IMO, this is somewhat disingenuous - Leadership starts with liquid gold...,and the region where Islam was first revealed...

> http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=HXz0B_j9eHI
> http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=rdpCOaJuBx4

It is a historiographically sustainable FACT that the Koran is more anti-semitic than Hitler's Mein Kampf.

http://www.cspipublishing.com

Who are you to judge a man's heart? Knock it off. You seem like a Troll of late.

As for my posts, I am unapologetic if I offended you or anyone else by calling a supremacist ideology founded by a pedophile just that. My namesake was a polemicist when necessary to help call this colony to action in order to defend her against an oppressive threat. And if that's what it takes to wake Americans up - to alert them to the threat, so be it.

Paul Revere warned "THE BRITISH ARE COMING!"

Let it never be said that I didn't warn that "SHARIA IS COMING!"

This is what I don't get..., someone who accuses the "Kafir" of hatred in his heart, yet fails to recognize that Islamic ideology is full of hate, and under Sharia, it is a system of legally-mandated hatred. How can someone who objects to a supremacist ideology of hate be considered a hater by pointing out the hateful teachings, and legal system, of an evil ideology which condones the rape, torture, and murder of those unwilling to join the club of "Mo-Allah" ?

By pointing out and exposing the teachings of Sharia Law, which is legally mandated hatred - if anything,... those who do are anti-hatred...

If someone points out that Conservatives are for less Government, or that Liberals are for big Goverment, does this make one a hater by exposing an ideology?

Complacency on the part of the apologist can only serve Islam.


Islam deserves criticism on account of the logical consequences of its dogma, namely, that the murder of fellow human beings is to be rewarded with sensual pleasure in a hedonistic “Paradise”—a concept born in the fantasies of an Arab rebel some fourteen centuries ago. The religion of Mohammed is a dangerous system when the teachings and example of the “prophet” are believed and followed.
~Richard Dawkins~

Let's be clear. Islam wasn't revealed. It was invented.

MK262
 

I asked you a question a while back and you blew it off. Why? Was the answer to difficult to find?

I had asked you a question about Islamic governments. Something along the lines of were they becoming more liberal (in the classic sense) or becoming more radical.

Is there a country with a Muslim majority where all religions and all people enjoy the same protection under the law? In this day and age why not?

In the majority of countries run by Muslims do people of other religions enjoy equal protection under the law as Muslims?

As the Muslim population grows in a country or the hard liners take over do the laws remain the same or are they screwed down on non-Muslims?

Do Muslims live in peace with their neighbors until they reach a certain % of the population and then as their population grows they become more radical. Any studies on this? Maybe Europe? But most of them are poor and live in gettos - not like the US? Any growing Muslim population centers in the US?

Pete

Islam, the sea in which the terrorist shark swims. It aids the shark and comforts it in it's journey. The deeper the sea the larger the shark.

Herein lies their brilliant strategy, and a clear path to denying them safe harbor in their muslim sea. MOO, only through prosecuting total war will there be peace.

Declaration of War

To all muslims.

As of today, August 6, 2010, with this Declaration of War, we will begin killing muslims with the same indiscriminate weapons, and ideology that muslims have chosen to employ worldwide.
We will kill anyone who supports you in any way.
We will kill muslims where ever we find them.
We will Kill you at work.
We will kill you in your homes.
We will kill you in your schools.
This means your children are considered combatants. We justify this targeting in response to the Beslan School Massacre. Knowing full well that muslims have no respect for human life, we will incorporate the same methods of destruction to muslim families.
We will kill you in your mosques.
We will give no quarter, we will not rest.

Annuit coeptis, Audemus Jura Nostra Defendere

Edit to add:In regard to this particular thread, I want to apologize to the board for my temperament.

The face of Islam: LINK

Who made the problem? Islamics.

Who is fixing the problem? The U.S.

My, my.

I strongly disagree. It was revealed. By Satan himself.

There is a deeper problem here that we're missing. This isn't simply a political and sociological problem. This is a spiritual problem. It is more than a physical war. It is a spiritual war.

My apologies :D I was sort of quoting the POTUS…

“I have known Islam on three continents….before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction”

> http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../06/023771.php


I’m an ardent admirer of Lieutenant General Boykin, he doesn’t beat around the bush… :cool:

This is going to be my last post in this thread, because I'm honestly wasting my time and my efforts trying to serve as a counter point to this kind of insanity.

I just wanted to point out that what Penn wrote above is absolutely evil, and I hope he gets help.

Targeting Children???? Yeah.... you go sign back up and put a uniform on for that one. Let's see if you can take an M240 and mow down a couple schools worth of Muslim kids. :rolleyes:

This has become some kind of sick joke. I don't know if you're being serious or just trying to provoke a reaction. If you are serious, you have lost your soul and your humanity.

I'm going to go back to doing what I came here for, reading and learning about the military and SF. I leave the Holy War to those who are so inclined. :rolleyes:

Once again.....
 

Once again ducked my questions. Oh,well..

By the way its the Muslims who like to target children - even their own if it advances Islam.

Not too many parents in the west are proud all their kids grew up to be suicide bombers.

Penn was making a point, one which you clearly missed.

I take it you would not be party to a group/tribe that employed such violent means?

Most "civilized" humans would agree with you, well all except muslims.

The muslims of the world have yet to speak as one and denounce such violent acts against humanity, they will continue to use children as weapons, use the mentally challenged as bombs and deliberately target children. And to what end? Is the western world denying them their religion? No. They wish to dominate the world through violent means, and in this ideology, islam, the end justifies the means.

Please explain to me how could any half intelligent human being justify the deliberate attack on school children?

Chechen terrorists are muslims, they deliberately killed 300 children. For what, Freedom?

As a warrior, if my leaders told me to deliberately target and kill children, any children, I would kill them (my leaders) where they stood.

In a civilized society the end does not justify the means.

Tell me, where do you as an individual draw the line?

Team Sergeant

The religion of peace.:rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favzl...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rT_jm0pW6c

…and exploiting them….sickening…:mad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrCyWDdSN8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPU4UN03t7E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU9SsB-P84c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg1EYKg12Pc
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...6422368&hl=da#

Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur'an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme. (Sura 9:111)


You who believe, shall I show you a bargain that will save you from painful punishment? 11 Have faith in God and His Messenger and struggle [j-h-d] for His cause with your possessions and your persons—that is better for you, if only you knew—12 and He will forgive your sins, admit you into Gardens graced with flowing streams, into pleasant dwellings in the Gardens of Eternity. That is the supreme triumph (61:10)

"Just give me that olde tyme religion..."
Richard :munchin

The Risks of a Totalizing View
 

Penn,

I realize you were trying to make a point, collectively we all want to win this war. With that sole objective in mind, given the tactics employed by the enemy, non state actors in the case of AQ, and insurgency in Afghanistan, don't we sow the seeds for perpetual and expanded conflict with anything other than precise use of force? General McChrystal touched on the expansive risk characteristics of "insurgent math". Specifically in this type of conflict can we kill our way to victory? Wars end when one side loses the will to fight, WW2 while not easy, was simpler, we took Berlin, Germany surrendered. Here we face a decentralized criminal organization (focused on political coercion instead of profit) complete with global cells, and an insurgency. Folks have addressed total war, unfortunate civilian casualties, and our moral limits in previous posts, my question is can we brutalize our way to victory in the scenario we face? For example, The Soviets didn't namby pamby anything when it came to brutal force, they had no restrictive ROE. TS's point is valid, when you are ordered to place mines designed to maim children it's clear who you should shoot. Despite using such tactics and brutality the Soviets still lost. The Israelis are closer to our values system, yet despite their military superiority over the Palestinians and blunt force mindset, what results have they achieved?

In an earlier thread IIRC Richard likened the war in Afghanistan to a police officer making a repeated call out to a domestic violence situation in poor urban neighborhood. A dangerous situation which can escalate into substantial and perpetual community blowback if mishandled.

There are domestic instances of success against organized crime organizations specifically the war on the Mafia using RICO etc in the 70's. Our challenge is different we need to kill them not convict them, but our enemies operate across borders. IMHO it is equally important to note what the NY authorities did not do. They declared war on the Mafia, not Italian Americans. They didn't go into Italian boroughs and shake the people down until they produced mafia. Basically, they knew most Italians here weren't mafia and were scared of the mob. They didn't disparately target Catholic churches or Italian businesses, or question every last name in the white pages that ends in a vowel. We think of the past as the good old days, but the abbreviation for term With Out Papers isn't that old, neither was the era without tensions and stereotypes. At the same time there were plenty of civilians in the neighborhoods who know who the bad guys were, most chose other paths, but we didn't condemn them for minding their own business and keeping their mouth shut. It wasn't easy but with the discerning granularity and precise use of Humint ,infiltration and an evolution in legal technology (RICO) they broke the mobs back.

With Islam it is easy to fall into this same trap, what emeritus sociology and politics professor Sami Zubaida of Birckbeck College in London refers to as " a totalizing vision". Specifically

While I don't agree necessarily agree with his views on religion and ideology , he earlier also clarifies;

Quote:

Muslims in western societies follow diverse religious and political orientations and have diverse lifestyles. Indeed, Muslims do not constitute a "community", but are differentiated by ethnicity, class and generation and education. The assertion of Islam as their primary identity is, indeed, a misleading ideology, upheld equally by Islamist publicists and many institutions and authorities of the "host societies". Many sectors are secular and only nominally "Muslim", though all the signs are that these are declining in a wave of religious assertion. Others are occasionally observant and "cultural" Muslims. Rigorous Salafism may be a minority orientation, although an increasingly prominent one. Its authority and influence are assured by the lavish financial provisions of Saudi sources, establishing mosques, schools and charities, and dispensing clerics and preachers.

IMHO we play right into AQ's hands by upping the brutality quotient without precision targeting. We are not AQ's objective their objective is to recreate a fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate, and they are failing. The security forces of Islamic nations are hunting AQ as well now realizing their barbaric ways, this was not always the case. We absolutely need to identify, engage, and terminate the enemy, yet if we aren't careful we will then in fact create a world of Umma nationalism needlessly and the very "clash of civilization" AQ and the insurgents need to survive.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflic...ology_4346.jsp

There is a cost, in terms of time, effort, and effectiveness to such precision. Is it worth it? That depends on the aggregate cost - in other words, the cost per target times the number of targets.

I do believe there are lots of individuals that ought to be designated as targets. Couple that with a high cost-per-target and the effort becomes impractical.

Rhetorical question: How does one identify a Taliban sympathizer in the wilds of Afghanistan, and do so with high confidence, low risk, and reasonable cost in terms of blood and treasure? I'm sure I don't know. If someone does know, they probably shouldn't say.

Your ears deceive you…
 

What constitutes an innocent life under the legal system of Islamic Law or under the ideology of Islam?

According to Islamic Sharia Law, the agnostic or “Kafir” are “NOT INNOCENT” - they are the worst of all creatures - so says Islam…

Don’t take my word for it, listen to the Ummah and read what Islamic Law says…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAbPeUJ0HHQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-bW9...layer_embedded

"...whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind." (5:32)

"The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom..." (5:33)

The first part (5:32) sounds like a prohibition against murdering any innocent, but the second part (5:33) permits the killing of non-Muslims under many circumstances (kufr/Kafiroon) because, they have committed corruption, or mischief in the land by not believing in “Mo-Alla” which puts one “beyond the pale of Islam”

Islamic Law says - not my words or feelings :

* Kafir - Non-Muslim / Non-Believer/ Pagan / Agnostic /Jew / Christian, etc…
* Kufr - Unbelief/infidelity
* Apostate - One who denies the ultimate truth of Islam.
* Apostacy - The act of any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief, and leaves the faith.
(Reliance of the Traveller - index for above - see pages 1132,1170,1172,1207).

c2.5 The unlawful (haram) is what the Law giver strictly forbids. Someone who commits an unlawful act deserves punishment...

(3) and unbelief (kufr), sins which put one beyond the pale of Islam (as discussed at o8.7) and neccessitate stating the Testification of faith (Shahada)...
(pgs 30-31)

o4:17 There is no indemnity for killing a non-Muslim...
(pgs 588-595)

o8.2 In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representative) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed

o8.7 (2) to intend to commit unbelief, even if in the future. And like this intention is hesitating whether to do so or not: one therby immediately commits unbelief:

(15) to hold that any of Allah's messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent:
(Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Pages 30-45, 588-595, 595-610).


Arafat said to the non-innocent world that they wanted peace with the Jews, yet among his fellow Muslims, he was only offering "the peace of Saladin"

"al-Taqiyya" - “wAllahu khayru al-makireen”

:munchin

I think we have different definitions of "historiography," divergent views of historical causation, and differing interpretations of modern European history in general and modern German history in particular.

MK262 & AKV

I. Yes, it is absolutely evil. If executed by a muslim it is not judged as evil, it’s part of jihad, disguised as: we need our own state separatist movement, and the sea of islam say's what? And your defense is what?

2. Who ever said anything about being in uniform. My cousin in the 70's, much to the horror of the family, ran guns for the IRA. I see the future as Non state actors executing policy against muslims on their own.

3. The declaration of war I presented is the muslim & bin laden song book.

4. There is no defense for muslims other than they are primates who have not evolved, that plausible, they do after all, destroy(MURDER) their children for sake of family honor, which must bring a sense of relief for the victim, it seems the culture it rooted in primal familial rape and abuse; would being put out of that vicious misery be considered one allahs blessings? I would think it would, so praise be to allah in all his mercifulness.

There is a direct correlation of reinforced cultural conditioning reflected in the chickenian (pun intended) Muslim slaughter of 300 innocent children in a Russian School.

Did you see that blatant propaganda on the cover of Time Magazine. A beautiful Afghan girl with her ears and nose hacked off because she ran away from her husband. The back story was: Her father sold her to a Taliban fighter, while away, his family beat her and abuse her, locking her in a room for a year while he was out jihading.

You can tell from the picture, even though she is all hacked up, she is beautiful. I can image the threat she must have pose as an uneducated, dirt floor village, subservient prisoner. The thought of Beauty as a threat to cultural domination; seems a strictly muslim construct. Portraiture is outlawed.

Now if you do want to make a counter point, and are truly magnanimous, get some friends together find a way to get her here, NYC; because the best plastic surgeon in NYC (and that pretty much means world class best) is a dear friend of mine. He would love the opportunity to help restore some sense of being human to this young girl. The Only culture that permits this animal behavior is muslim!!! It is not a defensible position.

Back on topic:

The declaration of war I presented is current muslim warfare ideology, a ideology you are defending, by, as you say, the offering of a counter point, a counter point to what, truth?

As for the help I need, I need to get in touch with my cousin, and I need private LR SOTIC classes. Other than that I feel balanced and on target.

Edited for inaccurate word choice. Richard

Richard, Thank you for the correction, I know I was over the line, but passion and emotion when combined often lead to inappropriate displays of behavior; my sincere apologies to the board.

I hate to get sucked back into this thread, but since you are lying about what I have said, I might as well correct you.

I never defended any ideology as espoused by extremists. To say I have ever done that, is an outright lie.

What I have said is that not all Muslims are our enemy. That is the counter point I have made.

Having corrected you, I now leave this thread again. Discussing this issue with people like you who are completely devoid of rationality is pointless.

Bluntly, I'm increasingly convinced that you are not reading what other people post.

Moreover, your 'counterpoints' would have more merit if they were consistent with each other and did not reflect the values that you attribute to others.

As I pointed out earlier, you and I are in broad agreement on this issue. Unfortunately, at present you are doing more to undermine that position than to support it.

My $0.02.

Checking out at Costco this morning, a mother and son were in front of me. She had her head covered, they spoke Arabic together. While she placed her grocery on the counter, the son, in his Rutgers shorts, texted; spoke fluent English on his cell, with a nasal NJ accent, there is no doubt an American raised young man.

The only one thought that crossed my mind: As an American, I wondered were his loyalties laid.

A breach of trust occurred. It continues to split the relationship between muslim and all other non muslims, by the refusal of muslim people and cleric’s worldwide to assist in the capture of bin laden and the rest of his ilk.

Your defense, and for that matter anyone defense of: “Not all muslims are terrorist” is incorrect.

All muslims are culpable due to the continued silence in denouncing the wanton slaughter of innocent people, not to mention the easy denouncement in the wholesale killing of children.

There is no movement, as in protest, in the muslim community worldwide to confront its radical cleric’s inciting hate and advocating the killing of innocent people. The logic being: non muslims do not matter, jihad is a cultural impetrative, and to do so would be putting their life on the line, by not adhering to Islamic doctrine.

If not all muslim support terrorism, or are not sympatric to terrorism, then why is there not a worldwide movement by muslim; let’s say on the order of the anti-war movement in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, that developed in America and worldwide to stop the war.

Surly with a billion muslim worldwide, statistically speaking of course, there should be some form of protest movement?

Except for the fact of the, 999,900,999 million illiterate muslims the power elite refuses to educate.

The defense of muslim ideology, or muslims as “not all are terrorist”, fails the accessory test in all capital cases. As a former LEO, silence automatically makes one a co-conspirator; therefore, in the execution of any terrorist acts that wantonly kill innocent people, all muslims are implicated by association affirmed in their silence, which translates as condoning the action.

MK262,I am not lying, I am interpreting, inferring, what you are implying, in the defense of "not all muslims are terrorist" its that simple.

I guess there's something I just don't understand.

Let us suppose that not all Muslims - which I will call group B - are bad. Some are good, some are bad, some are neither.

There is another group which consists of non-Muslims. Let's call them group A.

Members of group B sometimes do bad things to members of group A. The reader may be inclined to point out that members of group A may sometimes do bad things to members of B, but that is beyond the scope of this posting. Let's focus on B doing things to A for the moment.

Members of A want the bad things to stop. How to do this?

1) Group A can eliminate B.
2) Group A can surrender to B.
3) Group A can filter out the bad elements in B and remove them and no one else.

Members of group A generally reject solutions (1) and (2). That leaves solution (3).

I do not know how to discern who within group B is a bad person. I have not yet addressed (and will not address, in this post) how to deal with the problem after identification. So the question is - how can we know who is a bad guy within group B? For our purposes here, this is a rhetorical question; however, in the real world it is deadly serious. The evidence suggests that we do not know, although I would welcome information showing otherwise.

And this brings us back to Chef Penn's woman and children at Costco. If we suppose that the woman is Muslim, and further suppose her child is a Muslim, how can we determine whether the child is (or is not) a bad guy? Other than the Muslim factor, I see no way to accomplish this. However, we have evidence - a growing pile of evidence - that American born Muslims have some possibility of turning into bad guys. Therefore our problem is not theoretical; rather, it becomes a matter of life and death.

Now this has an implication which may be worthy of reflection. If we don't know how to filter out the bad guys, then the survival of our society and civilization depends on the elimination of group B. Note I did not say killing all the members of group B, or even some of the members of that group. Neither did I suggest giving all, some, or any of them a wedgie. Elimination of group B means some set of actions that causes them to stop the attacks.

So, then, our choice - we must eliminate them, or accept our own elimination. Again, in this context, elimination is not a synonym for kill.

My impression is that Western civilization prefers its own demise. I cannot say I like that choice.

nmap--

I think you could develop more options than (a), (b), and (c) if you expanded the forms of political activity beyond the choices of capitulation and annihilation.

As for defining the 'bad guy,' I think that defining the enemy primarily by intent is not the way to go. Earlier, you argued that 'demographics are destiny.' I think that statement is false. History is made by people making choices in their everyday lives. From a historical perspective, most of these choices will be inconsequential. People are simply too busy doing their own thing to worry too much about 'the big picture.'

Some in this thread think that this inattention is a bad thing, that it leads to complacency, that if we don't wake up now, we'll wake up one day living under sharia law. I respectfully disagree. To me, that's just the way of the world.

In my opinion, the greater danger is limiting the options people face so that they feel pressured to make choices and decisions they otherwise might not. Heated rhetoric that radicalizes the discussion is a sure way to put pressure on folks and get them to feel hemmed in.

Everyone has buttons to push. Are there ways we can communicate and not push those buttons unnecessarily?

Make no mistake, I am absolutely sure that at this moment there are Americans who have succumbed to their hate and to their fear and are plotting something horrible. (I work at a facility that the DHS considers an attractive target.) These people need to be found out and stopped.

But while the high speed low drag types hunt down these scoundrels, I think we low speed types should be temperate in our judgments, provisional in our conclusions, and moderate in our rhetoric.

YMMV.

MK262

Please tread carefully when accusing people of lying on this forum. Discussions on this forum are often pursued with great vigor. They do not become personal. Terms such as "lying" make things personal.

There are some brilliant minds on this forum. Many will have opinions wholly contrary to your own. Logic and manners win the day, friends, and respect.

Ok.

He was being disingenuous. I'll leave it at that.

While callling someone out as a "liar" is a big step, and a gross violation of what I consider to be "PS.com manners," it is hard to mistake these words:

I never got the impression that MK262, someone I do not know and with whom I have never exchanged a PM, was saying that.

I think it is time we all took a step back. This is a very personal, volatile, and complex issue. I would ask that we all temper our remarks. I would further ask that perhaps we wrote our messages elsewhere, let them "distill" a bit, and then pasted them into a message box here... and used the "preview" button extensively before posting.

Thank you.

First, an example of someone who apparently thought he could predict (and, perhaps, influence?) the bad guys and failed. LINK

No, not really. I chose those for a reason, and I limited the choices for those same reasons. That said, I urge you and others to offer more nuanced choices. I would ask that those offering such alternatives suggest how they differed qualitatively from the three choices I included.

Keep in mind that eliminating group B can be as simple as changing their views to something more tolerant of group A. The old group B would cease to exist. So you see that the choices offered are not necessarily kinetic in nature. ;)

I am open to better ways. Please, tell me more.

Demographics creates an overall environment that influences those individual decisions, whether in terms of money and finance or population movements. I would contend that it an important (perhaps predominant) factor in human behavior.

Now you bring up those individual decisions, often inconsequential. Agreed. Still worse, individual behavior is hard to predict. Aggregate behavior, on the other hand, seems quite another matter. The advertising industry, in their efforts to promote both deodorants and politicians, seems confident that they can change overall behavior of populations.

The current economic malaise? It was predicted 15 years ago, and that was based on the demographics.

I suppose we'll have an agree to disagree position on this one.

Predicting what's over the horizon is always perilous, and often amusing when viewed in retrospect. And one can reasonably argue that people muddle through somehow, with the dire consequences never quite occurring.

Is this different? Hard to say. I think it's entangled with other issues (including demographics) that are rather wide-ranging. In the end, this may be another agree-to-disagree issue.

Could be. On the other hand, choosing to do or say nothing is a decision in its own right. And, too, there is a positive to the pressure you mention - it can manifest itself in the desire to offer alternatives. I sense that dynamic in your own post, which I quote from here. Creative alternatives might be a really good idea; however, I regret to say I'm not seeing many of those. But perhaps I've missed something?

Well...actually....no. :D

As ZonieDriver suggests, this is an emotionally loaded topic. We can use the kindest, most civil language...show the utmost in mutual respect...adopt the careful discourse of the disengaged scholar...but the emotion remains.

If you haven't read Hayakawa's book, Language in Thought and Action, I urge you to do so. It is a brilliant text. Per the book, we could modify the choice of buttons to hit - and, if we wanted to guide some particular discussion, we would do so. But that isn't the same as not pushing the buttons. Rather, we choose which buttons to hit - Christian Red, or Islamic Green, for example. (Yes, that's me pushing buttons, and having fun doing it.)

So what I hear you saying is that some percentage of the U.S. population have some probability of being bad guys, per the definition in my earlier post. And I see that you are urging some sort of filtration to discern who they are such that their action can be prevented.

I agree. This is all good.

Here's the problem - I don't see how to filter them out. DHS has tried, with notable failures. Perhaps there have been successes - if so, that's great! Perhaps DHS (or others) are good at filtering out bad guys - in which case, we have nothing to worry about.

However...big however...if the filtration I mention is not effective, then we have no way to stop the bad guys. This brings us back to those three options I've mentioned.

So, please tell me what I should conclude, so long as it is suitable to discuss in this public forum.


Now, Sigaba, I ask you - how much fun is that?

Seriously, though, this seems to lead to something like a shrug, followed by diligent searches through cable channels in search of a ball game. In essence, for the lower speed participants in the discussion to scratch themselves and defer the hard thinking to others.

I would contend that this is the very area where we need to have a broad societal dialog. Yes, it will sometimes become emotional. There will, from time to time, be anger and hurt feelings. And yet, societal evolution seems to demand exactly that sort of process.

MOO, YMMV.

LOL, simply Brillant
It is deeply emotional, my button requires only the slightest movement of air.

Thank you all. I state earlier, and I repost it here again for anyone who has contributed to this discussion and missed it in post #141

Edited for inaccurate word choice. Richard

Richard, Thank you for the correction, I know I was over the line, but passion and emotion when combined often lead to inappropriate displays of behavior; my sincere apologies to the board.

I agree with Sigaba - especially when we're talking issues which do not simply reduce themselves to a singularity as described in that "a, b, or c model", but which lend themselves to nearly infinite complexity among literally several billions of individuals and huge numbers of families; villages; tribes; ethnic groups; cultural affiliations and intra-cultural polychotomies; linguistic groupings; shared or divergent views of legends, myths, and histories; nations and non-governmental organizations - usw.

Either a, b, or c - the Forest Gump Model - "Simple is as simple does"?

I would reasonably think the model for such an issue calls for a much larger alphabet than that.

However, YMMV - and so it goes...

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Well...sorta. ;)

Models can be horrifically complex, and perhaps this is one of them. That does not mean that simplified approaches cannot address the predominant effects and provide useful insights.

Let's consider a baseball. Someone throws the baseball, and it lands in an open field (no broken windows!) We can describe much, but of course not all, of the motion by looking a the initial speed and the effect of gravity. Not a perfect effort by any means, but it gives us a rough understanding of what happens.

Should we add factors? Maybe. There is wind resistance. We might even want to take the effect of wind speed and its direction over the entire course of the baseball. The effects of roughness on the baseball surface and spin might be of interest. No doubt long-range snipers do this - they have a need for greater accuracy than does our baseball tosser, so they incorporate additional factors to accomplish a closer (but imperfect) approximation of the path of the object.

We extend the theory to long range artillery, firing a shell at a target 25 miles away. Gravity predominates. Wind speed and resistance may have an effect. And, the time in the air may mean we have to add the rotation of the Earth into the mix. Our simple model is becoming messy, isn't it?

This continues. At some point we're faced with a host of factors including relativistic effects as we approach the speed of light.

But...do we really need to add the effects of relativity to the path of an ordinary baseball? I think not. And as we grapple with basic understandings of a problem the minor factors (supposing they are minor) may distract rather than illuminate. Therefore, let's start out with a Forrest Gump approach - something that clears away as many factors as possible - and attempt to define primary effects.

In doing this, let's consider boundary effects - how do our approaches work at the limits? If we're looking at a baseball, this might mean we would wonder what would happen if we just dropped it - what path it might describe. Or, what would the path look like if we threw at at a very high speed. Some models fail at the boundary, you see.

So my Gump model (personally, I prefer the a,b,c model, but we may as well have some fun with this) is very simple. And yet, a variety of approaches are included. Let's consider...

In the category of eliminating the other group, we can include everything from cultural transformation, for example improving the rights of women, to causing (by whatever means) increased tolerance for other faiths, or even nuking Mecca. Whether any of these would actually work is beside the point - they all collapse down to a single broad category.

For surrender - the destruction of our group, in this case - we can include the do-nothing strategy. Surrender does not necessarily mean that we'll put all of our women in burkas - though it might. It just means that whatever we become will be very different than what we are.

Filtering is anything that tries to designate and locate the individuals (or, for that matter, groups of individuals) and do something with or to those groups or individuals. Notice that General Petraeus is trying this approach by dispersing the troops and attempting to get them to interact with (and gain the trust of) the local residents.

So, while I continue to urge people to add to or improve the Gump model, I don't see anything better at the moment. Hopefully, someone will.

I agree - scrimshaw is a funny sounding word.

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

How can you say that?

ALL Muslims are REQUIRED to pay Zakat. And by definition- that is Sharia Law, Zakat supports jihad.
Ultimately, ALL Muslims are required to provide material support to the destruction of the United States.

How does that NOT make them our enemy?

BOOK H

ZAKAT

h1.0 WHO MUST PAY ZAKAT
((Muhammad Shirbini Khatib) Lexically, zakat means growth, blessings, an increase in good, purification, or praise. In Sacred Law it is the name for a particular amount of property that must be paid to certain kinds of recipients under the conditions mentioned below…”

h1.1 Zakat is obligatory

(a) for every free Muslim (O: male, female, adult or child):

THOSE FIGHTING FOR ALLAH {Jihad}

h8.17 The seventh category is those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in military operations {Jihad} for whom no salary has been allotted …

(Reliance of the Traveller, pages 244-274)


“rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat." ~Barack Obama~

> http://www.meforum.org/2438/zakat-mu...ity-in-context

o9.0
(O: Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.

o9.1 Jihad is a communal obligation (def: c3.2). When enough people perform it to successfully accomplish it, it is no longer obligatory upon others.

(The Reliance of the Traveller, page 599-600)

Sir, as we as pay billions to the Arab members of OPEC are we not the enemy? It would seem to me step one has to be stop the billions of our dollars from flowing to them.

I totally agree................:):):)

Big Teddy :munchin