Obama!!!

I believe the monolith is theirs.
Or why would a British born Pakistani blow up London...because of Arabs in Iraq?

How often do we hear of 'The Muslim WORLD' (even fawning Obama likes that term. An entire World...Sounds pretty monolithic to me).
How often do we see global MONOLITHIC solidarity between Muslims who share no country, race, language or culture?
How often do Muslims go on and on about 'wrongs' committed in 'Muslim Lands' to other Muslims half way around the World that they share no link to at all?
Well...Except one link.

I'll monolith away thanks.

I wonder if Grandma Obama was taken aback?
Blimey.
A supposed Christian Grandparent goes to a huge Islamic religious gathering at the most holy Islamic site in the world where fellow pilgrims chant for the destruction of the country her Grandson is President of!

A proud day for all Americans I'm sure.
Is this in fact a unique historical event?
Has any other American President, in the middle of a war no less, had their Grandma go into the heart of the entire motivational drive FOR that enemy, to hear "Death to America" chanted?

And the day the most holy of Christian places, at the most holy of Christian times, sees thousands of Christians chant for the death of a country and it's people...I may start to think that perhaps it's not such a unique Monolith as well, by the way.


And actually they said the letter Obama sent was in reply to a letter HE was sent after he got elected.
Peace negotiators would simply be the ones in contact with these barbaric, schoolgirl beheading, freaks.
Mind you...a few Christian schoolgirl heads gets you a personal little message from The President of the United States.
Nice work if you can get it.

Feel free to jump to their defence though...



Hold the presses. More glorious Obama news!
Sleep well in your beds tonight America...

Earlier this year President Obama appointed Arif Alikhan to be the nation's Assistant Secretary for Policy Development at the Department of Homeland Security and Kareem Shora to the agency's influential advisory council, which provides recommendations and advice directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Alikhan, who leads a Homeland Security team responsible for developing policy issues to secure the country against terrorism, has referred to the renowned terrorist organization Hezbollah as a "liberation movement" and was responsible for killing a Los Angeles Police project that monitored terrorist activities in the city's notoriously radical mosques.

Shora was the head of a well-known Arab organization whose officials refer to anti-U.S. jihadists as heroes.
As executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Shora had close ties to radical Ivy League professor Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian terror supporter who has reportedly worked on behalf of the extremist Palestine Liberation Organization....


And oh yeah...Guess who was also on a 'Homeland Security Policy Institute's presidential transition task force' advising the incoming Obama administration?
Step right up Nidal Hasan...The Fort Hood butcher himself.

I mean really...you have to laugh.
Don't you?
Well come on! Laugh why don't yers.

Yes, yes you will. You'll keep claiming Islam is a homogeneous, unchanged '14,000 year old' mindset personified, for example, even though one of the many internal schisms it clearly carries is that between literal traditionalists (like the Saudi Wahhabists etc) and revisionists who believe in ongoing interpretation of the Quran et al.

Yet in your regular rants you as good as tar all Muslims with the same brush - IE as potential-perpetrators of the worst actions committed in Islam's name. Thinking it's a monolithic 'Army of Darkness' is as foolish as believing it's a dyed-in-the-wool 'Religion of Peace'. Why migrate to either extreme?

Yes, but it seems a rather opportune time to send a response. And given that Obama's non-white figurehead status has had some impact on US perception (and terrorist recruitment drives apparently), and given that the US has played a significant role in the Philippines recent history, it seems to make sense that he might attempt a personal intervention.

I've had a quick look into the delightfully named MILF, and the only beheading incident that jumps out is that of 11+ marines during a 4-day fire fight. I'm not sure where you're getting the school girls from. The 'ethnic cleansing' (in terms of booting people out of regions) seems to be a tit for tat affair, with Christians involved too.

I'm not doing that. I am questioning your more hysterical appraisals though.

Doing the fact-checking you're not prepared to do takes some time however. I might get on to your latest revelations later. So far all the sources citing the Hezbollah 'liberation movement' quote lead back to an article that starts: 'Purported non Muslim Barack Hussein Obama...'

The claim may be true, who knows, but frankly, that article doesn't source it in any way, and I've done enough myth chasing for today.

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Really? Just marines?
I guess you should look more, and spend less time appeasing and aplogising away.
You after a statue in Saudi or something?

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.as...0164537fe2d885

OOPS! There goes one school teacher head to add to the pile.

But yes, sorry. So many Muslims in so many countries (so Monolithic even) hacking off people's heads it can get confusing (hacked off 2 in Russia this week);

'Be-headed for Ramadan' School girls were in Indonesia.
BUT...the devout Quran reader that planned it visited MILF in the Philippines first.
More of that non-existant monolithic stuff I guess. Unless it's yet another Muslim group hacking off holy heads in The phillippines. It could well be!

So I'll change my words then...

Mind you...Hack off a few Prisoner of War heads and a teacher's head (and take visits from Indonesian schoolgirl decapitators) and that gets you a personal little message from The President of the United States (and probably some Heavenly virgins too).
Nice work if you can get it.

Better?

Supposed Muslim Obama?
Don't know. oooooooooooo.....spooky.
He sure likes to apologise for them though (even when they butcher the troops he's meant to be Commander in Chief of in the country he's President of), and hire lots of them to tell him how to run the country.

I do know his supposed Christian Grandmother likes to take Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca though, where her fellow devotees scream "Death to America".

Imagine if Roosevelt's Grandma took a holy pilgrimage after Pearl Harbor to a Shinto temple in Japan, as Japanese screamed "Death to America" around her.


Nah, that would never have happened then. Today though...

{EDITED for brevity}

Indeed, and I figured you were thinking of that one, and blending it all together. You couldn't recognise the 'non-Islamic' influences involved then, and you're neglecting some now too.

The MILF group are primarily a paramilitary separatist group comparable to the likes of the IRA (existing due to genuine grievances IE 'ethnic cleansing' that left locals impoverished and marginalized etc). They do seem to have trained JI extremists, including the nutter you mention, but these ties with 'transnational' extremists seem to stem more from pragmatism (money etc) than ideology. The ongoing peace processes are no doubt trying to maneuver them back towards their legitimate concerns and a quasi-legal footing, thereby disentangling them from these groups. (It's worth noting that they aren't considered a terrorist group by either the US or the Philippines).

To point out where non-Islamic influences come to bear on events isn't being an 'apologist' for Islam, it's just called looking at the whole picture (as opposed to joining certain dots to make a picture of a giant marrow-sucking Moor )

I'm not trying to suggest with any of the above that Islam is playing no role here, that extreme-Islamic aggression isn't noticeably virulent at the moment, or that Islam doesn't have some unique facets & cultural links that facilitate this. I'm just reiterating the fact that there are many factors at play (as you so often ignore this). And as such there are more approaches to tackling these problems than just 'nail Islam', as it were.

The teacher was killed by a different, more radical, Islamic group as it happens (and one that MILF condemns, for what that's worth), but don't let the details worry you. And why are you so obsessed with this letter? Is it because you feel more deserving of the Nobel peace prize and losing out to 'Hussein' still smarts?

I'll add it to your list of mythical beliefs (along with the 'Arabic African heritage' one you refuse to source).

You may be at war with Islam, but fortunately the rest of the world isn't set on that self-defeating course. Feel free to go off and bomb Somalia on your own though.

__________________

“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

I wouldn't mind visiting a MILF in the Phillipines

__________________
100 Favourites From The Future: REWIRED

Great victory for the GOP in Mass, very exciting stuff.

Should be a wake-up call for Democrats to second-think the liberal-dream agenda they've been pushing. At least it should bring back to earth those seeking reelection this year.

I honestly just wish the Republicans would just win, even the first four years of Bush's administration was not filled with so much belly aching, maybe right after the disputed election, but omg, every slightly progressive policy is now encrouching on the free market, and is an attempt to completely remodel our system into a pseudo-fascist, left-wing, totalitarian dictatorship, and that's just healthcare. LOL

BTW, I like how now the conservative pundits point to polls, to show that most Americans don't want universal healthcare, but they dismissed polls that showed most Americans disagreed with the war.

__________________


...uh the post is up there...

What do you expect, FF. They're politicians. 'Forgetting' or dumping inconvienent infomation is all part and parcel of the game.

Indeed. And it's something that cuts both ways if employed consistently; plenty of Democrats find themselves suddenly ignoring polls when they used to champion them, on those same topics. What's the rationale behind mentioning what you see as conservative hypocriscy when the examples, by definition, apply to progressives, as well? Is it just a rhetorical device? I'm fairly certain we've had this exact discussion several times in this thread.

There's also the little matter of health care not having been passed yet, making polls about whether it's a good idea particularly important. Many of the polls about Iraq were about whether or not it was a mistake initially, or whether or not it was being handled well. Though I'm sure there were some that were more specific, most weren't asking "should we leave now?"

Absolutely. I didn't mean to leave anyone in any doubt of that. That's why I said they're politicians. It doesn't matter which party or in which country they're in, the rules may vary slightly, but the game's the same. I'd also add that it doesn't matter what intentions the individual came into politics with either, the higher up that greasy pole you climb the stickier your fingers need to be to progress. That's the reason why, IMO, those who's careers peaked long ago are often the most interesting politicians to listen to, as well as being the ones who say what needs to be said. At least, I find that to be the case over here (in the UK).

Is there any single intelligent person here who believes that when we leave Iraq that it will not collapse into a Civil War very quickly? How about Afghanistan? Does anyone believe that it will not return to "Survival of the Fittest", which at this point seems to be the Taliban? If this is true and always was true, then tell me please, what was the point of both wars? At least in the real world; I realize that things may have been delayed, but that's not too important if it all comes back to fruition. Who, here, believes in an eternal HOT war? I still don't feel that we're out of the Cold War because people keep saying, over and over, that the U.S. is being eaten out by Commies, and if that's true, then we're still in a "Cold War" (apparently brought about by the idiot Dems) and we're definitely in a HOT war because as soon as we leave these Asian countries, everything will return to the way it was before because nobody else cares, si? I discussed this with my students in 2003 and also told them in Sept. 2001 that the world had entered a new age and I don't think enough people get it as of yet.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Well, I think it depends on when and how we leave. I also think that collapsing into war, while obviously terrible, doesn't necessarily doom Iraq. I'm sure if we all try real hard, we can think of a country that devolved into Civil War and came out fairly prosperous and free in the end. This is not to belittle the seriousness of such a thing, of course, but I do find it odd that everyone speaks about these hardships as if they spell complete and utter doom for the idea of a free and stable Iraq. These things are, as we've all been reminded of lately, very hard and take a very long time.

I think knowing how and when to intervene is a genuinely difficult thing. Obviously it's not plausible to overwhelm every dictator, but I also know the arguments we heard in the aftermath of the invasion about how it was "none of our business" or "had nothing to do with us" are hopelessly 20th-century notions, and far too short-sighted to be taken seriously as far as actual policy goes. They were rhetoric, not serious arguments about our role in the world.

It is, indeed, a new age, and while we haven't figured out exactly how we can help those in need and ensure our own stability, without risking situations like the one we're in now, I know that trying to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world's problems just isn't reasonable, either. We have to do something. Why? Because we can.

I still feel that, for all the mistakes that have been made, history is going to look somewhat kindly on a period of time that freed (literally) tens of millions of people from dictatorship. I think a lot of people have lost sight of just how remarkable that is, and it's a fact that won't go away no matter how many specifics were botched along the way.

I think that Iraq desended into civil war a couple of years ago, it's just not 'official' yet. Saddam didn't have control of the whole country when he was in power, what chance has anyone else? As for Afghanistan? That country seems to have been in flux for more years than anyone can remember and, yes, I think that the Taliban will take over again at some point in the future. I think the best we can hope for is that it'll be a more moderate version (for lack of a better word) that takes power.

The point of both wars? Well, the objective in Afghanistan was simple (at least, the first one was) we went in there to get rid of the camps that were training terrorists. The Taliban weren't going to be helpful, so we pushed them out too. Now? Now we're still there because the Karzai administration is too weak and corrupt to keep itself in power without the security of the armed forces there.

Iraq? Who knows. Certainly regime change seems to have been the #1 reason. The reason(s) for wanting that? I doubt the wellbeing of the people was the first one.

To those of you that have never read about or researched the History of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi: I urge you to at least take a quick glance at the history of this part of our world. Even those who have, I ask that they take a closer look w/o bringing their own political views into it.

If and when "we" leave Iraq it may very well fall into a civil war, but it already was for a very long time prior to the Gulf War even if it was not defined as such.

&feature=topvideos

As always, I just thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

Time for some real change not wanna be change:

Okay, it's official, I'm a cynical bastard. There is no CHANGE, not by Obush, Brown, or any politician. Every election cycle you hear one side claim that they'll make sweeping changes, and what happens? Everything stays the same, utterly pointless.

You can get polls to say anything you want them to, depending on how you phrase your questions and how you target respondents. A truly random poll with unbiased questions is hard to do. And even that can be undone by interpretation.