Posted on 02/28/2010 7:31:22 AM PST by Ready4Freddy
Intelligence agencies tasked with profiling the terrorist mind, and figuring out where future extremists might be found, have begun focusing on a surprising target: science students. As it turns out, many recruits in extremist groups such as Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, and Hamas have backgrounds in medicine, engineering, and other hard sciences. In one study by Oxford sociologists -Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, who will be publishing a book on the subject next year, out of 178 terrorists with higher education, almost half studied math or science. And the phenomenon is not limited to Islamists--strong links to science and engineering studies have been found among neo-Nazis, too, and engineers disproportionately supported Hitler and Mussolini during World War II.
With an eye on such statistics, Western and Israeli intelligence agencies are now ramping up their monitoring of hard--sciences departments in universities across the Middle East, says Claude Moniquet, a former French intelligence operative and current head of the -Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, which advises foreign intel agencies. U.S. officials are also apt to give visa requests from engineering students extra scrutiny, says Juan Zarate, deputy national-security adviser for counterterrorism under former president George W. Bush.
So why do geeks disproportionately turn to terror? According to personality experts, engineers are more likely than humanities students to view society like a big machine. And when that machine breaks down, engineers often tend to think it can be fixed by eliminating the so-called bad parts and replacing them with good ones. This clear distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, broken and fixed, appeals to scientific minds, which are more likely to be troubled by the idea that life might have messy moral gray -areas. /.../
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.newsweek.com ...
science/terror ping
Why do people write such nonsense - we seriously need to find these people and put them on the list.
I don't want to censor them I just want to make I know I'm reading the funny papers, or fiction.
Sorta reminds of the question, “why is it that so many professors are liberals?” Turns out, it’s the wrong question. The better question is “why do liberals want to be professors?”
What about the link between Radical Islam and Jihad?.....
.....Deliberately looking away from the answer...
Exactly.
They are recruited, and also engineering is a noble profession in arab countries, algebra was invented by the arabs so they are proud of their history. Unlike the us where engineers are considered nerds these days, and leaders like obama don’t think much of engineering programs such as nasa or real science such as the study of earth’s cyclic and extreme climate since the beginning of the solar system in the absence of man . If it were not for us having a head start in the industrialization age and the cause of liberty and freedom to fight for taking the moral high ground above the terrorists we would be doomed in spite of our leaders and media whom believe intelligence is being able to read a teleprompter say pretty words and science is a belief of hope like a releigion .
Only a Journalism major could write that!
And yes, I are an engineer.
Exactly.
Who do you want on your side in a non-conventional, asymmetrical war?
A bunch of liberal arts poseurs, who sit around talking like old women and philosophers, or people who can look at the physical laws of the universe and say “Hmmm. I think we can use this to our advantage.”
Give me a platoon of experienced engineers (especially EE’s, MechE’s and CivE’s) who are willing to die for their cause, maybe a two to four million dollar budget for tools and prep and I could bring this entire country to its knees - in a week.
The moments I saw the airplanes bank just before they hit the WTC, I knew an engineer was either at the controls or there were engineers involved in the detail planning of the attack. That’s also the moment I knew the WTC was coming down.
Where the “Oh geez, not this sh!t again” guy?
These articles are written by arrogant journos and poli-sci types who know deep down that most of them couldn’t pass the first year of a hard science degree.
So, why do jihadists recruit hard-science and medical types? Because they are valuable in military terms! Duh!
Thanks!
The guy who flew into the IRS building had an engineering background.
Additional brilliant insights include:
Ever notice how companies that get into the music business tend to seek out & hire musicians?
Isn't it interesting that entrepreneurs seeking to build & run a restaurant chain will tend to hire cooks & chefs? Who would have thunk it?
And groups established with the goal of healing people and keeping them healthy will inexplicably have a large contingent of doctors and surgeons.
The list goes on. Gee, with my keenly honed sense of the obvious, I too could be a journalist!
Osama Bin Laden is a civil engineer by education, training and profession, during which he was the project leader on many large-scale construction projects for the Saudis, on contracts for his father’s construction and engineering companies. When it came to buildings on the scale of the WTC, he was not a stranger.
The animals who destroyed The World Trade Center either were engineers or studied the impact of high temperture heat and it’s effect on steel. If you want to destroy something it first make sense to understand how it’s built.
So ?
“The guy who flew into the IRS building had an engineering background.”
He was a computer programmer.... or software engineer... those guys are nuts anyway.
(It was my old job) You end up talking to yourself.
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