Archive for the 'government' Category

24
Apr

In God we trust, all others bring data

By JSwan 17 Comments
Categories: healthcare, War on Terror, government, war, stats, health care and universal healthcare

Since joining FraudWasteAbuse I’ve had several good article ideas, each of which was eventually tossed out for lack of data. (Sorry for the lame coffee article - it was all I had left!)

For example: a few months ago I read two unrelated articles - one that tallied the number of terrorism related deaths in the USA over the last ten years, the other that tallied the number of deaths caused by deer-vehicle crashes in the same time span. While reading the deer article I made a surprising connection: For nine of the last ten years, deer have killed more people on American soil than terrorists (2001 being the exception). For April 17th, I planed on writing an article about fear, death, and taxes based on this data.

Alas, I could not find the data needed to support the article and thus it was nixed. It was not due to a lack of effort.

And that made me wonder: Why is good data so hard to find? With the 2008 elections coming up and all the talk about universal health-care, the war on terror, illegal farm subsidies, and CO2 emissions; isn’t data - which provides us the ability to measure impact and effectiveness - of dire importance?

Without good data analysis to prove or disprove the merits of a particular policy, aren’t we destined to argue endlessly without truly comprehending the significance of our actions as a nation? Isn’t it likely that, without meaningful data, bad policies will continue and good policies will be eliminated simply because the policy fit or didn’t fit into some political ideal that can be proven wrong, but hasn’t been? Isn’t data the key to accountability?

So where is the data politicians keep spouting off about? I want it. Show it to me. I do not want ridiculously misleading statistics, true as they may be. I want raw data that I can analyze myself should I choose to do so. I want to see people like Hans Rosling analyzing the data and debunking myths caused by ignorance. I want to know the facts behind the facts, not perspectives on data designed to manipulate my opinion. Where is it?

Tiger got to hunt,
bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder,
“Why, why, why?”

Tiger got to sleep,
bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

-Kurt Vonnegut

13
Mar

Would you want to visit Atlanta after seeing this sign?

By FraudWasteAbuse 45 Comments
Categories: news, life, humor, politics, funny, government, gay, airport, men, Atlanta, pride, homosexual and crossdressing

A couple of years ago, the City of Atlanta decided to launch an advertising campaign. Coined Brand Atlanta, its goal was to promote tourism, promote local pride, and establish an identity for the city. The rationale for starting the promotional campaign was that when people think of Las Vegas they think “gambling,” and when people think of New Orleans they think “Katrina”, er “Mardi Gras”, but nothing comes to mind when people think of Atlanta.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love Atlanta and enjoy living here, but there isn’t anything about the city that gives it an identity. Sure we’ve got the world’s busiest airport and the headquarters of Coca-Cola, but who really cares about that? Now that’s not to say that there’s nothing to see in Atlanta, but nobody is going to visit Atlanta so that they can snap some pictures of the airport.

Anyway, the Brand Atlanta campaign has come up with a few gimmicks to promote the city. These include TV and radio commercials, billboard ads, and a contrived and very lame theme song. I encountered one of these promos while at the Atlanta airport. It was large banner hanging from the ceiling at the train station. I’m trying to figure out what message Atlanta is trying to send. That all men in Atlanta wear skirts?

100_0262

10
Mar

Guess what the Swedish Government body fighting sexual discrimination is called

By FraudWasteAbuse 5 Comments
Categories: news, life, humor, politics, sex, funny, government, Sweden, Europe, offbeat, homosexuality and homosexual

Sweden has an official government department that devotes its resources to fighting discrimination against homosexuals. Can you guess what the name of the department is?

See for yourself.

I’d love to see people’s reactions when Hans Ytterberg hands out his business card.

07
Mar

Mining the ocean floor being seriously considered

By FraudWasteAbuse 14 Comments
Categories: news, environment, politics, government, libertarian, environmentalism, mining and ocean

It seems that an Australian prospector wants to start mining the ocean floor. And he might just get his wish.

He claims that mining at the bottom of the ocean will eliminate many of the negatives associated with modern mining. [digg=http://www.digg.com/world_news/Mining_the_ocean_floor_being_seriously_considered]

Heydon acknowledges that digging up the deep seas could make him a billionaire. But he insists that it’s also the solution to all the ills that land-based mining has caused. No indigenous societies need be disturbed. Better still, land doesn’t have to be butchered. There are no open pits, no leveled mountaintops. To make the most out of poor-quality ore, mining companies use cyanide to increase their yield and run the risk of polluting streams and lakes. None of that, he says, will happen underwater.

 
Ocean mining may seem like the next logical step, and he goes on to say that much of the land based mines are becoming exhausted:

This new approach to mining comes as the industry reaches a critical juncture. Many of the major land deposits have been exhausted by the $225 billion-a-year industry. But demand for minerals has never been higher. China and India are rapidly developing a middle class that’s hungry to improve its quality of life. That means millions of new houses laced with miles of copper wiring and acres of corrugated iron roofing. It means TVs, cars, and cell phones flecked with gold and cobalt. “How do we tell the guy living in a thatched hut that he can’t have a new metal roof because it’s going to cause environmental problems?” Heydon asks. “When we were developing, we didn’t care about that, so why should they? It’s up to us to pioneer new options.”
  
Heydon talks a good game. And in the past year, he has almost single-handedly ignited the current rush to mine mineral deposits on the ocean floor. Shuttling between the UK, Australia, Canada, and the US, he’s delivered his spiel hundreds of times to investors like the ones gathered here in San Francisco, as well as to the world’s largest mining companies. Anglo American, the owner of the De Beers diamond dynasty and the world’s second-largest mining company, recently invested $25 million. An additional $75 million came from iron, steel, and zinc producers who are scrambling to hedge against the possibility that their terrestrial mines may become depleted. Nautilus went public on the mining-heavy Toronto Stock Exchange in May, raising $22 million more. This winter the company said it would issue additional shares, raising another $100 million. What was a concept-driven startup 10 months ago is now a company with a war chest of cash. And things are moving fast, at least for the world of heavy industry: Nautilus is on track to begin mining the seabed by 2009.

 
You can read the full story here.

This actually sounds like a pretty cool idea. On the other hand, I’ve heard some pretty amazing proposals in my life and I can’t help myself from thinking that this is nothing more than a pipe dream. It will be interesting to see how this plan plays out.

One potential issue that may arise if this idea goes forward is if mining companies set up operations in international waters. Will governments attempt to assume regulatory control over operations? What would happen if a large mining company bullied its way onto a smaller company’s claim? Who resolves disputes over claims or other issues?

If mining does proceed and no governments get involved, it could be an interesting experiment in libertarianism on a small scale. What do you think?

06
Mar

Even the Nazis got a trial

By FraudWasteAbuse 2 Comments
Categories: news, politics, Iraq, War on Terror, law, terrorism, government, Republicans, war, Afghanistan, Bill of Rights, drugs, rights, Bush, civil rights, liberty, constitution, fascism, Nazis, Guantanamo, War on Drugs, Guantanamo Bay, Hitler and Nazi

Even the worst of the Nazis got a trial, even though the trial was a sham. The indictments were created ex post facto and were not based on any nation’s law. Even US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. But I digress.

The top Nazis could get a trial despite plunging Europe into its most destructive war and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people. Yet the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are somehow undeserving of a trial because they’re too barbaric, or happened to be kidnapped and sold to the Americans for a cash reward. Forgive me if I think the Nazis were a bit more dangerous and barbaric than some religious fanatics upset that a foreign military started shooting up their country.

Supporters of detaining alleged terrorists without trial posit that we did the same things with captured Germans and Japanese during World War II. The problem with trying to classify captured terrorists as prisoners of war is that we are not at war. Terrorism is still considered a federal crime, and sending the military to fight the crime of terrorism doesn’t make us any more at war than sending the military to fight drug cartels makes us at war. The government doesn’t consider arrested drug dealers to be POWs, nor does declaring a “War on Drugs ” strip accused drug dealers of their right to a fair trial.

06
Mar

Atlanta suburb gives citations for unattended idling cars

By FraudWasteAbuse 7 Comments
Categories: news, politics, bureaucracy, cars, insanity, government, crime, rights, civil rights, liberty, police, Atlanta, law enforcement, fascism and citation

In the city of Forest Park, a suburb of Atlanta, people are getting ticketed for leaving their cars unattended as they warm up in the morning. This appears to be another one of those “for-your-protection” laws, where the people who the law is supposedly protecting are the ones who get screwed. [digg=http://www.digg.com/politics/Atlanta_suburb_gives_citations_for_unattended_idling_cars]

Forest Park police are enforcing a Georgia law that makes it illegal for someone to leave a car unattended while it is idling. Its original purpose was to prevent cars from rolling away. Today, however, Forest Park is using the law under the guise of preventing car theft. Except that the potential victim of car theft is the one who gets slapped with a $168 fine. Fourteen people have been find since January. I guess this is what happens when the police don’t have anything important to do. Of course, an infinitely better idea would be to educate citizens rather than going around enforcing more draconian laws.

Our society is moving more and more towards abrogating citizens of all responsibility of everyday decision making. The state believes that you don’t have the capacity or even the right to make choices or risks with your own personal property. And apparently the state doesn’t think people are smart enough to know that there’s a risk to leaving one’s car unattended.

05
Mar

NSA wiretapping Americans without a warrant

By FraudWasteAbuse 8 Comments
Categories: news, politics, War on Terror, terrorism, government, crime, Bill of Rights, rights, Bush, civil rights, NSA, spying, wiretapping and warrantless

I’d hate to think that my fellow Americans would be so gullible as to believe the government’s promises that it was not going to use terrorist legislation against American citizens. Of course when the government makes justifications for overstepping its [digg=http://digg.com/politics/NSA_wiretapping_Americans_without_a_warrant]constitutional bounds to gain “tools” to combat whatever the latest bogeyman happens to be, one can be sure that those same “tools” will soon be used on everyday Americans.

In the latest example, it seems that there was a bit of a screw-up at the NSA and a Washington, DC lawyer was accidentally mailed a log of his private phone calls. Hilarity ensues:

It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked “top secret.” And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls.
  
You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.
  
By all accounts, that’s what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew in August 2004. And it happened at a time when no one outside a small group of high-ranking officials and workaday spooks knew the National Security Agency was listening in on Americans’ phone calls without warrants. Belew didn’t know what to make of the episode. But now, thanks to that government gaffe, he and a colleague have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA’s surveillance program.
  
The pair are seeking $1 million each in a closely watched lawsuit against the government, which experts say represents the greatest chance, among over 50 different lawsuits, of convincing a key judge to declare the program illegal.

Read the rest here.

04
Mar

What will universal healthcare be like? Just look at the VA

By FraudWasteAbuse 6 Comments
Categories: politics, bureaucracy, healthcare, government, Republicans, Democrats, rights, liberty, health care, hospital, constitution, doctor, VA, Veterans Affairs, socialized medicine and universal healthcare

With national elections coming late next year, it is inevitable that the topic of socialized medicine will again rear its ugly head. Much ado is made about the 40,000,000 Americans who do not have health insurance, which makes the fact that there are 260,000,000 Americans that do seem insignificant. Of course the 40,000,000 figure likely includes many young and healthy individuals with low risk of serious illness who don’t believe that health insurance would be cost-effective. But good news doesn’t make for a good emotional talking point.

If one wants to know how a national health care system would operate, one needs to merely look at the systems our government has in place. The most prominent form of socialized medicine in our country is the Department of Veterans Affairs. With 235,000 employees and a budget of more than $60 billion, the VA is the federal government’s second largest department, second only to the Department of Defense. It’s purpose it to provide benefits, disability payments, and health care to military members once they’ve left the service. The medical care provided at most VA facilities is generally considered to be fairly adequate. That is, if you can even get to see a doctor at all.

For those of us who have private health insurance, we can typically see a doctor for any reason within a week or two, depending how busy that doctor’s office is. Not so with VA health care, or any other socialized health system for that matter. Private insurance yields considerable flexibility and a range of choices. If health care is handed to the state, you do it the state’s way on the state’s terms and that’s it. If its one-size-fits-all plan doesn’t suit you, that’s too bad.

The reason for the failure of socialized medicine (aside from the fact that it is run by the government) is the notion that the laws of supply and demand can be ignored. Proponents of socialized medicine desire to create a system that offers unlimited health care to all Americans. Unfortunately, unlimited health care incurs unlimited costs. Since a system that incurs unlimited costs is obviously impossible to operate, rationing of supply is inevitable. Now we have scenarios in which priorities are assigned, and people who have brain tumors that will kill them in a year won’t be treated until the people with brain tumors that will kill them in eleven months are cured.

We can see evidence of this today in the Veterans Affairs health care system. Patients sometimes have to wait months just to see a physician for a non life-threatening condition. In one recent case, a man had to wait four months to get the result of an important medical test. A backlog exists of 400,000 applications and appeals for benefits, most of which are for veterans of previous wars. This problem isn’t limited to the VA. In Canada, wait times to get into hospitals can span weeks or months, including for simple procedures (Compared with the US where wait times are generally dependent on fulfilling medical requirements–such as no eating for a day or two). The average wait time for treatment after seeing a general practitioner is a little over 17 weeks.

Inevitably, you will have people who simply support socialized medicine in general, despite all its failing. They assert that everyone has a right to cheap or free health care no matter how crappy it is. The problem is that health care is not a right in the traditional sense of what a right is. True rights relate to the individual, such as free speech or freedom of religion. To exercise these rights, one does not have to coerce someone else to do something against his or her will. With a socialized medical system, one must coerce complete strangers into funding your actions. You are forcing others to be your slave.

Nationalizing health care, especially in the United States, would be a disaster. The US government has shown an extraordinary propensity for screwing up pretty much ANYTHING it gets involved in. Imagine yourself dealing with the type of people at the IRS or DMV the next time you need stitches.

02
Mar

Sex offender hysteria

By FraudWasteAbuse 6 Comments
Categories: politics, sex, paranoia, insanity, government, crime, civil rights, liberty, sex offender and sexual predator

Today I came across a story about how lawmakers in Ohio are planning yet another way to punish people for crimes they’ve already been punished for. Not content with forcing sex offenders to register with the sheriff in the county in which they live or barring them from living near a school, now a new law has been proposed that will force sex offenders to get special colored license plates that would allow the public to identify them. [digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Sex_offender_hysteria]

Does anyone else think our politicians have gone way overboard on this issue? I personally think that they went overboard the moment they required sex offenders to register, even after serving prison time. Here is just a sampling of some of the feel-good-but-useless-and-life-ruining laws that have been passed around the country:

- In Florida, sex offenders are barred from hurricane shelters and must report to the nearest prison if they have nowhere else to go.

- In Iowa, sex offenders are banned from living within 2,000 feet of schools and day care centers, which essentially bans sex offenders from living in most cities and towns.

- Georgia law prevents sex offenders from living, working, or loitering within 1,000 feet of a school, church, playground, or school bus stop. In some cases, entire counties are off limits.

- California has put out a piece of legislation which would enforce lifetime monitoring of convicted sexual predators and the creation of “predator free zones”.

We’ve all heard the insane cases where seemingly normal activity can ends up getting some poor schmuck on a sex offender registry. Like the 18 year old boy who gets convicted of having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, or the man who grabbed the a girl’s arm and scolded her for running in front of his car.

It appears that the only real thing these draconian laws accomplish are ruined lives for non-violent and non-repeating sex offenders, and a false sense of security for the community. If these people are such a danger to the community in which they reside, why are they being released from prison? If they disregarded laws against the molesting of children, why would they follow laws preventing them from loitering near schools and playground?

Much of the hysteria surrounding sex offenders can be blamed on the media. From sensationalizing local stories nationwide for weeks, to shows like “To Catch a Predator”, the media has kept American interest in sex offenders on the front burner. After doing a little research, many of society’s preconceived notions about sex offenders (not surprisingly) are wrong:

The vast majority of minors (94%) are victimized among family or friends. 84% of assaults on children under 12 occur within a residence. These statistics make distance laws (e.g. 1000 feet from a school) uncalled for. Another misconception people have is that sex offenders have a high recidivism rate. Actually, the opposite is true. Recidivism rates for sex offenses are relatively low, typically running in the 3-13% range, and among the lowest of all types of crimes.

I’m not trying to suggest that there aren’t real, dangerous criminals out there. But, the 18 year old guy who gets caught getting oral sex from his 17 year old girlfriend isn’t one of them.

28
Feb

Fear brings people closer to conservatism

By FraudWasteAbuse 2 Comments
Categories: politics, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, liberal, Republicans, Democrats, 9/11, conservatives, liberals, conservatism, conservative and Osama bin Laden

I recently read an interesting article in the February 2007 issue of Psychology Today. It was about political stances, and how most people’s politics have little to do with reason and more to do with personality traits and education level, among other things. According to the article, psychologists have discovered some interesting underlying personality differences between liberals and conservatives. A few I found to be somewhat surprising:

Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

Getting to the main point of the article, it seems that those who have the greatest fear of death, a need for an authority figure, and who have a one-dimensional view of the world are more likely to be conservative. On a side note, this would help explain why the vast majority of those in the military tend to vote Republican.

If anyone understands this, it’s President Bush. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush’s approval ratings shot up to around 90%. Instead of using this golden opportunity to push for a truly conservative agenda of smaller government, he vastly expanded the powers of government with the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Instead of reevaluating US foreign policy and changing it in a way that would ease resentment of the United States in hotspots around the world, he created a culture of fear, convincing Americans that their neighbors might be terrorists. Never mind that terrorism doesn’t register much of a blip when compared to the top killers of Americans.

Today’s conservatism is fueled by fear. Those who are more easily manipulated by fear feel at ease when someone in a position of authority (Bush) reassures them and tells them that he will keep them safe. Unfortunately, this combination of fear and need to be kept safe gives people a false sense of security. It is my hope that rational people will understand that the government can do very little to stop terrorism. Until then, we need to stop being ruled by our fear.

28
Feb

Bill would would ban use of phrase ‘illegal alien’

By FraudWasteAbuse 5 Comments
Categories: politics, bureaucracy, Florida, aliens, government, immigration, illegal immigration, immigrants and illegal aliens

TALLAHASSEE — A state legislator whose district is home to thousands of Caribbean immigrants wants to ban the term “illegal alien” from the state’s official documents.

“I personally find the word ‘alien’ offensive when applied to individuals, especially to children,” said Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami. “An alien to me is someone from out of space.”

Well, you’re an idiot.

Read the rest of the story here.

27
Feb

To whom does the US Constitution apply?

By FraudWasteAbuse 26 Comments
Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war, Bill of Rights, rights, Bush, civil rights, liberty and constitution

There is a great debate in the United States over whether or not terrorists have the same rights as American citizens, or even if terrorists have any rights under the Constitution at all. President Bush has maintained that captured terrorists are enemy combatants, and do not have the rights an privileges guaranteed by the Constitution. Bush is so adamant that terrorists do not have rights under US law that they are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, where Cuba technically has sovereignty even though the United States has effective legal control.

Another popular claim is that captured terrorists are actually prisoners of war. Prisoners of war do not typically get to challenge their detention and so captured terrorists must be held until hostilities have ceased.

Some even go as far as claiming that not even illegal immigrants have rights under the Constitution, because the Constitution only applies to American citizens.

There are several flaws in these claims. I’ll address the first one in this post and cover the others later. First, let’s evaluate the notion that non-Americans do not have constitutional rights. If one reads through the Constitution it becomes apparent that all references to “citizens” in the Constitution have nothing to do with the rights of the people. Most references are rules as to how one can participate in the political/election process. In fact, the Bill of Rights makes no distinctions between citizens and non-citizens.

Consider this: How can we be sure of our government’s claims that a suspected foreign terrorist is indeed a foreign terrorist until that person has had a fair and impartial trial to determine his status? What is to prevent an American citizen from being arrested, detained, and accused of being a foreign terrorist? That person would have no way to confront his accusers and prove his innocence.

This leads me to my conclusion. In truth, the Constitution does not apply to non-Americans. It doesn’t even apply to American citizens. The Constitution is a contract between the federal government and the states, and thus applies to the federal government. The Constitution itself is a list of rules and powers of the federal government. It is specifically enumerated and if it isn’t listed, the government isn’t allowed to do it. The Bill of Rights is a list of things the federal government may not do. Nowhere does it make an exception for non-citizens, terrorism, etc.

26
Feb

What’s your real tax rate? How about 40%

By FraudWasteAbuse 2 Comments
Categories: politics, government, taxes, tax, liberty and income

Think you pay a lot in taxes? What if you learned that you probably pay a lot more than you think? According to an article on MSN Money, the state takes about a 40% cut from the average American’s income. The American revolutionaries rebelled over taxes a fraction of that amount.

When we hear most politicians talk about taxes, they usually only refer to the federal income tax. However, most people don’t think to include other taxes such as property taxes, sales taxes, or all the “little” taxes we all pay that add up to a very large portion of our income over time. [digg=http://www.digg.com/politics/What_s_your_real_tax_rate_How_about_40]

I don’t know how others feel, but I hope more than a few are little peeved that the government can claim almost half of our income that it did nothing to earn.

For something a bit more visual, here is a table from the article:

All-in marginal tax rates for couples
Age
 $20,000
 $30,000
 $50,000
 $75,000
 $100,000
 $150,000
 $200,000
 $300,000
 $500,000
30 42.5% 42.3% 24.4% 36.9% 37.0% 45.9% 36.8% 43.9% 44.0%
45 41.7% 41.8% 35.8% 36.1% 36.1% 45.1% 35.9% 40.9% 43.2%
60 32.0% 36.3% 36.5% 45.5% 45.5% 47.7% 43.2% 45.8% 45.0%
                   

So how can we get our politicians more connected with the real world? Maybe it should be required that they do their own taxes every year.

Without a calculator or computer software.

Perhaps that might give them a vested interest in the tax code they write.

25
Feb

Americans more likely than Muslims to support attacks on civilians

By FraudWasteAbuse 16 Comments
Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war and Osama bin Laden

According to a recent poll done by the University of Maryland, Americans are more likely to support attacks against civilians than citizens of every other Muslim country except Nigeria. This poll challenges the popular belief that Islam is a religion of war and the United States is a nation of peace.

Percentage of population agreeing that “bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” are “never justified:”

Pakistan: 86%
Bangladesh: 81%
Indonesia: 74%
United States: 46%

WASHINGTON - Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland’s prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that “bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” are “never justified,” while 24 percent believe these attacks are “often or sometimes justified.”

Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world’s most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are “never justified”; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.

Click here to read more.

25
Feb

Why do they hate us?

By FraudWasteAbuse 11 Comments
Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war, Afghanistan, Bush and Osama bin Laden

For a while after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 George Bush made the claim that the terrorists attacked us because they hate our freedoms. Here’s an excerpt from a speech George Bush gave in 2002:

You just need to know it’s still a dangerous period in Afghanistan. There’s still a lot of killers roaming around, and they hate America. They hate us because we’re free. Then cannot stand the thought that we have freedom of religion in America; that we respect each other based upon our personal religious beliefs. They cannot stand the thought that there’s honest political discourse. There’s free press — confident they hate that. They hate us. And so, wherever they try to hide, we’re going to get ‘em. There’s no cave dark enough or deep enough from the United States of America.

However, this meme doesn’t seems to be as played up as much as it used to be. Even Osama bin Laden himself has discounted it:

If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn’t attack Sweden, for example.

The current conventional “wisdom” among supporters of the president seems to be that the terrorists hate us and want to kill us because they are Muslims and we are not. But how much truth does this assertion really have?[digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Why_do_the_terrorists_hate_and_want_to_kill_us]

It is true that much of the Muslim world finds many aspects of Western and American culture highly offensive. But it’s hard to find much evidence to support the claim that we are being attacked because they find us offensive. Most people typically are not going to be motivated to kill people on the other side of the planet because they watch trashy TV.

We can gather evidence for what motivates terrorists from looking at history. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan offers us some clues. In 1979 the Soviet Union, a communist and atheistic state, invaded the Muslim country of Afghanistan. In response to this, Osama bin Laden and other non-Afghan Muslims came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, not because the Soviets were non-Muslim atheists, but because they were waging a brutal invasion. Once the last of the invading troops left in 1989, war with the Soviet Union was not pursued.

The US government has a hard time learning from history. In this case, the US government is caught in a vicious cycle. Their solution to terrorism is to do more of the very thing that motivates terrorists in the first place.

The terrorists have made it very clear as to why they attack us. It is not because of our freedoms or because we are not Muslim. The two grievances that form a common theme among terrorist groups are our government’s bullying and meddling in the Middle East and its lopsided support for Israel.

Unfortunately, it is not easy to have true debate with those who support the war in Iraq and the war on terror unwaveringly. To them, the very idea that the United States might be partly to blame for terrorism is unacceptable and cannot or should not be considered, and the United States is only seen as a force of good in the world.

We will have to see how long our government can play with fire before it realizes how much the American people are getting burned.

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