Pajamas Media

89 Comments

1. DavidN:

I agree with the article, except for the conclusion that this sort of thing will damage Obama. I frankly think this works to his benefit. He gets the bump from those ridiculing Palin (go to the link he provides to the article, and read the comments…there are hundreds of people who have read the article and commented favorably on it), and he gets the benefit on the back end from condemning the attack, and seeming by contrast reasonable. So far it’s worked to his benefit, and I think it might continue to.

Sep 11, 2008 - 1:30 am 2. AJ:

Cole is an anti semite, America hater. Thus, he “teaches” at the Univ of Michigan in Arab/Ann Arbor. Nothing surprises me.

Sep 11, 2008 - 3:30 am 3. SAF:

DavidN

I must disagree with you, it will damage Obama. All those who comment favorably on such an article would vote for Obama regardless of anything he says or does from this moment on. These voters are on autopilot and nothing McCain can say or do will change that.

Undecided voters in a quandary about who to pull the lever will be tilted to McCain by these kinds of articles. Obama is in a tough position because if he presses too hard to stop these articles he alienates his money and support machine.

Sep 11, 2008 - 4:20 am 4. Jack Okie:

Josh, given the vicious baying media pack that savaged Palin after she was named the VP nominee, I have no interest in anything they want or have to say. Let them show the same interest in Obama’s background, say the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – then maybe Palin ought to sit down with them. The old media is less than worthless. Why should anyone give credence to their biased, distorted, elitist, in-the-tank-for-Obama opinion?

Sep 11, 2008 - 4:29 am 5. Ed Wallis:

“DavidN” and “SAF”,

Both your points have validity. I think it could influence “undecideds” either way, though, depending on that individual.

Firstly, let me say that the Cole-screed-approach is only “singing to the choir.” No effect on the O’bots.

Personally, I find the hyperbole-analogy (argumentum ad Hitle…err…bin Ladenum) so obvious and silly that it is more likely to be off-turning (i.e. against Obama, towards McCain); that is not to say that some “dim bulbs” out there – those searching for a “reason [sic]” to support Zerobama – who might think, “wow! that’s an awesome comparison! I never thought of that, dude!”, but much less likely in my opinion.

Sep 11, 2008 - 4:46 am 6. Greg D:

Well, one thing is for certain: Obama could not possibly have been comparing Palin to a pig in lipstick. If he had done so, he would have been comparing OBL to a pig in lipstick (A=B, B=C therefore A=C).

Comparing OBL to a pig would have been insensitive to muslims, and there’s no way Obama would do that.

Sep 11, 2008 - 5:58 am 7. jetski:

Hmmmm,

I’ll believe there’s a problem when Teddy Kennedy calls Sarah Palin “Osama.”

He’s already done that to his own party’s candidate – and they caught it on videotape:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APx2YJ-_jos

Sep 11, 2008 - 6:25 am 8. TmjUtah:

“But efforts to articulate a reasonable leftist polity aren’t getting any easier.”

You’ve identified the problem right there. “Reasonable leftist” is an oxymoron. Income redistribution, social “justice”, and entitlements pay for incumbent politician’s careers. Post 1972 Democrat candidates can only succeed nationally when they convince the electorate that they are some kind of “moderate” or “new”
Democrat. This is in spite of media, entertainment, and higher education agitprop which consistently portrays the American electorate one step away from wearing Mao suits and driving our own cars into the recycler in favor of bicycles, and prevented from achieving these ends only by criminal malfeasance on the part of Diebold, Dick Cheney, and Haliburton. Only the base prays for somebody to come down out of the mountains and enact the Peoples’ Revolution.

Obama may have gone through his Marxist phase but Alinsky’s creed isn’t his bible anymore; more like just another wrench in his Southside toolbox.

It is the major tactical dilemma facing any national Democrat candidate: how to survive the primaries where the wackaloon activists’ impact is maginified and still be able to rack up enough sane folks’ votes to get to the trough.

From here it appears that Mr. Obama has failed to shut the kids up enough to not scare Mom and Pop America right out of the booth. I can hope, anyway.

Sep 11, 2008 - 6:49 am 9. dave472:

Of course the article is accurate. Every society has extremists (it just so happens that in the US the extremists are in power). That’s why it’s so easy to demonize another culture. All you have to do is focus on the extremists of another country and allow the public to assume that the entire culture shares the same beliefs. We could do this for Israel, for example. We could have story after story in the paper how Israeli “modesty patrols” attack women for wearing the wrong clothes (see thenational.ae/article/20080908/FOREIGN/818255716/1011/rss and also haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1013163.html). We could write stories about the rampant corruption in the Israeli government, and how the government bans advertisements that are critical of government actions because they are “too controversial” (see here for ad ban: haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1015809.html). We could write stories about the long history of terrorism in Israeli culture, dating back to the first known terrorist group (the Zealots), through groups like the Irgun and Stern gang, and on into present day with people like Baruch Goldstein, who broke into a mosque and killed 29 Muslims. We could write stories every year about the parties that Israelis have every year at the grave of Goldstein celebrating the terrorist and his act (see: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/685792.stm).

Our country has extremists also, and Palin is one of them.

You could also focus on different aspects of the “evil” countries. You can talk about how the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel is in Iran, and that they like it there (csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p01s03-wome.html?page=1). You can talk about how Israel can’t even get Iranian Jews to move to Israel by paying them $10k (haaretz.com/hasen/spages/939220.html). You can write stories about how when Christian religious fundamentalists travel the world carrying a cross, they say that the most tolerant and friendly people they find are in Iran (see kw.org/report_iran.htm and also blessitt.com/?q=iran.html).

You can portray a country any way you like. It’s too bad that people around the world get their impression of the US from the actions and beliefs of people like Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin. It’s no surprise we are hated everywhere, and why I have to tell people I’m Canadian when I travel.

Sep 11, 2008 - 7:12 am 10. venividivici:

I think we’re seeing the emergence/consolidation of a new form of “thought” among Leftists. They simply seem incapable of “thinking” except in the form of false equivalencies. I haven’t seen a real analysis come out of the Left in years that doesn’t rely on a specious comparison of two unlike phenomena. Even the comparisons that make a valid point fail to bear the load Leftists want them to bear, e.g. the author’s statement that some of what Cole has to say has merit, but not to the degree he (and whoever is commenting favorably on it) seem to believe. This sort of realization should be simple for the reader to takes a moment to reflect on the thesis Cole (or any other typical proponent of this type of “thought”) is pushing. It certainly began with the attempt to find a “third way” between communism and capitalism, but has now been stretched beyond all common sense and, in most cases, is a near-complete repudiation of all forms of empiricism in comparison of phenomena. I call it pseudo-empiricism. As a committed empiricist and student of history, this makes Leftist thought completely useless in my eyes. That it passes for “convincing” in the eyes of Salon’s commentators isn’t really surprising, though.

Sep 11, 2008 - 7:12 am 11. schnargley:

The reason some of you knuckle-dragging evolutionary throwbacks who seem to pop up out of a scene from Deliverance cannot grasp what our best intellectuals like Juan Coles or Noam Chomsky says, is quite obvious- you simply lack the sufficient IQ. Let me try to spell out the simplified equations of these guys for your inbred brain before you run off to your job at Walmart:

Sarah Palin = Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden = Adolph Hitler
Adolph Hitler = Begin, Netanyahu
Israel = little Nazi Germany
Hamas, Fatah = Warsaw Jews
US = big Nazi Germany
GW Bush = Adolph Hitler
Al Qaeda + Left = underground resistance to Nazi Germany

Got it? If you flatbrainliners on the right only had the degrees and all the intelligence we have on the Left, you might grasp these simple equations.

Sep 11, 2008 - 7:28 am 12. Warren Bonesteel:

Dang. Cole is doing the whole Andrew Sullivan thingy, isn’t he.

Total meltdown.

Sep 11, 2008 - 7:55 am 13. narciso:

Really, the Zealots rose after more than a century of Roman occupation. The irony about the ‘Jesus was a community organizer’ meme, is that he wasn’t trying for political power, that was why the Zealots and the Pharisees, could not stomach him; he was striving for ethical reformation.

The Irgun arose after the pogroms in the East directed by Petlura (and other provocations by Stalin) and after an explictly anti Jewish leader came to power in Germany, proceeded to deliberately murder all of the Jews in Europe.
The Stern gang rose up under similar condition.
The PLO on the other hand, was just an extension of the already present dhimmification strategy or Arabs than began with the siege of Yathrib (Medina)and Khaybar back around 610 AD.
Represented later by the Wahhabi resurgence, the protofascist nationalism of the Golden Crescent, Haj Amin Husseini and co. Not surprising that the manager of the Munich massacre was the son of an aide to Husseini, whose uncle lead the organization. Alas, the ‘moderate’ party in Palestine, is none other than the fundraiser for that endeavor; Abu Mazen, aka Mahmoud Abbas

Sep 11, 2008 - 8:00 am 14. dave472:

narciso:
It’s a very interesting psychological process when an apologist justifies terrorism committed by their “in-group.” Pre-Holocaust Jewish terrorism is justified by occupation. Interestingly, a direct correlation has also been found with present day suicide bombing and occupation. Occupation leads to suicide bombing today as it did two thousand years ago. There is no correlation between suicide bombing and religion, however. This is obvious when you realize that most suicide bombers are secular. Post-Holocaust Jewish terrorism can be justified like any other immoral act committed by Israelis. Jews can commit any crime they want, and when confronted, they simply say “the Holocaust!” If you challenge them anyway, you are an anti-Semite. It’s quite a scam, but I think it is losing its effectiveness.

Sep 11, 2008 - 8:50 am 15. dave472:

narciso:
It’s too bad Hamas and Hezbollah are not allowed to use the same occupation excuse for terrorism that is valid for Jewish terrorism.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:05 am 16. Justin:

Do you have anything at all to back that up with dave472? What is really too bad is that Hamas and Hezbollah cannot say that they have attempted peace with their enemy repeatedly, and have even ignored atrocities in the name of trying to carry the peace process forward. Like Israel can. If they could say that it would be great because it would mean that there was actually hope for the peace process. But the truth is that Israel is the only side that has genuinely sough coexistance with its enemies, even as it became increasingly obvious that their was almost no one on the other side who shared those sentiments.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:33 am 17. Fat Jolly Penguin:

dave472:

I give you Nekama’s Troll Hammer.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/19/331477

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:34 am 18. megapotamus:

Dave, what explosive was used in the suicide bombings of two thousand years ago? I think you have a revelation here of biblical proportions. Yeah, biblical, that’s it.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:42 am 19. Kell:

The only thing any of the candidates have in common with Osama is that, by removing and adding a couple of letters to Obama and Bidden you get (Obama-b+s)+(Biden+nla)=Osama Bin laden. Good for a quick laugh, but nothing more.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:43 am 20. Andrew Garland:

Satire: The Top Ten Stories about Governor Palin

1. Diplomat asked Palin to fetch coffee. “How would I know who she was?” he said.
2. Call to Wassila library interrupted operations. “Palin talked for half an hour”, says librarian.
3. Palin’s children may not be citizens due to technicalities of Alaska Purchase.
4. Palin campaign operative asks for gun rack over VP Seal.
5. Sarah Palin did not inspire character Sarah Conner in the movie “The Terminator”. “She inspired the Terminator character”, reports screenwriter.
6. Secret sources report “Al-Qaeda will never surrender to a woman, may it please Allah”.
7. Palin is not vetted about future pregnancy. Federal law prevented asking.
8. Palin denies rumors of “virgin birth”, despite religious leanings.
9. “Killing moose is overflow hostility”, says psychiatrist.
10. When Bridge to Nowhere cancelled, 35 homeless denied shelter beneath.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:46 am 21. Joe:

“On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God’s will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts.”

With the exception of “reproductive rights”, which I assume is being used by Cole as a euphamism for abortion, these points are factually wrong.

Why wouldn’t you point that, Josh?

- She never publically supported or called for censorship, although while mayor she asked a town librarian who publicly supported her opponent a worrying question.
- She’s expressed skepticism of anthropomorphic climate change in the past, but has more recently been accepting of the doctrine, even allowing it to shape policy in Alaska.
- She publicly prayed for wisdom – she never claimed that the government was enacting God’s will, only prayed that that was the case. I’m not a Christian, but I always thought that’s the kind of thing they did.
- Even on abortion, she hasn’t done much to further the cause legislatively in Alaska.

This stuff has been debunked pretty thoroughly. I think the right are projecting their beliefs onto Palin to a certain extent, and the left is essentially doing the same thing — turning her into a boogeyman.

Hopefully she’ll start doing some interviews and the fog will clear (although keeping her out of the hot seat for a week or so and driving the lefty media and lefty bloggers batty was a good – and hilarious – strategy).

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:49 am 22. dave472:

Justin:
“Do you have anything at all to back that up with dave472?”

Can you be specific about what you need backed up?

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:57 am 23. dave472:

Justin:
“Do you have anything at all to back that up with dave472?” -Justin

I guess I could go sentence by sentence:
“This is obvious when you realize that most suicide bombers are secular.” -dave742

Back up:
Robert Pape of the University of Chicago ran a study that analyzed every suicide bombing from 1980 to 2003. The study was conducted by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, funded in part by the Pentagon Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The initial results were published in the journal “American Political Science Review,” the top Political Science journal in the world, and the final results published in a book called “Dying to Win”. Pape studied 461 suicide attacks overall. He ascertained the religious or ideological affiliation of 384 of them:
“Of the 384 attackers for whom we have data, 166, or 43%, were religious, while 218, or 57%, were secular.”
These results were mirrored by work published in a book called “Making Sense of Suicide Missions”, edited by Deigo Gambetta, who found that “contrary to a widespread belief, the majority of [suicide missions] have been carried out by secular rather than religious organizations.”
The most prolific suicide bombers are the LTTE. They are not Muslim.

Let’s look at suicide bombing in Lebanon. Pape’s database contains data on 41 attackers. From the book:
“…at least 30 of the 41 attackers do not fit the description of Islamic fundamentalism. 27 were communists or socialists with no commitment to religious extremism; three were Christians. Only 8 suicide attackers were affiliated with Islamic fundamentalism; the ideological affiliation of 3 cannot be identified.”

Here is a picture of one og the non-religious Christian suicide bombers from Lebanon:
http://ssnp.com/new/gallery/shohadaa/Sana_01.jpg

Of course, your first reaction is probably that Pape is a lying anti-Semite. Ariel Merari is head of the Center for Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He has a chapter in the book “Origins of Terrorism:Psychology, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind”, edited by Walter Reich and Walter Lacquer. He counts suicide bombing in Lebanon by incidents, and not individuals. Going by incidents, he finds that 7 out of 31 suicide bombings in Lebanon were committed by religious fundamentalists. The book is searchable on Amazon. The info is on page 204. Simply search “204”, and go to that page.

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:06 am 24. dave472:

megapotamus:
“Dave, what explosive was used in the suicide bombings of two thousand years ago?”

As soon as my post went up and I reread it, I knew someone was going to say this. Instead of discussing issues, people tend to make nitpicky commments like this to me. You are right. I should have said suicide attacks, not suicide bombings. The Zealots would attack their victims with knives (they were also know as Sicarii, which means “dagger men”). They knew before their attack that once they killed their victim, they would immediately be captured and killed. They knew their attack would result in their death, the same as a suicide bomber today knows this.

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:19 am 25. John:

Dave472 said: “Our country has extremists also, and Palin is one of them.”

Please, please, please keep up this line of attack. Shout it from the rooftops. Burn her in effigy at rallies. Tuck fliers under windshield wipers at the local supermarket.

Because the more you demonize her, the better the odds that the Messiah will lose and McCain will win.

When did the left become so freaking overwrought? Seriously, its like a mental disorder or something. BDS may well be for real.

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:19 am 26. dave472:

John:
Do you disagree that the US has religious extremists? Are we the only nation in the world that doesn’t?

“McCain will win”
I want him to win.

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:35 am 27. Dave II:

Good article, Josh, and I was hoping someone would highlight this hyperbolic blather for the nonsense it was when I read it…but you only glanced at some of the fallacies behind it…not at the TRUE CORE reason.

It is RELIGION, period. Sarah Palin is a strong Christian with deeply held beliefs (though she doesn’t wear them on her sleeve) and that guides her principles and her views. Ahhh…that makes her EXACTLY like Muslim Fundamentalists! Case closed. Let’s vote for Obama and we can all go home!

What a crock! It’s the utter depravity, banality, mendacity (call it what you will!) of this thinking that is at the core of the left’s problem with religion in general, but CHRISTIANITY in particular!

It is (a)moral relativism run amok! TRUE critical thinking sacrificed on the alter of secularism and liberalism, built in the hallowed and hollow halls of academia!

Does OBAMA get trashed with the same “religious nut-case” standard thrown at Palin…even though HE is a “Christian” and is said to hold the SAME religious beliefs Palin does? (Well, except for abortion…but then Obama doesn’t know when life begins!)

No, of COURSE NOT! HE’S not going to “impose” his views on society like Palin would (giving the VP a WHOLE lot more power than the President!)…
nooooo , HIS views are tolerant, flexible (highly!), and ENLIGHTENED!!!!!

Oh, all except for that 20-years under Jeremiah Wright nonsense, that is.

Yes…”THE ONE” can lead us to the “Promised Land”…where the lamb lies down with the lion, Christians and Muslims and even atheists…together, hand-in-hand led by the great orator, compromiser, and negotiator…the “community organizer” FOR THE WORLD!!!!

Excuse me…I think I got off track.

Tell me again why Hamas and Hezbollah want Obama elected…but SARAH PALIN is like a Muslim Fundamentalist????

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:41 am 28. RustyG:

Dave says “You can portray a country any way you like. It’s too bad that people around the world get their impression of the US from the actions and beliefs of people like Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin. It’s no surprise we are hated everywhere”.

Is it possible that the rest of the world gets their impression of the US from propagandists film producers such as Micheal Moore who’s bile was given awards in Europe?
Hollywoods anti-US films portraying the US military as murderers bears no responsibility? Democrat liberal politicians that call our military murderers, Nazis, terrorists, etc., are also innocent? The New York Times kept Abu Gharib on it’s front page for a month, that surely helped our image don’t you think?

You seem pretty honed up on your anti-Isreal talking points, but when you propose that all unfavorable US views worldwide are the fault of Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin you loose your credibility.

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:45 am 29. Danny:

“It’s too bad Hamas and Hezbollah are not allowed to use the same occupation excuse for terrorism that is valid for Jewish terrorism” – exactly what occupation would Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in lebanon be fighting against?

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:46 am 30. RustyG:

Is Juan Cole’s middle name Dave?

Sep 11, 2008 - 10:49 am 31. mhw:

the left is becoming like Islam

In the latter, some of the radicals have refused to play the ‘only advocate terrorism in foreign languages in sermons’ game.

In the former, some of the radicals have refused to play the ‘only use DNC approved talking points’ game.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:10 am 32. RustyG:

Sorry Dave, but I’m not real impressed just because Bob Pape of the U of Chicago says so. Is this the same U of Chicago where Bill Ayers teaches? After all, Juan Cole teaches at a University and look at the dribble that comes out of his mouth.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:12 am 33. dave472:

Danny:
“exactly what occupation would Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in lebanon be fighting against?”

First of all, I was speaking of suicide attacks. Suicide attacks are correlated to occupation. As for Hamas in gaza, supposedly gaza was turned over to the Palestinians. This is BS. According to international law, Gaza is still occupied by Israel. Regardless, Hamas has not committed a suicide bombing since the supposed “turnover.”
As for Hezbollah, the situation is as clear cut as can be. There were no suicide bombings before Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Then suicide bombings started. Once Israel withdrew in 2000, suicide bombings stopped. It’s not rocket science. Occupation leads to suicide bombing.

RustyG:
You believe that the rest of the world’s unfavorable opinion of US leaders is a result of Hollywood and the US media, and not the actions of the US. I think this is pretty silly. I really don’t even feel like debating it.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:15 am 34. RustyG:

Now you know how I feel Dave!

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:25 am 35. rob:

The level of discourse in American politics has deteriorated to the point of namecalling. Unfortunately, it is not the exclusive domain of the left. Conservatives do it too, only more in a mocking, less hateful tone (i.e., Obama is “the Messiah”).

Logical persuasion on the issues ends when it reaches a point where the audience will not be persuaded. At that point, the opponent is assigned an unpopular name or label (Bush is Hitler, Obama is the Messiah, etc.). This is intellectual laziness. And it’s a total turn off.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:26 am 36. Heather:

When did the left start thinking totalitarian Islam was a bad thing? *boggle* It’s been seven years of cultural relativism and “beautiful religion of peace”–they change now?

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:41 am 37. dave472:

Rusty G:
“I’m not real impressed just because Bob Pape of the U of Chicago says so”
So Robert Pape of the University of Chicago is fabricating data and paying off the pier reviewers at the American Political Science Review. The Pentagon, who helped pay for the study, allowed this to happen. Nice conspiracy theory. Would you have believed Pape when he was teaching air power strategy for the USAF’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies? Would he have been more credible then? I guess Pape paid off Diego Gambetta as well, since he found the same result. And what about Ariel Merari at the University of Tel Aviv? Don’t tell me. A self-hating Jew that fabricated the same result, right?

“Is this the same U of Chicago where Bill Ayers teaches?”
Bill Ayers teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Did you know you can be intelligent and qualified to teach at a University and still hold extreme views? U of I in Chicago is a good school, but it is not the same school as the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago is one of the top Universities in the world.

“look at the dribble that comes out of his mouth”-RustyG
“The level of discourse in American politics has deteriorated to the point of namecalling. Unfortunately, it is not the exclusive domain of the left.”-Rob
I agree.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:45 am 38. Ray:

Pape might not be so infallible – or corrct – after all: http://jihadwatch.org/archives/019592.php

He appears to be totally in step with most of the trends in academia today about Middle East studies: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmE1ZTRmMDQxMDQ0ZmVmNWVkOTk5MmM5YTQ4NmFhZjg=

Sep 11, 2008 - 1:04 pm 39. Palin: “They hate her because she is not a victim” | The Anchoress:

[...] Palin is “a Christian Stepford Wife!” She is “a cocky wacko!” She is “Osama bin Laden!” She is not deferential enough to Gloria Steinem! Palin is a living, breathing, functioning, three [...]

Sep 11, 2008 - 1:30 pm 40. RustyG:

I’d love to stay and visit, but since I’m in SE Texas about 10 miles from the Gulf and 75 miles East of Houston, Wifey says it’s time to be going. Say a prayer for us down here, Ike’s a big boy. Allah Akbar to you Dave.

Sep 11, 2008 - 1:36 pm 41. Brian G.:

Who cares what the world thinks of America? Most people don’t. If any of you think that the “world hates Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin” argument is going to win Obama votes, you are sadly mistaken.

Sep 11, 2008 - 1:42 pm 42. Bod:

Dave, if suicide bombing is the result of occupation, let’s go there.

Topically enough, what ‘occupation’ was the reason for 9/11?
What Occupation was responsible for Operation Bojinka?
What Occupation was responsible for Lockerbie?
What Occupation was responsible for the Balinese bombings?
What Occupation was responsible for the bombing of the Egyptian hotels in Ghazala?

I can sort-of buy your line that not all terrorism is due to religious fundamentalism, but you’re not making much sense here. What does it matter? The ’secular’ bombings usually have this much in common – they’re perpetrated by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Note the use of ‘Muslim’. Islam is a religious AND political ideology that embraces and violently supports Pan-Arabism. If you do the venn diagram for bombings that fall inside the umbrella of Pan Arabism AND muslim fundeamentalism, the exception set is vanishingly small.

Sep 11, 2008 - 2:27 pm 43. Rev. Sam:

I am appalled and disgusted by the claim of Obama supporters that Jesus was a community organizer. Jesus Christ told people to trust in God not the government. I am very upset how the liberal media is comparing Obama to Jesus with a halo. This is total blasphemy and shows how low and evil these people are. Only a fool would vote for low life political hack fraud like him

Sep 11, 2008 - 2:54 pm 44. susan:

“You could also focus on different aspects of the “evil” countries. You can talk about how the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel is in Iran, and that they like it there (csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p01s03-wome.html?page=1). You can talk about how Israel can’t even get Iranian Jews to move to Israel by paying them $10k (haaretz.com/hasen/spages/939220.html). You can write stories about how when Christian religious fundamentalists travel the world carrying a cross, they say that the most tolerant and friendly people they find are in Iran (see kw.org/report_iran.htm and also blessitt.com/?q=iran.html).”

Dave, you are not very bright with the above quote.

If you hear a native american telling you that he feels bad in his reserve in the usa, would it be right to tell him “then get out”?

The jews in Persia are not “immigrants” like your average mexican as the copts are not immigrants in egypt and the maronites are not immigrants in the former mesopotamia, therefore even if they are mistreated there are surely a lot of reasons why they don’t want to give up their land to the muslims (imperialistic).

But your attitude makes me think that you will be forced out of the USA very soon if you think muslims are not a bigger threat than extremist buddist. And they won’t care if you tell them “but buddies, I was supporting you all the way, I belive you are a religion of peace” kind of non-sense.

The psychological situation of the christian population living in a state of dhimmitude in muslim majority countries is a mixture of stockholm syndrome and unadultered fear.

I went to the pages you quoted and about christian people being warmly welcomed in Iran here’s a quote:

“When asked about the cross, we would tell them that we have come to apologize for the way “Christians” had used the cross against the Muslims in the Crusades”

The muslim brain accept when the christian lower himself as the inferior that he is. Apologising for the crusades to people in Iran is a sing of submission and it’s totally the scheme of dhimmitude. Beside, the crusades never arrived to Persia, so the fool christian is also ignorant.

The second link is dated 1997 and it smells bad. It says they were probably the first USA citizens in Iran after the ban was removed. Well, you cannot kidnap and beheade the first as a welcome card don’t you?

The evidence you bring is quite poor, compared with the pages and pages and pages of horrors that LOCAL non-muslims population suffer in muslim majority countries.

And the moral equivalence that all religions are the same and you have extremists in every cult is a leftist dogma that has been debuked so many times with such stong arguments that you can search yourself.

Sep 11, 2008 - 3:04 pm 45. susan:

Other questions for dave the muslims supporter, in addition to the ones posed by bob.

Let’s not talk about suicide bombing, there is a rampant jihad in sweden carried on by muslims against native swedish people. The amount of rape and women harassment (virtually non-existent in northern europe) has increased dramatically due to the immigration of muslim population. There are in Malmo no-go areas for native swedes or “whites”.

What kind of occupation the sweden state started to trigger this kind of behaviour from muslim immigrant who found there the welfare paradise?

Please list all the muslim countries that sweden has occupied.

Sep 11, 2008 - 3:09 pm 46. Phil:

Leftists always defend victims. It does not matter who the victim is, or the perpetrator. They do not see good and evil as a moral basis for thought. Thus, they defended the Jews when they were being exterminated, but now attack the Jews when they fight back They defended the USA when it was attacked on 9-11, but now attack the USA when it fights back, as in the War on Terror. This is why the left defends Castro, Chavez, Hamas etc. because the left sees them as victims of the USA actions. Good and evil are thrown out the window.

Sep 11, 2008 - 3:19 pm 47. Not a Lib:

Fight the evil – elect McCain/Paln

Sep 11, 2008 - 4:43 pm 48. ozziepat:

*dave472*

You neeed some serious help boy. Maybe you could get the bund to take up a collection to pay for your meds. You in turn could do something helpful like polishing their jackboots. That would be right down your intellectual sewer pipe.

Sep 11, 2008 - 4:55 pm 49. dave742:

Ray:
“Pape might not be so infallible – or corrct – after all”

I do not have the time to go through your whole article from the top-notch “Middle East Quarterly” journal. (BTW, there is a reason why I called the American Political Science Review the top Political Science journal in the country. The Journal of Citation Reports evaluates journals from around the world and ranks them. This is the authoritative source for journal rankings, and the source used by libraries around the world when deciding what to put on their shelves. APSR is number one out of 84 political science journals. There are conservative journals on the list, such as Policy Review (48), Armed Force and Society (61), Commentary (74), New Republic (77), and the Journal of Strategic Studies (79). Do you know where the Middle East Quarterly ranks? Nowhere. This journal is a complete joke, and only exists for dumbasses who can’t get anything published in a real journal. Because there are so many right-wing authors who cannot get published anywhere, Pipes and Rubin had to invent a “journal” to get these guys in print. So tell me, is the “Middle East Quarterly” even a journal? Do they even put out a hard copy? Or is it one of those prestigious online-only journals?) Because I don’t have a lot of time, I will look at a couple sentences that relate to the Pape study directly. Specifically, we were talking about the fact that most suicide bombers were secular. A fact that was determined not just by Pape, but by Gambetta and Merari as well. Your article, then, says this:

“Despite the revisionism advanced by Pape and others, the fact remains that most suicide bombings since 1980 in the world in general and in the Middle East in particular are sponsored by Islamist and not secular terrorist groups.”

Wow!!!!! This conclusion is the exact opposite of that reached by Pape, Gambetta, et al, and Merari! This is very interesting. Pape spent years with a team of researchers gathering information from every suicide bombing over a 23 year period, used sound research methods, and came up with very statistically significant results. So where did he go wrong? What was the miscalculation that Fine was able to unearth that invalidates years worth of work? It will be interesting to read the critique. And we find it in the next sentence: he “gerrymandered his data”!

Oh! Now I get it!

This is pathetic. You can only get away with this in a BS journal like Middle East Quarterly. He says that Pape gerrymandered his data so that he “does not need to include the significant numbers of suicide bombings conducted by Sunnis against Shi‘a in Iraq.” Guess what. There might be another explanation that does not involve “gerrymandering.” The data in Pape’s study goes up from 1980 to 2003, which is when the article in APSR was published. Pape did not use data from Iraq because he could not see into the future. What suicide bombing that had occurred in Iraq before the study came out was also difficult to analyze, because the identity of most suicide bombers in Iraq is nearly impossible to obtain. The experience in Iraq invalidates nothing, but only strengthens his thesis. Suicide bombing was unknown in Iraq before the US invasion. Then the US invades and occupies Iraq, and suicide bombing begins. Hmmmm. It must be their religion! It can’t possibly be the occupation!

So Fines “evidence” that “most suicide bombings since 1980 in the world in general and in the Middle East in particular are sponsored by Islamist and not secular terrorist groups” is that Pape “gerrymandered his data” because he did not include suicide bombings that occurred in the future. That Hack! How could he not include data that was going to happen? How can he exclude data like that?

Fine gives a reference after his gerrymandering statement, and points to a Martin Kramer article. Fine, let’s look at that.

Kramer begins his speech by giving his audience (this was from a debate) three reasons why they will “want to believe” Professor Pape’s theory. Kramer realizes that any logical, objective, and open-minded person will find Pape’s fact-based theory completely logical, coherent, and compelling, so he tries to counter this by giving reasons why one should ignore these judgments. Kramer claims that there are actually deeper, hidden reasons that the audience will make these conclusions, and the audience is not self-aware enough to see this. To help them, Kramer lists the mistakes that the audience is liable to make. How nice of him. Kramer’s reasons that people “want to believe” Pape’s theory are:
1. Because the theory is reassuring.
Kramer tells his audience that they are afraid to face the fact that suicide bombers are merely crazy Muslims that are out to get them. The audience wants to avoid this fear by adopting Pape’s theory that suicide bombing is related to occupation, because occupation as a cause is much easier to remedy than dealing with crazy Muslims. He even gives a Wizard of Oz analogy to try to shame the audience for not facing reality. He begins by insulting his audience, which is a strange debating tactic. But it gets worse.
2. Because the theory is empirical.
Kramer claims that fact-based research can’t be trusted for three reasons. First, because databases can be flawed. His speech, however, makes no accusations of flawed data in relation to Pape’s work, so this does not apply to his critique. Second, samples can be too small. This is ridiculous for Kramer to bring up in relation to Pape’s study, because Pape studies the universe of suicide bombings: every single event from 1980 through 2003. As I said above, the sample size cannot be any larger! Third, statistics can be misleading. This can certainly be true, but this usually happens when a biased individual wants to use statistics to support his point of view, and he therefore cherry-picks the ones that do support it, and ignores the ones that don’t. This is impossible to do in a properly run study. For example, Pape studies the universe of suicide bombings, and all the cases are treated equally. It is people like Kramer, however, that use misleading statistics and facts. For example, Kramer can advance the thesis that Islam is responsible for suicide bombings, and then simply ignore all cases where this is clearly false. In addition, studies like Pape’s are published in peer-reviewed journals, where the reviewers will address any evidence of bias. Misleading, cherry-picked statistics are generally found in the media, books, speeches, the internet, the Middle East Quarterly, etc, and not in comprehensive studies published in peer-reviewed journals.
Kramer in general doesn’t like empirical, fact-based research because this approach will always lead to conclusions that conflict with his analysis. (Kramer’s distrust of fact-based research also explains his involvement with Campus Watch). Kramer is much more comfortable with the approach of presenting an emotional appeal to people’s biases and prejudices, without the presentation of any facts. He tells the audience that his approach may “confuse” the audience, but in the end, it is more trustworthy than those misleading facts. So he tells the audience that if the facts seem very clear to them, it is because the truth may simply be too “[confusing]” for them to understand. He tells the audience they are not smart enough to see his “truth”. More insults for the audience.
3. Because the theory is secular.
Here Kramer comes back to the idea that his audience is afraid to confront the idea of Islam being the cause of suicide terrorism, so they prefer Pape’s theory of nationalism as a cause. Again, Kramer tells his audience that they are too scared to face the facts. The problem with this is Pape’s theory is not secular. One of Pape’s tenants is that there must be a religious difference between the occupied nation and the occupying nation for suicide bombings to occur. Islam in particular is not a cause of suicide bombing, but a religious difference is a key factor. Kramer says “the idea of religion as an independent variable is foreign to our mode of thought”. Pape’s book, however, expressly defines religion as an independent variable: “The two independent variables in the study are the existence of a religious difference and the existence of rebellion…”. Kramer should have read the book before making this statement.
Kramer concludes this journey through the psyche of the audience by saying, “So the popularity of Professor Pape’s thesis tells us interesting things about ourselves.” He is saying Pape’s thesis is popular not because it is a thorough, well-researched, and well-reasoned study, but because people, including his audience, are too stupid and too scared to realize what the real reason for suicide terrorism is. Starting a speech by telling the audience that they are stupid and scared is not the best way to win an argument in a debate. The interesting thing we learn here is not what the popularity of Pape’s theory tells us about ourselves, but what Kramer’s introduction tells us about him. We know now that Kramer does not think he can deal with Pape’s theory on an intellectual level, so instead he begins by trying to shame the audience into believing that Pape’s theory may not be correct.
After he’s done insulting the audience, Kramer begins with his actual critique. First, Kramer says he does not have a competing theory that can address all cases. Instead, Kramer thinks that suicide terrorism has “…different origins and [achieves] different purposes in different contexts”. This may be so. People can have different reasons for carrying out the same act. But as most scientists will tell you, the simplest theory that fits the facts is usually the right one. So let’s see whose explanations fit the facts better; Pape’s simple, all encompassing theory, or Kramer’s individual explanations for each case. Kramer also explains that he will only be addressing suicide bombings from three different groups: Hizbullah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda. (This is not a surprise. It’s hard to address suicide bombings by the LTTE and blame it on Islam, so Kramer ignores cases like these. It’s what Kramer likes to call using “too small” of a sample. Kramer cherry picks his cases, but brings up the technique in relation to Pape, who addresses all cases. Funny) Therefore, we will only be able to compare theories for these three cases. Isn’t it funny how Pape “gerrymandered” his data, but people like Kramer won’t consider anything that doesn’t fit his pre-conceived worldview? Pape looked at EVERY suicide bombing within a 13 year time period. Kramer only cherry-picks the ones he likes.
At this point, Kramer again brings up how Pape only reluctantly introduces the idea of religion into his theory. Kramer says that “…Pape lets religion into his formula through the back door…” and that he “…clearly casts religious difference as a subordinate factor…” Once again, this is ridiculous. Pape’s model has two independent variables, and a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied is one of the two. Religious difference is not a “subordinate factor”, but is one of two independent factors in Pape’s study! In addition, Pape talks about the importance of religious difference throughout his book. Again, the factor in Pape’s analysis is a religious difference and not Islam specifically, and this is what Kramer has a problem with. Kramer thinks that Islam is the critical factor, and not a religious difference in general, and he says that Pape shows “…the usual academic reticence about fingering Muslims or Islamists”. Kramer is saying that Pape is as afraid as the audience is about not facing the fact that Islam is the real problem. However, maybe it is not fear that causes Pape to bring up religious differences instead of Islam. Maybe it is the facts that cause him to make this distinction. Religious difference explains why the LTTE uses suicide bombing against Sri Lanka, when they are a secular/Hindu group. How can Kramer blame this on Islam? He can’t, so he ignores it. The lack of religious difference explains why the LTTE discontinued their use of suicide bombing when India occupied their land, even though India’s occupation was even more oppressive than Sri Lanka’s. Kramer cannot explain this, so he ignores it. Kramer also cannot explain why over half of suicide bombers are secular. This does not fit his theory of blaming Islam, so he ignores the fact. And if the Muslims are simply attacking the West because they are unbelievers, I would expect all Muslims worldwide to be attacking all Western countries pretty much randomly. Why is it that only occupied Muslims are attacking only the nations that occupy them? Even though the US supplies Israel with all the weapons, bulldozers, helicopters, and political support that they possibly can, still the Palestinians only attack Israel. Why don’t Palestinians attack the US as well? Pape would say it’s because Israel in the country that is occupying Palestine, and not the US. Kramer ignores this. Why does Al-Qaeda concentrate its attacks against the US? Why don’t they attack Israel as well? Pape explains this by pointing out that it is the US that is occupying the Arabian peninsula, and not Israel. (Al-Qaeda has also targeted countries allied with the US in the occupation of Iraq, but the reasons are the same). Kramer ignores this. Pape’s theory explains all of the facts. The motive behind Kramer’s theory is to demonize Islam, and he conveniently ignores all facts that do not fit his view.
The first case that Kramer addresses is that of Hizbullah in Lebanon. Kramer admits that Islamists did not commit all of the suicide bombings that occurred in Lebanon in the 1980’s, and that their “secular competitors” also committed attacks. Kramer, however, does not state how many of the attacks were committed by each group. I showed above that it was the vast majority that was committed by secular groups.
Kramer’s task, then, is to find a way to blame suicide bombing in Lebanon on Islam, even in the face of this data that clearly shows Islam is not a key factor. So how does he do it? He says that even though Islam was “not present in all suicide bombings” (an interesting way of putting it when, in fact, Islam was “not present” in 73% of the suicide bombings), it “had to be there at the creation”. Kramer’s way of blaming Islam is to claim that it doesn’t matter how many attacks were actually carried out by secular groups or individuals, but what counts is who carried out the first attacks. This is the “he started it” defense that you normally hear on the playground in the third grade. It is quite hilarious that a supposed “expert” would try to make this argument. The idea that the religious affiliation of the first suicide bomber is to take the blame for all subsequent suicide bombings is completely insane on a number of levels. Kramer justifies this stance by saying that it is unlikely that secular groups could have come up with the idea of suicide bombing on their own. Only fundamentalist Muslims and their distorted morality are capable of originating this idea. But even if we adopt Kramer’s insane logic, is it true that Hezbollah invented suicide bombing?
First of all, even within the Israel-Palestine conflict, the suicide attacks by Hezbollah in 1982 were not the first. Several occurred in the 1970’s, and all of those were committed by secular organizations (See Ricolfi, Luca “Palestinians, 1981-2003” in “Making Sense of Suicide Missions”, Diego Gambetta, editor, 2005, page 81). For example, on 12 April 1974 three members of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command attacked a settlement in Kiryat Shmona. When Israeli soldiers stormed the building they were in, the three blew themselves up (See “Arab Guerillas Raid Israel Apartment House, Shoot 34 – 18 Die Before Three Attackers Blow Selves Up”, Los Angeles Times, 11 April 1974, page 2. Also “2 Arab Terrorists Massacre 18 in Raid on Israel Border Town”, Los Angeles Times, Harry Trimborn, 12 April 1974, Page A1. And “Arab Guerillas Kill 18 in Israeli Town, Then Die in Blast at Apartment House”, New York Times, 12 April 1974, page 65). Ahmed Jibril, the founder of the PFLP-GC, said at the time, “I’m persuaded that other organizations can only imitate us and follow this difficult and painful path.” (See “Arab Terrorist’s Goal-Crush Israel”, Los Angeles Times, Jocelyn Saab, 12 March 1975, page B6).If we are to follow Kramer’s third grade logic and blame whoever started suicide bombings, then in reality it is secular groups that should really get the blame. Islamic groups were only able to “imitate [the PFLP-GC] and follow [the] difficult and painful path [of suicide bombing]”.
It is possible to follow the history of suicide bombing (or suicide attacks) much farther back than this, however. Vietnamese soldiers used the technique against the US in Vietnam (For example, see “Suicide Attack Described”. New York Times, 26 February 1969, page 7 and “Reds in Suicide Attack on US Infantry Camp”, Chicago Tribune, 19 April 1969, page S8). At this point maybe Kramer wants to blame Communists for all suicide attacks, since “they started it”. But suicide attacks go back even further, as I stated earlier. The first known suicide attack was from the Zealots two thousand years ago. If we use Kramer’s “they started it” logic, that means we can blame suicide attacks on the Jews!

Kramer recommends the book “In the Path of Hizbullah” (see geocities.com/martinkramerorg/Sacrifice.htm).

Here’s a couple quotes from that book:
Ayatollah Khamanai:

“Hizbullah is the front line of the Islamic world in its fight with the Zionist enemy. The liberation of occupied Palestine is the prime goal for the jihad against the Zionist entity.

Nasrallah reply:
“As you are wali amr al-Muslimin (guardian of the Muslims), the resistance will continue its path of jihad until the liberation of all occupied land.” p. 146

Occupation!

Kramer also recommends Saad-Ghorayeb. Here’s some quotes from that book:

“Occupation of one’s land by Israel or any other foreign power emerges as a principal determinant of oppression and, like all oppressed people, those whose land is occupied will be afforded Hizbu’llah’s ‘automatic’ support.” P.21 (quoting Fnaysh)

“It is the right and duty of all people [whose land is occupied] to resist occupation.” Nasrullah p.126

“Hezbollah does not pursue martyrdom as an end in itself, but as a means of achieving victory.” Nasrullah p.133

“the [military] operations are only linked to the issue of occupation.” Nasrullah p.109

Sep 11, 2008 - 6:47 pm 50. dave742:

Bod:
“The ’secular’ bombings usually have this much in common – they’re perpetrated by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood…If you do the venn diagram for bombings that fall inside the umbrella of Pan Arabism AND muslim fundeamentalism, the exception set is vanishingly small.”

Either you are not reading or you are not comprehending what I am saying. The majority of suicide bombings in Lebanon, for example, were committed by communists/socialist/Christians. These groups have nothing to do with Islam. The group responsible for more suicide bombings than any other group in the world is the LTTE. What link whatsoever does the LTTE have to do with Islam? When analyzing a particular phenomenon. how can you ignore the group that his responsible for more acts than any other? Serial killings, for example, are committed mostly by white males. What if I wrote a paper saying that serial killings are committed mainly by white females, and I ignored white males, even though they are the largest group? Would you call me an imbecile? I hope so.

Let’s talk about you. Let’s say that China takes over the US. They confiscate all of our weapons, take all of our best land, chop the areas we have left to live on into little pieces and make it impossible to go from one place to another, continually keep taking more of our land, kill our children when they throw rocks, etc, etc, etc. If you had no other way to fight back, and your family members were already dead, would you consider a suicide attack? I certainly would. Ever see the movie “Independence day”? Why was the suicide bombing at the end of that movie considered heroic?

Sep 11, 2008 - 7:01 pm 51. dave742:

susan:
“Let’s not talk about suicide bombing, there is a rampant jihad in sweden”

I cannot understand most of what you write. Can you please show me what you mean by this? any refs?

Sep 11, 2008 - 7:06 pm 52. Sickofliberalgarbage:

The libs will say ANYTHING to damage or tarnish the image of any opponent – they truly don’t care if it’s true or not. Of course, it’s all true in their “alternative universe”.

Sep 11, 2008 - 8:25 pm 53. Danny:

Dave:

“First of all, I was speaking of suicide attacks. Suicide attacks are correlated to occupation. As for Hamas in gaza, supposedly gaza was turned over to the Palestinians. This is BS. According to international law, Gaza is still occupied by Israel. Regardless, Hamas has not committed a suicide bombing since the supposed “turnover.””

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.nsf/1ce874ab1832a53e852570bb006dfaf6/ada0f63b7f2206b78525727400508f47!OpenDocument is what the UN had to say when asked if Gaza was still “occupied”. Just repeating the same lie over and over don’t make it true.

Secondly, Hamas hadn’t carried out a suicide bombing from Gaza for well over a year before the handover because there was a great big wall stopping them. They did did blow up a soldier who took a woman aside because she complained her false leg was setting off the metal detector. There have also been next to zero suicide bombings from the West Bank which does have an ongoing Israeli presence – also mainly due to an IDF presence and a big wall that stops them.

Thirdly there have been zero suicide bombings from the Golan.

“As for Hezbollah, the situation is as clear cut as can be. There were no suicide bombings before Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Then suicide bombings started. Once Israel withdrew in 2000, suicide bombings stopped. It’s not rocket science. Occupation leads to suicide bombing.”

Actually it is clear-cut. Hizbollah stopped carrying out suicide bombings in the late 80s/early 90s over a decade before the end of the occupation. They resorted to rockets and roadside bombs, which didn’t halt after 2000.

There is a quite obvious correlation between occupation and violence that you seem unwilling to make. Where Israel has ended the occupation, the terrorists have got stronger, made up excuses to carry on resisting so pathetic only the hopelessly retarded parrot them, and have carried on making attacks. Where Israel hasn’t pulled out there has been near silence – and that is absolutely clear cut.

Sep 11, 2008 - 8:54 pm 54. Dave Surls:

“You could also focus on different aspects of the “evil” countries. You can talk about how the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel is in Iran, and that they like it there…”

LOL.

After centuries of Muslim oppression, the total Jewish population of Iran in 1948 was 150,000, despite the fact that Jews originated in this part of the world, and had been there for thousands of years. Since the creation of Israel and the establishment of the Khomeinist government virtually all Jews have left the country, and now there are only about 20,000 Jews in all of Iran. By way of comparison there are about 5,200,000 Jews in the United States.

That’s what one would say if one were telling the truth.

Judging by your idiotic post, that’s not a priority for you.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:13 pm 55. Dave Surls:

“Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, and Juan Cole.”

Instead of listing them all you should just say “scum of the earth”. Saves keystrokes.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:16 pm 56. CALindie:

Josh – “When Obama says repeatedly that more unites us than divides us, he means precisely that we need to recognize that we have more in common with George W. Bush than with bin Laden, even if we disagreed with the decision to invade Iraq.”

Here’s my problem with Barack Obama. It was his trip to San Francisco and his “private” meeting with high dollar donors in which he said some very ugly things about “small town” American people being bitter and clinging to their religion and guns with antipathy for people not like them. For me this shined a bright, white light on Obama’s duplicity. It is not only a little creepy but ultimately dangerous of our country.

You certainly have a right to give Obama credit for his lofty rhetoric and endless platitudes. But when he says one thing in New Philedelphia, Ohio and reveals his true attitude in San Francisco, CA I decided I can’t buy the snow job any longer.

I believe Obama will carefully and eloquently play both ends of the political spectrum against the middle and say whatever it takes to keep 46% of Americans wearing rose colored glasses through Nov. 4th.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:55 pm 57. Danny:

The only reasons Iran has the “largest Jewish population in the Middle east” are because the other nations kicked their Jews out and because for most of the post 1948, Iran was a very very close partner of Israel. It was only post the Iran-Iraq War, when the Islamic republic no longer relied on Israel for weaponry and it’s ongoing existence that it viscerally turned against Israel.

Sep 11, 2008 - 9:57 pm 58. susan:

dave, didn’t you get the memo?

in many parts of europe muslims have occupied territories. Rape is jihad against the infidel

http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/003131.php

http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/02/muslim-rape-epidemic-in-sweden-and.html

http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/06/jihad-in-swedish-schools.html

I am sorry that your limited mental capability doesn’t let you understand the basic english that I use.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:50 pm 59. susan:

Dave, care to point out what pages of the bible the LTTE cites as justification for their suicide bombings?

Since your poor mind seems to draw a parallel with the muslim suicide bombers why not go to the full extent.

The simple fact that if someone go to wikipedia to this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam

and nowhere it is cited that it’s a “christian” group but a communist/socialist should cut the legs of all your “subjects”.

At least the idiots like yourself bring up good old hitler when they want to find someone born in a christian country doing atrocities. Which is not completely true either.

This Tamil tigers stuff has no ground. Like everything else you have said.

But let’s go on with the moral equivalence. Find suicide bombing in “occupied” Tibet.

Sep 11, 2008 - 11:58 pm 60. Rachel Peepers:

Tomorrow, after my last class, (well, actually, I’m cutting my last class,) I’m flying out of Indianapolis airport into Albany where my Dad lives so we can have a weekend together. Do a little fishin’. Talk a little politics. Just generally shoot the breeze. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t go home so soon after school just started, but I suspect he misses me muchly.

At the same time, he knows I write for the school paper, and try my best to keep up with all of you smart as a whip politicos at PJM so he’s in a sense reading what I’m thinking. And knows I’m staying out of trouble.

Getting back to politics, though. One of the things I’m gonna ask Dad is what he thinks about all these bazarre things being written about Sarah Palin, from her being called a pig by Barack to being compared (in a nice way of course) to Osama Bin Laden. (In case you don’t know, I’m a big Sarah Palin fan.)

Be that as it may, right now I feel like making my own comparison.

I liken Barack to a kid who never quite fit in. Always wanting to, but never quite being taken for a typical American boy. An image he’s tried to change.

So every movement he makes,like the way he walks around and saunters on stage when he’s giving a speech; the way he keeps the volume of his voice real loud; I think Barack is trying to be Mr. cool. But at 5′6″ tall and weigh 125 pounds he’s more like Mr. Puny.

Even the way he so nonchelantly removes the cap of his water bottles and takes a drink. He’s like Woody Allen getting ready for a date. One thing goes wrong and he falls apart.

I’m trying to remember if Barack does the roll up your sleeves affect. But I bet he does.

Incidentally, I think women scare the stuffings out of Barack. I bet Michelle was the first girl he ever dated. And I think Sarah scares the living tar out of him. I get the feeling Michelle wears the pants in that family. She has a sneer that could quiet a rabid dog.

And then there’s Biden.

If you’re a lawyer, you never want to have a plaintiff who got rear ended because you’re sure to win and your client is sure to expect more money than you get him.
Whoops, I didn’t make that clear.

In other words, liability isn’t an issue. Damages is. And 98% of liability- certain clients think they should get more than they do.

This is the predicament Joe Biden is in. It’s why he said, “Hillary might have been a better choice.”

If Sarah comes out even in their debate, Biden will be teased from Huntington Beach to Wilmington, Delaware for not beating her pants off.

If he does well, everybody will say, “Well, you should have because you’ve been in Congress since the House gave Davey old Betsy.” It’s almost a no win situation for old Joe.

But before I lay my dirty blonde hair on the pillow, let me tell you a story my Dad told me about John S. (Slew) McCain senior, (the Senator’s Grandfather).
The story makes it obvious where he gets this “America First” stuff from. It’s part of his DNA.

This story was handed down to my Dad from his Dad, my grandfather.

It was September, 1945. My Granddad, Albert, was the officer of the day at Hawaii’s Hickam Field when at around 2am in the morning this plane taxis in. Out of it came Admiral “Slew” McCain, who a month before had requested leave because he was so run down and skinny from the pressure cooker of command. Nimitz turned Slew down telling Slew he had to be on the Missouri when Japan surrendered.

So now it’s five days later and Slew comes walking every so gingerly off the plane. He’s now down to 100 pounds. Skin and bones, sick as a dog. So my granddad asks Slew if he wants anything to eat before he hits the rack.

Negative was the answer. So Slew goes to bed. Next morning he wakes up at the crack of dawn to fly back to San Francisco. He walks down the ramp and falls down when he gets to the bottom of the stairs. Which is where he dies, having given his country everything he had. There was nothing left to give.

Sep 12, 2008 - 12:25 am 61. Ed Wallis:

This is also a nice piece on Palinphobia:

http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2008/09/12/feminist_army_aims_its_cannons_at_palin

Sep 12, 2008 - 1:37 am 62. dave742:

Danny:
“OpenDocument is what the UN had to say when asked if Gaza was still “occupied”.”

Your link doesn’t say anytthing, Danny. Occupation, according to international law, is about having “effective control” over a territory. Israel has effective control over the gaza strip. See:

http://www.btselem.org/english/Gaza_Strip/Gaza_Status.asp

“Hamas hadn’t carried out a suicide bombing from Gaza for well over a year before the handover because there was a great big wall stopping them.”

Here is a picture of your wall that is stopping all the suicide bombers:

http://www.gush-shalom.org/media/2004/8/29/4.jpg

Israel’s channel two reported that over 17,000 Palestinian workers were arrested over a two month period, and over 2,500 in two weeks. Your wall does not stop anyone. The wall was built for political reasons, not to stop terrorists. The are no suicide bombings because that is not the direction being taken at the present time. If the decision is made to start suicide bombings again, it will happen despite the illegal wall.

“Hizbollah stopped carrying out suicide bombings in the late 80s/early 90s”

The Jerusalem Post
March 21, 1996, Thursday
IDF officer killed by Hizbullah suicide bomber
BYLINE: David Rudge
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 758 words
HIGHLIGHT: Lead Story

“AN IDF officer, Capt. Salah Zeidan, 23, from Beit Jann, was killed and a Defense Ministry worker was wounded yesterday when a Hizbullah suicide bomber hurled himself at an IDF convoy two kilometers from the Metulla border crossing in the security zone…”

The Jerusalem Post
December 31, 1999, Friday
Suicide bomber wounds 13 in Lebanon. IDF braces for millennium weekend attacks.
BYLINE: David Rudge
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 823 words
HIGHLIGHT: Lead Story

Agence France Presse — English
December 30, 1999, Thursday
Hezbollah claims suicide attack in southern Lebanon
SECTION: International news

Sep 12, 2008 - 5:02 am 63. dave742:

Dave Surls:

“total Jewish population of Iran in 1948 was 150,000″

The Jewish virtual library says there were 100,000 in 1948. Maybe they are anti-Semitic:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/iranjews.html

What counts is what the population was at the time of the revolution, when the evil people took over. The Jewish library says the population was 80,000 in 1979. Now there are 25,000 (see my CS monitor link). As the Jewish library link says, it was mostly the wealthy that left at the time of the revolution. Their motive to leave was financial.

So many Jews did leave, mainly for financial reasons. This does not explain to me why 25,000 remain and why you can’t pay them to go to Israel.

Sep 12, 2008 - 5:12 am 64. dave742:

Susan:
“and nowhere it is cited that it’s a “christian” group”

Yes, Susan. I never said the LTTE is a Christian group. I said they are not Muslim.

Sep 12, 2008 - 5:16 am 65. susan:

dave74256664836766396209

you still have to find claims of the tamil tigers that they are suicide bombing in the name of god plus (important) you have to find a worldwide known and renowed christian leader (pope or similar) that justify the attacks and praise the martyrs.

Otherwise your moral equivalence has only one name: judeophobia.

Sep 12, 2008 - 5:16 am 66. dave742:

susan:
re: Muslims in Sweden

You said:
“there is a rampant jihad in sweden carried on by muslims against native swedish people”

I asked you abou this, and you give me some links from Jihad Watch (seems like that site is a primary source of info for people here) that gives some translated links of a Swedish tabloid.

When I look up the issue in non-tabloid sources that don’t need to be translated by sites with names like “Jihad Watch,” I get a different picture:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/27/europe/EU_GEN_Welcome_to_Sweden.php

I don’t know why Sweden is so open to Muslim immigration is they are declaring “Jihad” on them by raping all their citizens. I think you should try and grow up.

Sep 12, 2008 - 5:26 am 67. susan:

“Yes, Susan. I never said the LTTE is a Christian group. I said they are not Muslim.”

and your following brilliant point is?

“I don’t know why Sweden is so open to Muslim immigration is they are declaring “Jihad” on them by raping all their citizens. I think you should try and grow up.”

it’s called leftist multicultural brainwashing , but I do not expect you to recognized it because you are deeply affected.

Google stockholm syndrome and you might step out of your judeophobia and muslim fanaticism and learn about human psychology.

i have already acknolwledge your limited brain capacity, but it is at least interesting for others, able to understand it that the ways of communism are exactly those.

Antonio Gramsci (a commie murderer friend of yours) talked about the concept of hegemony that as a first step was to take control of the public opinion, then education (school) and then media.

This is the commie dream in a nutshell. Unlike what others might think, the central power buttons are not the army or the politics.

It’s public opinion, media and school.

“The concept of hegemony is crucial to Gramsci’s thinking and embodies his most important legacy. By ‘ideological hegemony’ Gramsci means the process whereby a dominant class contrives to retain political power by manipulating public opinion, creating what Gramsic refers to as the ‘popular consensus’. Through its exploitation of religion, education and elements of popular national culture a ruling class can impose its world-view and have it come to have it accepted as common sense. ”

Multiculturalism and your mantra “all religions are the same” is the proof that Gramsci was right and weak minds like yours are easy to manipulate.

Sep 12, 2008 - 5:55 am 68. dave472:

susan:
“you still have to find claims of the tamil tigers that they are suicide bombing in the name of god”

No I don’t, Susan. You really aren’t getting it. Papes thesis is that occupation is correlated to suicide bombing. Occupation – suicide bombing. There is no religion in that equation. That is why most suicide bombers are secular. The reasons for suicide bombing are not religious, they are because a groups of people feel that their land is being taken over. Religion is a factor since a religious difference is required for suicide bombing to occur (see above for description of how the LTTE suicide bombings ceased when India took over the occupation from Sri Lanka, even though conditions under India were arguably much worse). This factor is probably much more of a cultural factor, however, than a religious factor. IMO. An occupation of the US by Cost Rica would be more tolerated than an occupation by India. This would be true even for atheists in the US. The religious difference with India would exist, but I think its the cultural difference in general that makes more of a difference.

“weak minds like yours are easy to manipulate”

Not everyone can be a genious like you, Susan. Maybe I will start reading more “Jihad Watch” to get a more balanced view of the world.

Sep 12, 2008 - 6:41 am 69. dave472:

Justin:
“Do you have anything at all to back that up with dave472?”

You still haven’t answered me as to what you need backed up. Is it that I called the Irgun and Stern gang terrorist groups here?:

“We could write stories about the long history of terrorism in Israeli culture, dating back to the first known terrorist group (the Zealots), through groups like the Irgun and Stern gang..”

Mayeb you didn’t know that the Irgun was a terrorist group. Here is something to back that statement up:

Anita Shapira is the Ruben Merenfeld Chair on the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University and Vice-Chairperson of the Israeli Historical Society, She served as the head of the Weizmann Institute on Zionist Research, and is currently head of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies. Not the usual resume for an anti-Semite, if that is what you are thinking(see: tau.ac.il/humanities/faculty/anita.htm). In 1992 she published a book titled “Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948″. In it, she writes that “…the IZL’s uniqueness and strength were principally associated with its terrorist activities…” which included “…the mass indiscriminate killings of the aged, women, and children…” and the “…extortion of funds and acts of robbery perpetrated in the Jewish community in order to finance their actions…attacks against British without any consideration of possible injuries to innocent bystanders, and the murder of British in cold blood.” (p. 249, 247, 350). They also “…executed Jews suspected of informing, even though some of these persons were totally innocent.” (p. 249). The Irgun’s ideology was “…liberated from all commitments and moral restraints and motivated only by national interests. (p. 243). The “… two radical conclusions of the IZL [were] that only armed force can bestow a right to the land and that to achieve such a sacred objective all means are legitimate.” (p. 249). “In the IZL’s eyes, the example of Ben Yosef sanctified the use of terror as a method of action by which a certain group in the community is singled out to become a standard-bearer of history. Terror was no longer perceived as just another means to deter Arabs from attacking Jews or to pressure Britain into not withdrawing from the national home. Rather, it was an identifying code, conferring on its adherents special rights and an exalted role in the national hierarchy. The use of force ceased to have a functional importance and became a value in its own right.” (p. 246).

Insight into the Irgun ideology can also be gained from their people that inspired them. Shapira explains how the Irgun was “…an organization controlled by the radical circles in the Revisionist movement…” who “… “…drew inspiration from the ideological triumvirate of Uri Zvi Greenberg, Abba Ahimeir, and Y.H. Yeivin.” (p. 242). Abba Ahimeier “…declared that it was not the righteous who were the makers of history but rather those who revolted against the establishment and its rules, those who dared to dictate the rules of the game themselves. For that reason, the terrorist is the true hero of history. He characterized the terrorist as an idealist, who sacrifices his life on the ‘altar of the life to come.’” (p. 197) (Quotes from Abba Ahimeir, “Megilat sikarikin” (Scroll of the Sicarii), in his Brit ha-Biryonim, 218).

The Stern gang was “even more radical” (p.243) than the Irgun. Avraham Stern wrote anthems for both groups. In them, “…the wish of the fighters to ‘die for their country’ often appeared as a motif…”. (p. 243).

Shapira also states that “…the IZL, even if it had criticism for Hitler… did not shrink from finding positive points even about Nazi Germany, not to speak of Mussolini’s Italy. Like Brit ha-Biryanim in its beginnings, their criticism of Nazism was not total and absolute but limited solely to the racist antisemitism of the regime. The IZL conducted an ongoing flirtation with the right-wing, anti-Semitic regime of the colonels of Poland, considered fascist in Palestine.” (p. 248).
“…the British stood directly in the path of the Jewish people leading to sovereignty in their own land…[Stern and his] associates carried the reasoning of Ahimeir, who saw the British as ‘alien occupier’ to its logical conclusion.” (p. 346).
And what was the reason for all this terrorism from the point of view of the terrorists? Occupation! “…the British were presented more and more as ‘foreign occupier’. an expression coined by Abba Ahimeir already at the beginning of the 1930s.” (p. 246).

Leonard Weinberg is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Haifa’s National Securities Studies Center:
http://nssc.haifa.ac.il/

Here is his resume:
http://www.unr.edu/cla/polisci/faculty/faWeinberg/Leonard_Weinberg2005.pdf

He, along with Arie Perliger, wrote an article titled “Jewish Self-Defense and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel” Roots and Traditions” in Totalitarian Movements and Political Traditions, Vol. 4 (3), 2003, p.91-118.

“…the Etzel’s world view…considered political violence and terrorism legitimate tools in the Jewish national struggle for the Land of Israel.” (p. 100).

“The Etzel’s terrorist campaign against the Arab population lasted until the end of the ‘Arab Uprising’ in 1939 and included more than 60 attacks…” including “…shooting at Arabs in the downtown Haifa area in June 1938, and a month later at Arabs walking near the Sheari Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem…shooting at a bus with Arab passengers in July 1938, throwing explosives at another bus in September 1937, shooting at a truck with an Arab driver in November 1937…using a semi-machine gun and throwing a grenade at an Arab coffee shop in Jerusalem in November 1937, throwing explosives at another coffee shop in Haifa in April 1937, and the use of a semi-automatic machine gun to shoot at an Arab group in Haifa in May of 1939…the most dramatic act…was planting of a mine in the Arab market in Haifa in July 1938, an attack which resulted in the death of more than 70 Arabs…the concealment of explosives in a suitcase at the British embassy in Rome, which destroyed the entire embassy.” (p.100-101). Joseph Kister: The National Military Organization, 1931-1948 (Tel Aviv: Ezel Museum, 1998), p.23-94 (Hebrew).

“… the Lehi adopted a series of religious symbols and complementary Messianic terminology that constituted a central component of its ideological framework, Stern considered his group a chosen sect of the ‘chosen people’. In his view, religion was the common denominator in the nation’s existence and it was only religious fanaticism that ‘kept the nation’s blood purely Jewish’…the Lehi organization’s ideology places its world view in the quasi-fascist radical Right, which is haracterised by zenophobia, a national ehotism that completely subordinates the individual to the needs of the nation, anti-liberalism, total denial of democracy and a highly centralized government.” p.106,108. Internal quotes from Lehi’s political platform, 1948, in Josef Heller: Lehi, Ideology and Politics: 1940-1949 (Jerusalem: Zalman-Shazar Center, 1989), note 38, appendix, p.591-603 (Hebrew). After ellipsis, see p.173-9.

“On the operational level, the renewed Lehi emphasized the advantage of terrorist acts when dealing with an enemy that possessed much greater resources…Lehi mebers [claimed] that there is a legitimate struggle against British terrorism and that terrorism in and of itself in not an illegitimate act…the Leehi still considered themselves followers of zealot activists throughout the generations.” (p.110). (Heller, note 38, p.173).

The assassination of the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte on September 16, 1948 by Lehi led to “…an Israeli government decision to declare it a terrorist organization.” (p. 113).

And finally:
“…the founding of the State of Israel led to the disappearance of these radical groups, since the goal of Jewish sovereignty was attained.(p. 116)

Wow! Once you get you own state and no longer feel that you are occupied, the terrorism stops! What a concept!

1) http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/faculty/anita.htm

Sep 12, 2008 - 6:55 am 70. view from afar:

Dave 742 first let me say that you are annoyingly hard to read; you are drowning people in information, without convincing anyone, let alone someone of the opposite point of view, that your facts line up to a logical conculsion. And please know this, just because you line up a whole bunch of facts and places to click to see doesn’t mean
A) you win the debate, B)you’re right because you have the most information(in your eyes proof)

Finally, how come you never once look at your own biaises, which color everything you write? I guess what I want to know why do you hate the Jews so much? What have the Jews as a population done to you personally? I mean you aren’t, for example ranting on and on about the Chinese in Tibet(mentioned before, which you totally ignored), which, from a step back standpoint,seems to need to be a similar reason to be so angry and AGAINST SoMETHING over an illegal occupation…

Oh, by the way, going way back to the beginning of this arguement, actually, living in France, and having many European origin friends ( I am the only American who isn’t independantly wealthy in the area), everyone does pretty much quote Michael Moore and the Hollywood anti American stuff…as I pointed out to many of my friends, although I don’t always agree with everything G. Bush says,: he is representing the AMERICAN people, and not the English, nor the French, and yeah, that should annoy them, just like we Americans are annoyed when Europeans defend their interests over our (American) own!! duh, G. Bush isn’t going to aim to please other countries and leave Americans hurting in the grand scale of these things… please don’t rip me to shreds, I won’t argue back, I need to read other things and keep my mind open to new and exciting things rather than wallow in hate…and have to constantly prove to the whole world that my opinions are right. Thnk about it…what’s the deal?

Sep 12, 2008 - 10:17 am 71. Danny:

Dave, yeah the wall doesn’t stop anyone it just a complete coincidence that the incidence of suicide bombing went down at the same time the wall was going up. West Bank is still occupied, why are there hordes of suicide bombers? In fact as Israel tightened it’s grip, the number of bombers went down. By your hypothesis, they should have gone up.

“Here is a picture…….illegal wall” – blah, blah, blah, who cares? So your response to why the ongoing occupation of the West Bank hasn’t resulted in more suicide bombings is to throw a hissy fit about the wall which has quite clearly stopped suicide bombers – prewall lots of suicide attacks, postwall next to none, seems pretty compelling evidence to me.

If you claim occupation causes suicide bombings then why haven’t there been any from Gaza for nearly three years? Why where there only two lone suicide bombers in Lebanon? Why are there none from the Golan? Why are there next to none from the West Bank? Why did Palestinian suicide bombing only start in 1993? The fact is there is zero correlation between “occupation” and suicide bombing.

Sep 12, 2008 - 12:02 pm 72. susan:

“No I don’t, Susan. You really aren’t getting it. Papes thesis is that occupation is correlated to suicide bombing. Occupation – suicide bombing. There is no religion in that equation. That is why most suicide bombers are secular. The reasons for suicide bombing are not religious, they are because a groups of people feel that their land is being taken over.”

Turkey is occupaying illegaly north cyprus since 1974. Any evidence of suicide bombings from the native cypriotic people?

There are probably other dozen places where there is illegal occupation and extreme poverty, yet the only suicide bombings are 99% muslim and 1% communists.

Sep 12, 2008 - 2:41 pm 73. Shocked!:

“Comparing Sarah Palin to…Osama Bin Laden?” This quote just caused me to admire Sarah even-more. If the progressives made this comparison-the opposite must be true.

Sep 12, 2008 - 7:29 pm 74. Rubicon:

Interesting…. the National Socialists were the Nazi’s, but someone wants us to compare conservatives who are for less government, to them. Seems our larger & more intrusive leftist friends look more like fascists than any conservative. Remember, leftists favor return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine (which it is not & even JFK said so), card check denying workers the right to a private vote so union organizing thugs can threaten their way into power & forced collection of union dues.
But hey, you go right ahead thinking Bush is the bad guy.
Can you name one, just one American citizen, who obeys the laws of the land, who has been detained &/or prosecuted under the Patriot Act, including the revised version Democrats finally voted for because they feared being labeled anti-American.
The name calling, has caused some to finally fight back by throwing the false comparisons & allegations right back into the faces of accusers whose logic is bankrupt.
Palin is hated, just because she did not abort a baby. What bunk!

Sep 12, 2008 - 11:09 pm 75. Palin Messes With Obama’s Mind : “7.62mm Justice” ™:

[...] What’s the Difference Between Palin and Muslim Fundamentalists?  Lipstick. [...]

Sep 13, 2008 - 3:03 am 76. RightwingHippyChick:

Dave 742, clearly you believe the claims made about Sweden to be lies.

They are very much true, those Swedish girls who get gang-raped are real, living, breathing people.

I think that you will be more convinced if you do some googling yourself rather than if I post links for you, so please do this. I think that once you realise that this is happening for real — girls and women getting strategically gang-raped by racist, religious supremacists that have invaded their country posing as needy refugees — you’ll be ready to step back and have a look again just whose side you’re on and how you’re being lied to and manipulated by your heartstrings by the people who have turned the ideals of the left into a cynical business.

Sep 13, 2008 - 6:01 am 77. dave742:

view from afar:
“without convincing anyone, let alone someone of the opposite point of view, that your facts line up to a logical conculsion.”

I know that I will never convince anyone on a blog like this of anything. That’s not why I post to these blogs. I don’t see why my facts are not logical. I said that A) all countries and cultures have extremists, B) Someone’s view of another culture is very dependent on what information they get about that culture and if that information focuses solely on the extremists of another culture or on the entire society, amongst several other factors. I think the things I brought up relate to these issues.

“And please know this, just because you line up a whole bunch of facts and places to click to see doesn’t mean A) you win the debate, B)you’re right”

Again, I’m not here to win the debate. If facts support view “A”, and do not support view “B”, view “A” is “right,” and view “B” is wrong. This does relate to why I post here. My worldview is based on facts. If a fact does not fit my worldview, that means my worldview is off, and I change my worldview. People on the far right do not do this. If they see facts that do not support their worldview, they use some type of defense mechanism to ignore the facts. The object of people on the right is to defend their worldview at all costs, and to never change their worldview. I enjoy presenting people with facts that do not fit their worldview, and watch what lengths they will go through to keep their minds shut and ignore them. My wife is a social psychologist, and this provides endless topics of discussion regarding in-group/out-group dynamics. People on the right need to defend their worldview, which is: “USA is number 1.” I lived a large portion of my life being apolitical, and knew little of world events. At that point I would have agreed that the US is the best country in the world. I believed the propaganda. Then I started exposing myself to facts, and I allowed those facts to effect my worldview. As a result, I know have the views I do. Facts changed my views. It’s fascinating to me that most people won’t do this. They’ll defend their “USA is number 1” worldview regardless of what facts they run across. The defense of the in-group is limitless.

“Finally, how come you never once look at your own biaises, which color everything you write?”

I look at my biases constantly, and my wife helps me as well, and vice versa. I am aware of my biases.

“I guess what I want to know why do you hate the Jews so much? What have the Jews as a population done to you personally? ”

I do not hate Jews. My mother-in-law is a Jew. I do not hate here. I think she an incredible person. I hate the actions of the leadership in Israel and the US. I do not hate Jews. I do not hate Americans. I am, however, very disappointed how easy it is for leaders to do incredibly immoral things because their citizens won’t look at these actions objectively because they are brainwashed by their in-group mindset. Jews have done nothing to me personally. I am a citizen of the US, and since we in the US now have a puppet government controled by Israel, I am very concerned with the actions of Israel. I am concerned with Israeli actions for this reason, and also because I have empathy.

“I mean you aren’t, for example ranting on and on about the Chinese in Tibet…”
I live in the US, and as a citizen of the US I am responsible for what the US does. If I was Chinese, maybe I would focus on that issue. The Tibet issue may be slightly different than how it is portrayed in the US media. I read this:

michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

and also the “Buddha’s Not Smiling” book in the footnotes, and I have some different opinions about Tibet as well.

“he is representing the AMERICAN people, and not the English, nor the French, and yeah, that should annoy them, just like we Americans are annoyed when Europeans defend their interests over our (American) own!!”

I think it is possible to act in the interest of your country and at the same time realize that other countries have their own interests. It is possible to act as part of a world that is made up of over 100 nations. People in the US think all countries should act in the interest of the US. I don’t. It is in my interest to rob a bank, isn’t it? Won’t I benefit as a result? Shouldn’t I simply do what is in my interest? I don’t rob banks because it is not in the interest of the wider community. The US has no realization that other countries have interests, and that acting in your interest should be done within a moral and legal framework.

“constantly prove to the whole world that my opinions are right”

I try to only argue facts. Facts relate to right and wrong. It is the right that argues opinions. One thread I did post on relating to opinion got on the subject of marriage and monogamy. My wife and I have sex with other people, and it is our opinion that this is a valid way to live. When the issue is an opinion, I could care less what your opinion is. If you want to live a monogamous life, fine. Have a great time. I had no interest in convincing anyone that my opinion was “right”. It was those on the right, however, that were trying to convince me that I was “wrong.” It is people on the right that seem to want everyone to agree with their opinions. In general, I tend to post on things relating to facts. In that case, my view is usually, if not always, correct. Look at this thread. I posted facts by top researchers and I am rebutted with articles saying that the researcher is wrong because he didn’t see into the future. Then I am confronted with dribble from “Jihad Watch”. It’s laughable. I am right. If someone ever confronts me with sincere facts that show I am wrong, then I will accept it and change my worldview accordingly.

Sep 13, 2008 - 6:12 am 78. dave742:

Danny:
“prewall lots of suicide attacks, postwall next to none, seems pretty compelling evidence to me.”

People can climb over the wall, Danny. You can take a ladder and climb the wall , Danny. There are thousands of Palesinians arrested in Israel looking for work, Danny. They get there by climbing the wall, Danny. There are dozens of photos like the one I showed you of people climbing the wall, Danny. Please, oh God, tell me how this wall can stop suicide bombers but cannot stop thousands of Palestinians looking for work. Do suicide bombers not know how to use ladders?

(viewfromafar: Is there a “right” and “wrong” answer to the question of whether or not the wall stops suicide bombers? Has Danny provided enough evidence with his second grade logic for me to ignore years of research from a University of Chicago professor? Work that is supported by others, including researchers at the University of Tel Aviv? There are right and wrong answers. Pape and others use sound research to arrive at similar conclusions, and look how far people like Danny can go to ignore it. Look at his logic. It’s amazing. This is why I post here.)

Danny, suicide bombing is a tactic. There are times where a tactic might be advantageous to use, and other times where it is not. Nearly all suicide bombings are part of campaigns. They are not events distributed randomly throuh time. The first suicide bombings in Israel, in 1994, were a response to the Golstein massacre of 29 Muslims in a mosque. After 27 years of occupation, Israel had escalated their immorality to the point where they were simply walking into mosques and shooting Palestinians. The IDF allowed this to happen. This was a breaking point, and Hamas promised 5 suicide attacks in return. This is why suicide attacks by Hamas started. There was a 40 day mourning period, and the 5 attacks started on the 41st day. Three attacks occured, and at that point Israel started a withdrawal that was supposed to happen years earlier. Because Israel reacted to the Hamas attacks by doing something positive, Hamas ceased their campaign, and only 3 attacks occured. Suicide bombing is a technique. When it produced positive results, it ceased. It started again when Hamas decided it would be advantageous.

Sep 13, 2008 - 6:34 am 79. Danny:

“A puppet government controlled by Israel…”, ah the prejudice finally shows itself.

You have made a claim suicide bombings are CAUSED by occupation. There is not even a correlation then there cannot be causation. That’s the facts. There are many suicide bombers in the world and most are motivated by different reasons. The Tamil Tigers “resistance” is different from Hamas’s which is different again from Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s. I read Pappe too and I don’t believe he has the simplistic monocasual argument you have. You are simply attempting to project other people’s views onto your prejudice.

Sep 13, 2008 - 6:48 am 80. Danny:

First suicide bombing by Hamas was in 1993 before the Oslo process let alone Goldstein massacre:
”
List of suicide bombing attacks by Hamas in 1993:

“On April 16, 1993, at a roadside café at Mehola Junction, Hamas operative Tamam Nabulsi drove a van into a parked bus and detonated it. Two passengers on the bus were killed and five were injured. This was the first suicide terrorist attack in Israel by a Palestinian terrorist group. The Jerusalem Post reported the attack on April 18, 1993. The article noted that this was the first suicide bombing in Israeli territory. Hamas took credit for the attack.

An abortive suicide attack was reported in Gaza on September 13, 1993.

Sept. 26, 1993: Hamas member Ashraf Mahadi , died in the Gaza Strip, when his explosive-ridden car blew up (botched attempt)

Oct. 4, 1993: Kamal Bani Ohed, rammed explosive-laden car in Israeli bus near Ramallah and Beit El, 29 Israelis injured. Hamas claimed responsibility.

Nov. 2, 1993: A botched car-bomb attack near Sinjil; Hamas claimed credit

Dec. 13, 1993: Anwar Aziz, drove bomb-laden ambulance into a jeep-load of Israeli soldiers in Gaza Strip, wounding three.

Dec. 14, 1993: Ossama Hamid, Hamas member, Israelis killed him before he detonated the bomb. According to the Jerusalem Post, he was driving an ambulance.

The Jerusalem Post on Dec. 24, 1993: “About a dozen suicide bombings have been attempted since the PLO-Israel accord was signed in September.”

If you think that it is just a coincidence that the same time Israel built the wall that the number of suicide bombings fell dramatically despite events like the number 1 and number 2 in Hamas being killed – took them six months to “take revenge” for that one – then again your prejudice is simply blinding you. As for the “There are thousands of Palesinians arrested in Israel looking for work” – a) most don’t get there by “climbing over the wall”, most overstay their permit b) They don’t number in the thousands – a hint is that the total number of Palestinians in jail for ALL causes around 8,000 with most arrested in the territories.

Suicide bombing also dropped off from Gaza – again by a complete coincidence when a wall went up – so your claim is that Hamas decided that suicide bombing from Gaza was a “bad idea” but a “great idea” coming from the West Bank. Pur-lease.

Exactly what evidence is there that the Wall doesn’t stop suicide bombers? Apart from the crazies on the far left of Israel – of whom plenty are at TA university – exactly what evidence is there that the Wall has made no impact? Pappe also didn’t write that the wall DIDN’T stop suicide bombers. I don’t recollect Pappe making the argument that you have that occupation generates suicide bombers probably because it is untrue. Even when dealing with Israel, it clearly isn’t the case as there are occupied lands where no suicide bombing occurs, lands where next to none occurs. Once you get outside Israel there was the wave of suicide bombings in Algeria which is not occupied by anyone. Now it has been a while since I read his book but i don’t recollect him making the simplistic argument you are, mainly because it is clearly BS.

For the Middle East here is an alternative hypothesis. Iranian radicals carried out suicide bombings during the revolution, when Israel invaded the Iranians exported suicide bombing to Hizbollah, who in 1992 – when Hamas and PIJ leaders were deported to South Lebanon – exported it to the Palestinians who started carrying out suicide attacks when they were repatriated to Israel in 1993. Others islamist groups saw the effectiveness of suicide attacks on westernised societies and imitated Hizbollah and Hamas – as did [more]secular Tanzim.

Sep 13, 2008 - 7:57 am 81. dave742:

Danny:
“There is not even a correlation…That’s the facts…I read Pappe too”

If you read Pape, you read this on page 99:

“The nationalist theory of suicide terrorism predicts that suicide terrorism would occure in tandem with only one of the combinations of independent variables-that is, when there is both a religious difference and rebellion. This theory correctly predicts 49 of 58 cases, a result that is statistically significant at the highest common benchmark of .001, meaning that it could be achieved by chance less than once in 1000 times.”

There IS A CORRELATION. It is amazing that you say you read this and claim there is not a correlation. Commonly, in social experiments, a p value of 0.05 is considered statistically significant, and indicates a correlation, Pape’s theory is over 50 times stronger than this benchmark. A p value of .001 is commonly used in medicinal experiments, where absolute accuracy is required. P values of this level allow companies to say that Lipitor lowers cholesterol, or that cigarettes cause cancer. If you believe Papes’s theory is incorrect and that there is no correlation, maybe you also believe that drugs don’t work and that cigarettes do not cause cancer. I would not be surprised if this were the case.

“First suicide bombing by Hamas was in 1993”

When a serious researcher like Pape studies suicide bombings, he only considers cases that are suicide bombings, and not incidents that are not bombings that Israel wants to claim are for political reasons.

Your first one is this:

“On April 16, 1993, at a roadside café at Mehola Junction…”

The Jerusalem Post claimed this was a suicide bombing, but even their language contained lots of words like: “apparent,” “unofficially,” “believed to be,” “if [it] was a suicide bombing”:

“POLICE at the scene of Friday’s first apparent suicide car-bomb…Hamas, claimed responsibility for the apparent suicide carbombing…military sources unofficially said it looked like a suicide bombing…body of an Arab believed to be the driver of the van was found some meters from the blast…If the explosion was a suicide bombing it would be the first inside Israel or the territories…”
The Jerusalem Post
April 18, 1993, Sunday
Only luck prevents disaster in suicide car-bomb attack in territories
BYLINE: JON IMMANUEL, MICHAEL ROTEM and DAVID RUDGE

Outside Israel, the rest of the world called the incident what it was, a car bomb. A car bomb is not a suicide bombing:

query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE0DB1539F934A25757C0A965958260

“TWO Arabs were killed and seven Israeli soldiers hurt today when a car bomb exploded at a busy Israeli roadside cafe in the occupied West Bank. The bomb went off when a booby-trapped car rammed two parked buses full of soldiers and civilians going home for their weekend leave in the Jordan Valley. Police said car was filled with cooking gas canisters and the attack was intended to be a suicide car bomb. Israel army radio reported one of the Palestinians killed worked at a snack bar at the site. The other’s identity was not immediately revealed.”
Evening Standard (London)
April 16, 1993, Friday
West Bank car bomb kills two
SECTION: Pg. 15

You booby trap a car when you want to get away, not when you are committing suicide. The Jerusalem Post article above said this: “At 1 pm. a white Mitsubishi van with Israeli yellow license plates drove into the parking lot of the Moshav Mehola roadside cafeteria. The driver parked between two Egged buses, one carrying soldiers, the other on a regular passenger route. Most of the 50 or more soldiers and passengers were off the buses and were standing around the service counter.”

Please explain to me the following. The supposed suicide bomber was parked next to a bus that was empty when he detonated the bomb. If he was parked there first, he waited until all the soldiers exited the bus and left before detonating his bomb. If the bus was there first, he parked next to an empty bus and detonated his bomb without waiting for the soldiers to come back first. If the suicide bomber was sitting in the car waiting to detonate it, why did he either wait for the soldiers to leave before setting off the bomb, or, alternatively, why didn’t he wait until the soldiers returned to the bus? Why did he set off his bomb next to an empty bus? Answer: This was a car bomb that was booby-trapped, probably with a timer. The bomb went off, fortunately for the soldiers, before they returned to the bus. If it was a suicide bomber, why didn’t he just drive the car into the cafeteria and set off his bomb? This was not a suicide bombing, and most media outlets knew it, regardless of Israel’s claim. Serious researchers look at these things, and don’t rely on unnamed Israeli officials to tell them what is or is not a suicide bombing.

Here is a report from your second incident:

A boobytrapped car exploded in the Shaykh Ajlin district south of Gaza this morning, while it was being prepared by a terrorist. The car caught fire and the terrorist in it was killed. Our correspondent in the south Nisim Qeynan has learned that an IDF [Israel Defence Forces] unit, on a routine patrol, found the burned car and alerted additional units. The car contained gas balloons, fuel containers and other explosives.
BBC Summary of World Broadcasts
September 27, 1993, Monday
Boobytrapped car blows up in Gaza; “terrorist” killed

Once again, there is no evidence that this was going to be a suicide bombing. I don’t feel like going through the rest of your list. Even the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists the first suicide attack as April 6, 1994:

http://tinyurl.com/nfdjq

Maybe they are anti-Semitic liars?

After reading the rest of your post, I see that you keep using the word Pappe. (When you used it the first time, I thought you had just made a typo). Robert Pape, who did the suicide bombing study, is a different person that Ilan Pappe. You said that you read Pappe’s suicide bombing study. That’s strange, since Ilan Pappe never did a study on suicide bombing. Could you explain what you mean when you said you read Pappe’s suicide bombing book? I know it can’t be possible that you lied.

Sep 13, 2008 - 11:32 am 82. dave:

RightwingHippyChick:
“I think that you will be more convinced if you do some googling yourself rather than if I post links for you, so please do this.”

I don’t use Google much. I have access to Lexis Nexis, and I use that. Lexis Nexis is a database of thousands of newspapers, magazines, transcripts, etc. from around the world. I did a worldwide search over the last 2 years for any article that contains the following 3 words: Muslim, rape, sweden (the search engine finds forms of words – “rape” will find “raped”). The search found a total of zero articles that speaks of the issue you bring up. I guess there is a worldwide conspiracy to keep this issue a secret, and only websites like “Jihad Watch” know about it.

Sep 13, 2008 - 1:32 pm 83. Nine-of-Diamonds:

“The reason some of you knuckle-dragging evolutionary throwbacks who seem to pop up out of a scene from Deliverance cannot grasp what our best intellectuals like Juan Coles or Noam Chomsky says, is quite obvious- you simply lack the sufficient IQ. Let me try to spell out the simplified equations of these guys for your inbred brain before you run off to your job at Walmart:”

Boys, I think we’re witnessing Obama’s “50 State Strategy” in action. Way to win over them Red States – keep it up.

Sep 13, 2008 - 6:24 pm 84. Danny:

You have been claiming over and over that the causative effect is “occupation”. That occupation causes suicide bombing. For causation you need not only that there is a correlation between where there is an occupation and suicide bombing – which there isn’t one – but also where there isn’t occupation there shouldn’t be suicide bombing. Neither are correlated. If a medical experiment simply gave a drug to everyone sick and reported a correlation without any controls or null hypothesis it would rightly be thrown out by the FDA. If far more people who didn’t take Liptor showed a decline in Cholesterol than those who did than those who did then one might question the original “correlation”.

You quote Pape – “both a ***religious difference*** AND ***rebellion***”. Rebellion doesn’t equal “occupation” and you need to throw in a religious difference to get the correlation. I doubt there is even a correlation with those effects, as “rebellion” and “religious difference” are fairly loose definitions. Do the Islamists and a socialist government in Algeria have a “religious difference” even though they are technically both Muslims? Do socialist PLO and socialist Israeli Labour have a “religious difference”? He also gets he correlation by only looking at conflicts where suicide bombing has occurred – ie a classic case of selection bias. What he actually saying is that ideological difference and a rebellion are necessary but not sufficient reasons for suicide bombing.

A car bomb where the driver drives the car bomb into a group of people and doesn’t expect to survive the explosion isn’t a suicide bombing? Or are you claiming the person driving the car full of explosives into a group of people was expecting the people around him to die but he was going to survive? Are you really that desperate to “prove” your point? Ok, then I guess we can start dramatically cut down the number of suicide bombers.

Erm, did you read the Mofa website? Is reading not one of your skills? Read the title again… It puts a date on when it is counting from.

PS mean Pape, not Ilan Pappe – who I would never seriously quote as a reference. It must be a Freudian slip because I am dealing with anti-Semite pretending to be some objection to “occupation” usually quotes frauds like Pappe or Chomsky or Cole.

Sep 14, 2008 - 10:13 am 85. dave742:

Initially I gave you the benefit of the doubt and trusted you when you said you read Pape’s book. After reading your last post, I feel safe to say that you are lying. There is simply no way any sentient being could have read the book and keep saying one thing after another that has no relation to what is in the book. Either you are lying when you said you read the book, or you are incredibly stupid.

“You have been claiming over and over that the causative effect is ‘occupation’. That occupation causes suicide bombing. For causation you need not only that there is a correlation between where there is an occupation and suicide bombing – which there isn’t one – but also where there isn’t occupation there shouldn’t be suicide bombing. Neither are correlated…He also gets he correlation by only looking at conflicts where suicide bombing has occurred – ie a classic case of selection bias.”

Danny. Pape looked at 58 cases overall. Seven cases were conflicts where suicide bombing has occurred, and 51 were conflicts where suicide bombing has not occurred. You say Pape didn’t address conflicts where suicide bombing had not occurred, when in reality he looked at 51 of these cases. Either you haven’t read the book, or you’re stupid.

“Rebellion doesn’t equal ‘occupation.’”

Yes, Danny. Nobody ever said that. Maybe you should actually read the book. Rebellion is a possible response to occupation. Pape’s definitions of occupation are drawn from international law, and his discussion of it is too long to quote here. It starts on page 83, if you ever decide to read the book.

“you need to throw in a religious difference to get the correlation.”

Pape did not “throw in” religious difference. Religious difference is an integral part of Pape’s theory. It is one of the two independent variables. Relgious difference, as I have said, is a measure of the “difference” of the two groups (occupied and occupier) in what Pape terms an “alien” occupation. Things like linguistic difference can also be used to measure this, but linguistic difference is not as strong of an identifier as religion, and Pape argues this quite convincingly. Once again, “religious difference” is what is necessary for the correlation, and not the “presence of Islam.” There is no correlation between the presence of Islam and suicide bombing.

“’rebellion’ and ‘religious difference’ are fairly loose definitions”

Pape defines rebellion on page 98 as “any organized resistance by a militant group beyond political protests or other forms of non-violent civil disobedience.” The definition does not need to be any clearer. There are 58 cases considered by Pape. Each are classified as to whether or not a rebellion is present. Please tell me which case you disagree with regarding the rebellion classification.

Religious identification is a variable that is used in countless social psychology experiments. If you are saying all these studies are invalid because religion is too loose of a definition, then I think you should write a paper on it. If you make a good case for throwing out hundreds of studies done over the years for this reason, I think you would become a famous researcher. Here’s your chance. Pape uses standard list of religious identification for his study, like countless studies before him. 80 percent of the world population identifies with one of 12 primary religions. The addition of several secondary religions was also considered, but doing so had no effect of the study’s results.

“A car bomb where the driver drives the car bomb into a group of people and doesn’t expect to survive the explosion isn’t a suicide bombing?”

The driver did not drive the car into a group of people. It is true the the Evening standard reference I quoted said that “The bomb went off when a booby-trapped car rammed two parked buses full of soldiers.” There are always conflicting accounts the day something happens. It is obvious however, that this account is in error. If you ram a bus full of people with a car that then explodes. There will be deaths. The Jerusalem Post had a much more detailed account of what happened, and their account makes it clear why nobody died:

“The driver parked between two Egged buses, one carrying soldiers, the other on a regular passenger route. Most of the 50 or more soldiers and passengers were off the buses and were standing around the service counter.”

When it said “the driver parked between two Egged buses,” that implies something different than what you said, which is “the driver drives the car bomb into a group of people.” Parking your car between two empty buses is different than driving you car into a group of people. Even the Evening Standard article I quoted did not say that the car drove into a group of people. This is pure fabrication by yourself. The car was parked between two empty buses. The bomb went off between two empty buses. Nobody was killed because the soldiers were inside the cafeteria when the bomb went off. Reread this four times, then try responding.

“did you read the Mofa website? Is reading not one of your skills? Read the title again… It puts a date on when it is counting from.”

The title of the MOFA website is “Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel Since the Declaration of Principles (Sept 1993).” The “Camera” list you quote lists 7 suicide attacks in 1993. You are claiming that MOFA prepared a comprehensive list of dozens of suicide over the last 14 years, up to the present date, but decided to leave off the first few. Pretty stupid. Danny, 6 out of the seven suicide attacks on the Camera list are after September, 1993.

TELL ME, WHY ARE THESE NOT INCLUDED ON THE MOFA SITE?

MOFA picked September 1993 as their starting point because that is when the DOP was signed. This list includes all suicide bombings. If the camera list were correct, 6 of them should be on the MOFA list. They are not. Do you know why? Because they are not suicide bombings. A highly biased third-rate organization like Camera can get away with making the claim that these incidents were suicide bombings, but an official organization like MOFA, while obviously biased as well, has to try and retain some semblance of objectivity. This is why they don’t make the ridiculous claim the incidents on the Camera list were suicide bombings.

Sep 14, 2008 - 12:18 pm 86. Frank L:

The more Dems and the Lib media attack, slime and pan Palin, the more they’re driving undecideds like me to vote Rep.

Sep 14, 2008 - 7:09 pm 87. Kelly:

“Hey Snaggle-tooth” or what ever your name is….I feel bad for you, being so enlightened and educated. Not that there’s nothing wrong with book learnin’….To think higher education is all it takes to be you. WOW!!! I would rather make an honest living working at Walmart than to live in the misery you must live in. I can see you are too smart to even consider the fact that the heartbeat of America is made up of people who work at Walmart ect. Or can your dried up shriveled brain comprehend that? Maybe you have been taught too much useless crap to be able to think rationally. Maybe it is the fact that you have evolved from a grunting angry ape? I wonder?

Sep 14, 2008 - 8:27 pm 88. RightwingHippyChick:

Dave said: “I don’t use Google much. I have access to Lexis Nexis, and I use that.”

And this is your problem, you’re using the wrong tool in the wrong way.

Most of the articles will be in Swedish, rape is a local affair that rarely makes it into the international press. The information is all out there, if you dare to look at reality.

Sep 14, 2008 - 9:53 pm 89. dave472:

RightwingHippyChick:
“And this is your problem, you’re using the wrong tool in the wrong way. Most of the articles will be in Swedish”

I don’t know Swedish, and I doubt you do either. In that case, you are telling me that the “right tool” is to believe translations of Swedish tabloids by sites such as “Jihad Watch.” I do not consider this the “right tool.” This issue does not exist outside of far-right wing blogs. It is fabricated.

You say Lexis Nexis is the wrong tool. However, you can find any story you like in English language papers when you search Lexis Nexis worldwide. Here’s one:

“Swedish prosecutors have filed rape and murder charges against a truck driver who allegedly confessed to killing a girl this year and a woman in 2000. Police arrested Anders Eklund…”
Associated Press Worldstream
July 18, 2008 Friday 8:47 AM GMT
Swedish man charged with rape and murder of 10-year-old girl
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Why is it that I can find and read about a truck driver raping a girl in Sweden, but when there is an epidemic of rape by Muslims in Sweden, it goes unreported? Does this go back to the conspiracy theory? Here are some more stories about containing the term “rape” and “Sweden”:

UPI
October 12, 2007 Friday 12:57 PM EST
Swedish boy claims rape by girl gang

Agence France Presse — English
February 12, 2008 Tuesday 10:00 PM GMT
Chilean tenor sentenced for rape in Sweden

“A Swedish taxi driver who thought he was witnessing an attempted rape ran over the alleged assailant, who turned out to be the woman’s boyfriend…”
UPI
March 4, 2007 Sunday 6:31 PM EST
Cabbie thinks he sees rape, rams boyfriend

Associated Press Online
June 26, 2007 Tuesday 6:00 PM GMT
Sweden OKs Prison Porn for Rape Convicts

Thai Press Reports
June 9, 2008 Monday
THAILAND SWEDE SUSPECTED OF FIVE YEAR OLD RAPE IN THAILAND

UPI
October 3, 2007 Wednesday 12:21 PM EST
Sweden clears man of rape while asleep

Rapes in Sweden, and rapes by Swedes in other non-English speaking countries such as Thailand, are reported in the English language press. There are zero stories about a rape problem in Sweden involving Muslims. I cannot understand why they would ignore a rape epidemic. I did find one story about Muslims gang raping a woman, but it was in Pakistan:

“Four Pakistani men were hanged Thursday for gang-raping a Christian woman at gunpoint during a 1999 robbery, a jail official said.”

The Associated Press
June 29, 2006 Thursday 3:23 PM GMT
4 Muslim men hanged in Pakistan for gang-raping Christian woman
BYLINE: By KHALID TANVEER, Associated Press Writer

There is no rape epidemic by Muslims in Sweden. I cannot tell you how hilarious it is for you to tell me how I am brainwashed when you get your news from “Jihad Watch.”

Sep 15, 2008 - 6:49 am

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