints to go through constantly, bulldozing of a lot of new construction, foreign settlement using the water you need to live to water their lawns, no ability to leave,
They have tried on several occasion to make peace with those people, and what do the get?
Probably the same response that you expect when your peace proposal requires the other side to have no military, allows your side to control the borders, and leaves your settlements and checkpoints inside the other country intact. As bad as some Palestinians have behaved, I don't expect them to take a deal that would essentially make them second-class citizens of the eastern half of Israel.
And now they go forward into a future where it is uncertain on whether they can count on there staunchest ally in a few weeks.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi are all as pro-Isreal as the rest of the Washington politicians that meet frequently with the AIPAC. The worst probable scenario for Israel with regard to the change of administration is that they might have to pull back out of Gaza if they want all of their American financial support (assuming that they go through with a ground invasion).
You are just simply narrowing down the pool of possible suspects because those that wish to do us the most harm tend to be of the Muslim faith.
Right, because no other nutjobs would carry out a terrorist attack, and because they can't start recruiting white people and women, and because they couldn't possibly hide their religious affiliation.
..about this whole affair. The Muslim passengers were headed for a "religious conference" (Wahhabi madrassa?) when they got into this incident. Promptly afterwards ,they were "represented" by two very shady organizations, the 'Muslim Public Affairs Council' (A Wahhabist front) and the 'Council of American-Islamic relations' (who have links to HAMAS). If it were a moderate organization like the "California center for Islamic pluralism" or something similar that was representing them then I would be more sympathetic, but two militant Islamist hate groups suddenly muster up the funds to "represent" them? It sounds like a planned publicity/propaganda stunt meant to conjure up sympathy.
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
What nonsense. The kaffiyeh is a bedouin or "palestinian" man's garb predominantly. When referring to women's veils or headscarves, you would probably mean the hijab or the even more concealing niqab.
Get your terminology right, before you try to educate the trolls...
K.
I think its interesting that you can make pronouncements about who is and who is not really Christian and what constitutes proper Christian doctrine. Are you in possession of some spiritual knowledge that gives you the authority to make these pronouncements?
What evidence do you have that most western Muslims fit those extremist stereotypes?
Sharia "law" as it applies in England is a form of binding arbitration that is chosen by the parties involved. No party is forced to have their disputes tried in a Sharia court. If two people have a dispute and both legitimately choose to have that dispute decided by an arbiter, they are free to do so. I would advocate against people making that choice but it is their choice to make not mine.
Sharia law encompasses a majority of non-free countries? That's a possibility although the most populous non-free country, China, is a huge exception. I don't support Sharia law, especially in its most extreme forms, as the law of the land. It is barbaric. But all you've proven is that some Muslim countries use some form of Sharia law (its not as extreme in every country). Do you actually think everyone in the country or even 50% of the people in those countries support every application of this law?
You continue to assume all Muslims act the same as an extremist subsection without any evidence that to support that generalization. Where is your evidence? You seem to
You really think that an 8th century agreement, one that scholars don't think is a fraud, has bearing on the beliefs of all 1 billion Muslims? If you do, you're not just a sectarian prick, you're a fool as well.
You're really that deluded that you think all 1 billion Muslims are responsible for extremist interpretations, past and present? Just like Jews are responsible for killing Christ?
I support the rights of people to express their opinion but that doesn't mean I support every single one of those opinions. I don't agree with Christians who hate gays, Muslims who hate women or white people who hate black people. I'm also mature enough and have had enough interaction with people to know that not everyone of the people in those three general groups feel that way.
so, the islamos are deplaned...funny, and they can sue the airline, funny too, so....when somebody is going to sue the islamic church for their more than 5,000 victims on 9/11?, or the destruction of property? ...is anyone going to sue the Caliph, or the ayatolah, or the muezzin, or the mullah, or the Mujtahid for several million dollars for their direct responsibility on more than 10,000 terrorist attacks in the last five years?, what about beheadings?...are they non responsible too, is the family of the victims the ones who are at fault because they are not "believers"?.
time to suck it up and accept that they (the islamos) are the ones who brought this kind of excrement upon them....time to stop playing the "poor me" card and accept that their PR campaign has put them on the spotlight.
My mother has always been scared to fly. She will always ask someone with us where they think the safest place to be on the plane is if something goes wrong and it crashes. I could easily see her having this conversation. Since my mother is Native American, I wonder would they assume she was a middle eastern terrorist too?
Our intervention in the middle east over the past 200 years has bread suicide bombers who want us the fuck out of their lives.
WTF are "bread terrorists"?
Are they white or brown?
Do they rise to the occasion? Do they have lots of dough? half-baked?
A bit too crusty?
Are they unleavened at passover?
Ahhh! French, I bet!
First of all, I did no such thing. I said some people just call themselves christian to fit in. The meaning behind that it that they are no more christian in their faith then a label will allow them to be. You can put on a Tshirt that says worlds greatest Dad and it doesn't mean that you are dad or a great one at that. It just means that you put a label on yourself.
Second, proper christian doctrine is that Jesus said and did. Don't confuse Christian doctrine with Church doctrine. If you had a relationship with him, or at least invested the time to understand other people's relationship with him, you would know these things. Jesus did and said certain things and anyone claiming to be a christian can't dispute that unless they are attempting to pervert the entire religion. You know, they call Christians Christians solely because Jesus Christ and their belief in him. Otherwise they would just be Jews. Of course you understand that Jesus was a Jew right?
I didn't say anything about western Muslims. And neither did you. You lead a generic Muslim statement and most of them are in places other then the west.
Actually, no. Sharia law isn't in England at all, the English law of the land controls everything, even the ownership of slaves which Sharia law allows.
I said most and Countries as in plural and you come back with one country. Amazing, simply amazing. Do you even know what your talking about? It's readily apparent that you don't know what I'm talking about. You see, I wasn't attempting to prove that you support anything, I was attempting to show that your summation was completely incorrect and I did that already. And yes, they do support application of the law because if and when they go against it, they find themselves dead. Whether they personally support it doesn't really matter because they will always publicly support it which does nothing but encourage and enforce it.
Contrary to your belief, the extremist subsection is the majority of Muslims. I never said all Muslims are that way now did I?
BTW, the concentration of Sharia law covered countries exist primarily in Eurasia and Africa. If you combine the number of Muslims living in North and South America, all of Europe, and the Oceania countries you will have 8 times as many Muslims living in Africa and 20 times more in Eurasia. BTW, Eurasia and Africa have all the Sharia law covered countries. Imagine that. Anyways, Most as you said was simply incorrect. Now accept that and move on.
You're extremely deluded to think that perhaps 50 million (neo)nazis are responsible for the crimes of perhaps 100.000 of them 50 years in the past.
So why do you discriminate against nazi's ? Why would you go against them just because they hate (and sometimes try to kill) gays ? That's just ... discrimination. You're not ready to support a nazi president ? That's racist !
Not every nazi, you know, feels the same way. Some don't want to kill ALL blacks. You're just a mean racist for discriminating against nazis just because they hate gays, blacks, and so on.
I hope you can see the sarcasm in this and the problem with your point of view.
Why don't you tell me under exactly what conditions christians live in Egypt ?
After all, it couldn't possibly be that agreement, since "everyone thinks it's a fraud", right ?
And yes, again, technically you're correct. Not "all" muslims believe in it. Only Sunni. That basically means everyone except Iran, which is technically not "all" of them, just > 95%.
Why don't you check whether you're right first, then start insulting people ? You know, you might actually learn something.
But of course like all progressives, you're bound to learn something you won't like at all.
In fact, one could argue that a majority of the religious terrorism in the middle east is actually nationalist terrorism disguised as religious extremism. If you look at the causes which drive people to the al-qaida bootcamps: oppression (by US forces or otherwise - AQ was not active in Iraq before we had a military presence there), lower standards of living, and so forth. People turn to religion when times get tough. Other people use that to twist the religion. They convince people at the end of their rope that the only thing that will make things better for them, their family, and their country is to go blow up the people fucking them over.
The common denominator is identity. Race, ideology, religion, nationalism, regionalism, whateverism all get abused when one person wants to draw an us/them line. The danger is that when effective propaganda resonates, it takes on a life of its own.
Just look at the "genocide" in Rwanda. The Hutu and Tutsi tribes where not actual races. They were two groups of people arbitrarily separated by the Dutch based on how dutch they looked. The country tore itself apart across artificial racial lines that were in reality just figments of someone else's imagination.
Asshat's patriotism is part of his identity. If he doesn't understand anything about Muslims, then it's a lot easier to cling to unchallenged lies than contemplate shameful truths.
While in an airport do you Talk about bombs or hijacking? Why not, afraid some thing may happen? No try it. Then Boston police almost machine gunned a white college girl with some blinking lights on her chest. Racism there? Stupid is as stupid does. When the airport police want to inspect the power supply I was checking, my thoughts where "good someone is doing his job and I will not be hijacked". I am sure every 9/11 plane victim would have loved to have spent 2 hours on the ground and arrived in one piece. The family should take there FREE flight, apologize to the other passengers. And learn a lesson from the experience.
And for the rest of you screaming Racism. Try the same conversation on your next flight. See you on the News.
An old Dilbert cartoon about the subject.
http://superblog.crazyengineers.com/2008/07/07/this-is-why-i-love-dilbert/
http://i40.tinypic.com/2u61p4i.jpg
You, my friend, are the one that needs to think for yourself. You seem to think that tolerance for tolerance sakes, is really a social advancement, when really, it is part of an overall set of tools advanced by corporate interests designed to reduce us to interchangable parts. Frankly, christians sticking with christians, jews with jews, and so, families preferring family members, seems to offer more lasting, real promise, than, some wishy washy corporate social model that has brought us 10% unemployment, 10 trillion dollars of government debt, and a total dislocation of the world economy as the rich line up for a bailout at our expense. These parachial values that I mentioned might have some problems, but, they did produce a viable economy and lasting culture that persisted successfully for almost 2,000 years. What does your corporate multiculturalism done for humanity lately, that compares to the culture that produced Raphael and Bach?
This is my sig.
Firstly, most religious people nevertheless seem to have a functioning system of morality. They're typically highly inventive when reconciling it with their religion, reinterpreting and ignoring it as necessary to enable themselves to function as normal upstanding human beings. And that's just the ones who've gone so far as to actually read the text they're supposedly living their lives by.
In order for this sentence to be true, there needs to be a universal, singular and unchanging (over time) definition of "upstanding human beings" in a moral context.
No, there doesn't. They merely need to be able to function within the society in which they find themselves, wherever and whenever that is. Human's innate (evolved) sense of morality is being initialized with very different parameters now compared to 1400, 2000 and 4000 years ago - and different parameters in the US vs the middle east. It's the vast difference between modern western societies and ancient middle eastern ones that's the CAUSE of this conflict between ancient religion and current morality.
That definition would form, obviously, an ideology, and a religion.
I don't see why it would form a religion, it doesn't seek to explain anything about the state of the universe. It's merely a set of responses to stimuli - feeling guilty after stealing, feeling angry after seeing stealing, etc. Most people are not even very good at stating what moral rules they're using - they think of rationalizations for intuitive moral decisions which turn out to conflict with answer they give to later questions.
So what you're saying, in essence, is that it doesn't matter that people profess hate, and keep killing one another, in the end they'll follow your religion.
No, I'm saying that whatever religion they follow if they feel it's OK to hate and kill then that's what they'll do. And if they want to be nice to, say, gay people then that's what they'll do, too. They'll find a way later to reconcile it with their religion (and they certainly won't follow MY religion because I haven't got one). The local religion will, I'm sure, influence how an individual's own morality turns out, but it won't be the only influence and I don't believe that morality is a purely learnt trait. Once you've GOT that morality and those moral feelings of guilt, disgust, etc., you can't escape from them just by reading a religious text. They're inevitably going to affect your acceptance and interpretation (and translation) of that text.
BTW, I can highly recommend the book 'Moral Minds' if you're interested in this sort of thing. It's written more from a scientific point of view than a philosophical or theological one.
Have you ever read the Bible?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is how it always starts. Why don't we just make all muslims wear fucking yellow stars? Let's stop them travelling and confiscate all their money and put them in prison, obviously they're just funding terrorism.
Arsehole.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Why don't we just keep things in context and understand that fear is a rational behavior that people display. If you act in a manner that triggers that, you are going to instill fear and resentment into them. This is a basic law or instinct of survival born into most Humans.
You or they are free to dress however they want. They just need to realize that their dress can and will entice reactions out of people and they must deal with it. There is a time and a place for everything, currently, that place and time for some might be inconvenient but it's there and they need to realize that not all people know them personally.
The Pope can't ban the use of birth control. Million of Catholics worldwide use birth control in all its forms and look at the Pope with derision in regards to this topic.
The Pope can only mandate in matters of faith, and even there his powers are quite narrow.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Since when a person dressed as a Muslim is a threat?
It is statements like the one you just made what makes this world a sorry place to live in.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.