Politics 09: Fire Reid and Steele.

[Sierra]

It's disingenuous and manipulative. And that's me being charitable. Hey, let's publish a special edition of the bible with a 50-page introduction detailing why everything in the book is completely wrong and see how well that goes over.

Kirk Cameron is a sack of shit.

[Cmdr_King]

Perhaps little footnotes for contradictions and things that people often ignore.  Maybe even for historical context.  It'd be 100% less dishonest AND hilarious.  But maybe I just like the idea of The Bible as prefaced and annotated by Terry Pratchett.

[Sierra]

Fanatics often have little comprehension of comedy, sadly.

[Cmdr_King]

No, but I do, and I really care considerably more about my opinion than theirs.  If for no other reason than that I worked harder for it.

[Grefter]

Clearly what should have happened was Darwin's estate should have kept it copyrighted  and denied publishing rights obviously.

[metroid composite]

The funny thing is that, if people read the whole book and are convinced more by the creationist side, it's probably due more to weakness of Origin of Species than strength of the creationist forward.  The first book ever written on any brand new subject is always written in ridiculously long-winded confusing ways (Principia Mathematica was insanely bad for this) and is always based on much weaker evidence than is available today.  I had a professor in physics who said the real genius is not the person who comes up with the new discovery, but the writer who translates it into plain English for the rest of us.

[Grefter]

Yeah that is part of why it is so intellectually misleading.  This isn't like they are addressing the most up to date argument backed by a hundred years of research here.  TAKE THAT NEWTON TOTALLY DISPROVED YOUR THEORIES OF MOTION BECAUSE IT WORKS DIFFERENTLY ON A SUBATOMIC LEVEL BITCH.

[superaielman]

http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTgwMzk5MjIzOTM5OTY4NmFiYzZkNTcwNzMxNmNhYzI= Nice work AP. As little as I like Palin, it is going overboard when you devote that much to fact checking a biography compared to a health bill.

[NotMiki]

Now hold on a sec, there's a few important considerations left out of the math there.  For example: the health bill is really large, but how much of it is actually new material?  Presumably most of the bill provisions are slightly modified versions of past versions.  Compare that to Palin's book which is 90% new material (minus the early press release stuff).  Second, how long did they spend on each?  It's not like they've had those 11 people working around the clock for the past month on the book, whereas I would be shocked if the staff they have on the bill do much else.

[metroid composite]

Palin book: brand new.
Health care bill: been around for months now

I dunno, if it's still weighted towards Palin a month from now, something has gone seriously wrong.  Right now, though, it seems like "and the Senate is still fooling around".

[NotMiki]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/opinion/24tue2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

This is kinda out of left field, but I'm just so thrilled to hear Turkey is making real progress with its Kurdish minority that I have to share it.  If Turkey can simultaneously legitimize its Kurdish population and make the PKK (or at least their violent actions) obsolete, it would be a huge victory for...well, everyone, hopefully.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well, that is certainly heartening.

[NotMiki]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/27/minaret-ban-in-switzerlan_n_372026.html

Keep it classy, Switzerland.

The racist (anti-immigrant or ultra-nationalist would be the typical ways to describe them, but they're not as accurate) Swiss People's Party wants to ban the construction of minarets around mosques.  Currently support for the initiative is polling at 37%.

[NotMiki]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html?_r=1&hp

...and Switzerland amends their constitution to ban the construction of minarets by a 57% majority.  For a sense of what's going on here, it's important to underscore the practical effect of the ban: next to nothing.  Switzerland has 150 mosques, of which 4 have minarets, none of which conduct the call to prayer.  Only 2 mosques with minarets were planned for construction before this ban.  Of Switzerland's 400,000 Muslims, 6% of the population, 90% are not religiously conservative.

So what's going on here?  A racist political party is playing on fears of Islamic terrorism to limit the religious rights of a minority group.  Think that's not it?  Check out the poster used for the campaign:



An impressive piece of propaganda: stop the steely-gazed Muslim woman from launching ICBMs erecting minarets in our country.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

* Jo'ou Ranbu golfclaps. Way to uphold your standards of civility and tolerance, Switzerland.

[Xeroma]

And I thought America had problems with Muslims. Wooooooow. Makes me wanna puke, really.

[superaielman]

America doesn't have a fraction of the problems Europe does with Muslims. This is still really pathetic.

[Pyro]

America doesn't have a fraction of the problems Europe does with Muslims inside our nation. This is still really pathetic.

Amended to account for a few wars.

[Grefter]

Retards.  You are completely and totally losing the perspective here.

Population of Switzerland.  7,739,100 in the 2009 census (from Wikipedia).  5% of the population is Muslim by those numbers. 

Quick Google search of the US lists an estimated 8 Million Muslim residents (this is the highest listed I found, found article stating 5-8 Million, no idea on the accuracy).  Wikipedia lists US Population as of 2009 Census as 308,034,000  http://www.islamicpopulation.com/America/america_general.html This site lists 6 million.  Lets go with the upper 8 million though.  That gives you a massive less than 3% of your population.  Closer to 2% if you follow a more conservative estimate.

Yes Switzerland has a slightly bigger problem with Muslim culture and its integration within the country, yes they are probably fairly reactionary.  Do your fucking homework before you get all high and mighty though.

Editting for obvious math fail.  5% is 1/20  Not 20%.  Typo hurry go thanks.

[NotMiki]

Switzerland's Muslim population is almost all from Turkey and eastern Europe.  They're mostly secular as a consequence (the ratio of mosques to Muslims is 1:2500).  The Muslim women of Switzerland don't, in the vast majority, wear any kind of religious clothing, and almost no mosques, current or planned, actually have minarets.  The law is aimed at a paper tiger: the 10% or so of Muslims who are conservative (0.5% of the population by your reckoning) and the grand total of 2 mosques which are planned to have minarets in the future.

This law has nothing to do with the growing pains of cultural integration; it's just a bunch of racists' way of strengthening their position by picking on a tiny, unpopular minority.

Anyway, I don't really get what you're getting at, Gref.  So the US at large has issues with its Muslim population?  So what?  Should we forbear to criticize Switzerland because we have problems too?  Bullshit.  You think we wouldn't say the same thing about our own country if this kinda shit passed here?  You know us better than that.  Thing is, it hasn't.  For all the suspicion of Muslims in the US and anti-immigrant sentiment, you still don't see the kind of institutionalized racism that this law presents.  Show me one single state that has a law like this on the books, passed by popular vote, and I'll shut up.  There are plenty of states which have the same popular voting mechanism that Switzerland does; this kind of law is every bit as possible in the US.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Retards.  You are completely and totally losing the perspective here.

So, because the affected population is so small, it's okay to adopt a measure of outright bigotry against it? It's still taking a rather frightening precedent into the fray, and one that could be outright disastrous if taken as an example by countries where this minority has more representation.

[Xeroma]

Just because they're a small minority doesn't make it any less sensical or BS Gref. If anything it makes it make -less- sense since they apparently have such little presence.

[Cotigo]

Jackasses. 

What he's saying:  Switzerland has a larger proportion of Muslims in the country compared to the US.  This sort of reactionary action is understandable, if ignoble, in that context, ESPECIALLY when you consider that the animosity toward Muslims in the US is based off a much smaller concentration of the population.  Were the population more concentrated, it's very likely that anti-Muslim sentiment would be a much larger problem in the US (and considering it's already a pretty large problem, we need to get off our fucking high horses about judging Switzerland, because the US would frankly do no better.)

  He's not saying it's good or justified.  He's saying that he can see why there's such reactionary racist nonsense in Switzerland, and that the lot of us are stupid for saying, "Well at least America doesn't have that sort of animosity!"

Which we are.  How the hell did none of you get that.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I can't give a damn whether the Americans have any reason to put themselves in a high horse over this or not (regardless of statistics, nobody ever should when ethnical discrimination of any nature is a huge issue -all over the world-). What matters is the standard set here. Any country setting up an institutionalized form of segregationism is an execrable act (*Waves to the african apartheid.*), but it turns even more dangerous when a particularly reputable country does it. Switzerland, for a long time, has been a landmark for a highly civilized country as far as statistics and reports go, and when a country with that kind of reputation creates an institutionalized form of ethnic/religious discrimination, it's setting a very dangerous precedent. France is doing it in a roundabout way with its burqa discriminatory measures. Switzerland is taking a step further. Now, other countries where their people are openly stating xenophobic tendencies within a large enough spectrum of the populace will have an example to follow, which -will- have disastrous consequences if it goes through, because this -can and WILL- be used for political gain. When something of -that- scope is coming into the fray, going "ahahaha we're more civilized because of numbers" (which Gref didn't start, but did help perpetrate) is insanely short-sighted. Grefter's point is even true, but -that's not the goddamn problem- here. It's a side point within the real issue at hand.

[NotMiki]

Jackasses.  

What he's saying:  Switzerland has a larger proportion of Muslims in the country compared to the US.  This sort of reactionary action is understandable, if ignoble, in that context, ESPECIALLY when you consider that the animosity toward Muslims in the US is based off a much smaller concentration of the population.  Were the population more concentrated, it's very likely that anti-Muslim sentiment would be a much larger problem in the US (and considering it's already a pretty large problem, we need to get off our fucking high horses about judging Switzerland, because the US would frankly do no better.)

  He's not saying it's good or justified.  He's saying that he can see why there's such reactionary racist nonsense in Switzerland, and that the lot of us are stupid for saying, "Well at least America doesn't have that sort of animosity!"

Which we are.  How the hell did none of you get that.

Ok, I guess the point of my follow-up post was lost on you.  Saying that this animosity toward religious Islam is based on the population of Muslims in the Switzerland is not convincing because the vast majority of them are secular.  Switzerland's population of Muslims who this would actually matter to as a practical matter is minuscule.  The population of Muslim women who wear burqas like the woman in the poster is not large in any sense.  Switzerland is not probably quantitatively different from the US: solid numbers are hard to come by, but they both probably have conservative Islamic populations of about 0.5%.

So there's a little math.  What about the sentiment behind it, that the US is just as bad with Muslims and that we have no grounds to say otherwise?  I feel a little repetitive here, but I'll ask again: where are the voter initiatives to curb Islam in the US?  I mean, there is certainly a lot of tension and, yes, racism in the US where Muslims and Arabs are concerned.  Why hasn't it gotten to this next level?  This is a next level, no doubt about it.  It's institutional discrimination of a sort nothing in the US is.  There are plenty such initiatives opposing gay marriage, so why not ban minarets here?  It's not like initiatives of that sort have to be constitutional; that's something that would be judged down the line.

I can't give a definite answer to that question, but I'm fairly certain that an American idea of freedom of religion plays a big part in it.

Anyway, I criticize my country when appropriate, and I criticize other countries when appropriate (hi French issues with Muslim clothing).

Speaking of which:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/europe-reacts-to-the-swiss-minaret-ban/?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/europe/01iht-swiss.html?hp