Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

It's other religions too. Islam is just the predominant religion in the part of the world that has oil that we keep messing with.

If you lived in Pakistan or China or I don't know where else, you'd probably be aware of extremist violence by followers of other faiths.

You missed the last three decades of the GOP?

Massive understatement.

Not true, but rebelling against Rome and facing near annihilation tends to have certain influences. Incidentally, Reza Alsan's Zealot is very interesting on this topic, at least if you're not as conversant in ancient history as GGG.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I've actually come around to seeing the wisdom of what you said -- that we might as well look to people who drive black cars, rather than to Muslims, to influence young muslims by vocally rejecting the teaching that murder is an appropriate response to blasphemy, or that their religious cause justifies the violence we've seen in so many instances in the muslim world.


Similarly, I now realize that asking the police to address the way in which police view black men is wrongheaded. After all, it is only a small number of police who have actually killed unarmed black men. Far more police have not done so, and looking to those non-killer police to influence police culture is wrong and unfair, and similar to crushing people under stones at Salem.

The commonality between the police killings in Ferguson, Staten Island, and elsewhere is that the killers drove Chevys.

Many thanks for your tutelage, and for the intellectual honesty that led to your "black car" statement in the first place.

Question for the New Yorkers
 

Is the massive slowdown in police activity (i.e., the disgusting refusal of NYPD to do their fucking jobs*) actually noticeable? For example, in lower police presence in Times Square and other areas, friends or yourselves not getting tickets, lower level of harassment, squeegee guys reemerging from the ashes....

Really just curious.



*While I find the conduct disgusting, I find the irony potentially delicious. The slowdown is going to prove that the focus on low-level crimes -- the core of broken windows policing -- is no longer a contributor to preventing serious crimes in NYC (assuming it ever was -- as I said before, whether it contributed to crime reduction under very different circumstances is at most minimally relevant to whether it does now). Or, it's going to prove the opposite -- and, in so doing, prove that the NYPD are willing to see people die in order to prove their point (which appears to be "we should be above criticism, and if we aren't then we will make you suffer"). I think the former is more likely.

Re: Question for the New Yorkers
 

Funny, you see "disgusting refusal to do their jobs" where I see "finally doing their jobs instead of harassing people of color."

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Boy am I glad I no longer litigate.

You're just trying to score debating points instead of actually having a conversation. If I got that wrong, or if something I said somehow sent you down the path of being a jackass, I apologize, but I'm not seeing it right now.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I don't quite get the idea of Islam as superior to the state - it sounds like it explains something, but on closer look, I think it is way off. Likewise, the idea of reforming Islam through a vatican counsel process is kind of strange.

It think you are missing Shia/Sunni/other divisions and the very decentralized concept of religious organization in Sunni Islam - there is no real church structure, just collections of mosques and schools with a mish-mash of alliances and relationships among them. Organizationally, they're like Unitarians, not Episcopalians and certainly not Catholics.

If you look at the Middle East, there are three major states where religion has official standing in the government: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. None of these are Sunni. The big Sunni states, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq, are all engaged in a war on radical Islam that includes the sort of repression, torture and abridgment of rights of speech that few Americans other than Dick Cheney would support. I don't think the leaders of any of these three states would suggest Islam has any special role in the state - Sisi made a point of going to a Coptic Church on Christmas to emphasize that the state and Christianity are compatible.

As to other religions, you are too optimistic on their separation from the state. You may want to look at what is happening with the Hindutva and Modi in India. It's a world of book-banning, religiously imposed school curricula, and violence against non-Hindus; India is a place where religious violence is more likely to be targeted against Muslims than by Muslims, and it is a state with almost 200 million Muslims. What of France's ban on head scarfs in schools and law against women shielding their face in public - isn't that intertwining of Church and state? And Catholicism still plays an often unhappy role with the state in places like Poland, Ireland, and many countries in Latin America. Then, of course, there are places like Utah and Oklahoma ...

Re: Question for the New Yorkers
 

It helps point out some of the solution. It may be possible to police New York in a sensible way with a much smaller police force. There is room to fire a whole bunch of these miscreants without affecting public safety.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Hmmmm. There was that little war in Algeria in the early 60s when Algeria broke off of France, and the communists played a role. I am not sure who de Gaulle would have preferred repressing, as between Communists and Islamists. I certainly don't think he would have found the Fanon's of the world unthreatening.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

As someone who drives a black car, I'd say it's pretty incumbent on me to speak my mind on both police and Muslim terrorism, as we're all part of a broader community. Since my tax dollars go to both arming the police and arming lovely governments like Saudi Arabia and Israel, that both engage in widespread killing of Muslims and that both have much to do, in different ways, with the growth of radical Islam, I'd like the people who use those tax dollars to listen to me. If I were in NY, I'd want the Mayor and the Commish to be dealing with the issues on their watch, too, and I sure as hell would prefer my federal government not hand out a lot of heavy arms to police forces everywhere.

As to telling other people what to say and when to say it, well, good luck with that. You've been trying to get Hank to have a non-trolling conversation here for years, and if you can't do that, I'm not sure how you're going to get the NYPD or the larger Muslim world to start singing from your hymnal. But keep trying, I'm sure some day you'll find someone somewhere in Islam who can just order it all to stop and tell the religious terrorists to get in line, and, of course, they'll listen, as they always do.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Saudi Arabia is Sunni, no?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Worse, I've been able to spread my evil influence, and now you/Ty/Sidd are all trolling, depending on whether you ask Thurgreed or ty or Sidd.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Wahabi. Wahabis may be Sunni in the sense of rejecting Ali as a divinely anointed successor to the Prophet, but try calling them Sunni to any traditional Sunni and see what you get.

The Sauds have pretty effectively used Wahabism to create a state supported by an Islam of their defining.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

From here on out, we think of you as the Hank al-Detroiti.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

You are intentionally ignoring the point of the analogy. At least, I hope you are because I can't think of a positive alternative.

The point is to compare the idea that talking to the police should be punished harshly to the idea that anyone depicting the prophet without absolute reverence should be punished harshly. The act of violence committed against someone who snitches is compared to the act of violence committed to someone who commits blasphemy. And the whole reason for posting the analogy in the first place is to compare the atmosphere in a community in which something like a cooperating with the police is frowned upon collectively and ends up, in certain instances, resulting in violent acts. If everyone in the community reinforces an idea, they end up, intentionally or not, encouraging or sanctioning steps taken in furtherance of that idea.

Again, if you don't want to have a productive conversation, stop responding to my posts.

TM

Re: Question for the New Yorkers
 

I see your point, but the motivation is towards the former and not the latter. They are pissed off and responding with a virtual strike, not recognizing the need for a different kind of policing.

Beyond that, if you or I could design a policing approach for NYPD, while it might look more like what's happening now than what was happening a month ago, I don't think it would look exactly like this. Not serving summons, not writing tickets.... maybe some of the reduction is good and warranted, but I suspect it's more about creating a fiscal problem for the city in order to gain power and leverage (or just to act out the blue tantrum).

Not that I don't support the idea of moving away from using traffic citations and such to close revenue gaps in cities -- aka stealth taxes on the poor and middle class -- but, again, I don't see that as the NYPD's motive.