This is getting ridiculious!

Judging by what I'm reading / seeing on the news, on Facebook, and around the virtual water cooler, we've become a nation of twitching, babbling, scaredy cats.  Now lots of people are saying they'll stop reading the news altogether since it's just full of stories about terrorism and such.  Why?  Will not watching the news make them any more safe?  

Some nut case terrorists attacked Paris, killing 130 and injuring more....serious for sure, but think of it this way:  Paris has a population of 2,340,000 people, with another 5,000,000 tourists visiting each year, too.  Over the course of a year, your odds of being killed by a terrorist in Paris are roughly 1 in 6,600,000.

Other ISIS assholes smuggled a bomb on board a Russian plane in Egypt and blew it up, killing hundreds.  But that same day there were roughly 93,000 other airline flights worldwide.  Over the course of a year, the odds of YOUR flight being blown up by terrorists are 1 in 33,045,000.   

Judging by the paranoia I'm seeing we seem absolutely certain Mohammad the terrorist is waiting right outside our door holding a bomb with our name on it.

Meanwhile, your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 1,107,000.  Your odds of dying while swimming or jogging are roughly 1 in 1,000,000.  Your lifetime odds of dying in a car wreck are 1 in 6,700.  I won't even get into the odds of you dying due to a lifetime of smoking or heavy drinking or overeating. 

Yet we still play outside, swim, jog, smoke, drink, eat....and think nothing of it.  *Pffft....ain't skeered*

Of course, you shouldn't do "nuthin' dumb", either.  Don't stand in the middle of a golf course during a thunderstorm holding a 9-iron high over your head.  Don't plan a vacation to Syria or Nigeria or a cruise near Somalia.  Don't fly on an airline based in Africa or a few other third-world places (not to mention Russia or Malaysia).  If you see an unattended package in a crowded place, stay back and call the police.

GET A GRIP, PEOPLE!  Go about your business.  Work hard, play hard.  Be aware, yes, but don't live your life scared.

S

I'm not feelin' the love

Remember my recent post about the creeping anarchy I saw around the world?  I'm not so sure it's "creeping".  Seems to me it's about to break into a jog, if not a sprint.  Consider this:

Mid East meets West

Unless you live under a rock you'll know that the Mid East is currently in turmoil.  Really, really deep doo-doo, actually.  It's their normal state of affairs.  Literally millions of refugees have fled the wars in Syria and Iraq, and now are trying to escape the barbarism of ISIS, too.  Many hundreds of thousands have made their way to Europe, looking for a better, or at least safer, life.

According to EU rules, open borders theoretically allow those in any EU country to move freely around and into any other EU country.  This is now being challenged, and strained.  It's really a sad situation.  All these migrants want is to not be shot at, to work, to provide food for their families and a roof over their heads.  It's something we can all sympathize with. 

Here's the problem:  Germans, possibly because of their lingering national guilt due to their dark WWII-years, have been surprisingly accommodating to these refugees, while many other countries have not been.  Germany expects 900,000 to arrive just this year.  (To put this into context, it would be like 3,000,000 refugees arriving in the US in just one year.)  That's quite a social burden to take on.  Most of the rest of Europe can't or won't, and it's threatening the cohesion of Europe, such as it is. Yet the migrants keep coming.

Things are getting more tense and desperate by the day, which historically will lead to an eventual breaking point.  And every terrorist attack, such as the French train shooting a few weeks ago, strengthens the case of the anti-immigrant factions who see in every refugee a latent terrorist. 

So when is this breaking point going to be reached, and when it happens, what form will it take?   Beats me.  All I know is that the Europeans are being re-active, and not pro-active.  They fell behind the curve early and will probably never make up the lost ground....a situation that anarchists dream of.

Remember reading of those days when having big 'ol oceans around us kept us isolated from all those pesky foreign problems?  No more.  We're no longer immune from the wars in the Mid East, the stock market crash in China, or pollution originating anywhere in the world.  All those problems will find us, too, probably sooner rather than later. 

In retrospect, do you think maybe we should have left Iraq, and Libya, and Syria, and all the rest of that blighted region alone?  They were in a bad situation for sure, but are things any better today after all our meddling?  We were told the goal was to get the bad guys over there before they could get to us here, but I fear the opposite....we've only accelerated the process.  

Yes, I'm a political science nerd.  It's gonna be interesting (for me at least) to see how all this eventually shakes out.  Keep your powder dry.

S

How will you react?

 

We live in a very cruel world.  Not a day goes by that the 24-hour news doesn't remind us of this.  Sometimes it's just pure meanness, but more often it has religious/political overtones, disenchanted Muslims being the usual perps.

Over the weekend there were multiple shootings in Denmark, initially looking like a copycat of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris last month.  Then there was the burning-to-death murder of the Jordanian pilot in Syria, and now the multiple beheadings of a dozen Christian Egyptians in Libya.  And too many bombings around the world to count....it's just too easy to blow up a bus or a train.

Closer to home we've seen the lone wolf attacks on the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa and the hatchet attack on a policeman in NYC, and of course the Boston marathon bombers.  The authorities have told us of some of the plots being hatched that they've broken up at the last minute, but we'll probably never know of many others.  Suffice it to say there are too many soft (undefended) targets for the police to watch them all.  Attacks can happen any where, any time.

And they WILL, here.  Count on it.  It's just a matter of time.  So here's my question:  When it happens, how will you react?

Remember after 9/11?  Buildings in NYC and Washington were attacked, and many people who worked in tall buildings in other cities stayed away or even quit their jobs because they were too scared to go to work.  And when commercial airlines were allowed to fly again a few days after the attacks, many planes left their gates close to empty.  For quite a while this scared off leisure travelers, and the hotels, casinos, and resorts that catered to them suffered.  Like the ripples on a pond caused by a single tossed stone, the effects were far reaching.

So if a terrorist bombs the Chicago "L", are people going to stay away from Dallas' DART, or the Bay Area's BART?  If they attack a church or synagogue in LA are people in Minneapolis or Miami going stay away from their house of worship?  And even more importantly, are you going to self-censor what you say around the water cooler or write on your blog or on Facebook?  (K is certain I have a jihad contract out on me already :)

I remember years ago I had a trip planned to London just a few weeks after their horrific train bombings.  K told me to stay off The Tube (London's subway) if I saw anyone get on who looked "middle eastern" and was carrying a backpack.  Guess what, virtually everyone who rides The Tube looks middle eastern and carries a backpack!  So what did I do?  I traveled around town via The Tube.

When it happens, will you close your curtains and crawl into a hole?  Will you still take your summer vacation to Disney World?  (OK, now that one scares me more than any terrorist ever could!)   Will you still ride your transit system to your job on the 40th floor of a downtown office building?  Will you blink?

If you change your lifestyle (beyond just being more aware), then the bastards win.  Will you let them?  It's not too soon to start thinking about it.

S

Whap! Thank you, sir. May I have another? Whap! Thank you....

I had an interesting exchange in my previous post with It's.a.crazy.world regarding my feelings for / perceptions of Islam, and I mentioned the peaceful nature of Buddhists and Hindu's in passing.  This in turn reminded me of a conversation I had with an Indian friend recently.

He was telling me about his native country (he is an IT professional here in the US now and his wife is a doctor), and he enlightened me considerably.  He told me that there are as many Muslims living in predominantly Hindu India as there are in the next door Muslim country of Pakistan.  I had thought that when the British vacated control of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 the Muslims and Hindu were seriously segregated.

The Hindu are a very benign, inclusive people.  When their country was founded their revered leader Mahatma Gandhi pointed out the colors of their flag (saffron...orange to us...representing their Hindu citizens, white their Christian citizens, and green their Muslim citizens) was meant to show respect for all.

Here's the tie-in with my post of yesterday:  My Indian friend explained that in recent years with the rise of militant Islam terrorism has become a terrible problem in India.  India claims, and they have proof, that Pakistan is turning a blind eye to the extremists living there and fomenting trouble inside India.  The goal seems to be to cause a backlash against the Muslims living in India, sparking a religious war the ruthless extreme Muslims feel they can win.  The last thing they want is "peaceful co-existence".

Why are there so many disaffected Muslims around the world?  What is it about Islam that makes it so easy for extremists to subvert?  (At least "subverted" is what moderate Muslims say has happened to their religion.)  Where did they learn to be so ruthlessly cruel?  Are such atrocities really called for in the Quran?  

There are entire sects (Wahhabis, for example) who are devoted to this unbending, my-way-or-the-highway, take-no-prisoner, version of Islam.  Rule, or exception?  Every religion has their nut cases, but do millions of Muslim militants still qualify as "exceptions"?  There's a big gray area there.

Honest question:  How many "other cheeks" should we in the West turn when extreme Islam comes after us?  How much should we accept before we become a doormat?

S

Please don't be shy.  Thoughtful comments would be appreciated.

Just sayin'

It's politically correct these days to point out that not all Muslims are terrorist.  Of course this is 100% correct, but have you noticed that, worldwide, almost all terrorists are Muslim?  True.  There are very, very few exceptions.  Timothy McVeigh comes to mind.  Any others?

Just a tidbit of trivia from my somewhat strange mind.  Make of it what you will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think I have begun to see the value of Twitter.  When it was first explained to me I was told Twitter was a way for you to tell your friends in a very few words what you were doing.  I wondered, "Why would anyone want to know I'm eating a bowl of cereal?"

But last night as we were eating at Fuzzy's Tacos, with all the TV's tuned to soccer *gag*, K was keeping up with the second-by-second breaking news from Boston.  She knew within seconds that  Dzhekalto Tsrkilckicopev (sp?) had been captured, a full 5 minutes before the news outlets reported it.  And can you imagine a faster way to get the word out when you're looking for someone, whether it be a terrorist or a lost child?

I'm still not going to be a Twitterer myself, but if there's a news story I want to follow, I'm going to Twitter first.  Another nail in ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN's coffin.

Good day to you all.  :)

S

BREAKING NEWS!

For once there's actually news worthy of the title.  These are crazy (read: insane) times we live in.  As I write this the news is showing live pics of the cops surrounding the suspected hiding place of Dzhakhar (I'm just gonna henceforth call him "Dizzy") Tsarnaev.  He's giving the usual "you'll never take me alive, copper" speech, and I imagine the cops are thinking, "OK, as you wish, ass hole."

What do we know?  Just bits and pieces.  He and his bro were Muslim, but we don't know if they were radical Muslims.  Is this politically motivated?  Did they get terrorist training somewhere?  Do they have accomplices?  Have they set booby-traps elsewhere?  All unknown.

But to tie this in with another current hot topic....this is exactly one reason why people should be allowed to own and possess firearms.  People in the Boston area have been told to stay home, don't go out for any reason, and if possible to retreat to their basements.

I personally would feel a helluva lot safer if I had my gun with me as a last line of defense in case some nut on the run like Dizzy were to invade my home and threaten my family.  I don't need an assault rifle with a hundred-round magazine.  My .40 cal H&K is plenty.  

If you ever thought that scenario was an absolutely far-fetched possibility, turn on your TV right now.  This whole thing is insane.  Killing innocent bystanders, knocking off a 7/11 (to draw out the cops and bring things to a head?), tossing more homemade bombs, shootouts....just insane.

S