Most Muslims on here defend Islam instead and attack those on here who criticize Islam. They are too busy playing the victim rather than condemning people who shoot 14 year old girls in the head and ignoring the anti-Islam comments.

Nonsense – it’s not religion as such, but radical Islam. No other world religion has followers who use its teachings to justify the denial of education to girls and the killing of those courageous people who resist them. You don’t find adherents of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Judaism or Christianity doing this. Unfortunately, Islamic supremacist theology contains teachings — in this case the Koranic verses on women — that can be interpreted to justify this type of oppression, and also plenty of recruits willing to act on them.

Yesterday, outside the Dail, over a dozen members of the Buddhist minority in Bangla Desh stood with placards protesting against Islamic supremacist oppression in their country. (They chose a bad day as the big farmers’ demo swallowed them up).

Nonsense – you are an apologist for a patriarchal lust for power and control. Religion is the language of this lust.

No Mel, all the different sects of all the different religions are conditioned to dislike each other. Christians along the bible belt are told the Pope is the Anti-Christ. Catholics and Protestants are thought to despise each other. The two main types of Muslim are constantly warring with each other. They ALL hate Jews. India is no better with the Buddhists etc…. And it was a common practice among Christianity to burn young girls as witches (because it was a sin to shed blood).

And what about the animals directing the drones that are reckoned by a recent US study to be having a 2% militant casualty rate, the other 98% civilians, many children.
How do we even know this was not a false flag black op precisely to inflame. Read a little history of ‘special forces’ SOPs(Standard Operating Procedures). Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim is the new anti-semitism. It is a whipped and stirred hate device to distract from the internal criminal activities of the corporations running these wars, and thus imploding their own economic stabilty for further plunder.
‘War is the continuation of politics by other means.’ Clausewitz.
The anger expressed on this thread is exactly what is required to motivate the ongoing PNAC crusade launched by Cheyney/Bush&Co.

Not Islam…religious literal fundamentalist puritanism. As brewed and cultivated by Wahhabi Sunni Saudi, and used by the US to mobilise Afhanis against the quite progressive soviet regime in Kabul in the ’80s. And as spreading on its crusaade against Shia Iran through multi-faith Syria with the collusion, yet again, of Nato and Sunni Turkey.

All religious are prone to this psychotic exteremism..as is atheism. Even scientists can cling to dead theories, to the detriment of scientific thinking. Their ‘faith’ in their own scientific rectitude creates the requisite blind-spot for self-deception. Thats why it takes revolutionary theories, from Copernicus to Einstein so long to break the conviction-barrier of established dogmatic theory.
Same with the moral certitudes of religion. We see it regularly in holy Catholic Ireland with its institutional convictions of ethical supriority.

@Damien while your on the subject of extremism don’t forget to include politics, from right wing extreme god fearing conservatism to the atheistic loony left wing.

@Damien
did you really just try and blame the US /NATO for the fact that these warped psychopaths tried to murder a 14 year old girl whose only ‘crime’ was to criticise them?

It’s pretty evident that all religions have extremists but other religions have civilized unlike Islam. Haven’t heard many Christians hijacking planes, stoning people to death, beheading, mutilating, chopping noses off, and putting a bullet through a 14 year old girls head over a peace award. The article is about radical-Islam not the 700 club or the Pope.

@Kevin agreed its a pity some people hijack the forum to rant.

@Andy, you mean like the series of distorting rants my comments seem to have elicited?

@Mattoid:Less with the straw construction polemics. Try reading whats written.

@Kevin:What religion was George W?The developers of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos?The inventor of Napalm and Agent Orange?Drop the bigotry.

I was answering peter’s repeated simplistic question. It ain’t that simple, except to simpletons.

@Damien
All I’m saying is that its sad that you can’t just condemn this barbaric act for what it it is instead of going off on an anti-US anti-imperialism rant and trying to make out that the people that carried it out are solely a product of evil western imperialistic interference.

If, as you claim, thats not what you were saying then why bring the US, NATO, Dubya, nuclear weapons, agent orange and napalm into a thread thats about a child being shot through the head for criticizing islamofascists and affirming her right to an education?

@Damien – What a moronic comparison. It’s just like when people compare the NI-IRA (domestic terrorism) and UVF (domestic terrorism) to Al Qaeda (worldwide Islamic terrorism). You’re going to compare isolated incidents like the ones you listed (when most of them didn’t cite a religion for their actions or kill themselves for Jesus) with Islamism/Sharia Law Movement/Taliban/Al Qaeda? 78 percent of Pakistanis support death for apostates. 83 percent of Pakistanis support stoning for adulterers. Do 78 percent of Irish support death for apostates? Does 83 percent of Irish support stoning for adulterers?

Damien, I concur with your assessment of the historical reasons for the rise of the Taliban in Afganistan. If the CIA had not armed and aided the Mujahidin the Russians would never have had to resort to their desperate tactics like the countless documented atrocities against civilians and wiping out entire villages from the air in order to keep their “progressive’ regime in place in Kabul. I’m sure the Russians only had the good of the Afghan people in mind. Those pesky Yanks just can’t stay out of other peoples business can they?

I’m still trying to figure out how Sunni muslims can go on a crusade….

Well well, the wasps are abuzz.
@mattoid: repeat, I was responding to a simplistic input from peter. To sum up this atrocity as ‘Islam’ is like calling Bloody Sunday ‘Protestantism’, or IRA atrocities as ‘Catholics’, a habit the BBC cultivated for the last 50 years(with a little collaboration from our compliant southern media)to avoid examining the underlying factors. You think ‘Islam’ sums it up?Crusade is cognate with jihad. Mirror religious wars. You can’t see that?Thats the literalism I referred to above.
Nobody mentions the ‘warped psychopaths’ waging a drone war killing kids every day. A recent US study reckoned 1 in 50 victims are actual combatants. Double standards?
@Kevin. I think I stated that the problem was Islamic fundamentalist extremism, as opposed to ‘Islam’. Can you tell the difference?
Are you lads saying my depiction of the origins of al Qaida in Saudi and US geopolitical shuffling are wrong?Do elaborate.
@Jim: Afghanistan has been at the crossroads of empires since before Alexander wandered through…and still is.
Its the anti-Islamic tar-brush I oppose. It remains a gross and dangerous simplification playing to knee-jerk bigotry.
Which suits certain agendas.

You just can’t help yourself Damien – you’re still going on about the evils of the US in a thread that has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Like I said, its sad that you can’t put aside your prejudices for even long enough just to condemn the attempted murder of an innocent child.

Yes , mattoid, mea culpa. Its me thats prejudiced.
Thats why I addressed peter’s, at best, misunderstanding when he attributed this crime to ‘Islam’.
The child herself and her family probably identify as Muslims.
As for your idiotic ‘anti-American smear, I lived and worked there and have family and friends both from there and still there. I also happen to have Islamic friends who get enough of this scattergun shite without seeing it in print and reinforced by people who appear on the surface sufficiently educated to know better.
To quote an American songwriter ‘..still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest..’. Seems to be a recidivist habit of yours, like lecturing and refusing to respond to counter-queries.
You obviously prefer the condemnation of the last atrocity circle-jerk to any meta-analysis. And if I’m locked on some spurious anti-US gig of your own tendentious invention, what are you locked on that you seem bent on making me the centre of the thread??Stalking?Or just trolling and misrepresenting?
What exactly is your agenda?And what have I written that is factually incorrect?
RSVP.

Rant over Damien?

Most of your rambling diatribe doesn’t warrant a response, however in relation to your last question “What have I written that is factually incorrect?” I have read through your posts but have failed to see any facts there to comment on – just a series of opinions which of course you are entitled to.

Possibly the only fact you have stated is that Wahhabism has been promoted by Saudi Arabia, and I certainly wouldn’t dispute that.

Start putting relevant facts in your posts and come back and ask me the same question again.

No surprises there then, mattoid.
All you have is spleen to vent against anything that challenges your received wisdom.
Still curious as to why you think spewing bigotry against Muslims is a mentally healthy exercise and interrupting it an ‘irrelevant’ thing to do. I’ll keep my suspicions to myself.

Relieved to hear your rant is over for the minute though(no doubt you will live to rant another day) .
I’ll get back to you for an opinion when I think you have one of your own.
Get well soon.

Dear oh dear oh dear Damien…

I will take your comments one at a time:

“All you have is spleen to vent against anything that challenges your received wisdom.”:
I’m not sure how you can possible claim to know what my ‘received wisdom’ is, especially since you have also said that I don’t have opinions of my own! I can’t really see how I’ve been ‘venting my spleen’ either – all I’ve done is ask you why you introduced the US/Nato into a thread that is about the Taliban shooting a child through the head, not about the US, Nato or anyone else.

“Still curious as to why you think spewing bigotry against Muslims is a mentally healthy exercise and interrupting it an ‘irrelevant’ thing to do.”:
Are you getting me mixed up with someone else, or did this come from your own imagination? How do you figure out that I think spewing bigotry against muslims is a mentally healthy exercise? Come to think of I haven’t seen anyone on this thread “spewing bigotry against Muslims” (Peter’s initial comment of “Islam?” can hardly be seen as spewing bigotry!) The only bigotry I see on this thread is of the anti-US variety.

“I’ll keep my suspicions to myself”.:
Pray tell, what are your “suspicions”?

” I’ll get back to you for an opinion when I think you have one of your own.”:
Since you ask, my opinion is that nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies deliberately shooting an innocent child through the head. Ever.
If you want to know my opinion about the US, I think their campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have often been crass, clumsy and misguided, and the needless deaths of many innocent civilians have been caused by their ultra-aggressive ‘shoot first ask questions later’ attitude. Their soldiers have sometimes acted despicably, and there have clearly been several murders and rapes committed by the less-than-savoury characters in their ranks. However when these abhorrent acts have been uncovered and investigated the perpetrators have faced charges from the US authorities and have been punished accordingly. When was the last time the Taliban prosecuted one of their own number for murder?

I will finish by asking you a couple of questions:
1) Since you didn’t answer it first time round I’ll ask again: If, as you claim, you don’t have an anti-US agenda why did you bring the US, NATO, Dubya, drone strikes, nuclear weapons, agent orange and napalm into a thread that is about the Taliban attempting to murder a child?
2) In more than one thread you have referred to a “recent US study” that found that only 1 in 50 victims of drone strikes were combatants. Do you have a reference for this study?

Starting at the far end…the study was released on the 25th Sept and is by Stanford and NY University. Had you bothered to search ‘drone casualty report’ I would not have to direct you. It was widely reported in the media.

Your general trust in the US/ Nato reflects the same naive acceptance of that received wisdom pumped through the propaganda apparatus of Pentagonia. Fortunately the Pravda machinery is leaky and there are people doing serious examination. Try http://www.globalresearch.ca for background. You will find others yourself if you bother.
The information is there. You are displaying the same semi-conscious trust in western moral superiority as those who refuse to believe the Roman cult was institutionally complicit in the crimes of its members. I’ve just witnessed the same presumption on the part of a former BBC director general over the Jimmy Saville breaking news. I believe its called denial of unpallatable evidence.
Instead of interrogating a nobody like me start questioning power and its pursuers.

Thanks for posting information about the report Damien – I was fully aware of the Stanford report already and I suspected this might be what you were referring to (so less of the patronising “Had you bothered to search ‘drone casualty report’ I would not have to direct you” nonsense please).

The reason that I asked you for a reference was that I was highly sceptical of your claim that the “recent US report found that only 1 in 50 victims are combatants”, given that this flies in the face of pretty much every study that has ever been carried out into drone strikes, which have generally found that about 25-30% of casualties have been civilians but that this figure has been improving in recent times (further references given below). My scepticism was well founded as your 2% claim is a gross misrepresentation and distortion of what the ‘Living Under Drones’ report actually states.

Quoting from the report: “From June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881
were civilians, including 176 children.”
This represents from 14% (best case scenario) to 34% (worst case scenario) civilian casualties – far too many in anybody’s book, but a long way from the 98% figure you have peddled.

The 2% reference in the Stanford report actually states:
“The number of ‘high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low—estimated at just 2%”.
The source given for this figure is the Bergen-Braun study, which clearly states “Since it began in 2004, the drone campaign has killed 49 militant leaders whose deaths have been confirmed by at least two credible news sources. While this represents a significant blow to the militant chain of command, these 49 deaths account for only 2% of all drone-related fatalities”, ie. the 2% figure refers solely to Taliban leaders as opposed to Taliban ‘foot soldiers’.

The same report also states:
“The civilian casualty rate has been dropping sharply since 2008. The number of civilians, plus ‘unknowns’, those individuals whose precise status could not be determined from media reports, reported killed by drones in Pakistan during Obama’s tenure in office were 11% of fatalities. So far in 2012 it is close to 2%. Under President Bush it was 33%” ie. in 2012 only 2% of drone strike casualties have been civilians by co-incidence the complete opposite of what you have claimed!

I would not dispute that the drone campaigns waged by the US are pretty misguided at best, have killed numerous innocent civilians (including children), have fuelled anti-US sentiment in the affected areas and in doing so have almost certainly been counter-productive from their point of view.

However the fact that an apparently intelligent person like you can go onto a public forum and grossly misrepresent the content of a published report (and in doing so to distort the truth to breaking point) only serves to reinforce my perception that you have an anti-US agenda.

Since you have refused to answer my other question on two occasions I will take it that you are unwilling to do so.

http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Stanford_NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES.pdf

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/index.html

http://www.law.columbia.edu/ipimages/Human_Rights_Institute/The%20Civilian%20Impact%20of%20Drones.pdf

http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/13-1/drone%20strikes.pdf

Thanks for posting information about the report Damien – I was fully aware of the Stanford report already and I suspected this might be what you were referring to (so less of the patronising “Had you bothered to search ‘drone casualty report’ I would not have to direct you” nonsense please).
The reason that I asked you for a reference was that I was highly sceptical of your claim that the “recent US report found that only 1 in 50 victims are combatants”, given that this flies in the face of pretty much every study that has ever been carried out into drone strikes, which have generally found that about 25-30% of casualties have been civilians but that this figure has been improving in recent times (further references given below). My scepticism was well founded as your 2% claim is a gross misrepresentation and distortion of what the ‘Living Under Drones’ report actually states.
Quoting from the report: “From June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881
were civilians, including 176 children.”
This represents from 14% (best case scenario) to 34% (worst case scenario) civilian casualties – far too many in anybody’s book, but a long way from the 98% figure you have peddled.
The 2% reference in the Stanford report actually states:
“The number of ‘high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low—estimated at just 2%”.
The source given for this figure is the Bergen-Braun study, which clearly states “Since it began in 2004, the drone campaign has killed 49 militant leaders whose deaths have been confirmed by at least two credible news sources. While this represents a significant blow to the militant chain of command, these 49 deaths account for only 2% of all drone-related fatalities”, ie. the 2% figure refers solely to Taliban leaders as opposed to Taliban ‘foot soldiers’.
(cont.)

The same report also states:
“The civilian casualty rate has been dropping sharply since 2008. The number of civilians, plus ‘unknowns’, those individuals whose precise status could not be determined from media reports, reported killed by drones in Pakistan during Obama’s tenure in office were 11% of fatalities. So far in 2012 it is close to 2%. Under President Bush it was 33%” ie. in 2012 only 2% of drone strike casualties have been civilians by co-incidence the complete opposite of what you have claimed!
I would not dispute that the drone campaigns waged by the US are pretty misguided at best, have killed numerous innocent civilians (including children), have fuelled anti-US sentiment in the affected areas and in doing so have almost certainly been counter-productive from their point of view.

However the fact that an apparently intelligent person like you can go onto a public forum and grossly misrepresent the content of a published report (and in doing so to distort the truth to breaking point) only serves to reinforce my perception that you have an anti-US agenda.
Since you have refused to answer my other question on two occasions I will take it that you are unwilling to do so.

http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Stanford_NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES.pdf
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/index.html

http://web.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/counterterrorism/drone-strikes/civilian-impact-drone-strikes-unexamined-costs-unanswered-questions

http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/13-1/drone%20strikes.pdf

Soo, mattoid..when I produce the study in question the goalposts shift again.
I’m beginning to suspect you are a professional propagandist. The smear of anti-American persists(standard ‘anti-semitic’ smear technique for hasbara handbook followers on anyone who voices the slightest criticism of israel’s apartheid policies). I spent half the day talking to an American, not bad a for a bigot yank-hater. She reckons most Americans would agre with my scope on it. She a ‘self-hating American’?
You slam me for not condemning your chosen atrocity. Tell me so just when you were going to challenge the ‘Islam?’ stir with your ‘counter-productive’ argument.
Oh, and when you were going to(or better still, a man of your intelligence)where you have already condemned the multiple civilians and children killed by these remote instruments of mass destruction, which you have obviously, on your own admission, been better aware of than myself.
Oh and maybe, you being so numerate and ahead of the curve, you might update us bigots on the figures for maiming, blinding and psychotically disturbed children(and adult civilians)resulting from all this ‘counter-productive warmongering you just happen not to get around to mentioning while you were busy smearing me for responding to the original dangerous sectarian simplification feeding into a deliberately stoked anti-Islamic hate storm.
I note also, your failure to mention the condemning of this atrocity of the Talibans(whichever of the multiple screwed up groups and black-ops special services set-ups working under the label was responsible)by Pakistani clerics as un- and anti-Islamic.
Or were you just holding that in reserve also?

So let me get this straight Damien – your response when I expose your distortion, misrepresentation and lies for what they are is to say that I’m moving the goalposts and then accuse me of being a professional propagandist working on behalf of Israel??
Not much point in continuing on with this – just keep wearing the tinfoil hat….
Goodnight.

I guess thats as straight as you’re capable of, mattoid.
Lets recap.

I elucidate peter’s simplistic triple post of ‘Islam?’ as summation of this atrocity; and you drone in from the blue with accusations that I am the one ‘prejudiced’; distort my explanation into an ‘anti-American rant’, then proceeding to personalise the issue in an attempt to smear and dimiss, distrort and decoy and generally misrepresent everything I post.
Reads like a pro-job to me. You and peter wouldn’t be siamese twins by any chance?

Oh, but I am the liar??
Keep wearing the tin-foil head.

Its actually pretty funny that you accuse me of misrepresentation after the lies you have told about what the Stanford report states :-)

Forgive me for thinking you have an anti-US bias when you (and nobody else) have introduced the US, Nato, George Bush, napalm, agent orange, drone strikes (about which you have blatantly spread misinformation) and now Israel into a thread that was about the Taliban shooting a child!!

Still straighter than the average corkscrew, eh mattoid.

I’m afraid the evidence is above as to what I wrote to correct peter’s simplistic summation, twist as you will on the thermals of your own petard.

And I’m a ‘liar’now for quoting such exemplars of your ‘islamofascism’ as the BBC, Irish Times and other mainstream organs. Your methodology is self-evident, but feel free to keep digging your crooked little hole.
Your desperation waxes comical. At this stage its a matter of time before you accuse me of introducing the US, Nato, al CIAda et al into Pakistan…and probably napalm into Nam.

Your abuse just ripens from strident into hysteria with your successive slurry-sprays. The issue for you was never the issue; it was always that anyone had the temerity not to capitaise on this atrocity for racist ulterior motives.
Sorry for your troubles.

:-)