Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

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So the one 'attack that might have been foiled' was some bloke in San Diego sending some money to someone in Somalia who might have had contact with extremists, extremists that are in Africa, a whole continent and a dozen time zones away.

Liberal left wing types that supported the bombing of Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds ('we have to bomb them because if we don't then they will all starve') did not imagine for one moment that the talk of 'terrorist training camps' was utter bullshit. It was all true - to them when Donald Rumsfeld was telling them. They thought that bombing them would only encourage the terrorists.

So where are they?

There are plenty of immigrants fresh from Afghanistan in London, the ones you meet work hard for a living driving taxis and doing jobs white people don't like doing. So if the NSA/GCHQ have not caught any of them for being unduly fundamental-extremalist and none of them have come here to join terror cells so they can blow up thousands more innocent babies and puppies, what is going on?

As a taxpayer I expect more from this clash of civilisations. I have not had any days of work due to terror bomb threats, no postcard sites have been blown up and I have no idea what the colour coded threat level is for the day.

>Liberal left wing types that supported the bombing of Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds... to them when Donald Rumsfeld was telling them.

I think you're confusing your political parties.

>There are plenty of immigrants fresh from Afghanistan in London, the ones you meet work hard for a living driving taxis and doing jobs white people don't like doing.

Nice casual racism.

>As a taxpayer I expect more from this clash of civilisations. I have not had any days of work due to terror bomb threats, no postcard sites have been blown up and I have no idea what the colour coded threat level is for the day.

While I question the notion of a "clash of civilisations[sic]," you're saying this like it's a bad thing.

> I think you're confusing political parties

In the UK liberal refers to more socialist and inclusive policies (I think in the US it refers more to people being allowed to take care of themselves?).

I think you've missed a particularly oblique piece of sarcasm.

Thank you!

Sarcasm and humour in general is usually not the way we deal with serious things like the war, even here on HN.

This is a pity as humour, even if it is British rather than American (or German) is a great way to make big, scary, difficult-to-understand-things a bit easier to talk about. It is a tactic and we should be taking the piss out of the politicians and the spies, rendering them to being pathetic 'Peeping Toms', tantamount to being dirty perverts, lowest of the low.

That said...

...I am genuinely surprised at how we have been able to kill whomever we like in The War Against Terror with a lack of reprisals from those we bombed. I am sure soldiers in Afghanistan do not see it that way, but for the folks in UK/USA there is practically zero terror threat.

To all intents and purposes those we have attacked and tortured are like unwitting subjects for a follow up to the MKULTRA type of things that went on 50 years ago. I do wonder if there are those in the military that see it that way, testing new weapons by killing a few people with them.

Fortunately those we bomb are people as opposed to complete psychopaths, so they don't have the mindset of those in the arms business.

The near-rambling presentation suggests to me that the author would only claim sarcasm if the post was not well received.

> Nice casual racism. How is that racist?

It's textbook racism in that it assigns characteristics based on race alone.

> it assigns characteristics based on race alone.

By that standard, saying that black people have dark skin is racist. I could say all sorts of things about different racial groups that nobody would find offensive except guilty white people who know nothing of real class struggle.

You don't mess with a black girl's hair. Asians are more family-oriented than most. White people tend to be higher-minded in ways that often look out of touch. Latin culture idolizes a certain ideal of the strong male patriarch. Africans are extremely practical.

These statements are uncontroversial and I discovered them through direct interaction with the cultures in question. It's once you start organizing these observations into a racial narrative that purports to explain why one race is 'better' than another that your motivations become suspect.

>I could say all sorts of things about different racial groups that nobody would find offensive except guilty white people who know nothing of real class struggle.

Swing and a miss. Assigning job preference to a race is just a lazy version of explaining what you really mean, and we try to be above that.

Your response, for instance, is all over the place:

>You don't mess with a black girl's hair(1). Asians are more family-oriented than most(2). White people tend to be higher-minded in ways that often look out of touch(3). Latin culture idolizes a certain ideal of the strong male patriarch(4). Africans are extremely practical(5).

1 - I don't know what this is. 2 - do you mean "as a entire ethnic group" or "people from the Asian continent?" 3 - I don't even know where to start with your statement of white people being "higher-minded" and I'm pretty sure I don't want to follow you down your impressions-of-races rabbit hole. 4 - you hedged this comment by refining it to the "culture." 5 - by referring to the entire continent of people, this is such a strange generalization.

>Nice casual racism.

That's not racism.

>While I question the notion of a "clash of civilisations[sic]," you're saying this like it's a bad thing.

I don't see where he assigned a value to this prediction. It seems to me that you've done that for him, both in this comment and the one accusing him of racism.

>That's not racism.

He stated "doing jobs white people don't like doing." How do you interpret this? This is, by definition, stating that by being white alone, the population carries a characteristic.

>I don't see where he assigned a value to this prediction.

They're independent clauses ("I question that this event is occurring _and_ it seems as if by the preposition 'as a taxpayer', you expect a little theatrics instead of quiet aversion of harm.").

>He stated "doing jobs white people don't like doing." How do you interpret this? This is, by definition, stating that by being white alone, the population carries a characteristic.

Only if you're a twat.

He was making a general observation: that minorities tend to do jobs that white people don't want to do.

And he's right. That's a simple observation, one which carries no value judgment. It just is.

That's not being racist; it's making an observation. If you think that any statement which differentiates between the races in any way - even if only tangentially - is a racist statement, then frankly, you need to get over yourself.

>Only if you're a twat... you need to get over yourself.

You're adorable. You must be the life of parties.

YOUR FACE IS STUPID!!!

So where are they?

A great many went to Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/opinion/iraq-a-school-for-... and many more.

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