Still a crime in the post-Osama world.
Yet people want to argue when you point out that Osama has won.
Reader Interactions
154Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.
Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.
The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.
I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.
The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.
If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.
Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.
Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.
Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.
Ah, the different things are different argument.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity
Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.
Republicans in disarray!
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
The Republic of Stupidity
Woo hoo!!!!
American exceptionalism at play!
Chris
And this is why emergency powers are horseshit. Because the powers don’t just go away when the threat’s gone. They find ways to justify their existence indefinitely.
cleek
no, he hasn’t won.
at best, he scored a couple of tactical victories. but his goal was never to annoy Americans or to give us legal and moral puzzles to chew on, it was to drive the US out of the middle east and to establish a fundamentalist Islamic republic across the entire ME.
he has, so far, completely failed. he hasn’t driven us out of the ME. he hasn’t destroyed the US. and given the recent spate of democratic revolutions in the ME, even his message of Islamic fundamentalist law seems to have been rejected.
yeah, there are racists in the US. i’m sure nobody needed bin Laden to point that out.
Ija
It’s weird that the pilot’s name has not come out in any of the stories. From the stories, it seems like the pilot is the one most adamant about not wanting the men in the plane. The pilot is being well-protected from any adverse publicity in all this. Lucky him, he probably won’t be sued as well, the airline will be the one paying. Good gig if you can get it.
jammni
Yeah, I think a big part of that whole thing is: these people who want to argue that we didn’t end up losing to OBL, they don’t see the “flying while brown” concept as a loss of civil rights or a problem, but just as a “winning” tactic, or as “just the way things are now,” or “the way things should be, those people have always made me nervous.” What do they care, they aren’t FWB, never will be, doesn’t affect them.
Brian S
@cleek: Just because he didn’t accomplish his primary objectives doesn’t mean that we haven’t lost as a result of the war. It may be a stretch to say that Osama has won, but it’s no stretch to say we have lost a significant part of ourselves in the meantime.
Suffern ACE
@cleek: Not only did he hate us for our freedom, our freedom is now almost completely gone.
cleek
@Brian S:
tell it to JC and Balko. they seem to think he won.
Loneoak
In fairness, it sounds like everyone around the pilot realized he is an asshole and protested, and then showed kindness to these men. Flying while brown wasn’t the crime here, the pilot’s behavior was—he abused his absolute right of control over his passengers. I’m pretty certain he’ll pay for it, hopefully with his career. If people on the plane cheered and these guys were interrogated and put on a no-fly list, then I would agree Osama won. But that didn’t happen.
Edit: Not to be too sanguine about it, because I agree with cleek and Brian S. But really, isn’t this an example of Osama losing, especially if the pilot gets the boot?
Hungry Joe
Terrorism was, and is, a very real threat to a tiny fraction of our citizens, but it has never been an existential threat to the nation. Yet 19 lunatics with box cutters set in motion a process by which we’re destroying ourselves — via “Shock Doctrine” economic opportunism orchestrated by the rich, and the slow evisceration of basic freedoms to distract the yahoos.
How could bin Laden have been so successful? Maybe all he did was pull on a thread that was already loose …
cleek
@Suffern ACE:
wow. i hope that’s snark.
Guster
This is gonna blow your mind, but maybe he won some battles, but not the war?
That’s a pretty remarkable victory, given the disparity in power–and that he only won the battles because we helped him. But he’s still losing the war.
Southern Beale
This story deserves a little more attention, IMHO: 2 advisors to the Joint Chiefs of Staff say the future of U.S. global dominance isn’t in more bombs or faster jets, it’s in universal healthcare and solar panels.
Brian S
@cleek: If you go by the rhetoric of pretty much everyone who was talking in 2002, he did, because the construction then was, if we change our ways of life, the terrorists have won. If we sacrifice our freedoms, the terrorists have won. It became a joke. If I don’t eat this hamburger with triple bacon, the terrorists have won. And the HTIC was Osama Bin Laden, so if the terrorists won, then he really won, By that measure, Bin Laden has decidedly won. You can narrow the battle to simply argue that the US presence in the Middle East constitutes a Bin Laden loss, but that’s a very limited way of looking at it.
Ija
@Loneoak:
Yup. I’m really curious about the identity of this pilot. Surely there are some enterprising journalists out there who can investigate this? What the f*** is wrong with journalism nowadays that days after the incident, we don’t even know the name of the pilot, let alone his supposed “rationale” for acting in such a horrible way. I’m sure the airline wouldn’t release the pilot’s name, but surely journalists learn in journalism school how to get information from non-official sources? Or is this story too unimportant because the victims are Muslims, and no journalists care to dig further? It’s really weird.
Just Some Fuckhead
Call me sane but I don’t feel qualified to assess the aspirations of a madman and determine his level of success.
different church-lady
Dude, Osama didn’t invent racism and xenophobia.
different church-lady
@Suffern ACE: Really? Almost completely gone you say? How so?
cleek
but why should we ?
@Brian S:
but that’s the way bin Laden looked at it! how can you say he won if he didn’t even meet the goals he said he wanted to achieve ? he only cared about the internal workings of the US so far as they affected the way the US dealt with the ME – and we’ve gone in the completely opposite direction of what he wanted, in that respect.
Zifnab
Oh bullshit. We were never that happy, egalitarian, peace-loving bunch of hippies the author claims. Today it’s freaking out at Muslims on airplanes. Thirty years ago, it was freaking out at a black man getting on your bus.
Racism and xenophobia, militant police policies and security measures – these are not new to the US. We’ve had paranoid anti-Other People practices dating back to Ellis Island and before. We’ve had second class citizenry. We’ve had police brutality and absurd fear-based legislation – see: Drugs, The War On – for generations. Come the Clinton Era, it was finally getting tamped down. An entire generation of 60s Era radicals raised their kids not to be assholes, and it was all baring some fruit. And then 9/11 happened, and we fell back into our old bad habits. But they were just that – bad habits.
Osama didn’t start this fire. It was always burning, since the nation started turning.
RP
This is mostly a debate about semantics, but I don’t like saying he “won” in part because it leads to ridiculous hyperbole and negativity like post #7. “Won” sounds too final. He definitely changed America for the worse after 9/11, but he had plenty of help and, more importantly, none of those changes are necessarily permanent. There’s still a lot of freedom and opportunity left in this country, and there’s no point in throwing up our hands and saying “he won! Oh well.”
numbskull
@Ija:
If we knew the name of the pilot, we would …. ? What? Google him so we could send him threatening letters? Check to see if he has granite countertops? Bother his kids at school? See if he donated to Republican candidates? Put him into a nice mental cubby-hole once we’ve determined he somehow fits a satisfying profile? I’m only somewhat kidding here; what would you do with the information? I guess it may be useful to know if he or she was a newly-minted PIC on a feeder tube, which means he or she is very young (mid 20s) and, though experienced in flight time, very inexperienced in life. But beyond that, I’m not sure what use it is to know the name of the PIC.
TSA recalling a plane that’s already left the gate is very, very rare. I am not excusing the pilot, but such weirdness possibly precipitated a very poor decision on his or her part.
Pangloss
Yeah, the wingnuts aren’t too wild about Barack and Michelle using Air Force One to fly anywhere, either. Too damn brown!!
Brian S
@cleek:
Because that’s the entire basis for the discussion, and it has been since roughly September 12, 2001. You can act like it isn’t, you can narrow it to what OBL stated he wanted, but the narrative that dominated from the very beginning was that this was going to be a battle for our identity. You can pretend otherwise, but you’re rewriting history if you do.
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I would never slander you in such a fashion.
different church-lady
@Brian S: Narratives. Reality. Which do we want to discuss?
Fred
OBL won what? There is no finish line.
What a pessimistic attitude!
Bill Murray
@Ija: Well it’s not like the pilot wouldn’t cheer for his assaulter, so why should his name a big deal
Fred
@cleek: No that was NOT his goal. Someone hasn’t been studying their Jihadi manual!
His goal was to destroy the US. Economically and morally.
No worries, the GOP has his back now!
El Tiburon
@cleek:
Are you serious? How every you decide to paint it, victory or not, the 9-11 attacks forever changed this country – for the worse. I am pretty sure OBL was quite pleased with his work.
Look, OBL’s stated goals are irrelevant. What is beyond debate is that the 9-11 attacks changed the trajectory of this nation (yes, with a Gigantic Big Assist from George W. Bush).
So every single day we are in Iraq and Afghanistan OBL won. Every single day human beings rot in a cage at Gitmo OBL won. Every day we debate the efficacy of torture, OBL won.
That we consider it a major US military victory to finally kill one dude like OBL, then he has won. And he continues to haunt our very existence in our stupid policies that we continue to enact.
The Moar You Know
@Ija: The pilot has ABSOLUTE control over the vessel (his aircraft) and as a result he or she has absolute, legally unquestionable control over who gets on that vessel.
The airline, the media, the passengers denied boarding can holler about it all they want, but they can’t fire him, they can’t sue him, and they can’t take away that control of the vessel so long as he has been given control of it by the owners – that’s rooted in maritime law statutes that go back long before this nation was founded, and that exist for some really, really good reasons.
If the pilot happens to be an anti-Muslim bigot who’s not letting any Muslims on his aircraft, well, that’s a shame (and in coming from a family full of pilots, I can tell you that I have never heard of such a thing) but there would be only one remedy for that – ground that pilot with full pay until retirement.
Bob Loblaw
@Fred:
Oh my god! Really?!
Let! me! continue! to! use! exclamation! points! in! every! single! one! of! my! posts! because! I’m! a! very! enthusiastic! and! not! at! all! stupid! person!
!
Fred
@El Tiburon: The US has been sticking it’s nose in everyones business (militarily) for decades. That didn’t start with OBL and it won’t end with his demise.
Bill Murray
@cleek: Wasn’t the bug up bin Laden’s ass about US troop presence in Saudi Arabia near Mecca, not the entire Middle East?
El Tiburon
@different church-lady:
True enough, but he certainly made it PC to hate on the brown Muslims.
Brian S
@different church-lady:
You have to talk about both. To ignore narrative is to ignore the way humans communicate with each other, and to ignore the incredible power narrative has one shaping our actions. Narrative, in some ways, creates reality. All you have to do is look at the number of people who still think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 to see that.
cleek
@Brian S:
fuck the narrative. al-qaeda doesn’t give a shit about the American pundit class’s narrative. they don’t kill people to control our internal narrative. they kill people because want the US and the west out of – as they see it – their lives. we, and the rest of the world, has denied them everything they said they wanted; so why give them credit for things they neither asked for nor fight for ?
seems self-defeating.
“Hey sports fans! Today, the Dragons just beat the Monkeys 58-0! Quite a shellacking. But, they did it with so many unforced errors that Dragons fans are claiming the Monkeys actually won! Why? Beats me. Over to you, Bob.”
El Tiburon
@Fred:
No doubt. But 9-11 made full-on war and occupation desirable and acceptable to the American public. We have 2-4 wars going on and look – basketball playoffs and Houswives of New York.
Mandramas
Terrorist are the perfect enemy. The can’t officially surrender. You can always been in war with them, you know. Even, if it is needed, you can always fake a couple of terror attacks. You only need a powerful Military–industrial complex, a strong intelligence community and faithful mass media.
/irony
Joel
Considering that Bin Laden’s goal was to get muslim people thrown off airplanes, I’d say he succeeded!
Suffern ACE
@cleek: /snark…
Suffern ACE
@cleek: /snark…
Brian S
@cleek: Like I said earlier–this fight was never really against al Qaeda–it was a fight over who we are as a nation, and in that fight, the narrative is everything. Scream all you want about how we’ve won because we’re still involved in the MIddle East–you’ll even be right in that very narrow, limited way. But that’s all you’ll be right about.
nancydarling
@Southern Beale: Let’s spread this story. We pee in our pants with fear of what might happen and yet the summer Arctic Ocean will be ice free by 2020 (last occurred one million years ago) and the thawing permafrost is set to give up its methane which is 25X as lethal in its effect on climate.
jeff
@Bill Murray:
No. OBL made a list of demands that includes that, along with tons of other stuff, some of it laughable.
trollhattan
OBL’s ultimate goals remain unachieved, but he did successfully complete many of his intended steps along the way, which revolved around attacking the west–our values, our way of life, our religions, our economy, etc.
Does that constitute a “win” ultimately? I think not but he left an indelible mark. Indelible because we’re never going back to the world of 9.10.01. Indelible because we’ll never bring back the lives lost in the many subsequent wars. The wounded will never become completely whole. Our surrendered rights will not be completely restored (although I think it’s irresponsible to stop demanding them and throw in the towel).
No, he didn’t achieve his main goal but he was happy to wreck as much havoc as he could, trying, and we rose to the bait all too willingly. Asymmetric warfare lessons have been well taught to all.
elmo
@The Moar You Know:
I was with you right up until “can’t fire him and can only ground him with full pay.” Nonsense. It is absolutely the case that the skipper has full control over the vessel while he is the skipper. But if he doesn’t do what the owner wants done with it, the owner of the vessel can fire his ass.
slag
For once, I’m actually ok with declaring a victory here. In this debate, the argument articulated by Zifnab and others has won. Sorry, John, you lose.
cleek
@Brian S:
al-qaeda will probably be very surprised to know that they’re being credited with winning a war that they apparently have no part in. any other victories you’d like to give them? maybe they defeated the public option, too?
if they incidentally caused us to do stupid things, but not the things they wanted us to do, then we’ve made errors. but that doesn’t mean they won.
Ija
@The Moar You Know:
Like I said, it’s a good gig if you can get it. Apparently you are protected from all and any consequences that people in other professions, suspected of being a racist or a bigot, would have to face, including public censure.
Brian S
@cleek: So you’re really going to argue that our reaction to 9/11 doesn’t count as a loss for us just because al Qaeda didn’t say specifically that they were going for it? Seriously? We reacted badly–we continue to react badly, which is John’s whole fucking point–but it’s not a win for them because that’s not what they were after. That’s your whole argument. They were the bomb that triggered our reaction–who the fuck else gets credit for having us collapse into pants-wetting fear at the sight of Muslims on planes? Tell me, o wise one.
Ija
@numbskull:
The names of the passengers were printed quite freely after all, I don’t understand why there is such a secrecy about the pilot’s name? It’s starting to look like there is a deliberate effort and plan to protect his/her identity, which begs the question, why? What is so special about the pilot? Why can’t we know his/her identity? Is he/she deserving of some sort of special protection? Why? Because we think crazy Muslims might go bomb his house, since Muslims are terrorists after all?
Maybe it is irrelevant, I just find the media blackout about the pilot’s identity interesting and puzzling.
ETA: At the very least, isn’t there any enterprising journalist interested on the pilot’s side of the story? Maybe he/she is being made a fall guy/gal for the airline, maybe the airline is exagggerating his/her involvement and minimizing their own, etc etc. Who knows?
El Tiburon
@trollhattan:
The fact that we are even talking about this in terms of an OBL win is in itself a win for OBL. He has been elevated to Worthy Opponent status like the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Again, I realize this was because of the colossal clusterfuckidness that is George W. Bush and the Republicans,
but yes, OBL won. Regardless of his intentions – he won.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Call me sane but I don’t feel qualified to assess the aspirations of a madman and determine his level of success.
And what makes you think, JSF, that he was “mad”?
He saw what Afghanistan did to the Soviets, and figured he could tank the economy of the US by drawing it into a general war in the Middle East. He didn’t do too badly in his guess.
Svensker
@El Tiburon:
Nah, that was happening long before. Quick, what’s the first word you think of when you heard the word “Palestinian” (hint: starts with “t” and ends with “ist”. Or there’s the alternate: starts with “gun” and ends with “man”).
Osama just watered the fertile, plowed and seeded flower bed.
different church-lady
@Brian S: Good answer. Let’s do talk about both. Because not everyone bought the narrative 10 years ago.
eemom
I wonder who’s gonna star in Osama:The Movie.
Johnny Depp?
Brian S
@different church-lady: Which speaks to the power of narrative. That you and I didn’t buy it doesn’t mean it didn’t have an incredible effect on the nation as a whole, which is why we keep seeing stories like the one John linked to, and which is why claims like Cleek’s, while factually accurate, aren’t particularly true in a larger sense.
Ghanima Atreides
@cleek: OBL landed a lucky punch in Americas economic glass jaw. But he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in transforming the GWOT into the American War on Islam.
Random facebook bigots:
League of Ordinary Gentlemen’s Tim Kowal said the EXACT SAME THING.
Muslims and the need for reform, or at least better PR
Then Kowal gets knocked around for two more posts, but still doesn’t get it.
cleek
@Brian S:
a loss for us is not an automatic win for al-q. this is not a zero-sum situation.
we have damaged ourselves, but that damage doesn’t really help al-q achieve their goals. in reality, their goals remain utterly unmet, and their organization has been beaten up pretty badly. it’s very unlikely that they think they’ve won. so, why tell them they have ? why the eagerness to credit them ? why not just admit that we overreacted to them and made unforced errors – errors which harm our country but which do not help al-q ?
Sly
Bin Laden, and by extension Al-Qaeda, had a basic plan of action, spanning 20 years, that we can use to determine success or failure. It was first revealed by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein in his 2005 book on Al-Zarqawi, and is broken into seven basic stages.
1) By provoking the United States into a war against Islam itself, anti-western Muslims worldwide would unite under a common banner.
2) The “western conspiracy” (i.e. Christians working at the behest of Jews) against Islam is confronted directly and its forces within the Middle East are defeated.
3) Secular regimes in the Middle East, like Israel and Turkey, are openly attacked and overthrown.
4) Heretical regimes in nominally Islamic states like Saudi Arabia and Jordon are attacked and overthrown. The West will be permanently crippled through the loss of needed energy sources.
5) With the entirety of the “Muslim world” under one banner, a Caliphate is declared and implemented by force. Modern state boundaries are dissolved and a single Pan-Islamic state is created.
6) The Caliphate expunges all remaining Western influences from the territory it controls, and raises an army for the final confrontation with the western conspiracy.
7) The western conspiracy is permanently destroyed in a global war.
So the most you can say is that Bin Laden lived to see the first phase completed, and that is being exceptionally generous. Anti-western sentiment has not, by any means, coalesced around Al-Qaeda’s ideology or agenda, and the chance of it still happening will likely be impeded by the events in places like Egypt.
If, however, your criteria for a complete Al-Qaeda victory is that you now get felt up at the airport… well… then I guess he won in that sense. But all this strikes me as more of the same “if you do X, then the terrorists win” nonsense, which I got tired of around 9 years and 6 months ago.
Ghanima Atreides
@Brian S: 70% of Americans opposed the “terror” mosque. OBL’s killer app is American xenophobia and racism.
The good
negroesmuslims need to distance themselves from the badnegroesmuslims, right?Ija
@Ghanima Atreides:
Well, Tim Kowal was adamant, adamant I say! that he is only concerned about the image of Muslims among “non-bigoted Americans who think that Islam and America are not compatible”. NON-BIGOTED only. Got that? He would probably be very offended that you lump him with be bigoted folk. He was very, very clear about that, repeating it numerous times in the posts and subsequent comments.
I’m surprised he has not deigned to write a post about whether the Muslim community’s response to Osama’s death has been satisfactory for him and other “non-bigoted Americans who think that Islam and America are not compatible”. I’m counting the days to that post.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: nah, what OBL wanted was to provoke America into a war that would destroy us economically and morally.
IMHO he was wildly successful.
The Moar You Know
@elmo: True, and if we were back in the old days where ship’s captains worked on a single-trip basis, the guy would never fly again. However, these days the pilot simply has to claim that he believed that carriage of these passengers was a safety risk and that’s the ballgame – can’t fire a guy for doing his job, and making that call is explicitly part of the captain’s job.
@Ija: 1. I would hate to think that merely “being suspected” of being a bigot would carry consequences. Might be better to wait for proof. There is certainly more to this story and that will come out over the next few days.
2. You are certainly protected from any and all consequences for refusing to take what you have cause to believe are dangerous persons or cargo on board your vessel, and there are some damn good reasons for that. The airlines could make a lot of money carrying dangerous/reactive/explosive cargo on passenger flights, for example – you could just get rid of those pesky cargo-only planes and maximize your yield – but because pilots determined a long time ago that doing so constituted an unacceptable risk to passengers, you don’t have to worry about boarding a flight full of nitroglycerin.
Of course, people sometimes lie about what is in cargo and a shitload of people die. Incidents like this keep pilots on their toes, inspecting for dangerous cargo and yes, dangerous passengers.
Ghanima Atreides
@Ija: yeah, the whole “don’t call us bigots” we just have some “understandable” questions about shariah coming to america LoOG schtick was eerily reminiscent of the “don’t call us racists” we just want to see the long form birth certificate schtick.
Ghanima Atreides
@The Moar You Know:
yeah right.
don’t hold your breath.
Kowal on muslims and their “PR problem”
Heres my new definition of a libertarian.
A wingnut bigot with a college degree.
Ghanima Atreides
hah! For the BJ lexicon.
libertarian n. defn. A wingnut bigot or racist with a college degree in economics, theology or political science.
Calouste
@Ija:
Which airline does John McCain’s son fly for again?
Ghanima Atreides
@cleek: OBL got exactly what he was hoping for….the Arab Spring. A populist uprising against the crusaders and colonialists.
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
The moral destruction that Bin Laden wanted, in his mind, existed before a single U.S. soldier set foot on Iraqi soil. The rejection of modern Salafism was all the evidence he required that a particular people were the enemies of God, and therefor by definition a people who were morally corrupt. Plus, I hardly think Pan-Islamic fascist state that Bin Laden envisioned would mesh well with notions of civil libertarianism.
Besides, the whole purpose of pointing out our moral corruption was to galvanize Muslim sentiment against us. Al-Qaeda was to serve as the foundation (as “the base” is the literal translation of “Al-Qaeda”) for the final Islamic revolt against what they saw as a global Zionist conspiracy. Even if Bin Laden’s goal was to further the moral decay of the West through the self-corruption of our own legal doctrines, it would merely be a part of a larger strategy.
As for economic destruction, I’d wouldn’t exactly categorize 15-20% of GDP over a ten year period the final nail in the coffin of American capitalism. Our ruination, for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, would come when much of the world’s remaining petroleum reserves were under the exclusive control of a Pan-Islamic fascist state.
Ija
@The Moar You Know:
If the two men really were dangerous, or did something to make people suspect that they are dangerous (other than being dressed in Muslim clothes and having Muslim names), wouldn’t that fact have come out by now? You would think the airline would be all over themselves to make the facts known, if not through official channels (they have to apologize for PR and lawsuit purposes after all), surely through well-placed whisper campaign to a few reporters? This is how things are done, right? But so far there hasn’t been any story like that, no one suggesting the men were whispering about a bomb, or loudly praising Osama, or yelling Allahu akbar, or whatever. Surely something like that would have come out, no? SOMEONE is bound to talk after all.
Zagloba
@eemom
Too white, skinny, and pretty. How about Jason Momoa?
The Moar You Know
@Ghanima Atreides: Shoulda said “will come out within the pilot community”, I know damn well it will never see the light of a major news outlet. The MSM is almost as hostile to pilots as they are to Muslims, and the story will either stay as “sheet-wearing bigot pilot won’t let nice guy on plane” or “hero pilot won’t let Muslim who shits Semtex on aircraft”.
batemapa
the comments at the blaze story are absolutely incredible:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/muslims-allegedly-kicked-off-delta-flight-after-pilot-wont-fly-with-them-on-board/#comments
my favorite part of this is how these assholes think that all this represents is people finally standing up to political correctness, as if being a politically correct racist and xenophobe isn’t powerful and irrational enough
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
You could characterize “Arab Spring” in such a fashion, but its democratic nature is exactly the opposite of what Bin Laden envision and wanted. Democracy, in the mind of Bin Laden, was an exemplar of Western permissiveness. What he wanted in response was a counter-crusade of Muslim soldiers operating under a single banner, serving as the foundation for the Caliphate. The possibility of that happening has not increased with Arab Spring, but decreased.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly:
hahahaha!
The Muslim Brotherhood will be the main political party.
Their slogan is “Islam is the answer”.
77.2 of egyptians just voted for shariah law.
Iraq is kicking America’s ass out in December, which means we spent a trillion dollars and seven thousand soldier lives to make an islamic state that is going to give oil to Iran.
No one expects the Arab Spring.
And after the Arab Spring, the American Fall.
There is no way to spin Tahir and the “exit strategy” in Iraq and AfPak as anything but horrible for American influence in MENA.
Spike that OBL-kill endzone ball all you want, but he reshaped the world.
And not in America’s favor.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: no OBL wanted ISLAMIC DEMOCRACY, that is consent of the governed under the rule of law, shariah law. And that is what Egypt and Iraq both have.
OBL opposed westernstyle or “missionary” democracy.
loool
consider this…..
what if the Arab awakening makes this a geopolitical Year Zero? Those 300 million people may be divided among 20 different countries, but they all speak the same language, the same religion, they communicate through the same electronic media, they can see each other on TV. Egypt was the tipping point; just by itself it’s a quarter of the Arab population. From now on, every Friday in every Arab country is potentially a “day of rage”, until justice is seen to be done. External forces might try to hold back the process, co-opt, divert or divide it, and they’ll surely have some temporary successes, but I just don’t see this stopping until the Arab world has achieved political sovereignty and unity – not as a single national polity, but as a league or union which is a sovereign geopolitical actor. It’s as if a whole new continent is surfacing, and the existing powers will have to rearrange themselves to accommodate its existence.
Think about it sly…300 million people with their own oil and their own religion– The United States of Islam!
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: you are a retard.
OBL wasn’t a salafi, he was a wahabbi.
Wahabbist are Arab nationalists, salafis are millenialists.
OBL just wanted the western powers to GTFO MENA, the salafis are like jehovah witnesses– they are looking for the end of the world.
Mnemosyne
@Ghanima Atreides:
Uh, no, OBL wanted to found a new caliphate with himself as the caliph. You may want to re-read your history if you think that the caliphate did more than pay lip service to democracy. The Abbasids and Ottomans were not elected by the people.
Ghanima Atreides
@Mnemosyne:
cite please? I have never heard that. ;)
Again, OBL succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Cole’s point is sound. The GWOT became the American War on Muslims, both here and abroad.
KIlling Iraqis and Afghanis and Pakistanis in their own countries, and demonizing american muslim citizens at home.
America is now economically (9% unemployment, the deficit) and morally (torture, droning) bankrupt.
And the Generous Quran clearly states a ruler should govern with the consent of the people.
Is that in the bible anywhere?
Tim, Interrupted
Um…I hate to be the one to point this out (no, I don’t), but none of you knows the whole story here. As per usual, MSM is notoriously short on backstory and details.
Pretty sure this pilot has flown LOTS of passengers in Muslim gear over the years, so WHY the adamant refusal here? Wouldn’t some of you at least want to know his reasoning before going all emo/pc? I mean, I know doing so would totally fuck up your poutrage in this case, but it’s a thought…
Also, additionally, too, and furthermore: I LOVE LOVE LOVE how Cole has gone 180 from being all “INVADE AND KILL THE BROWNS, NO MATTER WHOM OR WHERE OR WHY!” to “I LOVE ALL BROWNS EVERYWHERE AT ALL TIMES AND AM THEIR CHAMPION EVEN WHEN I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT!”
Distrust extremists…especially extremists who do philosophical/political 180s and need blog hits.
MattR
@Tim, Interrupted:
I’d love you to come up with a reason that would justify the pilot’s reaction.
Ija
@The Moar You Know:
Maybe people wouldn’t be quick to jump on the racial profiling/bigot bandwagon if there had been any indication at all in any of the stories that the two men did something, anything, to make people suspect that they are “dangerous persons”. I mean, so far there is nothing at all, not even anonymous quotes about how the guys were “belligerent” or “uncooperative”, or whatever. I know a white guy who was thrown out of plane for being “belligerent”, so I know that things like that do happen, and racial bias may have nothing to do with it at all. But from the stories, it seems that the two men did nothing at all other than wearing Muslim clothes and having Muslim names.
El Tiburon
“Bin Laden’s death doesn’t end his fear-mongering value”
Epic Win.
If I’m AQ, I don’t even worry about launching an actual attack. I simply create a bunch of chatter about attacking, or say, all major malls or high school sporting events or whatever. Then I sit back and watch all the Scared Little Americans do the rest of the damage.
Ghanima Atreides
@cleek:
I have just proven you wrong, cleek.
Best whip out that pie filter.
;)
WereBear
@Sly: It does make a heckuva science fiction premise!
fhtagn
@Ghanima Atreides:
Oh look, it’s Mademoiselle Matoko Bush-Fellatrix, back to peddle some hatred of America with a side order of racist krazy klown krankery.
Ghanima Atreides
@fhtagn: trying for another thread derailment?
and again, i’m not a racist, unless christian and stupid are races now.
;)
hey Cole, when do you move the LoOG into the blogs we mock column?
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
On Egypt, claiming that the entire Egyptian population “voted for Shariah Law” is rather obtuse. Without elections (which Al-Qaeda has explicitly rejected), knowing the following becomes problematic:
1) The extent of the Muslim Brotherhood’s support among the Egyptian population. Even the pro-democracy movement had its factions, and a considerable number of Egyptians were (and likely remain) pro-Mubarak.
2) The extent of Al-Qaeda’s influence within the Brotherhood. This has always been a controversial topic, since the West tends to treat political Islam as one monolithic entity with a single agenda and vision when this is hardly the case. Its even difficult to categorically label the Brotherhood as a fundamentalist group.
There is no such thing as consent of the governed under the Caliphate.
A distinction that mostly exists in the minds of Westerners who don’t think that Muslim theological and political doctrines have changed, diversified, and combined since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Modern Salafism has been suffused with the teachings of al-Wahhab, and serves as the theological framework for Islamic fundamentalism. Modern Wahabbis are, by definition, Modern Salafis. And even if you insist on making a clear distinction for the sake of non-violent Salafis, all that would mean was that OBL was both Salafi and Wahabbi.
He wasn’t simply an “Arab nationalist.” Limiting his agenda as such puts him in the same fucking category as Nasser and Qaddafi. Are you seriously making that comparison?
trollhattan
Uh oh, Glenzilla due up on “Talk of America” to question the Osama mission. I kan haz prior commitment?
fhtagn
@Sly:
I fear that all previous attempts to reason with Miss Frothhead have ended in frustration. Still, I do applaud your heroic endeavour.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: that is all bulshytt. Every Arab Spring revolution has an operative franchise of the MB…the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Hamas in Palestine, al-Islah in Yemen, SMB or Al-Ikhwan in Jordan…even in Libya. Both Qaddafi and Mubarak outlawed the MB, and al-Qaradawi (head cleric of the MB) put out a death fatwa on Qaddafi.
Al-Q came from the MB, but has consistantly refused to renounce violence.
I’m a muslimah that has read Qutb, and I do know the distinctions.
To westerners who believe in separation of church and state…. However, Al-lah the Compassionate the Caring grants leadership in a theocracy, and so the Defender of the Faithful governed with the consent of both god and man.
;)
77.2% of the people that voted. Egypt is 90% muslim.
How did you think they would vote?
nancydarling
There is an excellent conversation between Madawi Al-Rasheed, a Saudi woman who teaches at Kings College, London, and Bernard Haykel of Princeton. There is much more light cast there than by Ghanima Atreides.
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/36025
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
I am not making the argument that the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t participating in Arab Spring. I am making the argument that the Muslim Brotherhood is one of many participants, and the exact impact it will have on the geopolitics of the region will remain an unknown until there actually are elections: When we see what candidates who are members of the Brotherhood propose as matters of public policy, and how the public responds to those proposals.
So when the Caliph, who rules through an Islamic conception of divine right, does something that the masses doesn’t like… when “God” and the people are not on the same page… who wins and who loses? Where does the public’s right to chose fit in?
You called Western Democracy “Missionary Democracy,” presumably because it does not treat apostasy, a necessary step in the proselytizing of others, as an offense against the state. It’s an interesting point. But it does not circumvent that fact that freedom of conscience is implicit in a democratic regime. Any regime that does not treat freedom of conscience, the freedom to choose, as a permanent right is, by definition, anti-democratic.
Tim, Interrupted
@MattR:
Why would I want to do that? I’m happy to hear what this dude has to say, if it’s ever made public. And if not, I’m ok with not knowing.
Maybe he is a complete douche bigot, but at this point none of us knows THAT either.
Embrace not knowing. It is the way of the Grasshopper. :D
Mnemosyne
@Tim, Interrupted:
You may have missed the news, but we killed Osama bin Laden last week. He was a guy who led a terrorist group called al-Qaeda that attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Any of that ring a bell?
Tim, Interrupted
And you may have missed the news, but YOU didn’t do a damn thing and you have nothing but U.S. government sources, which may or may not be accurate, to verify OBL’s demise.
Secondly, not getting your point? Are you assuming the pilot banned these Muslim dudes from his flight as a reaction to 9/11? How do you know that? Have you talked to him?
THE
Last Post. ;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Tim, Interrupted: How do you know that anyone posting on this thread did not have anything to do with getting bin Laden? Even if they weren’t a member of SEAL Team 6, the person might have had some involvement. You don’t know. Hell, if the person paid US taxes, they helped fund the training and equipping of the people who did it.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: lawl
Democracy, classical hellenic democracy, just means consent of the governed.
So “the governed” in dar ul Islam (the ummah, the muslims) means consent to the rule of shariah law.
Shariah forbids proselytization–freedom of speech legalizes proselytization.
Therefore al-Islam and freedom of speech are incompatible.
Westernstyle or judeochristian democracy, what i call missionary democracy, has freedom of speech and freedom of religion encoded as law.
Therefore missionary democracy and majority muslim states are not compatible–that is why the Bush Doctrine and COIN could never work.
Empirically this is true in Iraq(97% muslim) and Afghanistan(99% muslim).
This is also why shariah can never be implemented in law in the USA.
Christians and Jews could be citizens of the caliphate, they just couldn’t proselytize.
;)
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly:
Again, it is not right to chose, it is right to proselytize.
Do you believe in the intrinsic right to proselytize the poor and ignorant?
Muslims do not, and neither do Trey and Matt.
That is the difference between islamic democracy and missionary democracy.
And when muslims are DEMOCRATICALLY empowered to vote, like in Iraq and Egypt, they vote for islamic democracy with shariah law.
And America just spent 10 years, a trillion dollars in treasure and seven thousand soldiers in blood to find that out.
different church-lady
@Tim, Interrupted:
The problem here may actually be that folks are embracing not knowing a little too tightly. As in, “I don’t have enough information to know what’s really going on but I’m going to go ahead and form an opinion anyway.”
But then again, that’s always the problem.
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
Democracy means rule of the people. It means that literally. Republicanism, the modern incarnation of democracy, is the rule of the people by proxy. What you are articulating is the rule of God by proxy.
The prohibitions on evangelism in Islamic jurisprudence extend only to matters of compulsion or exploitation, as you have provided. Within the context of Islamic jurisprudence, it matters not one whit what I believe, because I am not a Muslim. However, one can advance a credible argument that freedom of conscience implies freedom from coercion, so the two are not categorically incompatible. Certainly not as incompatible as democracy and theocracy.
In other words, what is permitted depends upon the interpretation. Further, the nature of the rule of God by proxy depends upon which interpretation is the governing policy, and how that governing policy was decided upon. An authoritarian individual, or even a collection of scholars from a specific theological school, establishing that policy through coercion is not democratic. In fact, it seems to me that it is precisely the kind of compulsion that Islamic jurisprudence seeks to avoid.
There. I’ve just reconciled hundreds of years of seemingly impassible conflict within political Islam, and did it without being a Muslim, within two short paragraphs on a blog, and by being someone called a “retard” by a self-labeled Muslim who doesn’t know the relationship between modern Salafism and Wahabbism.
R U DONE?
Mnemosyne
@Tim, Interrupted:
Last I checked, a big chunk of my taxes are going towards the military so, yes, the Navy SEALS that I helped pay for got him.
No, I’m assuming the pilot banned these Muslim dudes because he was irrationally afraid of terrorist backlash from the killing of bin Laden. You know, that thing that just happened last week?
This is not the first time I’ve suspected you have the same condition the main character in Memento had, because you seem to think that events from last week somehow happened before 9/11/01.
ABL
@different church-lady: THIS.
yet again, i must point out that POCs have ALWAYS been harassed — whether on planes, in cars, in department stores, in restaurants.
Now that white folks also feel the sting of “WTF did I do to warrant being treated this way,” everybody is crying about how Osama won. He didn’t win. This country has been losing since its inception. Sure, small inroads have been made, but for every inroad, there pops up another egregious example of fuckery.
For many black folks (and its borne out by the numerous hip hop lyrics to this affect), 9/11 simply took the heat off us. Arab is the new black. And in the southwest, Latinos are still taking a beating.
But yes, let’s crow about how Osama took our freedoms.
Fucking hell.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: no.
Yes, the only thing possible in a theocracy.
There is no political Islam. There is only al-Islam.
Your babbling about “political Islam” makes no sense. The clergy are the lawyers are the government. They are all the same.
The only law is shariah law, islamic jurisprudence. There is no secular law.
Missionary democracy is very different; the clergy are not lawyers, lawyers are not clergy.
I understand that is a difficult concept for proselytizers to grasp.
bi la kayfah
Stefan
If the two men really were dangerous, or did something to make people suspect that they are dangerous (other than being dressed in Muslim clothes and having Muslim names),
A pet annoyance of mine: there’s no such thing as “Muslim clothes.” There’s clothes that are typically worn by Arabs, or by Persians, or by Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani/Afghan etc. Muslims, but these clothes are typical of their culture and region, not of their religion. Unlike some other religions (Judaism, Sikhism, etc.) the clothes have no religious significance. It’s like saying someone in a business suit is wearing Christian clothes.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: and you are the one that does not understand the history of Salafism and Wahhabism and teh different schools of sunni and shi’ia Islam.
you are a retard.
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
Which is antithetical to democracy.
So which is it? Is Arab Spring a grass-roots, non-violent movement for theocracy or is it a grass-roots, non-violent movement for democracy?
Either way you answer, the only possible conclusion is that Bin Laden lost. There is less likelihood that there will be a Pan-Islamic Caliphate governed by Al-Qaeda militants in which all elements hostile to their belief structure are purged and a final war will be waged against the “Zionist Conspiracy”. And that’s saying a lot, because the chances of that happening were abysmally low to begin with.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: why do you say a theocracy is antithetical to a democracy?
Does Iraq have a democracy? Egypt? Indonesia?
People vote there.
A theocracy only means there is no separation of church and state.
I think that is wrong.
No…there will be an Arab Union or perhaps an Arab/Persian Union of loosely affiliated islamic states with islamic democracies, where the citizens vote on leaders and the rule of law is islamic jurisprudence.
;)
that could certainly still happen.
And Bin Laden won. He destroyed the myth of American invulnerability.
He changed the world.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ghanima Atreides: Burning of the White House during the War of 1812. Pearl Harbor.
Ghanima Atreides
@nancydarling: Ms. Rasheed is a maftoon, and you are a retard.
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
Unless Islam (unlike virtually every other religion on the planet) accepts the notion that the wisdom of the masses is the reflection of the wisdom of God, then they are fundamentally incompatible.
It means more than that: it means a system in which political legitimacy is determined by God’s will. Since direct rule by God is somewhat problematic, theocracy therefor must entail the rule of a religious elite or a secular elite given the imprimatur or divine authority by a religious elite. It is authoritarian, unless God’s will is defined as a reflection of popular sentiment.
Which is counter to what Bin Laden wanted. Bin Laden was opposed to Pan-Arabism because he believed it would only enslave Muslims to the West.
Certainly not enough to make a global war against non-Muslims (and their Muslim handmaidens in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc) a real possibility in the minds of every Muslim with a complaint against the West. That was the whole purpose of 9/11.
Ghanima Atreides
@Omnes Omnibus: but we won WWII and the Revolutionary War. That is why I said teh MYTH of American invulnerability.
In case you haven’t noticed we lost in Iraq and and we are losing in AfPak.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: then Iraq and Egypt and Turkey and Indonesia are not democracies, by your definition.
;)
lol, no!
OBL hit both Wall Street and the Pentagon.
He junk-punched America in the economic nads.
Perhaps you do not understand the relationship between the bankstahs and the missionary democracy crusaders, but OBL understood it.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: you see….OBL knew he could not destroy America militarily….so the hit on the Twin Towers was a strike on our economy. IMHO it was wildly successful.
;)
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
Jesus Christ….
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was Salafi. A Salafi revivalist, to be precise. His alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud was the entire reason why Salafism spread in the Arabian Peninsula to begin with. What you call Wahhabism is merely Arabian Salafism.
And Salafi jihadism is much, much, much bigger than Wahhabism, because it’s much bigger than Saudi Arabia.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: and Salafism is classic millenialism.
Have you read Boyer’s Religion Explained or Atran’s In Gods We Trust?
If you want to say Wahabbism is a subset of salafism that focuses on arabian nationalism, I can agree with that. But salafism and wahabbism are not the same thaing, which is what you were saying.
;)
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
The goal of the attacks was to simultaneously hit the economic, military, and political centers of the United States. To stab the heart of the “Zionist Conspiracy” and “awaken” all Muslims to the possibility that a war against the West was not only possible, but preferable to the corrupt regimes like the one in Riyadh. 9/11 wasn’t supposed to be the final blow. It was supposed to be the opening punch.
Bin Laden believed that the entire purpose of the West, it’s reason for existing, was a Satanic plot to humiliate and destroy Islam. If this is “understanding” the relationship between global finance and the United States military, I’ll have some of what you’re smoking.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly:
no, he exhibited classic islamic EGT defense against proselytization reflex.
islamic terrorism is a reflex.
just as christians believe they are commanded to proselytize, muslims believe they are commanded to resist proselytization.
OBL understood he could not destroy America militarily. Too much mecha, too many soldiers, too much system redundancy.
I think the strike on the Pentagon was just a misdirect.
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
Yes. They have interesting ideas (moreso Pascal Boyer, I’m not much of an Atran fan), but what of it? Their evolutionary theories on religious belief are a bit beyond a discussion on the 18th century rise of Salafi revivalism in the Arabian Peninsula and its contributions to the political discourse within Islam in the late 20th century. This isn’t really “grand theory” stuff.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: Salafism is classic millenialism and fundamentalism, as described in both books.
Have you read Maynard-Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games?
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly:
in Islam, political legitimacy is determined by the very Word of God……by the Generous Quran and islamic jurisprudence (shariah).
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
We’re not disagreeing. My only caveat is that I take minor issue with the word “classic,” and the Christian construct of millennialism doesn’t exactly translate into Islamic eschatology. But I get the meaning. And, yes, Bin Laden framed the final struggle with the West as apocalyptic.
Also an interesting fact: The seizure of the Grand Mosque by militants loyal to Muhammad bin abd Allah al-Qahtani in 1979, who was declared by his brother-in-law to be the Mahdi, and the resulting siege and crackdown by the Saudi government, was a key event in pushing Osama Bin Laden away from the House of Saud as well as his own family.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ghanima Atreides: In that case, I offer Vietnam, Lebanon 1983, and Mogadishu as examples.
3d try, FYWP.
Tim, Interrupted
@Omnes Omnibus:
Weird. Did I say no one on this thread had anything to do with allegedly killing OBL? Did I say they did? Did someone on this thread SAY they helped do it explicitly, as opposed to the usual cheerleading use of the term “we?
Guess I missed when that happened…
Oh, oh, oh…I see!: If you paid taxes, you get to say YOU killed OBL now. That is awesome…guess you also get to say YOU landed on the moon and YOU killed all the little Iraqi and Afghani kids who have been wasted by U.S. bombs and missiles. Is that how that works?
Omnes Omnibus
@Tim, Interrupted: You made an assumption that the word we was used in a cheerleading sense. I just pointed out, in the spirit of your contributions upthread, that you could not know that Mnem had not been involved. I also said some involvement not commanded the SEAL team or copiloted one of the choppers. It really does help if you read and respond to what was written, but you won’t and, therefore, I shan’t continue this discussion.
Ghanima Atreides
@Omnes Omnibus: lool
Lebanon and mogadishu were not wars. OBL trained on Black Hawk Down.
And we forgot about Vietnam. National amnesia.
And all on foreign soil.
nah, 9/11 was vasty different.
A junk-punch right to the economic nads…on contiguous American soil ….right to Wall Street.
And OBL got so much bang for the buck. A handful of hijackers and four fuel bombs.
amazing.
Ghanima Atreides
@Sly: millenialism is not just christian, and both Atran and Boyer discuss that.
That is your problem….you see everything through the lens of western culture.
There are more things under heaven and in earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ghanima Atreides: I am tired this evening and I have neither the time nor the patience to point out the number of inconsistencies between your last several statements. Nor will I waste my time pointing out the issues that you are conflating. Go forth, crazy girl. Stay convinced of your own righteousness. Fly into your little rages, but don’t bother to actually learn the terminology that you use. Why should you try to learn or progress?
Ghanima Atreides
@Omnes Omnibus: all you do is scold an’ bitch about my lack of manners and empathy.
you never argue on substance.
and idc.
;)
fhtagn
@Ghanima Atreides:
You do realize that these pathetic squeals for attention are never going to get you any attention from ED Kain? He’s left, kid, and there was never any chance that you could squirm your way into the position of crazy booty-call girl anyway.
pattonbt
@Omnes Omnibus: Always remember this is the same person that was ferociously adamant in her support of our intervention into Libya. Her belief absolutely unassailable and based on FACTS! Nothing! and I mean NOTHING! could compete with her/his FACTS! The righteousness of her/his knowledge and omniscience could not be questioned by ANYONE who was of right mind! She/he is the all knowing all seeing oracle of all things and no one, NO ONE!, can come close to obtaining such high understanding! We are all merely babes sucking at her/his teat of knowledge. If only we would take to it, all would be perfect!
And of course with the span of a single thread (with no change of facts on the ground in Libya or our level of involvement) she changed her mind. Of course this change was also based on FACTS! (and stuff) and her new position was equally unassailable.
This was also the person who knew, KNEW!, that the cell phone effect was totally real and unquestionable and the R’s COULD NOT WIN last November.
This is also the person that used to be full throated in her support of GWB and his policies. Her FACTS and KNOWLEDGE unassailable then as well.
I have simply come to believe that the more this person expresses their certainty about anything the more sure I am I can safely believe the opposite. But it sure is an interesting ride to watch! This is not meant at a dig to her/him, I like almost all the people on this site and she/he brings tremendous insanity and intensity to the field and I think she/he is always trying to come from a good place.
But, methinks it might be wise if she/he reviewed her overall track record (something our host here does quite well) and back off the all knowing superior to thou stuff.
Oh, and Cudlip!
Ghanima Atreides
@fhtagn: hahaha, im not the one that is terminally butthurt about his mancrush leaving BJ. I’m thrilled hes gone…did I speed his exit? sweet! EDK went fullfrontal libertarian and his GBCW world is going to stick. EDK would have been laffed off this blog with the epic glibertarian crap he is churning out lately. And eventually Cole is going to move the LoOG into the blogs we mock column.
@pattonbt: do you know what cudlips do?
They dont learn. They just keep chewing that failcud.
I learned. The cell phone nation turned the red wave to beach break in colorado where I live, where I worked on Bennet’s campaign, where the Rasmussen polls showed Tancredo and Buck ahead. I changed my mind about Bush, and about Libya. I changed my mind about horrorshow Bush with empirical data, partly after my reversion to Islam when I came to understand how EGT applies to evolution of religion and the epic fail of COIN and the Bush Doctrine…im young. im still learning the world.
I changed my mind about Libya after after someone sent me Mataconis’ article on Humanitarian Imperialism and Right to Protect. I dislike HI doctrine, but I still think Libya will succeed as an operation.
Because of the Arab Spring.
And on this thread cudlips are still insisting on American exceptionalism, endzone ball spiking, and that OBL didn’t “win”. Empirically he accomplished a great many of his goals. …chief among them turning the GWOT into the American War on Muslims, a war OBL knew America can never win….that is Cole point.
If you don’t think the great evil and atrocity and human death and misery levied on the Arab World by 10 years of OIF and OEF haven’t contributed to the advent of the Arab Spring, you are a cudlip too.
And im a grrl.
;)
Ghanima Atreides
No argument here.
When pilots kick innocent American muslim citizens off planes for no reason but prejudice and fear, then OBL has won. When 70% of the people in a country that has freedom of religion vote against construction of a mosque, then OBL has won.
Ghanima Atreides
and since fhtagen brought it up, the Manzi/Krugman solidarity post that EDK, Sully, McArdle and glibertarians everywhere are slobbering over is written by an ex-defense contractor that retired as a millionaire at age 43 to live in France, who has french healthcare and whose children go to french schools.
nostalgie de la suzerain, lol.
Ghanima Atreides
pardon my french.
nostalgie de la suzeraineté that should be.
That is all conservatism/libertarianism is anymore.
Plus a bathetic belief in Hayek and the other Dead White Guy Phailosophers.
And in my studies of “economics” I am learning that Free Market Theory can never work, just like missionary democracy can never work in majority muslim nations.
Because of evolutionary economics, the biological basis of behavior, and evolutionary theory of games.
Ghanima Atreides
@fhtagn: hmmm. Here is at least a quasi-interesting post from the LoOGies.
no comments yet.
Will they have enough self-examination to realize the parallels between Bush-era America and the Greeks?
Alas for us, Bush was no wily Odysseus.
And Rufus wants to blame Helen for the tragedy…such a conservative/puritan/libertarian viewpoint….but the glamour of sex was not the downfall of the Trojans and the Greeks…like Americas illfated expedition to MENA, it was tribalism and revenge.
Why do conservatives and libertarians hate women so?
pattonbt
@Ghanima Atreides: My only point is you take such monumental and (uniquely) vociferous stands on your beliefs and chastise anyone who points out counter information as poor, intellectually challenged dolts who could not possibly understand whatever the issue at hand is to the degree you do even though the information presented against your stand is solid.
Like all humans, you are not correct nearly as often as you’d like to believe you are (and you have a long history of error to point to). And this site as almost exclusively dedicated to mocking people who act in such a manner (granted, mostly those who hold beliefs counter to those of the community at large). But we can always count on you to leap head first into your next “belief” with the same abandon and forget the errors of your past and act as if they were inconsequential and should not have any bearing on how we view your current stands. Can you see then maybe why many people do not take you seriously (or as seriously as you believe we should)?
And by the way, I also voted for and donated to Bennet. The polling was always close one Bennet was actually neck and neck, if not just a hair ahead, by election day so the “cell phone effect” wasn’t in Colorado either. Just sayin’.
THE
@pattonbt:
It’s very true, pattonbt.
Ghanima has one of the most binary minds I have ever encountered. You find yourself spending most of your time trying to get her to understand the subtlety of the real world. And she is always dismissive of it.
All empirical truth is uncertain and probabilistic in nature.
Unfortunately she is boolean.
fhtagn
@THE:
Or, in short: she’s a nut.
Ghanima Atreides
@pattonbt: Rasmussen had Buck and Tancredo ahead.
And it was determined post election that Rasmussen’s polling was distorted by cell only effect.
I was right, you are wrong, looks pretty binary from here.
;)
Mayhap we can discuss other places where I was proven wrong since I have posted on this blog?
Ghanima Atreides
@THE: you are just pissy because i won’t do what you want. I will never do what you want.
I will do what I want, what Im interested in at the moment.
@fhtagn: and you are just pissy because I helped run your mancrush back to the LoOG.
And I was right about that too. He was a libertarian all along.
;)
fhtagn
@Ghanima Atreides:
Oh look, it’s Lady Matoko Bush-Fellatrix, obsessing over ED Kain again. It’s a sad thing to see the wretched creature grovelling for attention and hoping he might relent and take her as a concubine.
THE
@Ghanima Atreides:
Oh no. I am not pissy at all.
I worry how much you are simply unaware of.
It means that things happen “out of the blue” for you.
And then you invent some other extreme explanation.
So you are ricocheting from theory to theory all the time.
It’s much better if you could juggle multiple constructs in your mind at the same time,
without committing in the absence of really hard evidence.
I wish you could watch the way my Bayesian programs do it.
They have no problem handling thousands of hypotheses at once.
They just shift probabilities as new evidence comes in.
pattonbt
@Ghanima Atreides: Rasmussen? Do some research on Rasmussens predictive history and then we can talk about whether or not you want to use that pollster as one on which you would want to base an argument.
Their poll problems were not due to the “cell phone” effect, they were due to the “we’re biased f*cks” effect. Also, too, I did look back at all the polls I could find and at best (excluding Fox and Rasmussen as the outliers, which is fair based on their historical biases) the race was pretty much dead even up to the wire with Buck up by at most 1 to 2 points at most and all indicators showing Bennet closing (Bennet won by 1.7, easily within the margin of error on most polls). So I’m not sure how my point above is wrong.
And NOBODY had Trancedo ahead. Maybe months and months before the election but Trancedo was done well before the election happened.
Here is a wikipedia link that I used as reference for Colorado polls – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Colorado,_2010
And here is a link from 538 on Rasmussen – http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/polling-accuracy/
So, you were saying……
pattonbt
@Ghanima Atreides: And on places you have been proven wrong? I mentioned the ones that came to my head above and feel (including my rebuttal to your rebuttal just above this reply) that is sufficient for my purposes. Those are areas were you freely admit you were wrong (well, not the cell phone effect, but I digress) and, in my opinion, being wrong in those areas makes your judgment suspect forever, period.
While you may have had an epiphany (like our host) and come over from the dark side (and I believe it is genuine and I/we are glad to have you here) your old full throated support of the right can always be used as direct evidence that you can be swayed to believe in seriously awful things, and believe with fervor.
I don’t use that at means to cow you or stifle your voice, we are all fallible, but just something which you might want to keep in the back of your mind about your currently held fervent beliefs and that you can (and have been) find yourself believing in and supporting lies. That’s all.
Ghanima Atreides
@fhtagn: lool, im thrilled hes not here. That is all I wanted, membah? The Hook?
/spikes ball in endzone
haha, so rude, im sowwy.
;)
And the day is coming when Cole has to move the LoOG into the blogs we mock column. That will be supersweet.
@pattonbt:
no it doesn’t. That is how science works. The old orthodox model gets replaced by the heresy, the new and superior model based on empirical data. I change my belief models based on new empirical evidence.
I’m passionate about a lot of things. That is a feature, not a bug.
But i wasn’t proven wrong. Rasmussen was spoofed by cell only distortion. And you cannot (upon observation) come up other examples.
Therefore I am forced to logically conclude you are full of it.
THE
@Ghanima Atreides:
You really haven’t understood then.
That is what I want you to do too.
I am criticizing a flawed method, not a flawed purpose.
fhtagn
@Ghanima Atreides:
Still no ED Kain for you, Tokie. Game over.
THE
@Ghanima Atreides:
Not really. That is a retelling of Thomas Khun’s thesis about scientific revolutions.
It’s a sociology of science:
How scientific revolutions, new paradigms, spread through the community of science.
It’s not a normative model for rational thought.
It’s not how an individual should do science.
If you make up your mind about something, and then refuse to consider any contrary evidence,
that is a methodological error known as confirmation bias.
pattonbt
@Ghanima Atreides: Did you read my links at all? Just writing “Rasmussen was spoofed by cell only distortion” and going THIS, is not a winning argument. I gave you solid evidence of why Rasmussen has had a consistent R bias of a few points (historical, proven and across all polls) and that if you take that consistent bias and factor it into it’s polls it conducted in the Colorado Senate (and every other) race, you would have ended up with it being in the same margin as the other polls. Then, looking at all the polls from the Colorado senate race the end results was in the margin of error of all polls and thus there was no “cell phone” effect of any measurable magnitude.
For someone who seems to claim SCIENCE and EMPIRICAL DATA and other word salad scientific model jargon as much as you, you seem to ignore it when it is inconvenient to your core argument. Seriously. Where are my facts on Rasmussen wrong? Evidence please, not just “I SAID SO, SO THERE!”.
And, if I am reading you correctly, how were you past beliefs in the Libertarian/Republican world in any way related to science? Are you trying to claim that there was a time in the recent past while you held those beliefs that those beliefs were backed by facts and science? Seriously?
And I’m full of it? Strange. Your response is pure babble and makes no sense whatsoever. But keep on keeping on true believer.
But keep on keeping on.
pattonbt
@pattonbt: Oops. Missed the edit window. Forgot to delete my double “keep on” comment.