What radical Islam wants for you & me

[_JS]

>>If you all are going to spread hate, at least do it with some talent and gusto.<<

Really CU4, just follow JS's example and the hate will flow like water.

Really though, you've hit the nail on the head. JS and the rest of the socialist/communist left are to busy hating America and George Bush to care about national security threats. They've got an economy to take over, oil companies to nationalize, profits to steal. Who's got time to worry about a group of crazies doing their damnedest to acquire the means to murder a few million Amercans? I mean, JS has said before, terrorism is simply a fact of life. So just get used to it.

The only possible good that can come from this is that big cities are full of liberals.

Ah, yes...the armchair warrior chimes in.

[Plane]

[

This reminds me of the movie "Independance Day" people were delighted with imagages of destruction includeing most of Americas famous landmarks, it was a good movie.

Images like this, however graphic , should not cause us any real problem , as long as it is an empty threat it is a fantasy.
We have produced this sort of image ourselves in Hollywood several movies delt with a ravaged landscape after America gets blown up one way or another.

So is this threat an empty threat ?


I hope so.


Mean while , no body wants to make a photoshop image of the Kaba with a tomato thrown at it , we might take gross images in stride but there are plenty of people in the world that don't.

[Michael Tee]

It's funny but Jacques Baudrillard, in a really famous essay written just after 9-11, said pretty much the same thing as you, plane, and even referenced the same movie.  (Too bad I never saw it, I'd probably like it.)  Baudrillard's thesis was that the U.S.A. is hated all over the world, in truth as a symbol of modernity and the death of old cultures, but rationalized in most people's minds (people who can't just admit that they hate the modern world) in terms of political causes.  So that the real reasons for anti-American hatred remain buried in the unconscious mind, while the individual chatters about "imperialism" or "racism" or "colonialism" or "fascism," etc.  In reality, he hates America because it symbolizes the whole oppressive modern world.

For me the really novel part of the Baudrillard essay was where he analyzed the success of Independance Day in the U.S. itself, where of course people are not really comfortable with voicing overtly "unpatriotic" or anti-American sentiment and nevertheless were very enthusiastic in their response to Independance Day because "it's only a movie" - - i.e., an unfulfilled fantasy - - and they could rejoice vicariously in the destruction of the symbols of modernity (and hence of the modern world itself) without having to feel unpatriotic.

Baudrillard then went on to 9-11 and the wild rejoicing that took place everywhere, overtly in many cases, despite the sober words of world leaders, but even in America, where he felt that many Americans, particularly those more or less defeated by the modern world, felt a sense of liberation, but one they dared not voice.

The only problem with the Baudrillard essay, from my own POV, was that it seemed barely cognizant of the fact that we were dealing with a real-life catastrophe.  Those were real people jumping from the towers, it wasn't a movie, those immensely moving shrines and photos that you could see everywhere were for real fathers and mothers and sons and daughters who were alive on 9-10 and gone the next day.  But I think that movies like Independance Day fill an unacknowledged need in a lot of people all over the world, a kind of resistance to artificial structures of glass, stone and concrete and a world of paved streets and sidewalks.  We lost something, and Independance Day raised the hopes (fantasies is probably the better word) of getting it back again.

[Plane]

It's funny but Jacques Baudrillard, ....

I must look that up.


I don't think that you would enjoy the movie , the heros are the fighter jocks and the President of the US , a prisoner alien is punched and kicked , and the ending is pure American triumphalism. The purpetrators of the henious act are destroyed so thuroughly that it amounts to geonocide.


It would put you to sleep.

The big landmarks being blown up delighted the audence because Audiences love big exciteing explosions. If there are people outside the US that want to make a movie that features our citys burning lets let them , we can remake the same movie here and make more money than the origional.

I am only worried that it is a real stated goal of real persons who might have the real ability. What they wish for in frustration I don't worry about.

[Michael Tee]

I think I'd really like that movie.  Especially if it were done in a satiric vein.  Another one that I missed was Men in Black, but my son told me the best part of it was the trailer (which I DID see.)

<<I am only worried that it is a real stated goal of real persons who might have the real ability.>>

Tell me about it.  Every time I fly into or out of La Guardia.  And LaGuardia's nothing compared to Toronto-Washington (DC.)   DC is almost surreal.  But I think 9-11 was just a lucky sucker punch.  They'll never get that lucky again, unless they develop an entirely new technique.  The surveillance levels are so much higher now than pre-9-11.

[Plane]

I think I'd really like that movie.  Especially if it were done in a satiric vein.  Another one that I missed was Men in Black, but my son told me the best part of it was the trailer (which I DID see.)

<<I am only worried that it is a real stated goal of real persons who might have the real ability.>>

Tell me about it.  Every time I fly into or out of La Guardia.  And LaGuardia's nothing compared to Toronto-Washington (DC.)   DC is almost surreal.  But I think 9-11 was just a lucky sucker punch.  They'll never get that lucky again, unless they develop an entirely new technique.  The surveillance levels are so much higher now than pre-9-11.

The big story is how they got that lucky.

They crossed and recrossed the country for months , joined schools , made inquireys at diffrent potential target sites .

Everywhere they went they met the tipical helpfull American , and the one time they got pulled over they got a traffic ticket , not expulsion.

A few pips showed up in the screens of the CIA and FBI that something was up , but there was a lot of noise on those screens and very little co-ordination between jurisdictions.

Now there is increased co-ordination between jurisdictions probly a good thing under the circumstances , though those of us that are wary of the government growing repressive may regret it somewhat , it seems unfortunately inevitable and needfull.

I kinda hope that potential wrongdoers excite law enforcement appropriately , not overly , likely some Arabic and Islamic persons are innocent of such evil intent , I presume.

But is the tipical hospitable and helpfull American harder to find , are we suspicious and unapprochable , is freindlyness endangered? That I really regret is a real potential change, and the one thing that enemy propaganda is liable to really hurt . Do we need to be suspicious , how suspicious?

[Michael Tee]

<<But is the tipical hospitable and helpfull American harder to find , are we suspicious and unapprochable , is freindlyness endangered? That I really regret is a real potential change, and the one thing that enemy propaganda is liable to really hurt . Do we need to be suspicious , how suspicious?>>

New Yorkers in particular were said to be tough, hard-boiled and distrustful of strangers, and I found some evidence of that in my earliest visits to NYC, but I actually have found, in the last 20 years, and particularly since 9-11, that New Yorkers really do seem to be getting softer, friendlier personalities.  I've heard others say the same thing, too.  I think in a much smaller way, because it was only a one-shot event, that 9-11 was kind of like the Blitz, in that it engendered a more comradely, "We're all in this together" kind of attitude, which wore down the shells a little bit.

I think you'd really have to ask a member of a visible minority if there's been a change in attitude.  I've only been, in addition to New York, to Detroit, Delaware and Florida recently and I did not notice any change at all in the usual friendly, helpful attitudes that I always encountered.

[Plane]

<<But is the tipical hospitable and helpfull American harder to find , are we suspicious and unapprochable , is freindlyness endangered? That I really regret is a real potential change, and the one thing that enemy propaganda is liable to really hurt . Do we need to be suspicious , how suspicious?>>

New Yorkers in particular were said to be tough, hard-boiled and distrustful of strangers, and I found some evidence of that in my earliest visits to NYC, but I actually have found, in the last 20 years, and particularly since 9-11, that New Yorkers really do seem to be getting softer, friendlier personalities.  I've heard others say the same thing, too.  I think in a much smaller way, because it was only a one-shot event, that 9-11 was kind of like the Blitz, in that it engendered a more comradely, "We're all in this together" kind of attitude, which wore down the shells a little bit.

I think you'd really have to ask a member of a visible minority if there's been a change in attitude.  I've only been, in addition to New York, to Detroit, Delaware and Florida recently and I did not notice any change at all in the usual friendly, helpful attitudes that I always encountered.

Good ,good , but the Mohammed Atta gang got all that hospitality and ease of movement with middle eastern appearance and accents , is that lost?

Does it need to be lost?

[Michael Tee]

<<Good ,good , but the Mohammed Atta gang got all that hospitality and ease of movement with middle eastern appearance and accents , is that lost?>>

I sure hope not.  An Arab friend came back from a shopping trip to Buffalo and very angry at the treatment he got at the border, but I don't know if it was Canadian or American border security that gave him the hard time.  I guess I shoulda paid more attention.

<<Does it need to be lost?>>

Absolutely not.  The odds of the average Arab you meet being a "terrorist" are like the odds of getting struck by lightning.

[Plane]

<<Good ,good , but the Mohammed Atta gang got all that hospitality and ease of movement with middle eastern appearance and accents , is that lost?>>

I sure hope not.  An Arab friend came back from a shopping trip to Buffalo and very angry at the treatment he got at the border, but I don't know if it was Canadian or American border security that gave him the hard time.  I guess I shoulda paid more attention.

<<Does it need to be lost?>>

Absolutely not.  The odds of the average Arab you meet being a "terrorist" are like the odds of getting struck by lightning.

Yes if even that large , there are probly several lightning strikes for each act of terrorism , but our open society was used by Mohammed Atta as a conduit to his goal of causeing huge damage.

We love our openness and most of our history is a struggle to expand franchise , but do we have to put up with such a grand evil as the 9-11 vunerability to have an open society?

There probly are  a thousand lightning injurys for each example of terrorism as bad as 9-11, but 9-11 was worse than a thousand lightning injurys.

[Michael Tee]

I think "open society" covers a lot of ground.  I hope Americans will always be as free and generous with their time in giving directions, explaining local landmarks and life and just engaging in general amiable conversation, and maybe a little less "open" in providing instruction in flight training, security measures, etc.  But as I say, you'd probably have to ask a real Middle Easterner with some recent experience of the American people whether that is still the case.  I sure haven't noticed any difference.