Australian Politics Forum - Islamic terrorism statistics

Karnal

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #105 - Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:28pm

Soren wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:20pm:

Karnal wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:17pm:

Soren wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 9:56pm:

polite_gandalf wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 9:32pm:

FD Mark I was of course correct.

When terrorists set out to kill as many civilians as they can, its really just down to chance how "successful" they end up being. Muhammad Atta and his crew pulled it off, but it could easily have passed by as just another footnote in the long history of terrorism in the west. Even when they managed to hit the towers, it was due to another freak of chance that the buildings collapsed causing most of the casualties (thanks in part to a history of improper structural maintenance). Conversely, I'm sure Tim McVeigh would have settled with a death toll 10 times what he got - and might conceivably have got it on a different day. Ditto for the countless other non-muslim terrorists who have proven their intention to inflict maximum civilian casualties - but were thwarted only by chance or incompetence.

If Islamists had killed 3000 people in hundreds of attacks during a sustained period of time, then the 'threat' of islamists would be a no-brainer. But when its one attack which was a complete fluke, and is not really unique amongst all the different terrorist groups in terms of ambition, then its really more accurate to identify it as something that skews the terrorist threat, rather than accurately reflects it.

The best terrorist threat measure is frequency of attacks - especially when those attacks are designed to inflict casualties. That they may sometimes fail through sheer chance in achieving the casualty rate they were aiming for is no reason to dismiss the threat in any way.

Islam is an alien and hostile creed. Why should anyone accommodate it? Why should it be treated as if it was the same as native/local creeds and cultures?

Why should the West not treat it as an alien and hostile creed? There is no reason.

No, old chap, I’m sorry - I’m sorry, but FD begs to differ with you there. He thinks people should have Freedom.

I know, it’s hilarious, but there you have it.

The civilised world can be divided into two groups: scrunchers and folders.

The tinted world doesn’t count, of course. They use their hands.

You don’t really count either, dear chap. You have your bag.

You’re more a sprayer, no?

At least I don't eat it, like you do.

Now now, time for bed. We’ll discuss your creations in the morning.

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Soren

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #106 - Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:46pm

Karnal wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:28pm:

Soren wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:20pm:

Karnal wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 10:17pm:

Soren wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 9:56pm:

polite_gandalf wrote on Apr 24^th, 2014 at 9:32pm:

FD Mark I was of course correct.

When terrorists set out to kill as many civilians as they can, its really just down to chance how "successful" they end up being. Muhammad Atta and his crew pulled it off, but it could easily have passed by as just another footnote in the long history of terrorism in the west. Even when they managed to hit the towers, it was due to another freak of chance that the buildings collapsed causing most of the casualties (thanks in part to a history of improper structural maintenance). Conversely, I'm sure Tim McVeigh would have settled with a death toll 10 times what he got - and might conceivably have got it on a different day. Ditto for the countless other non-muslim terrorists who have proven their intention to inflict maximum civilian casualties - but were thwarted only by chance or incompetence.

If Islamists had killed 3000 people in hundreds of attacks during a sustained period of time, then the 'threat' of islamists would be a no-brainer. But when its one attack which was a complete fluke, and is not really unique amongst all the different terrorist groups in terms of ambition, then its really more accurate to identify it as something that skews the terrorist threat, rather than accurately reflects it.

The best terrorist threat measure is frequency of attacks - especially when those attacks are designed to inflict casualties. That they may sometimes fail through sheer chance in achieving the casualty rate they were aiming for is no reason to dismiss the threat in any way.

Islam is an alien and hostile creed. Why should anyone accommodate it? Why should it be treated as if it was the same as native/local creeds and cultures?

Why should the West not treat it as an alien and hostile creed? There is no reason.

No, old chap, I’m sorry - I’m sorry, but FD begs to differ with you there. He thinks people should have Freedom.

I know, it’s hilarious, but there you have it.

The civilised world can be divided into two groups: scrunchers and folders.

The tinted world doesn’t count, of course. They use their hands.

You don’t really count either, dear chap. You have your bag.

You’re more a sprayer, no?

At least I don't eat it, like you do.

Now now, time for bed. We’ll discuss your creations in the morning.

And you are eating it.
Miam miam.

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Karnal Gold Member Online Australian Politics Posts: 95430 Gender:	Re: Islamic terrorism statistics Reply #107 - Apr 24^th, 2014 at 11:08pm We’ll have to pull your posts up from.2007, old boy. Miam miam indeed. They must have been delightful.
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Soren Gold Member Offline Posts: 25654 Gender:	Re: Islamic terrorism statistics Reply #108 - Apr 24^th, 2014 at 11:11pm You are eating shite and you are grinning. You know it, we know it. Miam miam (Lat, carry on).
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freediver

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #109 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 9:23am

Quote:

What a load of crap. You quote one maverik imam but ignore the groundswell of public condemnation for terrorism from the muslim community

You also cited Tim McVeigh but forget to point out that just about every other person on earth opposed his actions. This proves that you are a bigot. It sounds absurd when people expect this from you doesn't it Gandalf?

How many Muslims do you think were involved behind the scenes in orchestrating 9/11? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

Quote:

Muslim leaders in Britain now actively work with authorities in a very successful program to counter extremism.

Is this because they recognised the threat? Or did they politely inform the 'auithorities' that we have to let a million people die from Islamic terrorism before we abandon your style of politically correct spineless apologetics?

Quote:

I'm not even going to bother asking you to substantiate your claim - as I can't be bothered going through another 20 pages of spineless obfuscation.

Time to start backpedaling again now Gandalf. How many need to die before you acknowledge reality? 1 million? 2 million? Could you perhaps concede that a terrorist attack in which thousands die is a bit worse than one in which only property is damaged?

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polite_gandalf

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #110 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 11:46am

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 9:23am:

You also cited Tim McVeigh but forget to point out that just about every other person on earth opposed his actions.

Slight difference - I didn't say that Tim McVeigh had "widespread" support amongst non-muslims.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 9:23am:

This proves that you are a bigot. It sounds absurd when people expect this from you doesn't it Gandalf?

It does sound absurd when you pretend I am doing to non-muslims what you are doing to muslims.

This was a particularly silly thing to say FD.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 9:23am:

Is this because they recognised the threat? Or did they politely inform the 'auithorities' that we have to let a million people die from Islamic terrorism before we abandon your style of politically correct spineless apologetics?

Is this your attempt to defend you BS claim that muslim terrorism has "widespread" support, and mislead everyone by citing a fringe voice as somehow representative of the muslim community?

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 9:23am:

Time to start backpedaling again now Gandalf. How many need to die before you acknowledge reality? 1 million? 2 million? Could you perhaps concede that a terrorist attack in which thousands die is a bit worse than one in which only property is damaged?

Good gracious, I just assumed you would have realised how badly you misunderstood my point by now - instead of creating one gigantic strawman out of it.

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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:

Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.

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freediver

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #111 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 11:51am

Quote:

Slight difference - I didn't say that Tim McVeigh had "widespread" support amongst non-muslims.

Islamic terrorists have enough support to pull of 9/11. How many Muslims do you think were involved behind the scenes in orchestrating it? 10? 100? 1000? 10000? A bit different from Tim McVeigh don't you think? Perhaps even a bigger threat?

Quote:

Good gracious, I just assumed you would have realised how badly you misunderstood my point by now - instead of creating one gigantic strawman out of it.

Did I imagine that you said this?

Quote:

If Islamists had killed 3000 people in hundreds of attacks during a sustained period of time, then the 'threat' of islamists would be a no-brainer.

Care to do some more backpedaling for us?

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polite_gandalf

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #112 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:08pm

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 11:51am:

Islamic terrorists have enough support to pull of 9/11. How many Muslims do you think were involved behind the scenes in orchestrating it? 10? 100? 1000? 10000? A bit different from Tim McVeigh don't you think? Perhaps even a bigger threat?

I never said there wasn't significant support for islamic terrorism. And by 'significant' I don't mean 'widespread' or 'mainstream' which is what you clearly were implying. You only need a relatively small group of dedicated fanatics to pull off something like this. But it is by no means "widespread", and it is particularly dishonest to cite a single fanatic to imply a mainstream view, and deliberately ignore all the actual mainstream islamic bodies and leaders who unequivocally condemn it. And it is even more dishonest to answer this by rhetorically asking if these bodies were simply being cynical in their condemnation.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 11:51am:

Did I imagine that you said this?

You imagined what I meant by it.

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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:

Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.

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freediver

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #113 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:18pm

Quote:

I never said there wasn't significant support for islamic terrorism.

You did however argue that this does not contribute to Islamic terrorism being a greater threat.

Quote:

And by 'significant' I don't mean 'widespread' or 'mainstream' which is what you clearly were implying.

So I did not actually say it?

Quote:

You only need a relatively small group of dedicated fanatics to pull off something like this.

How many Muslims do you think were involved behind the scenes in orchestrating 9/11? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

Quote:

But it is by no means "widespread", and it is particularly dishonest to cite a single fanatic to imply a mainstream view

By 'single fanatic' do you mean the British Imam who happened to get busted by the media sprouting his Islamic taqiyya?

Quote:

You imagined what I meant by it.

So what did you really mean by this?

Quote:

If Islamists had killed 3000 people in hundreds of attacks during a sustained period of time, then the 'threat' of islamists would be a no-brainer.

Are you going to backpedal, or just pretend you didn't say it?

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Karnal

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #114 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:49pm

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 11:51am:

Quote:

Slight difference - I didn't say that Tim McVeigh had "widespread" support amongst non-muslims.

Islamic terrorists have enough support to pull of 9/11. How many Muslims do you think were involved behind the scenes in orchestrating it? 10? 100? 1000? 10000? A bit different from Tim McVeigh don't you think? Perhaps even a bigger threat?

Depends. If your measurement of terrorism is the number of deaths, Timothy McVeigh is well up there.

Most orchestrated suicide bombings in places like Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, etc, actually cause minimal damage and death when compared to military strikes, conventional bombings and what we optimistically term, "troop surges" in civilian populations.

Their horror of terrorism comes in the randomness of the attack. This is its strength - a strength known by guerrilla fighters from Geronimo to Mao Tse Tung.

The scale of September 11 was not the number of deaths, but the sheer audacity of an attack on the centre of global trade. As everybody knows, the 3000 odd deaths on September 11 pails.in comparison to any single US bombing campaign in history, "surgical strikes" or not, for "good" reasons or not.

The scale of September 11 was purely symbolic. A beautiful day, two jumbo jets flying into twin towers, people jumping from the windows. Most importantly, it was symbolic because of where it struck: the very centre of the world.

We’ve been watching war in real time since TV news got the lightweight cameras to film it. We’ve watched death close up on the nightly news in Vietnam, tthe Faulklands, the Gulf Wars and the Balkans. Such death is always impossible to empathise with - how can you feel for hundreds of thousands of civilian "casualties"? Such death is so far from home.

But on September 11, I saw people crying at the senseless death and destruction. It shocked us. Many didn’t turn up for work. September 11 was a strike on us.

No one shed a tear when the US innvaded Panama in the late 1980s, fire bombed the barios and took out tens of thousands of the world’s poorest shanty dwellers in one afternoon. Actually, no one knew. The news only reported the invasion when the US got Norreiga in cuffs.

Such is the power of terrorism. It makes the news, it’s random.and unexpected, and it stops business. Car bombings in Iraq mean bugger all - the "real" terrorism has to strike at our existence.

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Soren

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #115 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 1:26pm

Karnal wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:49pm:

No one shed a tear when the US innvaded Panama in the late 1980s, fire bombed the barios and took out tens of thousands of the world’s poorest shanty dwellers in one afternoon. Actually, no one knew. The news only reported the invasion when the US got Norreiga in cuffs.

Such is the power of terrorism.

Such is the power of utter bollocks.

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Karnal

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #116 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 1:35pm

Soren wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 1:26pm:

Karnal wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:49pm:

No one shed a tear when the US innvaded Panama in the late 1980s, fire bombed the barios and took out tens of thousands of the world’s poorest shanty dwellers in one afternoon. Actually, no one knew. The news only reported the invasion when the US got Norreiga in cuffs.

Such is the power of terrorism.

Such is the power of utter bollocks.

Disagreeing with the bombing, old chap, or the figure?

Please explain.

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freediver

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #117 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 2:02pm

Quote:

Depends. If your measurement of terrorism is the number of deaths, Timothy McVeigh is well up there.

Sure. If you exclude Islamic terrorism, it is at the top. But you are never going to get one man hijacking four airliners and flying them into buildings. That takes organisation. That takes a broad, well funded support base. That takes Islamic terrorism.

Quote:

The scale of September 11 was not the number of deaths, but the sheer audacity of an attack on the centre of global trade. As everybody knows, the 3000 odd deaths on September 11 pails.in comparison to any single US bombing campaign in history, "surgical strikes" or not, for "good" reasons or not.

It was the biggest death toll of any terrorist attack, but that is irrelevant? People were pissed off because Muslims were audacious, not because they killed 3000 people?

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polite_gandalf

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #118 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 3:48pm

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:18pm:

You did however argue that this does not contribute to Islamic terrorism being a greater threat.

Correct - because it doesn't.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:18pm:

So I did not actually say it?

You said that it was widespread and quoted a single muslim in the UK as if he was mainstream.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:18pm:

How many Muslims do you think were involved behind the scenes in orchestrating 9/11? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

I don't know, but it needed to be small so that their cover wouldn't be blown. Probably less than 100.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:18pm:

By 'single fanatic' do you mean the British Imam who happened to get busted by the media sprouting his Islamic taqiyya?

This is the ugly face of prejudice. Any reasonable person would expect to see some actual evidence before smearing the muslim community like this. And the actual evidence (of muslims overwhelmingly condemning terrorism) is dismissed as a sinister conspiracy. You're becoming more and more a Yadda clone every day.

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2014 at 12:18pm:

So what did you really mean by this?

Quote:
If Islamists had killed 3000 people in hundreds of attacks during a sustained period of time, then the 'threat' of islamists would be a no-brainer.

Are you seriously still asking me this?

3000 total deaths in hundreds of attacks over several decades represents a bigger terrorist threat than a single attack which kills 3000 people in one hit.

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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:

Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.

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freediver

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Re: Islamic terrorism statistics
Reply #119 - Apr 25^th, 2014 at 6:42pm

Quote:

Correct - because it doesn't.

OK, just to be perfectly clear, you believe that the fact that there are a far larger number of Muslims willing to support Islamic terrorism compared to other terrorist groups does not increase the risk of Islamic terrorism by increasing the capacity of Muslim terrorists to kill large numbers of people?

Quote:

You said that it was widespread and quoted a single muslim in the UK as if he was mainstream.

It is a widespread view. I gave you a classic example to demonstrate this. Are you suggesting that this is only a problem if support for terrorism is 'mainstream' among Muslims?

Quote:

I don't know, but it needed to be small so that their cover wouldn't be blown. Probably less than 100.

Including all the donors who did not need to know the strategic details? In fact there could have been a whole host of people involved in pulling it off that did not need to know enough to 'blow their cover'.

Let's take your 100 people for the moment. If we compare with this with the leading contemporary non-Muslim terroist - McVeigh - do you think that the lack of an organisation to provide support for McVeigh and similar people contributed to the difference in death toll between the Oklahom bombing and 9/11?

Quote:

This is the ugly face of prejudice. Any reasonable person would expect to see some actual evidence before smearing the muslim community like this.

I am not smearing the entire Muslim community with this. I am smearing the terrorists, their supporters, and the limp wristed apologists. I even suggested some numbers for you: 10? 100? 1000? 10000? Is that all the genuine Muslims left in the world?

Quote:

And the actual evidence (of muslims overwhelmingly condemning terrorism) is dismissed as a sinister conspiracy.

Would you mind quoting me? Or are you not accusing me of this?

Quote:

3000 total deaths in hundreds of attacks over several decades represents a bigger terrorist threat than a single attack which kills 3000 people in one hit.

Ah total deaths. I still disagree with you. 9/11 highlighted a serious ongoing threat. If we had done nothing, this threat would not have gone away. We would have had more terrorist attacks in which 3000 or far more people died. 9/11 was a PR coup for the Muslim terrorists, precisely because so many Muslims support terrorism. It strengthened them, and if we had danced to the tune of the limp wristed apologists, they would have grown even stronger and launched more or bigger attacks. There may have been 'widespread condemnation', but there was no movement within the Islamic world to actually dismantle the institutions responsible for this. Instead, they did everything within their power to get in the way. Abu for example insisted that instead of invading Afghanistan, we should have sat down and negotiated with every tribal warlord.

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