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The uninformed American people have unwittingly elected a muslim as CIC.

Whatever his upbringing, he does not seem to display many signs of any kind of religion, either Muslim or Christian or even pagan. It might well be preferable if he did.

Instead, he gives every appearance of being a card-carrying Marxist and atheist.

We are witnessing an Islamicized America. This is well beyond political correctness. We are enforcing shariah law. We will not insult Islam. That is shariah law. We self censor. That is shariah law.

No, it's not. It is, of course, political correctness run amok. It is also adopting an attitude of dhimmitude. But let's at least be honest - it isn't sharia. Nobody here has to pay the jizya, nobody is being sentenced by the courts to be stoned to death for adultery, nor any of the other aspects of Islamic justice. Nor are women expected to wear the burqa.

The real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness. We are setting our hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.

On the other hand, this is a very apt characterization. We haven't (yet!) been subjected to sharia - but the West (or at least much of it) is going off the deep end of craziness.

I was very sad to see Site Institute is gone as of last month. Does anyone know where we can find Rita Katz?

Many of those involved with the Site Institute, apparently including Rita Katz, have moved to the Site Intelligence Group.

It is the changes in stories of what caused the wound.
I am very skeptical of “The Pakistani Interior Ministries” reports.

Since there was no autopsy done at the hospital, and many different people reporting what they saw or heard, I'm not too surprised that the story has changed several times; that's pretty normal in such confusing circumstances.

I don't trust the Pakistani Interior Ministry either, but I see no reason why they would try to hide the immediate cause of death. (They might well try to hide any government incompetence or co-operation with al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, even if it involved only lower-level officials and not Musharraf or any of his close associates).

CAN ANYONE SAY COVER UP......
OPINION...COMPLETE CRAP

The article that I saw said that as she was ducking back into the car her head was knocked into the lever by the shock wave of the explosion. I don't see any reason why that would be implausible, although I am a little surprised that they said that she wasn't hit by any shrapnel. However if her head was at the level of the roof of the car at the time of the explosion, she may well have been protected from shrapnel by the edge of the roof (the bomber was on a motorcycle and would be below the roof line).

I'm not quite sure I see why the precise location of the deadly wound matters at this point.

Has anyone here experienced “the quickening” or the speeding up of time? [...]

The quickening seems to be talked about more and more by young people. I used to think it was just for us older ones.

This sounds very much like the ideas which have been much discussed in the past few years about the approach of a "Singularity" in human affairs, particularly technological. A good introduction to writings on this subject can be found in the Technological Singularity article on Wikipedia.

Meanwhile innocent Christians are slaughtered and if we didn't know better, we'd swear this could happen only in much more primitive times.

Unfortunately I think very few individuals in the media "get it." The jihadis are not fighting because "they hate our freedoms" (how superficial) nor even because the US does give some support to Israel (though that probably does inflame many Muslims who might otherwise be less sympathetic to the radicals).

The real reason they're fighting is that they want to force Islam on the entire world; in other words, Convert or die. Christianity is directly in the crosshairs because of the large number of adherents and because it is very widespread; in the case of other religions, there are either relatively few adherents (Judaism, for example) or they are highly concentrated geographically and therefore less important outside their home countries (Hinduism, Buddhism).

As for this only happening in more primitive times, we have after all been told that persecutions would come. There have been more Christian martyrs in the last hundred years than in the previous two thousand, even leaving out those killed by Muslims. Satan "knows that his time is short" and we can expect more persecutions to come and even increase until the Lord comes again.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

I have never forgotten the Dr (in Jersey I think) that cheered when the towers fell. I have had an uneasy feeling about them since then.

A professional degree (of any kind) is by no means complete insurance against radicalism (of any kind). Many of the high-level Nazis held MD's or PhD's, for example.

At best during all those years of education an individual is likely to absorb a broader perspective than the uneducated mob, or those educated only in the religious texts of a single religion. Often that prevents the more parochial forms of radicalism, but it doesn't mean that they'll turn out to be good people - even the Bible says that Satan himself can appear as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14).

From the original article:
Though all three inquiries could have been perfectly innocent, Caspersen said he deemed the memo necessary.

Um, yes, I suppose so. The problem is that all of this information is readily available, at any library or even on the Internet. Some of it is even in the phone book. It sounds like the individuals involved (whatever their motivation) are essentially clueless about how to find out information in this society, or even fail to understand how it operates at a basic level.

If the questions were legitimate (that is, they were just interested in new career, etc), it's a very strange way to go about it. On the other hand, if point was illegitimate (some kind of criminal or terrorist plot), it's still strange - it draws attention to themselves unnecessarily, and suggests either some kind of freelance activity or that they were sent or recruited without adequate preparation and planning.

I'm betting freelancers of some kind - who are essentially clueless but who can be dangerous if they manage to slip through the cracks.

The other thing that occurs to me along this line is that you have to be very careful about identifying someone's religious affiliation based on their ethnic appearance. I know a number of South Asians in this country who are Hindus or Sikhs - or even some who are Christians and whose family had been Christians in India, not simply recent converts. Many of these people are likewise in highly visible professional positions, and the Hindus especially can be hard to distinguish from Muslims from that area of the world. (And for that matter many Westerners find it difficult to tell the Sikhs from the Muslims - though there are a number of telltale signs if the individual observes their religion, if you know where to look. The Sikh religion is a syncretic religion quite different from Islam, and in many ways more compatible with a Western outlook).

Conversely there are quite a few Muslims who are of European or Chinese ethnicity, contrary to the stereotype.

I will agree, that most Muslim’s are highly educated. That is what’s so sad about throwing good life's away for a false profit.

Some are, some aren't. What is probably true is that there is more disparity in education between the most and least educated Muslims than there is between the most and least educated Westerners, even for those Muslims living in the West. For every highly educated doctor or other professional you'll find several members of the poorly educated "underclass," which is often more radicalized than the upper classes.

The situation in Muslim countries is even worse; the education that many receive is almost exclusively in the Koran, which like any religious education is not very useful professionally unless you plan to become one of the clergy.

From Wired.com: Ever wonder just how bad a terrorist attack on a fuel plant could be? Well, wonder no more.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/video_fix_kings.html

I wouldn't fly with someone carrying a "ceremonial dagger," either.

I dunno, Cindy. I think I'd much rather sit next to a Sikh with his "ceremonial dagger" than a fundamentalist Muslim with a box cutter.

Is Ramadan over yet?

Ramadan is not yet over - it will last until around October 23 or 24. The exact date varies by country or region and depends on when the new moon is sighted in each country. A few countries use the computed astronomical new moon rather than an actual sighting.

I've seen posts on other threads that insinuate anyone concerned about potential terrorist attacks in our country is filled with paranoia and over-wrought with doomsday scenarios.

Sometimes this still surprises me. I expect it among the general population, but not as much here.

Since there have in fact been several small-scale terrorist incidents in this country since 9/11 (both publically thwarted and some actually carried out), it's quite clear that there is still cause for concern; the only thing remaining to be debated is how much concern. Anyone who thinks that that concern is 'paranoia' just hasn't been paying attention.

OPINION: Actually, I believe the anti-Christ is evil and it operates out in the open under the guise of politial correctness and it is blanketed in the spirit of tolerance.

"Little Children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." - 1 John 2:18

Indeed as John says there are many antichrists loose in the world.

After Steven Centanni and his camera man converted to Islam; they were released shortly after.

At gunpoint, I might add.

Can anybody seriously doubt that there is a spirit of antichrist in the world, and its name is Islam?

I've been following the story very closely and read in a few places that they were going to sell them in Texas.

Of course that in itself is suspicious - either the story is changing or there's more than one connection that they were planning to make.

I'm not buying it either.
I'd also like to see the pics they took of the bridge.

You and me both. Although the bridge is pretty massive as I recall, you'd need a lot of explosives to bring it down.

Still a good sized truck bomb should do it if you set it off in the right place so that it severed one of the main cables - but this could be done without cell phones, unless they were planning to leave the truck on the bridge as "broken down" and walk off, then set off the explosion using a cell phone once they were safely on land. Seems like a somewhat shakey idea - is the cell reception reliable enough in the middle of the bridge for that to work? Setting off the bomb on one of the approaches would be easier but would do less damage.

However this would only take a couple of cell phones, a half dozen at most. My bet is that the plan was for something much bigger and more spread out - bombs in many places perhaps, or a major drug operation. What else would you need hundreds of phones for?!