Getbig.com: American Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure
Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Eric15210 on December 07, 2009, 11:09:50 AM
-
SHOCKING NEWS HERE :o
Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.
Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters' trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.
Europe had been the front line, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said:
* There were major arrests of Americans accused of plotting with Al Qaeda and its allies, including an Afghan American charged in a New York bomb plot described as the most serious threat in this country since the Sept. 11 attacks.
* Authorities tracked other extremism suspects joining foreign networks, including Somali Americans going to the battlegrounds of their ancestral homeland and an Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo.
* The FBI rounded up homegrown terrorism suspects in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., saying that it had broken up plots targeting a synagogue, government buildings and military facilities.
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued her strongest public comments yet on the homegrown threat.
"We've seen an increased number of arrests here in the U.S. of individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, or supporting terror groups abroad such as Al Qaeda," Napolitano said in a speech in New York. "Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront."
Officials acknowledged that her tone had changed, though they said terrorism has been her focus since becoming Homeland Security chief.
In some of the 2009 cases, extremist leanings are suspected but motives are not known.
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- accused of killing 13 people in a Ft. Hood, Texas, shooting rampage last month -- has apparently suffered emotional problems. But in interviews, officials and experts have also raised his Muslim beliefs as an alleged motive.
A previous attack on the U.S. military, a shooting in June by an American convert who killed a soldier and wounded another at an Arkansas recruiting center, was apparently a case of a lone wolf radicalized in Yemen, according to Homeland Security officials.
"You are seeing the full spectrum of the threats you face in terrorism," former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.
"Radicalization is clearly happening in the U.S.," said Mitchell Silber, director of analysis for the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department. "In years past, you couldn't say that about the U.S. You could say it about Europe."
Europe has suffered a militant onslaught: transport bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, an assassination in the Netherlands in 2004, and close calls such as the fiery failed attack on the Glasgow airport in 2007.
Hard borders have helped the U.S. ward off the threat. But experts also said that Islamic radicalization is more widespread in Europe. Crime, alienation and extremism roil Muslim immigrant communities in places like tiny Denmark and the vast slums of France.
In contrast, American Muslims are wealthier, better educated and better integrated because the United States does a good job of absorbing immigrants and fostering tolerance, experts said. During the last decade, Americans have been a rare presence in the Al Qaeda-connected camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan that have trained hundreds of Westerners and thousands of recruits from Muslim-majority nations.
Nonetheless, recent investigations have run across Americans suspected of being operatives of Al Qaeda and its allies who were trained overseas and, in several cases, allegedly conspired with top terrorism bosses. They include a convert from Long Island, N.Y, who was captured in Pakistan late last year; a Chicago businessman accused of scouting foreign targets for a Pakistani network; and at least 15 Somali American youths from Minneapolis who returned to fight in their ancestral homeland.
"A larger trend has emerged that is not surprising, but is disturbing," Chertoff said. "You are beginning to see the fruits of the pipeline that Al Qaeda built to train Westerners and send them back to their homelands. . . . This underscores the central significance of disrupting the pipeline at its source."
A campaign of U.S. airstrikes launched last year has pounded Al Qaeda hide-outs in Pakistan. But the flow of trainees gathered momentum in 2007 when Pakistani security forces ceded turf to militant groups, officials said. The suspect in the New York plot, Najibullah Zazi, and the Long Island convert, Bryant Neal Vinas, allegedly met in Pakistan in 2008 and discussed attacks on U.S. targets with Al Qaeda chiefs.
Vinas and Zazi are the first Americans to be accused of joining Al Qaeda in several years.
Meanwhile, Silber said in recent congressional testimony: "There have been a half-dozen cases of individuals who, instead of traveling abroad to carry out violence, have elected to attempt to do it here. This is substantially greater than what we have seen in the past, and may reflect an emerging pattern."
Some feel radicalization in the United States has been worse than authorities thought for some time.
"People focused on the idea that we're different, we're better at integrating Muslims than Europe is," said Zeyno Baran, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. "But there's radicalization -- especially among converts [and] newcomers, such as the Somali case shows. I think young U.S. Muslims today are as prone to radicalization as Muslims in Europe."
In proportion to population, extremism still appears less intense in the United States. But the Internet functions as the global engine of extremism. Websites expose Americans to a wave of slick, English-language propaganda from ideologues such as Anwar Awlaki, the Yemeni American described as a spiritual guide for the accused Ft. Hood shooter and other Westerners.
And socioeconomic success will not necessarily prevent Americans' radicalization. Studies suggest that a quest for identity and the bonding process among small groups often drive militants more than personal hardship does.
"The profile in Europe is in general quite different [from U.S. extremists]: more working-class or even underclass," said a European intelligence official who requested anonymity for security reasons. "But it's a bit simplistic to make assumptions. We have seen everything in Europe -- educated people, doctors involved in terrorism. The underclass argument is not enough."
The Obama administration began the year with gestures to the Muslim world. President Obama promised to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and made a historic speech in Cairo.
The Homeland Security Department leads the administration's counter-radicalization effort. The Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which works with Muslim leaders, held summit meetings with Somali communities this year in Minnesota and Ohio, said David Heyman, assistant Homeland Security secretary for policy.
But that office still lacks a director, critics point out, and the department has yet to fill other key posts as well.
"We don't do enough about fostering a counter-narrative," said Matthew Levitt, a former anti-terrorism official for the Treasury Department now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Competing for space with the radicalizers and challenging their radical ideologies is the key."
In contrast to the heightened extremist activity in the United States, Europe has remained relatively calm this year. But the West needs to keep up its guard on both sides of the Atlantic, said Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian French scholar who interviewed jailed extremists for his book "Inside Jihadism."
"You can be middle-class and have bright prospects but become a jihadist," he said. "We have to broaden the analysis. This idea of American exceptionalism, the comparison with Europe, should not blind us to the fact that we are going toward a broader participation in jihad."
-
But according to Ozmo, Islam isn't the problem. It's a cultural thing. The US being third world and all.
-
But according to Ozmo, Islam isn't the problem. It's a cultural thing. The US being third world and all.
Extreme islam or run of the mill muslims?
-
Extreme islam or run of the mill muslims?
Whats your definition?
-
Whats your definition?
Run of the mill muslim is what i encounter and interact with everyday. Never met a "extreme" Islam personally, but i would imagine AQ, or one of these people who follow these radical clerics who encourage violence.
-
Oz, this is related to our islamic discussion the other day...
-
Oz, this is related to our islamic discussion the other day...
Are you suggesting i don't think it is?
Key words are "Muslim extremism"
-
Run of the mill muslim is what i encounter and interact with everyday. Never met a "extreme" Islam personally, but i would imagine AQ, or one of these people who follow these radical clerics who encourage violence.
I guess the question would be how would you know if they were an extremist? They haven't tried to behead you yet? Where do you see violence being advocated for the most part ( besides the Al Quedas of the world ) is in the mosque, where infdels are not welcome and do not go. Lets take Ramsi Yousef for example, this guy was for all accounts a run of the mill muslim, member of the PTA active in his community. Next thing you know he's trying to blow up the WTC in '93. You will only see what the muslims want you to see, and a muslim will always without a doubt choose another muslim over you ( and infidel, I am assuming you are not a muslim) right, wrong, or indefferent.
-
I guess the question would be how would you know if they were an extremist? They haven't tried to behead you yet? Where do you see violence being advocated for the most part ( besides the Al Quedas of the world ) is in the mosque, where infdels are not welcome and do not go. Lets take Ramsi Yousef for example, this guy was for all accounts a run of the mill muslim, member of the PTA active in his community. Next thing you know he's trying to blow up the WTC in '93. You will only see what the muslims want you to see, and a muslim will always without a doubt choose another muslim over you ( and infidel, I am assuming you are not a muslim) right, wrong, or indefferent.
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
The potential for a muslim to go extremist is no different that some guy to go postal. Anyone who has a propensity for violence and mass murder will find any excuse, be it religion, anger, ideology, revenge etc...
-
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
The potential for a muslim to go extremist is no different that some guy to go postal. Anyone who has a propensity for violence and mass murder will find any excuse, be it religion, anger, ideology, revenge etc...
I suggest you read the Koran before you make that as assumption, Jihad is a duty not a suggestion in the Islamic faith. The ability for Americans to quantify everything is mind boggling.
-
I suggest you read the Koran before you make that as assumption, Jihad is a duty not a suggestion in the Islamic faith. The ability for Americans to quantify everything is mind boggling.
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
Or should i read the koran like you suggested so i can too, quantify in the same the direction you have?
-
No emotion attached to my statement, just pointing out that we were asking the question about home grown terrorists not growing up in the middle east and if islam would produce more extremists if the cultural aspect was removed. Coincidental that we were debating this and then the study came out, that's all.
-
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
The potential for a muslim to go extremist is no different that some guy to go postal. Anyone who has a propensity for violence and mass murder will find any excuse, be it religion, anger, ideology, revenge etc...
There are glaring differences between someone going postal and an Islamic extremist.
-
There are glaring differences between someone going postal and an Islamic extremist.
Regardless,
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
-
Regardless,
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
How about we at least be honest about the debate and stop comparing what people did hundreds of years ago to people doing garbage right now?
-
How about we at least be honest about the debate and stop comparing what people did hundreds of years ago to people doing garbage right now?
When did i compare what people did hundreds of years ago? ::)
anyways,
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
-
How about we at least be honest about the debate and stop comparing what people did hundreds of years ago to people doing garbage right now?
This would be a start. It cracks me up. People are so quick to bring up the Crusades when at the same time, the Muslims were committing just as many atrocities across the middle east. The Ottoman Empire was one of the most oppressive and violent empires to ever grace this planet yet the apologists never mention it because no one has done any reading about it.
-
This would be a start. It cracks me up. People are so quick to bring up the Crusades when at the same time, the Muslims were committing just as many atrocities across the middle east. The Ottoman Empire was one of the most oppressive and violent empires to ever grace this planet yet the apologists never mention it because no one has done any reading about it.
Who has brought up the crusades in this thread but you and indirectly 3333?
again,
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
-
When did i compare what people did hundreds of years ago? ::)
anyways,
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
I suggest we end the pc garbage and equivocation and call these radical vermin what they are, animals.
-
I suggest we end the pc garbage and equivocation and call these radical vermin what they are, animals.
So all muslims are animals?
-
Who has brought up the crusades in this thread but you and indirectly 3333?
again,
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
Dont play dumb O. Every single time this topic is brought up there is equivocation, half-assed explanations, tortured logic trying to make this something its not, etc.
-
Com on bitches,
answer the questions:
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
-
Dont play dumb O. Every single time this topic is brought up there is equivocation, half-assed explanations, tortured logic trying to make this something its not, etc.
Show me where i have brought up crusaders. If you can't then at least admit you are full of shit and lying.
-
Com on bitches,
answer the questions:
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
We monitor mosques, get infiltrators to go in there and listen and if they hear radical shit that almost constitutes a call to crime and war, we put an end to it.
-
I'm curious as to what YOU think should be the solution, Ozmo. Or are you content to just sit around until they dirty bomb a city and kill 100k? Enlighten me.
-
Show me where i have brought up crusaders. If you can't then at least admit you are full of shit and lying.
I didnt mean you personally, but overall as part of the debate that canard is always brought up.
-
I didnt mean you personally, but overall as part of the debate that canard is always brought up.
Where in this thread has it been brought up?
-
well?
-
Com on bitches,
answer the questions:
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
I really don't know what you do other than stay vigilent and well armed. I don't trust muslims because of Al-Taqiyya, so anything they say it basically bullshit IMHO. And as far as the religion clause of the constitution, it has been bastrdized to mean a bunch of shit that was never intended by the framers.
-
well?
I'm curious to hear your opinion. What should be done? Do you think these homegrown jihadists should be allowed to preach violence and hatred in this country?
-
I really don't know what you do other than stay vigilent and well armed. I don't trust muslims because of Al-Taqiyya, so anything they say it basically bullshit IMHO. And as far as the religion clause of the constitution, it has been bastrdized to mean a bunch of shit that was never intended by the framers.
Thanks,
So you think there should be restrictions on religious freedom in the USA?
It's too bad. I have good friends who are muslims. I deal with them every day. Maybe i should carry a gun so i pop a cap in their heads if they go all AQ on me. :D
-
Thanks,
So you think there should be restrictions on religious freedom in the USA?
It's too bad. I have good friends who are muslims. I deal with them every day. Maybe i should carry a gun so i pop a cap in their heads if they go all AQ on me. :D
What the freedom of religion clause was designed to do is prevent a Church of the United States, as the founders were from a country that was basically run by the Church of England. So yes you are free to practice whatever religion you want, but there is a point where the line is crossed.
-
I'm curious to hear your opinion. What should be done? Do you think these homegrown jihadists should be allowed to preach violence and hatred in this country?
No. Preaching religious violence, i think is against the law, if not it should be. Isn't inciting to violence against the law?
Other than that, freedom to criticize this country as a citizen should be maintained.
What do you think?
So, what do you suggest? Outlaw Islam? Round them all up, good and bad, and put them in prison camps for what they might do?
Should we restrict religious freedoms in this country because some have used it to justify violence?
Because you and i may completely disagree on this thing, but i do agree Islam in very much a part of this.
-
I don't think religious freedom should be restricted. My problem is that a large number of these mosques preach "peace" on the top floor while holding jihadist reading sessions in the basement. They're all nice and fluff on outside while preaching their real message of death to the USA and the killing of civilians on the inside. It bothers me that this is allowed to go on because of the apologist attitude most people have with regard to Muslims. Can't upset the Muslims because we don't to risk pissing off more of them. ::)
-
I don't think religious freedom should be restricted. My problem is that a large number of these mosques preach "peace" on the top floor while holding jihadist reading sessions in the basement. They're all nice and fluff on outside while preaching their real message of death to the USA and the killing of civilians on the inside. It bothers me that this is allowed to go on because of the apologist attitude most people have with regard to Muslims. Can't upset the Muslims because we don't to risk pissing off more of them. ::)
I don't know about that going on in Mosques. I'm sure somewhere that happens. I'm also pretty sure the FBI or someone keeps tabs on the ones that do. I would hope.
-
That's how I feel Berzerk.
The question is how do you separate out muslims who are extremists or prone to extremist influence. I think we should also be prevent anyone immigrating to the country who believes shaira law is more important than the law of the land, those seem to be the muslims who refuse to assimilate and want to change our laws and customs.
Agreed, the majority of the muslims I have met seem fine...but I'm probably not meeting the fundamentalists.
-
That's how I feel Berzerk.
The question is how do you separate out muslims who are extremists or prone to extremist influence. I think we should also be prevent anyone immigrating to the country who believes shaira law is more important than the law of the land, those seem to be the muslims who refuse to assimilate and want to change our laws and customs.
Agreed, the majority of the muslims I have met seem fine...but I'm probably not meeting the fundamentalists.
that's what is scary about Britain, they seems to pander to it.
-
Exactly Oz and I wondered why. Someone from the UK (on here I think) thought it was a pull attracting more voters for the labour party. That's where I hate politics, some put party before the best interests of their country.
It's a shame what Brittan has allowed with unchecked immigration, such a beautiful country that needs to be preserved. Immigrants can be fantastic and make a country greater but not when they come in without pride and with the idea they want to change the country and don't want to be an active part of it.