hearings on the radicalization if Muslim-Americans

LeVeL

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That I hope we don't repeat McCarthyism.
 
Over the years, Peter King has made some statements about Muslims/Islam that are just mind-bogglingly offensive. I found it quite humorous that he is being questioned for his support of the Provisional IRA. He brushed it off by saying that they never attacked the USA or targeted civilians....but who better to judge a radical than another radical?
 
The provisional IRA never targeted civilians? Oh, and they only ever targeted the closest US ally on earth, historicly speaking.
 
I'm sure you've all heard about King's committee. Thoughts?

Likely to upset the 99.9% of the loyal, law abiding ?American Muslim? community, then produce more alienation and radicalism in the young, male contingent therein.

Provocative and ignorant approach.

I just heard about this today on Aljazeera News, does that make me a communist tourist? :p
 
Well, that's the thing about these types of stigmatisation runs. Once in a while, when you stigmatice a large group of people, some of them might start to believe it themselves.

Radical islam is a potential worry. A senate hearing is not the place for it. First of all, the politicians there don't care about the testimony, they've already made up their minds based on political alignment. Secondly, they don't know jack shit about the problem. Thirdly, it opens up the playing field for dangerous stigmatisation.

Leave to the feds. They know what they're doing, and they don't have to get reelected every few years.
 
This guy is just trying to get some lime light. Hopefully that light burns him to a crisp and he can go on the ash heap of history. If the word Muslim was removed from this "hearing" and it was more inclusive to radicals, like King, I would be all for it.
 
I'd like to see someone make a hearing like this. About jews. Not that I'd actually like that hearing, but I'd like to see someone try.

Imagine if some dem had started big hearings about everybody on the right cause of McVeigh back in the 90s. That would have been.. interesting.
 
I'm sure you've all heard about King's committee. Thoughts?
Simply put, hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims ... will only attribute to the radicalization of American Muslims. I'd have no problem with a broad inquiry into radicalization, but King seems to think the only group that threatens US citizens is Muslims. Which is obviously total bullshit. Why not look at the resurgent militia movement? Just yesterday 4 or 5 "Sovereign Citizen" types in Alaska were arrested for conspiring to kill a judge and bunch of state troopers. Or take a look at the radicalization of white supremacists. Supposedly the guy who tried to bomb that MLK Jr. Day Parade in Washington is a neo-Nazi.

As for that 52% who find the hearing "appropriate", I'm not surprised that they did. I think that was an uncharacteristically loaded line of questions from Gallup.

Imagine if some dem had started big hearings about everybody on the right cause of McVeigh back in the 90s. That would have been.. interesting.
The Senate Terrorism subcommittee held a hearing on militia movements. But both houses were controlled by the GOP in '95 and I think that may have helped limit the shitstorm.

King has tried to claim that these hearings are in the same vein as that '95 one. Except for the fact that that hearing was held in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, and we're nearly 10 years on from 9/11. And that the '95 hearing called out some pretty crazy sounding guys, while this is just targeted at "American Muslims."
 
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This is one of my patented rants, which will contain strong swearing. So I'll spoiler tag it to avoid accidentally offending.

Peter King is a scum sucking piece of shit.

For context, I am a Brit, working in Dublin. I see the legacy of British rule everywhere and go past the bullet holes outside the GPO most days. I also live in Manchester, which was blown apart by the largest bomb the IRA ever detonated on the mainland. I used to work in Warrington, where the IRA deliberately targeted bombs at civilians, killing two boys aged 12 and 13.

I've been to Belfast and looked at the twenty odd foot high fences keeping the two sides apart.

Despite all this, the two sides found peace and work together. Long way to go, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

So to say that none of this counts, because the IRA never killed on US soil, King can get to fucking fuck. Am I a second class citizen in the world now? Is my life, and that of the friends I was frantically trying to get hold of on that day in Manchester, worth less than some redneck in Alabama?

The IRA got a shit load of finance from the US and shits like King, who cling to faux Irishness like a fucking badge in the 1980s. They used it to buy semtex and guns from Gadaffi when Libya was under sanctions - and now he has the fucking gall to investigate Muslims? Financing the Lockerbie bomb is wrong, and financing the Grand Hotel bomb is right, Senator King? Is it really?

Because here is something, Senator King. You desperately think of yourself as Irish - I got news for you. The Irish aren't racist. The Irish don't hate Muslims. The Irish are the world champions of emigration, so they don't complain when immigrants come to their shores. Senator King, you couldn't be less Irish if you fucking tried. To the IRA, people like you were handy idiots with a chequebook - a bit like when some Brits see US tourists and show them round stately homes.

But ultimately, you dismiss the death and violence, the destruction, the killings and torturings, the drug and gun running as not counting because it didn't happen to US citizens. You love the Irish so much you treat them as second class citizens. Because their deaths and their suffering don't count because it didn't happen on US soil.

And you have the cheek to complain about Muslims?
 
I'd like to see someone make a hearing like this. About jews. Not that I'd actually like that hearing, but I'd like to see someone try.
I think that whoever would propose such a hearing would not get death threats...


A lot of people see this as just a national security measure. King himself said (and I'm paraphrasing) that he is certain that most Muslim Americans are hard-working, law-abiding citizens (ie not terrorists). However, he is worried that Al Qaeda, a Muslim extremist/terrorist group, might be recruiting young Muslim Americans (its not like they're about to try and recruit Jews, afterall) and he wants to look into that possibility and, if it turns out to be true, eliminate this threat. The only reason that religion is tied into this is because, as I just mentioned, Al Qaeda recruits Muslims. I think some Muslim religious leader in the States supported this idea that it wouldn't hurt to try and stop Muslim Americans being recruited (oh yes, I am way too lazy to look him up :lol: Heard this on the news the other day). Basically, King does not seem to be saying that Muslim = terrorist but rather that Muslims are targets for terrorist propaganda.
 
I think that whoever would propose such a hearing would not get death threats...
Really? Sure they would. Lots of them.

A lot of people see this as just a national security measure. King himself said (and I'm paraphrasing) that he is certain that most Muslim Americans are hard-working, law-abiding citizens (ie not terrorists). However, he is worried that Al Qaeda, a Muslim extremist/terrorist group, might be recruiting young Muslim Americans (its not like they're about to try and recruit Jews, afterall) and he wants to look into that possibility and, if it turns out to be true, eliminate this threat. The only reason that religion is tied into this is because, as I just mentioned, Al Qaeda recruits Muslims. I think some Muslim religious leader in the States supported this idea that it wouldn't hurt to try and stop Muslim Americans being recruited (oh yes, I am way too lazy to look him up :lol: Heard this on the news the other day). Basically, King does not seem to be saying that Muslim = terrorist but rather that Muslims are targets for terrorist propaganda.
King needs to say that. And sure, he'll get quoted on it. In the fifth or sixth column of the story in the New York Times, or whatnot.

What's really going to stick, though, is a US Senator on television saying "muslim" and "terrorist" in the same sentence time and time again. It'll stick like dried spaghetti on the dirty dishes.
 
That I hope we don't repeat McCarthyism.

McCarthyism or not the communist infiltration was real. Information revealed at the end of the Cold War proved that. Soviet intelligence operations were comprehensive and effective.
 
McCarthyism or not the communist infiltration was real. Information revealed at the end of the Cold War proved that. Soviet intelligence operations were comprehensive and effective.

And McCarthy was not how any of that was uncovered. Instead, McCarthyism turned people like Oppenheimer into villains.
 
And McCarthy was not how any of that was uncovered. Instead, McCarthyism turned people like Oppenheimer into villains.

Yes but that did not mean that the threat was not real. Some seem to make light of the fact that American Muslims could be turned. That is a mistake.
 
McCarthyism or not the communist infiltration was real. Information revealed at the end of the Cold War proved that. Soviet intelligence operations were comprehensive and effective.

Communist infiltration or not, McCarthyism was a fucking disgrace. I'm so fucking tired of this tiresome old story that it was okay because there were some commies in the US government. Of course there were commies in the US government. The Russians have always been excellent at humint, so it does make sense. During the 30s and 40s, a lot of people felt a connection to communism (if not stalinism) because of Hitler and Mussolini, and of course Franco. A lot of people were scared of fascism and nazism, and felt the only sollution was to support communism, the Finns did the oposite by alaigning themselves to the nazis to work against Stalin.

McCarthy was a fucking arse that didn't have the intellectual capasity to even understand the difference between a Soviet spy and a person with ideological differences. He ruined the lives of a great deal of people. McCarthy didn't really focus his attention on anything that would even resemble an effective search for communist infiltration. He focused most of his energies on deamonising commies, wether or not they were spies were inconsequencial to him.

Joseph McCarthy didn't achieve anything. He orchestrated a fucking witch hunt, and I won't accept that defense, if Thomas Jefferson were told that in the future, someone like McCarthy would perpetrate this hideous act of persecution, he'd get disgusted.
 
McCarthyism or not the communist infiltration was real. Information revealed at the end of the Cold War proved that.

So if you know that 1 out of every 100 people is a thief, do you lock up 100 people and claim you have successfully cut crime?

McCarthyism was just the Spanish Inquisition without the torture instruments.
 
There was torture, it just wasn't physical.

In the United States of America we have this thing that provides Free Speech and Freedom to Assemble. That is called The First Amendment. It amazes me how often the people that have a little bit of power set it aside for their own witch hunt. The hunters need to be on trial, not Muslims.
 
Basically, King does not seem to be saying that Muslim = terrorist but rather that Muslims are targets for terrorist propaganda.

In the past, he made a comment that 80% of mosques in the USA are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists...and that there are too many mosques here.
 
As an American, I apologize for this type of thing. We're not all like this.
 
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