Let's justify blatant racism! (or: shove your strawmen up your ass!!!)

The BBQ Pit
141

Because of his rants I believed he was prejudiced by being part of the culture I was talking about. My experience with the subject is from what I witness on the news. Would you not consider it ignorance if I provided links to the sources where the accusations of institutional hate is revealed? It has been shown many times. Open you eyes! The Arab news carries stories that enflame and insight the people of the region to hate.

The point to this thread is about profiling. Just like in an earlier analogy, not all white boys in an urban ghetto are looking for drugs and not all the black kids there are selling drugs. If one is so stupid to not realize the reason that certain white or black people in the example might be targeted by police one might point out the obvious - a great deal of the encounters show that the out of town white kid in that neighborhood is there for illegal purposes. Basing an argument on the fact that not all are…is just being argumentative.

"a powerful array of scholarly cites leavened by nuanced, informed analysis, with the occasional “motherfucker” thrown in "
???
All he has offered to me is the MF! I have not noticed a powerful array of scholarly cites leavened by nuanced, informed analysis beyond a select outdate definition for two words. No scholarly cites, just his own prejudiced twisting and rationalizations.

142

gobear:
Against my better judgment, I skimmed the last two pages. Collounsbury had one post with 3 links that appeared to be about NOI not having anything to do with Islam - NO scholarly cites.

And just because he is fluent Arabic in several dialects, and has strong connections to local business and political leaders does not mean he has anything expert to offer - just showing how the culture shares the hate

143

1 muslim tosses a grenade in a tent of officers, for reasons completely unrelated to his religion (He had been disciplined for previous actions), and that means the other 14,999 muslims in the US armed forces hate the US? Do you have any idea how idiotic and unreasonable that sounds? If not, try this: 1 christian american (Simplification, but bear with it for a moment) blew up a federal office because of his hate for the US. Does this mean the millions of other christian americans hate the US? No, it means he was a nut with a bomb.

It’s not a “remote issue.” You said no Muslims could hide their hate for the US. I pointed out that this is wrong, and pointed to a rather significant group that do not. How is this a “remote issue?”

You said:

You stated “muslim,” with not even a passing attempt to exclude muslims in the US (Do they not count as “true muslims?”). You promoted a completely and demonstratably inacurate stereotype, then complain when I point out people who don’t fit your stereotype.

So let’s put it simply; Is it your assertion that every single muslim hates the US, like you stated in the post I first responded to, or would you like to rephrase the statement?

144

At the risk of subjecting myself to a flamefest…

I would like to get back to the issue of profiling for a minute, because I still think there is a lot of fuzzy thinking going on, on both sides, and I’d like to clarify this issue. It’s worth doing.

First, let’s separate efficacy from morality. Just because profiling would be EFFECTIVE does not make it RIGHT. Okay? As a libertarian-leaning person, I have serious issues with the civil rights implications of profiling.

But as to whether it would be more effective than just taking samples of the population at random… OF COURSE IT WOULD.

Those of you who point to the IRA and Timothy McVeigh as counterexamples miss the point. Profiling is not done because peole believe that it’s impossible for their to be blonde female terrorists. Profiling is all about statistical populations and percentages. It’s a way of increasing the ‘hit rate’ from your samples.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that this is effective, I have a wager for them.

I will wager $100, even money, that the next terrorist attack comes from a male.

I will wager $100 that the next terrorist attack is carried out by someone under 50 years of age. And I’ll even give you 2-1 odds on that one.

I will wager $100 that the next terrorist attack is carried out by someone who has dark hair.

I will wager $100 that the next terrorist attack is carried out by a Muslim.

Now, this says nothing about Muslims, or Arabs, or blondes, or males, or anything else. The fact is, the vast number of terrorists in the world that we are personally worried about happen to come from Muslim communities. I’m not going to speculate why this is, and I’m damned sure not going to blame the religion. Maybe this is just an accident of geography - perhaps if the people in the situation of middle-east muslims were left-handed Zoroastrians, we’d be profiling people by tossing them a softball to see which hand they catch it in. But it’s the height of politically-correct idiocy to try to claim that the population of terrorists spans across the wider world population in even numbers, simply because you oppose racism, sexism, or any other ism. These are ethical problems, not statements of fact.

Or put another way: Go to Vegas, and tell a bookie there that you want to place a bet that the next terrorist attack will be carried out by a Muslim. Do you think a bookie would take that bet? I sure as hell wouldn’t. More likely, he’d want you to put up $1000 to his $100 in order to take that bet.

Now, there’s another issue, and that’s the risk of a counter-strategy. In other words, if you start profiling only black-haired young males, it won’t take long for terrorists to realize that the easiest way to smuggle a bomb on a plane is to put it in the handbag of an old granny. And there will be a run on blonde hair dye in terrorist circles. And there are women in the cause - they’ll become the new front-line troops, wearing nice dresses and blonde hair. That’s a practical argument against profiling 100%, but then it becomes a matter of game theory. How much profiling is optimal? Focusing 70% on young black haired males? 80%? If the population of terrorists in the wider population is skewed and not uniform, then profiling WILL be more effective than random sampling. And the rough game-theoretic rate at which you should profile would be roughly at the same percentage as the skew in the population. In other words, if 70% of terrorists are young black-haired males, then about 70% of the people you search should also be young, black haired males. The exact optimal profiling ratio will depend on counter-measures, error bars in guessing the terrorist population, etc.

It’s not a simple problem, but it is one that can be analyzed, and a reasonably optimal searching strategy can be developed. Whatever it is, it will NOT be a random sample of everyone going through the gates at an airport. That may be the moral way to do it, but it’s certainly not the most efficient.

Again, let me repeat myself - whether profiling is EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE is not the same as saying it’s RIGHT. It’s simply fuzzy thinking to try and argue that it isn’t effective, simply because you don’t think it’s right.

145

I did not say that you dumb ass.

And to the first part of your post: Yes I do realize how stupid that sounds - I was using sarcasm - “I could say” get it! I could say if I just wanted to be argumentative about it, but I do not believe it so I would not say it. I was attempting to point out how stupid your logic is to take a general statement and use it to paint every Muslim.

146

Sam:
Very well said! It is a shame that you must so carefully qualify your comments to avoid the “so you think all dark skinned people are mad bombers and should get the full cavity search” bit from some of the posters.

Of course if so many replies were not eaten by the 504 - web site not responding gremlin, it would be easier to invest the effort to type in more detail.

147

What scholarly citations are necessary for the self-evident fact that NoI is a crack-pot black supremacist organization?

But let me abstract away from that.

So, I share a culture of hate and am crazy. Amusing. A wonderful picture of bigotry, but amusing.

Now, let us review the exchange to date:

I note that in fact non-Muslims are not regularly called infidel.

You return with an inane response indicating you clearly don’t even know the terminology, I point this out.

You then return with some spew regarding the PLO and Muslims teaching hate, I point out that the PLO is a secular organization with a strong Xian component

You return with the obs that some PLO officials have used the word jihaad, to which I point out that the term is an ordinary word for struggle or striving in Arabic and that while it does have the Islamic political connexion in regards to a just war it is also a cultural referant – like crusade is in English

To this you reply with some rant about witnessing Arab terror for 35 years and that I am insane if I do not think that Muslims are simply lying to hide their hate. This pretty much wraps it up for me, as hate-spew is rather unenlightening.

So, what I see if a bunch of accusations that Muslims are hate-filled liars and so forth and so on. Hand waving hate mongering in the end.

Now as to the efficiency of profiling: I believe that is an empirical question Sam.

If one is talking about rational profiling, something that is not just empty prejudice, then I agree, it can be of real use. I have personally no problems with an FBI program of profiling that is constructed rationally, with an awareness that the ‘look’ and nationality issues are as challenging as they are.

However, what one typically hears of sounds nothing like rational profiling – indeed it sounds more or less like poorly thought out stereotyping.

148

I don’t disagree. Worse, I would worry that a profiling system would be too rigid to adapt to the obvious countermeasures I mentioned above. The end result of that would be a security system with holes in it, and the illusion of efficiency. It doesn’t have to be that way, but I have little faith in government agencies.

But that’s a different argument. I was specifically addressing the rather silly notion that the next terrorist attack is equally likely to come from any demographic group. That’s simply not the case. There is a high probability that the next major terrorist attack in the world will come from a Muslim extremist group. And Muslim extremist groups’ members are not a representative cross-section of the world population. There are very few Eskimo Muslim extremists, or Japanese Muslim extremists. Put these two facts together, and you come to the startling conclusion that if there are 100 people in a line, and you only have the manpower to search 50 of them, a good start might be to give the Japanese grandma and last year’s Iditarod champion a pass.

149

Well yes Sam, but there are a very good number of Muslims from countries that your average security officer will not think of, e.g. Bosnia, or France, either via converts or born in…

Further, the physical profile runs into problems with large overlaps for Med. pops which are non-Arab and/or non-Muslim.

Profiling by place of origin in combo with some points mentioned, e.g. other behaviours makes perfect sense.

Profiling by look does not. At all, I remain categorical on that. (Allowing for the grandma part, but disallowing the Asian char.; plenty of Central Asian Muslims with Asian looks.)

150

I have a buddy who once considered going into profiling for the FBI, and he had the alphabet soup after his name to land him the job. In the end, he chose a different path.

One thing he did point out to me, though, is that profiling as depicted in the media, both fictional and news reporting, is not quite what profiling really is.

Its a tool used to exclude certain possibilities, to narrow focus, and to, as Sam Stone put it, increase your hit rate.

However, it is a tool that requires detective work, forensics, etc. to both form the profile and to support it later on to create effective criminal cases.

An example: it is illegal for the Texas highway patrol to stop and strip search 70% of the hispanics driving on I35 and ignore 70% of the caucasians because we have significant drug inflow from Mexico. The profile is too broad and insufficiently grounded in good detective work. By the arrest reports out there, drug mules and other couriers coming through Mexico cross all ethnicities, age groups, nationalities, etc. Hispanic driver, then, is not a significant factor in the “drug smuggler” profile.

By way of contrast, while spree and serial killers can come from any walk of life, something like 99% of the documented serial killers in the WORLD are middle aged white males. Only 1 woman serial killer has ever been caught (Elaine Wernoss [?]), and only a few blacks and hispanics join the ranks as well. Thus, that factors heavily into the profile.

Similarly, while we have had a couple of homegrown terrorist who have been caucasian, most of the terrorists who have targeted AMERICAN interests have been of the Muslim extremist variety, and of those, few have been caucasian Muslims, Japanese Muslims, etc. Thus, that factors into the profile.

But the profile isn’t the only tool in the investigator’s bag.

151

It seems that Sam Stone wins his bets re: next terrorist attack. A sad congrats to Sam Stone.

Also, re: the Christians in the PLO. I did some checking in the CIA World Factbook, and “Christians and Other” make up about 8% of the population of the West bank. The vast majority are Muslim (around 70%) and Jews (about 12%). For the PLO to be heavily Christian would be somewhat of the big surprise, but not impossible-I could not find even an estimate of the proportions of which religions make up the membership of the PLO. However, given the above, I suspect it is heavily Muslim.

152

It seems that Sam Stone wins his bets re: next terrorist attack. A sad congrats to Sam Stone.

Also, re: the Christians in the PLO. I did some checking in the CIA World Factbook, and “Christians and Other” make up about 8% of the population of the West Bank. The vast majority are Muslim (around 70%) and Jews (about 12%). For the PLO to be heavily Christian would be somewhat of the big surprise, but not impossible. I could not find even an estimate of the proportions of which religions make up the membership of the PLO, however given the above, I suspect it is heavily Muslim.

You may resume flaming.

153

Apologies for the double post-my browser said the operation had timed out, and the little progress bar had dissapeared, so I re-submitted.

154

Oh, you didn’t? Your post said:

I then provide an example of a group in which that statement is completely untrue. We’ve also got news stories like this one.

Now, if you didn’t mean what you typed, feel free to clarify, but the fact is that you posted that sentance exactly as it appears, and what you typed is demonstrably false.

Dumb ass? I’m not the one claiming that what I posted isn’t really what I posted…

155

A great another over reacting jackass
My post does not say EVERY MUSLIM HATES THE US
so try to get a grip on your self; is that clear enough for you?

156

Just to be clear you said:

Originally posted by Phoenix Dragon
“So let’s put it simply; Is it your assertion that every single muslim hates the US…”