So I got this email.
It was a forwarded e-mail to my new Inigo.Montoya@ etc. account. I rather like this account and don’t particularly want it to turn into a spam recepticle. So I’m already a bit deuced by the fact that a bunch of strangers now have my e-mail address to forward on to some spam hawking gutter slut. But that’s not what this is about, see?
It was the content of the e-mail. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s set up as a multiple choice history exam. Here’s an example:
There are 12 examples of “Muslim” initiated terrorist acts, and of course, the “d” answer is always the same, “a Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40.” after the exam it has the note:
So, big deal, thinks I. There are racists out there, and lots of people feeling helpless and frustrated about things in general.
This is the nastiest piece of racist trash I’ve seen in a long time. One could just as easily point to the MILLIONS of deaths perpetrated by highly organized White Christian males in the last 60 years. Germany? Albania? Ukraine? North American natives? South American Natives? At least your average Ibrahim on the street is nauseated by the terrorist acts described below and refers to the perpetrators as “murderers” and not “Muslims”–the genocides put in motion by white guys had the backing of the general populace not being slaughtered. We could also do this list about serial killers & child molesters, most of whom are White Christian males between 20-40. They are responsible for a greater number and more reprehensible crimes than relatively quick murders and kidnapping for ransom.
And let’s not forget the most important point of all: Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran were used as Cold War pawns between, that’s right, the highly organized White Christian males who led the U.S.A. & their ideological opponents, the U.S.S.R… When the Cold War ended, the Arabs were left to themselves in a war-ravaged wasteland rotten with hidden unexploded ordnance, famine and poverty. The White guys did not behave civilly toward them, nor was any aid offered to the countries with no resources we wanted. Why should they behave civilly toward the White guys? We’d already shown ourselves to be brutes! And that horrible demon Saddam? Who do you think put him in power? That’s right, the United States installed him as a puppet leader who was unlikely to get in the way of our Mid-East oil craving. So we are more or less responsible for HIS crimes as well. Why the hell would any semi-conscious Iraqi trust the US military occupation?
I wonder WHAT we could have done to piss off regular old brown-skinned people to the point where they’d do some crazy shit to protect what remains of their culture and religion?
Believe it or not, Inigo, this same e-mail was pitted about a year ago. It’s sad to see that it’s still making the rounds. As I recall, at the time, I suggested responding with something like this:
Who commanded you to love your enemies?
a. Micky Mouse
b. John Ashcroft
c. Paris Hilton
d. A Jewish male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
Being in favor of profiling does not make one a racist.
Way to miss the point. What do any of these things have to do with terrorism?
Which is exactly why, when they are searching for these types of criminals, law
enforcement uses profiling to help catch them. Notice how us white males aren’t whining and complaining about it.
Bullshit. Us “white guys” in the US give shitloads of aid to the “brown guys” all over the world.
Let me get this straight: We don’t give them enough handouts, so that justifies them attacking us with terrorism?
Have you ever considered seeking professional help? You should.
Yep. Everything is the fault of us “evil Americans”. :rolleyes:
No. We aren’t.
Why don’t you help them? After all, it’s clear that you hate America and consider the Evil White Christian Males living here to be the source of all that’s bad in the world. Why don’t you strap a bomb on yourself and walk into the nearest civilian market and kill some of them?
Seriously. Get some professional help. You are a lunatic.
Ummm… not to detract from your main point (that whoever distributes this email is scum of a particualarly vile kind), but…
let’s see:
Muslim – has nothing to do with race*
male – has nothing to do with race
extremist – has nothing to do with race
between 17 and 40 – has nothing to do with race
so, in conclusion, I guess it’s just – not every assholish stereotyping is racial?
(and like I said – I feel your pain. But “racist” is, IMHO, a poor choice of word here)
*I know you’re thinking “Muslim == ‘brown people’”. And this is likely true in the writers’ mind. But you really should know better – firstly, Arabs (as well as Indians) are considerd Caucasian and, secondly, there are Muslims of all “racial” backgrounds anyway
Not every brown skinned person believes that the soul method for survival of his/her culture and religion is to blow up random (predominantly) white skinned people in remote locations around the world. Most, in fact, don’t.
I’m not defending the Iraq invasion, but I think it’s important to note that this is not a war on brown skinned people.
The problem is, though, that salafi extremism is a major problem facing the world today. And you can’t just say it’s because:
As a rule, that’s not true. The only place in the “Middle East” there was a direct Cold War proxy fight was in Afghanistan. The Iran-Iraq war wasn’t because of the Cold War, but instead due to regional issues (Iraq’s desire for a Gulf port and fear by the Gulf States of a revolutionary Shi’ite Iran), and while both the Soviets and Americans sold arms to Iraq (and the Americans sold arms to Iran), it wasn’t really a Cold War thing. The other major wars in the region were the various wars against Israel (which, while backed by the Soviets, wasn’t instigated by them, and were what the Arab nations wanted to do anyway), and the civil war in Lebanon (which was due largely to demographic changes and the difficulties of holding together a quota-based multi-religious, multi-ethnic nation.)
It’s also not true that this is due to “famine and poverty”. Salafi extremist thought is strongest in Saudi Arabia, the richest of the Middle East states, and in fact, Salafist extremists tend to come from middle-class or rich backgrounds.
This also isn’t an attempt by the Salafists to “protect what remains of their culture and religion”. In fact, most Salafi violence is against fellow Muslims, and the Salafi want to change their societies religious beliefs and culture.
Now, this post isn’t in defense of profiling…I think you can make an argument either way about it. But the Salafi, especially those who use terrorism and seek a violent overthrow of society, are a major threat to the Middle East and to the world.
When did this happen? The U.S. makes the smallest contribution in foreign aid (per capita, as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of national budget) of any industrialized Western country. We created the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, but in the countries of brown-skinned peoples, we’ve often made deals with local dictators to serve our short-term economic or security interests, without much regard to the good of the people who live there. (To be fair, we do the same with “white” countries like Uzbekistan.)
Obviously, none of that makes terrorism morally justified. And as for terrorism, please note that worldwide, Islamic fundamentalism isn’t really the uniting theme. Over the past few years, most terrorist bombings have been carried out by more-or-less secular groups with specific political agendas (e.g., the Tamil Tigers).
Yeah…posted in anger, sorry about that. Raving & drooling again.
I guess where I was going with this is that, to my understanding, we want to combat terrorism to save innocent lives. While the self-annihilating extremists scare the bejeezus out of us, they don’t come close in real numbers to the deaths caused by…well, damn near everybody else! I’m just thinking as a matter of triage maybe we could lose a couple more airplanes and streetside cafes and focus all the expense and energy on jumping in the middle of the REAL slaughters like Rwanda, Albania, etc.
OK. I don’t have a working solution in mind. But profiling pisses me off because terrorists as we’ve seen are nothing if not pretty damned clever. How long do you think it will be before they start recruiting white folks posing as June & Ward Cleaver to detonate 2 pounds of C4 implanted in their pasty, fat, potato-fed English asses? The Airliner into the office-buildings was pretty new to their playbook… I just think we need to spend a LOT more effort locating ordnance and improving blind security across the board. We’ve got the money for it, but evidently it’s more fun to spend it on open-ended wars of questionable legitemacy and political gala.
And lastly, I know Arab=/=Muslim. One’s ethnic & the other religious. I stumbled there. Just the same, if it’s the RELIGIOUS nuts we’re after, why then go after the ARABs? Islam has a rainbow of adherents, many of whom ain’t Arabs. Those are the ones who’ll be slipping through security.
I’ve begun to drool again…Gotta split for a minute.
Sticks and stones will break my bones
but names will never hurt me.
nnnnyyyyeeeeaaaah!
Bigot. “Evil White Christian Males” are not a solely American phenomenon. And I don’t want to strap a bomb on myself and kill civilians. That’s quite a leap there pardner, ever think of trying out for the Olympics? Violence & hate in general makes me sick. Profiling to get an unknown and tricky enemy is just plain dumb. It’s about as bright as rounding up Japanese (and the Chinese, and the Turtleknees, and the Look-a-these) and sending them to inland camps 'cuz they’re all spies. White folks would NEVER spy or turn coat now would they?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been pulled over while driving because I was white. Or dragged out of a line at an airport and searched because I was white. Or followed by store employees while shopping because I was white. Maybe your experiences are different. If so, I commend your patience for putting up with that crap, because I know that if it happened to my white male ass, I’d be whining and complaining about it until I turned blue in the face.
So, is your argument against such profiling moral or practical? If it were shown to be effective in preventing crime and making us safer, would you then be in favor of it?
Both, magellan01. Impractical because it doesn’t address the problem in any definitive way, it just makes the bad guys do something different. And, well, challenges are kinda fun, especially when the result is dead AND humiliated enemies. Immoral because it points the finger at a visually different group and sanctions persecution of that group. You can’t tell my looking at someone which prophet they follow, so you have to go by physical characteristics. All swarts are on the list then, aren’t they? Even the Hispanic Christians cuz, you know, dark skin, black hair, brown eyeses…
I know this looks like I’m needlessly turning it into a race issue, but I don’t think I am. E-mails like the one referenced in the OP only lead to mutual distrust, and I reckon that to part of the root of the problem.
I understand your position thus far, but what about my second question (focusing on the “If” that begins it): “If it were shown to be effective in preventing crime and making us safer, would you then be in favor of it?”
I said this before and I’ll say it again, if I offer you $10 and Bill Gates offers you $500, are you going to turn him down because you’re resentful of his stinginess and take mine because in percentage of income my sacrifice is greater? No. In absolute numbers we are the biggest contributors in the world, and that’s the bottom line. Only a cad would complain that someone is too cheap when they’re giving away money.
He didn’t say that. He said that unknown serial killers and child molesters are almost always profiled as white males between X and X years of age. That is true.
Profilers and people in general were surprised when the DC area snipers turned out to be black (although the older leader did turn out to be Muslim oddly enough).
Of course I don’t support profiling for this problem. Because as soon as The Bad Guys figure out that the swarts are bing inspected they’ll recruit disillusioned Reds, Yellows, Whites & Blacks who’ve lived in the US their entire lives to do their work–on behalf of Islam or general liberation from an exploitive & uncaring government. So then the profile will have to be broadened to “Everybody.” Which is where it should be anyway.
Terrorists don’t conduct business with harsh language alone. If we’re interested in stopping bombs at airports, we need to be looking for bombs, not people who look like a certain kind of religious extremist that’s been known to do crazy things with bombs. And we need to be looking for the ordnance in every location we don’t want it to be in. Fairly simple to do at an airport with the right technology, and fairly simple to defeat with a subcutaneous lump of plastique.
But the rant was about the e-mail as a bit of short-sighted hate-mongering. Even though I wasn’t really clear about that. I don’t think I’d get too much resistance if I suggested the real problem lies in that the DESIRE to blow innocent people up exists in the first place, and that the problem would be much better solved by addressing the basis for that desire.
