I am not stupid & midwestern enough to believe that all Muslims are a terrorist threat. My son is half jewish and I am not even reflexively pro-israel. I find that when I enter a church or a temple, its a bit of mental torture; over the weekend I was at a bat mitzvah and believe me, it was torture. I am about as far from the beliefs of david horowitz as you can get. I live near Princeton, and personally I think that NJ is a police state; they actually monitor people's license plates and I was harrassed 5 years ago in a park near princeton, because I was caught there after dark in my car with a partially used bottle of wine. They harrassed me for over 15 minutes making me dance around out of my car, then they let me go; later I was in the starbucks in princeton, about midnite, and these two saw me and started laughing. Its all a joke to these guys - "law & order."
Anyway, according to bin laden, he just wanted us out of arab lands. That was his main gripe. Boy, if thats all it takes, I would go in a heart beat, why fight these guys? But somehow I think they also want us out of portugal, spain, turkey, north africa, and ultimately israel. Last year I saw David Broza at 92nd St Y; he personally sponsored 4 young musicians from Nazareth, 3 of whom were palestinian. I have to tell you, at least 85% of the audience, standing room only was jewish, and all loved this guy and the concert. Obviously there are people on the other side, including myself, looking for an olive branch and a way out of this global mess, buts whats with all these draconian blasphemy laws in places like pakistand, iran, and saudi arabia? Why cant a britsh citizen like Rushdie write a book iranians dont like and be in hiding for literally years? They even targeted publishers in NYC over his book. What about the Van Gogh murder????? It is a concern of mine that what is happening in France with Algerians, and others, and what is in England with Pakistanis will spill into NJ. We shouldnt unfairly target muslims, but they should likewise leave me alone; I may be the great satan, but I have never advocated military action in any of their lands, except to get bin laden in 2002. On Wed, 9 Oct 2013, Zé Loff wrote: > On Oct 9, 2013, at 12:15 AM, Scott McEachern <sc...@blackstaff.ca> wrote: > >> On 10/08/13 17:38, Richard Thornton wrote: >>> I am not flippant enough to say that the NSA revelations do not matter, >>> but what are we supposed to do? The Middle Eastern terrorism threat is >>> real and we need to be able to stop them anyway necessary. >>> >>> All it takes is one of them to hit every Walmart in the neighborhood, >>> buy every pay-as-you-go phone they have, then pass them out to their >>> friends in every Mosque. Now you have a new terrorism threat. So, >>> welcome to the real world my friend, and wake up. > > [...] > >> And for the record, both you and Ze Loff should stick to facts and rational discussion. Bigots and morons are best defeated with those, and they'll show their true colours, debasing their own opinions. There's no need for insults and ad hominem attacks. > > First of all I owe an apology to the list and, albeit partially, to Richard. I now realise I overreacted a bit. I don't think hate (in the broadest sense of the word) belongs in this list and the comments the kind of which Richard made really get on my nerves. Ironically enough, I ended up spreading the hate myself. Again, my apologies. > > That being said, Richard, if you still stand behind your comment and your gross generalisation about muslims, I must still call you a bigot. And just for the sake of clarity I have the utmost respect for the victims of 9/11, as I have for those in Boston, Fallujah, Gaza, Auschwitz, Sbrenica, Sudan, Rwanda, Chechnya or in that theatre in Moscow a few years ago. In short for every one who was harmed by some idiot/state who thinks his beliefs (religious or not) is better than the rest of them. The "all muslims are terrorists" generalisation is as dumb and shortsighted as saying all blond girls are stupid, all americans are fat gun fanatics, all germans are nazis, all jews are... I'm sure you get the point. > > Just to bring this slightly back on-topic, please realise that terrorism (as real as it is) has been used as an pretext. Intercepting communications on the UN has nothing to do with it, nor does planting bugs on the European Parliament, nor does spying on Brasil's President or its state oil company. > > And Scott, thanks for setting me straight and for the rest of your message. > > > Again sorry for the noise and kudos on the YYCIX, Theo. > Zé
