>> ^ghark:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^NetRunner:
@bcglorf that is the state of play at present. The thing is, terrorists in Pakistan or Yemmen can't hurt us until they come here, unless we go there.
It seems like things like "Homeland Security" should be able to handle that, and should be able to do well enough within the traditional legal framework of jurisprudence.
And to toss out a touch of radicalism, if they can't, then they can't, and if some attacks get through, well, no one said freedom would be easy.
Now I'm not ruling out the possibility of ever taking the fight to the terrorists, but it seems like we should completely change the whole way we look at this. We don't want a declaration of war on terrorists, that gives the U.S. President all this crazy unilateral power.
I think if we'd have viewed this as some sort of International-scale law enforcement matter, we'd have been in much better shape. And yes, we'd probably still give ourselves the right to come in with special ops and "arrest" people inside sovereign countries on our say so, but it at least should be something that comes after evidence is presented to a judge who's issuing a warrant...
And that approach would've made it clear that toppling the governments of countries and rebuilding them is completely beyond the scope of what's warranted to deal with terrorist threats.

The real trouble was the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The terrorists in Afghanistan were able to hurt us here, and many of our interests and allies abroad as well. The formal government of Afghanistan when asked to choose sides with or against these terrorists chose to back them. Outright war with them in that context doesn't seem particularly absurd, nor even aggressive. The argument for reactive self-defense is rather strong.
You may not recall because our media avoided covering or discussing it much then and since, but Pakistan's formal government was right on the fence as well which way they would side. They still have well represented parties within Pakistan more enraged over Bin Laden's death than Benazir Bhutto's, and it's not the method or origin that offends them, but the nature of those dead. Bhutto was a moderate muslim women who was a former Pakistani PM and front runner in the upcoming elections. Bin Laden however, was to some well represented political parties a muslim hero and political ally rather than opponent. Showing that America had the will to play it's hand very strongly against the militants and terrorists hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan I deem necessary to having encouraged Musharraf and the military leadership to at least pay lip service to siding as they have. Even now though, that may not have been enough. The militants are killing so many of our moderate Pakistani allies that there is a lot of momentum to accept a truce out of fear with them and who cares if America is still nominally at war with these militants.

And what is the root of this terrorism?


IMHO, human nature. The same human nature that led a bunch of majority privileged whites in America to form groups like the KKK. The same human nature that sees common hatred unifying groups of people throughout history, and often the it starts from greed or envy. I certainly wouldn't posit that the formation of things like the Westboro Baptists as being the result of their members being unfairly treated or wronged in the past, but rather their own vices and faults.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^NetRunner:
@bcglorf that is the state of play at present. The thing is, terrorists in Pakistan or Yemmen can't hurt us until they come here, unless we go there.
It seems like things like "Homeland Security" should be able to handle that, and should be able to do well enough within the traditional legal framework of jurisprudence.
And to toss out a touch of radicalism, if they can't, then they can't, and if some attacks get through, well, no one said freedom would be easy.
Now I'm not ruling out the possibility of ever taking the fight to the terrorists, but it seems like we should completely change the whole way we look at this. We don't want a declaration of war on terrorists, that gives the U.S. President all this crazy unilateral power.
I think if we'd have viewed this as some sort of International-scale law enforcement matter, we'd have been in much better shape. And yes, we'd probably still give ourselves the right to come in with special ops and "arrest" people inside sovereign countries on our say so, but it at least should be something that comes after evidence is presented to a judge who's issuing a warrant...
And that approach would've made it clear that toppling the governments of countries and rebuilding them is completely beyond the scope of what's warranted to deal with terrorist threats.

The real trouble was the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The terrorists in Afghanistan were able to hurt us here, and many of our interests and allies abroad as well. The formal government of Afghanistan when asked to choose sides with or against these terrorists chose to back them. Outright war with them in that context doesn't seem particularly absurd, nor even aggressive. The argument for reactive self-defense is rather strong.
You may not recall because our media avoided covering or discussing it much then and since, but Pakistan's formal government was right on the fence as well which way they would side. They still have well represented parties within Pakistan more enraged over Bin Laden's death than Benazir Bhutto's, and it's not the method or origin that offends them, but the nature of those dead. Bhutto was a moderate muslim women who was a former Pakistani PM and front runner in the upcoming elections. Bin Laden however, was to some well represented political parties a muslim hero and political ally rather than opponent. Showing that America had the will to play it's hand very strongly against the militants and terrorists hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan I deem necessary to having encouraged Musharraf and the military leadership to at least pay lip service to siding as they have. Even now though, that may not have been enough. The militants are killing so many of our moderate Pakistani allies that there is a lot of momentum to accept a truce out of fear with them and who cares if America is still nominally at war with these militants.


And what is the root of this terrorism?

>> ^NetRunner:

@bcglorf that is the state of play at present. The thing is, terrorists in Pakistan or Yemmen can't hurt us until they come here, unless we go there.
It seems like things like "Homeland Security" should be able to handle that, and should be able to do well enough within the traditional legal framework of jurisprudence.
And to toss out a touch of radicalism, if they can't, then they can't, and if some attacks get through, well, no one said freedom would be easy.
Now I'm not ruling out the possibility of ever taking the fight to the terrorists, but it seems like we should completely change the whole way we look at this. We don't want a declaration of war on terrorists, that gives the U.S. President all this crazy unilateral power.
I think if we'd have viewed this as some sort of International-scale law enforcement matter, we'd have been in much better shape. And yes, we'd probably still give ourselves the right to come in with special ops and "arrest" people inside sovereign countries on our say so, but it at least should be something that comes after evidence is presented to a judge who's issuing a warrant...
And that approach would've made it clear that toppling the governments of countries and rebuilding them is completely beyond the scope of what's warranted to deal with terrorist threats.


The real trouble was the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The terrorists in Afghanistan were able to hurt us here, and many of our interests and allies abroad as well. The formal government of Afghanistan when asked to choose sides with or against these terrorists chose to back them. Outright war with them in that context doesn't seem particularly absurd, nor even aggressive. The argument for reactive self-defense is rather strong.

You may not recall because our media avoided covering or discussing it much then and since, but Pakistan's formal government was right on the fence as well which way they would side. They still have well represented parties within Pakistan more enraged over Bin Laden's death than Benazir Bhutto's, and it's not the method or origin that offends them, but the nature of those dead. Bhutto was a moderate muslim women who was a former Pakistani PM and front runner in the upcoming elections. Bin Laden however, was to some well represented political parties a muslim hero and political ally rather than opponent. Showing that America had the will to play it's hand very strongly against the militants and terrorists hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan I deem necessary to having encouraged Musharraf and the military leadership to at least pay lip service to siding as they have. Even now though, that may not have been enough. The militants are killing so many of our moderate Pakistani allies that there is a lot of momentum to accept a truce out of fear with them and who cares if America is still nominally at war with these militants.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^SDGundamX:
I know it is being nitpicky, but the reason Padilla could challenge was because he was an American citizen who had been designated by the president as an enemy combatant. You're right, they don't have to try every enemy combatant. I'm trying to find the actual court decision, but I could have sworn that it wasn't just a one-off thing for Padilla--the courts decided that any American has the right to challenge being put on the list in court.
As a fellow nitpicker, I don't mind when someone picks a nit. I don't contest any of what you say here. I actually thought that it went without saying that it hinged on Padilla's citizenship, and wasn't some sort of one-off decision.
>> ^SDGundamX:
As the video notes, al-Awlaki's family was indeed in the process of challenging it when the killing took place. I think that places the President in an awkward position from a legal standpoint. It'll be interesting to see where this goes if the family pursues this (sues for wrongful death or something), though I agree with you it seems like the odds are stacked in favor of the courts supporting the Presidential powers.
I don't see how they thought they might win such a challenge. All Al-Alwaki had to do was provide aid and comfort to the enemy, and it's over. And, well, his big thing was putting Al Qaeda recruitment videos on YouTube, so I'm thinking the government just plays one of those, and the case is over.
But in any case, his status when he was killed was still that of an enemy combatant. Now that he's dead, I suspect his legal status is no longer that of an enemy combatant, so there's nothing to challenge. And I suspect there's some Latin name for this, but I don't think courts are allowed to render something a crime by retroactively changing the legal status of things.
For example, say two people are getting a divorce, and the husband takes some jointly owned property with him when he moves out. Now suppose that when the divorce gets finalized, the court awards that property to the wife. The courts can't say "and it always was hers to begin with, so now we're charging you with larceny for taking it when you moved out".
You'd need to do something like that in order to make this killing a criminal act.
A wrongful death suit might fly though. But that's a civil suit, not a criminal charge.
But seriously, all this stuff is wrong. The President shouldn't have unilateral authority to declare people combatants and non-combatants. It should be uniformed members of the military of the nation we've declared war on. Everything else should be law enforcement, including chasing after terrorists.
The courts aren't going to make all that happen by fiat. That has to be a legislative effort, or it's just going to keep on going like this.


The trouble is it doesn't quite work to lump things as either law enforcement or uniformed soldiers at war. That works only in as far as it makes sense to pursue criminals through domestic and foreign law enforcement, or to make war on foreign nations refusing to enforce the rule of law. Due to myriad political bramble bushes, there are many nations like Pakistan and Yemen who claim much broader borders than those in which their actual loyal police officers can safely operate. When criminals hide in the tribal regions of Yemen and Pakistan, even willing and co-operative governments in Pakistan and Yemen are unable to enforce the law on the criminals we want prosecuted. Do we just leave those criminals be then? Do we declare uniformed soldier on soldier war against the governments in Pakistan and Yemen? Do we demand they restart the aborted civil wars that have left their tribal regions effectively autonomous independent nations?

In my opinion the tribal regions in places like Yemen and Pakistan are effectively not sovereign parts of those nations. It's not politically expedient to declare that, but it is the way Pakistani and Yemeni governments have been handling and treating the regions all along. They are for all intents and purposes independent nations, which merely pay lip service to being a part of Pakistan or Yemen while jockeying internally for a stronger position for themselves. I see American policy as effectively stepping in and treating those tribal regions as independent nations, rather than as Yemeni or Pakistani territory. Thus America is at open war with these tribal regions for their support of Al-Qaida jihadists.

I'm upvoting the video and the program for shining light into these matters, but I disagree with his argument in this particular situation.

As a person living in NYC, I've had my share of bomb threat experiences. The closet one I've had was back in 2008 or 2009 when a man from Jackson Heights was planning to bomb the 42nd street Times Square station via the 7 train line. I too was living in Jackson Heights at the time, and know that there is a sizable Afghani and Pakistani community there.

I used to pick up lunch and did my groceries from Indian restaurants and supermarkets. And when I've heard of the news of this terrorist attack attempt, I personally felt the dangers and the seriousness of the problem. The alleged attacker was from the very community I was living in, where I assumed I knew and was comfortable in, in the same neighborhood and rode the same train I rode in.

But the most important point to me was that this man was willing to sacrifice people's lives, not just any people but his own community, to get the job done. he wasn't planning to bomb the wall street, the city hall or U.N. Building. This man was going to plant the bomb on the 7 train line, the exact same line where majority of riders are from Jackson Heights.

The most shocking point of the story is that he got the terrorist attack idea from his local imam from a Mosque in Jackson Heights. Their own fucking neighborhood. And yet, the community had no idea about their doings.

Now this got me thinking. if you are a muslim, you must take care of your community and throw out the bad seeds. When someone is using your name or what you stand for something you do not identify yourself with, PUT A STOP TO IT. Blissful ignorance does not help anyone. These crazed people from your own neighborhood was about to kill you, and yet nobody had any idea this was happening in the community.

Just claiming that you are different from them, and blaming others for not being able to tell the difference is an excuse to your laziness. You haven't done anything to pull yourself apart, and identify those who are different from what you stand for. If the muslim community was more active in sifting out the bad seeds from their own community, then there would be no need for government to step in and invade your privacy. It is ultimately your laziness that gets your rights violated.

You live in this country, you live in the same neighborhood, your life is threatened by the psychos who really don't care how many innocent people they kill, including people of their own community, as long as they do whatever they feel like doing. This is YOUR problem (more like your life) as it is for every other ethnic groups in your community. Stop being selfish, stop being lazy. Stop making excuses. If you want your rights back, then TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR COMMUNITY FIRST.

Are you listening conspiracy theorists? Scahill goes on record in here declaring that "we didn't even get the oil contracts in Iraq". How does that fit the argument that Iraq's government is still an American puppet solely there to hand over Iraqi oil to Bush's friends?

This was a good talk and it needs to be had way, way more. Some of Scahill and the other's comments flail around a bit though. The one question about the NATO role having 'broken' Libya aught to have been answered and wasn't. Namely, Libya under Gaddafi for the last 4 decades wasn't broken?

After Scahill's listing of all the downsides to drones, particularly in Pakistan, at the least response was right there about being stuck without a good solution and having to take the least bad one. After all, even getting Bin Laden led to enormous anger in Pakistan, and not just over the how. There were elected members of Pakistan's National Assemblies declaring their outrage that the Pakistani military failed to protect Bin Laden, as he was an Islamic hero. The public sentiment in Pakistan IS against the drone attacks, but at the same time the militants the drones are hitting have killed at a conservative estimate, 10 times as many Pakistani civilians.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^marbles:
>> ^bcglorf:

And meanwhile you lament the loss of monsters like Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad. Well done.

Do you have a citation for that claim?
Meanwhile 1.5 million dead civilians in Iraq, untold thousands of dead civilians from drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, hundreds of innocents locked up and tortured at secret prisons all over the world, terror bombings in North Africa, yeah... you've got the moral high-ground here.

And your problem is you hold Saddam guiltless for the Iraqi dead. You hold the Taliban and Al Qaeda guiltless for the Afghan and Pakistani dead. You hold Al Shabab guiltless for the Somali dead. You hold Gaddafi guiltless for the Libyan dead.
What kind of twisted world view do you have were you reject the evidence for the above, but fully and enthusiastically embrace the guilt of those fighting against Saddam, Gaddafi, the Taliban, Al Qaeada and Al Shabab?


Fuck you. That's 3 times now in this thread you've made the same baseless accusations against me. Fuck you. You want to ignore the world wide terrorism and murder that you support, so be it.

Using your standard, we should be invading/bombing China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and half of the world. And to go further, China, Russia, and whoever else should be invading/bombing the US trying to install the type of government they think we should have.

What kind of "twisted world view" is that?

>> ^marbles:

>> ^bcglorf:

And meanwhile you lament the loss of monsters like Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad. Well done.

Do you have a citation for that claim?
Meanwhile 1.5 million dead civilians in Iraq, untold thousands of dead civilians from drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, hundreds of innocents locked up and tortured at secret prisons all over the world, terror bombings in North Africa, yeah... you've got the moral high-ground here.


And your problem is you hold Saddam guiltless for the Iraqi dead. You hold the Taliban and Al Qaeda guiltless for the Afghan and Pakistani dead. You hold Al Shabab guiltless for the Somali dead. You hold Gaddafi guiltless for the Libyan dead.

What kind of twisted world view do you have were you reject the evidence for the above, but fully and enthusiastically embrace the guilt of those fighting against Saddam, Gaddafi, the Taliban, Al Qaeada and Al Shabab?

Well, that was an easy one to disprove. Via Wikipedia:

Riots in the 1970s
1970 - Kent State shootings, May 1970, (Kent, Ohio, United States)
1970 - Hard Hat riot, Wall Street, May 8, 1970, (New York City, New York, United States)
1970 - Harakat Tahrir riots, June 17, 1970 El-Aaiun[citation needed]
1970 - Falls Curfew (Belfast, Northern Ireland on 3–5 July 1970)
1970 - Fatti di Reggio, July 1970, (Reggio Calabria, Italy)
1970 - Koza riot, December 20, (Ryukyu Islands, United States, later Okinawa Prefecture, Japan)
1971 - May Day Protests 1971, May 1971, (Washington, D.C., United States)
1971 - 1971 Springbok tour (Australia)
1971 - Camden Riots, August 1971, (Camden, New Jersey, United States)
1971 - Operation Demetrius (Northern Ireland on August 9–11, 1971)
1971 - Attica Prison uprising, (Attica, New York, United States)
1971 - Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
1972 - Bloody Sunday (Derry, Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972)
1972 - Operation Motorman (Northern Ireland on 31 July 1972)
1973 and 1974 - Athens Polytechnic uprising, Greek student riots and revolution at National Technical University of Athens, military junta overthrown, (Greece)
1973 - Oklahoma State Penitentiary Prison Riot, (McAlester, Oklahoma, United States)[citation needed]
1973 - Ageo incident, Tokyo Metropolitan Railways Riot,(Tokyo and Saitama, April 1973)[citation needed]
1974 - Cherry Blossom Festival at the Richmond Stadium, (Richmond, Virginia, United States)[citation needed]
1974 - Ulster Workers' Council strike (Northern Ireland, May 1974)
1974 - Ten Cent Beer Night, (Cleveland, Ohio, United States, June 4, 1974)
1975 - Chapeltown riot Leeds, West Yorkshire ,England
1975 - Nieuwmarkt riot, March - April 1975 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
1975 - Livernois-Fenkell riot (Detroit, Michigan, United States)
1975 - European cup Final 1975, Leeds United riot in Paris
1976 - Vitoria Riots, March 3 (Vitoria, Basque Country, Spain)
1976 - Kobe Festival Riot by motorcycle gangs (Bōsōzoku), May 15 in Japan
1976 - Notting Hill Carnival Riot (London, England)
1976 - Soweto Riots (Soweto, South Africa)
1977 - 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots, January, 1977, (Egypt)
1977 - New York City Blackout riot, July 1977, (New York City, United States)
1977 - Sri Lankan riots of 1977, (Sri Lanka)
1978 - Rameeza Bee Riots, (Hyderabad, India)
1979 - Disco Demolition Night, (Chicago, Illinois, United States)
1979 - White Night gay riots, May 1979 (San Francisco, California)
1979 - Greensboro Riot/Shootings, Nov. 1979, (Greensboro, North Carolina, United States)
1979 - Southall Riots, (Southall, West London, England)

>> ^quantumushroom:

Of course, watching an atheist angered by a lack of morality in the populace is hilarious. People didn't regularly act this way 40 years ago. What changed?
Not everyone proclaiming to be a Christian follows Thou shalt not steal all the time, but more of them have values than the ones raised with....NOTHING.


So what's the reason that all these god-fearing, morally-informed-with-superior-'Christian'-values people engaged in riots? Ummm... maybe it is because the proximate causes of a riot are based on economic and societal conditions and not prevented by a 2000 year old book. Also worth noting in the list is included Bloody Sunday, which, if I remember correctly, was part of a conflict based on rival gangs within your beloved Christianity kicking the shit out of each other.

>> ^marinara:

http://www.khudipakistan.com/faq/
spreading democracy and western culture into pakistan.
this guy runs a crappy little political organization that purports to save globalism from islamists. Why the hell would you want to save globalism?

At Khudi, we tend to prefer the latter. That’s why we organize conferences and workshops around the country, inviting people from disparate backgrounds to foster a culture of healthy discussion and debate
....
Khudi also runs an inter-university campus magazine, distributed at universities across Pakistan, providing students with a chance to air their views without fear of reprisal.

what an idiot. I read this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2459969.ece
about Maajid's polarizing youth, but apparently his big solution are free magazines and communications workshops.
this is an english man mucking about at politics in pakistan.
he'd do better to spend his time to learn arabic than to convince some rich pakistanis that they should love the west


Right, this 'idiot' clearly doesn't understand the situation as well as yourself.

This British Pakistani born man who spent years working with a major Islamic extremist organization obviously knows nothing about Islamic extremism in Pakistan.

You later deny this, but your snide(but poorly researched) remark about learning Arabic is CLEARLY because you didn't even know Pakistan's national language.

You haven't cared enough to study a thing about Pakistan, but while you snipe away here in ignorance, this man is honestly putting his own life at risk every day for his cause. Go find an online Pakistani paper and follow it's stories. You'll find moderate leaders and activists are regularly murdered. More over, not only are they murdered, but the nations lawyers refuse to prosecute the murderers and instead stand in solidarity with the murders 'bold' stand against blasphemy.

This guy even mentions the grossest such example in his talk, former Primer Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, but you again seem too ignorant of anything in Pakistan to grasp the significance.

Stop flooding the thread with unhelpful complaining and find something to support the horrific struggle faced by moderate Pakistani's against the extremists that are killing them every day.

<tin foil hat>

One of VBS.TV's correspondents, who is of Pakistani decent went around the neighborhood and spoke to a bunch of people who lived there and had access to the "compound". A lot of them wished that Bin Laden had been living there because they sounded like they would have been intrigued yet fearful. It was admitted that Bin Laden never lived in that compound. It's an interesting video. The one prior was also interesting as the correspondent had access to places in Pakistan that we could never imagine without him having gone there where blind, tongueless, warriors make machine guns by hand.

I think maybe the reason for this is, Bin Laden had been killed prior - by who? Who knows. But American intelligence knew and I think since Obama was probably fresh in office, the event would highlight "The War on Terror" so Obama and his administration held onto the information for a "better" time.

Anyway, I trust Vice more than our mainstream news, especially when you have a guy on the ground getting information from the source, which VBS.TV has done quite well in their own sort of way in Libya, North Korea and elsewhere.

I also trust Bill Maher but I understand that he is unable to get into tinfoil subjects that make the left look "conspiratorial"... even though our government is absolutely corrupt enough to look the other way as the Twin Towers were bombarded or lie about Osama Bin Laden's death for political gain.


And Haha the last comment Clark makes about "pathological liars".
</tinfoil hat>

Yup

1. Kerpal 27 up, 2 down

Kerpal is a fictional character named in a famous prank call (often attributed to the Jerky boys).

The man in the prank call identifies himself as Kerpal and seems to be of ambiguous South Asian descent. A man known as Akhtar (the correct Pakistani name) answers the telephone. Kerpal then alleges that Akhtar's older daughter kicked his dog. After minutes of confusion it is revealed that the daughter knows nothing about kicking Kerpal's dog, let alone who Kerpal is. The call eventually degrades into a shouting match with Kerpal shouting obscenities to no-end.

At least three different Flash animations have been created to visualize this call. The simplest one, thought to be the original and generally most liked, was created by Adam Letalik and published by FlatPlanet.org in late 1999.

I don't know anything about this person other than what is in the video, but your critique doesn't seem to address anything he says. Ad hominem?

Personally I find what he says about democracy being presented as only one political choice quite interesting, especially when one looks at the two-party system in the US, which is veering dangerously towards "theocracy" vs. "democracy".

edit: the language of Pakistan is Urdu, not Arabic.

(p.s.: the second link you provide doesn't work)

>> ^marinara:

http://www.khudipakistan.com/faq/
spreading democracy and western culture into pakistan.
this guy runs a crappy little political organization that purports to save globalism from islamists. Why the hell would you want to save globalism?

At Khudi, we tend to prefer the latter. That’s why we organize conferences and workshops around the country, inviting people from disparate backgrounds to foster a culture of healthy discussion and debate
....
Khudi also runs an inter-university campus magazine, distributed at universities across Pakistan, providing students with a chance to air their views without fear of reprisal.

what an idiot. I read this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2459969.ece
about Maajid's polarizing youth, but apparently his big solution are free magazines and communications workshops.
this is an english man mucking about at politics in pakistan.
he'd do better to spend his time to learn arabic than to convince some rich pakistanis that they should love the west

http://www.khudipakistan.com/faq/

spreading democracy and western culture into pakistan.

this guy runs a crappy little political organization that purports to save globalism from islamists. Why the hell would you want to save globalism?

At Khudi, we tend to prefer the latter. That’s why we organize conferences and workshops around the country, inviting people from disparate backgrounds to foster a culture of healthy discussion and debate
....
Khudi also runs an inter-university campus magazine, distributed at universities across Pakistan, providing students with a chance to air their views without fear of reprisal.

what an idiot. I read this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2459969.ece
about Maajid's polarizing youth, but apparently his big solution are free magazines and communications workshops.

this is an english man mucking about at politics in pakistan.

he'd do better to spend his time to learn arabic than to convince some rich pakistanis that they should love the west

@SDGundamX

There's clearly no point in arguing with you; you insist on attacking strawmen that you project as Harris' arguments and mine, disregard the statistical evidence (some of which could already be found in my html-mess post), refuse to comprehend that an ideology that regards women as only half as worthy of men - and that puts such high stakes on "purity" - will result in violence towards them, and continue to see things in an all-or-nothing way while accusing your opponents thereof and, cherry on the cake, provide the answer to your own arguments within them; I quote:

Radical fundamentalist Islam most certainly causes its followers to not just condone violence, but believe that violence is the only way to achieve the political aims for which radical Islam was created to achieve.

See this video on how it is not the fundamentalists that are a problem, but the fundamentals (thus the Qur'an quoting you keep disregarding). You keep trying to make it about some sort of homogeneous group called "the Muslims" that we are - according to you - unilaterally vilifying, but that only shows that the person who has a problem generalising is yourself.

If we were 700 years ago, Harris and the other "gnu atheists" would be arguing strongly against Christianity's effects on people's lives, not Islam's (not that Islam was any better, but it was hardly much worse).

You want evidence so badly? Why don't you go ask the Pakistani cops why they feel they have the right to rape and physical abuse their female visitors, see where that gets you.

The Pakistan vs. India stats come from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan