Whilst I'm all for the pointing out the fundamental issues with Islam (and chunks of the Old Testament aren't that great either) this theory has a few holes in it.
Firstly it's only called 9/11 in the US. Most other west countries write the date dd/mm/yyyy or 11/09/2001.
And the Muslim world has it's own calender as well.... And frankly it's just wacky, but it is used for religious purposes so if a Muslim was to pick a day for it's religious significance they'd probably pick it based on this one.

I'm always wary of numerology though.

I bet those muslims look silly going around in Paradise with perpetual hard-ons; "Let's play ring-toss!" as Joan Rivers said in one of her comedy routines.

I don't know, Simon. I think they might purposely pick the closest number to that verse on the infidel's calendar. They seem to want to force everyone to be Muslim so it makes sense they'd force it on a date of our calendar that's the number of a significant verse in the Koran.

Hmm. If I were the planner, I'd make sure that every time an American dialed for help in an emergency, they'd be forced to remember that date. Also, I know I could count on endless wailing and a memorial to perpetuate the crying, where I could point for the rest of time to prove what was possible; the Americans would actually help me show the effect I had on them - and a large number would blame themselves.

Because history, to an American, is last week's People magazine.

Thing is people have a tendency to see patterns. It's the way our brains are wired up. I find it much more likely that a bunch of fanatical religious whack jobs picked the first day they could after they'd learnt how to aim planes at buildings than wait until a day picked out from the ramblings of a schizophrenic nutter.

And even if they did, does it matter? Far better to focus on ensuring the religious extremists of all factions don't get their longed for apocalyptic battle and removing the police state our governments are constructing in the name of security than worry about thy they picked a date and whether they have a hard on in the after life.

Of course I'm one of those people who's first words when I wake up in the afterlife will be. 'Well, this is a surprise.'

That I'll agree with, Simon! I could care less their reasons for doing it and I too am much more concerned with the liberties we're being stripped of in the name of safety. I've been saying since then that they hit than sat back and watched us do it to ourselves.

I don't want safety at the price of freedom and find it disturbing how many are willing to sacrifice freedom for a perceived safety. And I do mean perceived. If civil rights are forfeited, your safety is a precarious one at best. All it takes is for someone to look at you askance for saying or doing something that offends them for you to find out the hard way just what price you paid for false protection.

Not too mention, how easy we made recruiting for Al-Queda become.

LOL! My first thought would be oh, shit! I expect after death to be rather like before birth. One of my favorite quotes is from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: I can't live forever and I don't really want to try.

Note to Simon:

Comments like:

"and chunks of the Old Testament aren't that great either"

and:

"ensuring the religious extremists of all factions don't get their longed for apocalyptic battle"

blur the picture and let Islam off the hook.

Name me any major world terror being executed today in the name of those "chunks of the Old Testament." Also, what faction, other than Islam, is attempting to get their "apocalyptic battle"?

Just because you may be atheistic does not validate moralistic leveling between Islam and all other religions.

Note to Donna:

Can you make a list of all your civil rights that have been forfeited? Are you saying we haven't been hit since 911 because the terrorists have sat back? That's it? For all the mistakes this administration has made, you can't give any credit for no subsequent attacks on our soil?

Oddly, sex in Paradise was also an issue for some early Christians.

Sometime in the third century a group of Christians in Alexandria (there's Egypt again) became concerned over whether or not they would be able to make love in heaven.

Their bishop, one Dionysius, wrote them, saying in effect, "You're missing the point. The point is to love one another here in this world. Leave concerns about what will happen or not happen in heaven to when you get there."

Compare that with the writings of Al-Suyuti.

"Are you saying we haven't been hit since 911 because the terrorists have sat back? That's it? For all the mistakes this administration has made, you can't give any credit for no subsequent attacks on our soil?

I'll tell you they have "sat back", simply because I know at least five ways for any group to drive Americans crazy with fear. Gee, the more I think about it, the more ways I find. And I'm just a process operator in an industrial plant.

But bin Laden et al don't have to do a thing but watch the snowball roll downhill. Just try to walk through an airliner gate without taking off your shoes, and you'll see how valuable you really are as a citizen. You, the public, prostrate yourselves for "authority", which is merely doing something to be seen doing something, for the conveniences you expect. A price is being extracted from you and you pay it. It must be OK, then, right?

Radwaste,

They have not "sat back."

Check it out:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23539

How are my civil rights being violated by being required to take off my shoes before boarding a plane?

I am not happy aboput all the safety precautions being employed, but my question, to Donna, was what specific civil rights are being violated?

Um, Ken, bury your head in the sand all you want. Sounds rather like you wouldn't be (or think you wouldn't be anyway, better mind that you worship in the proscribed manner) affected by a theocracy. Your belief does not protect you.

Have you actually read the Patriot Act? Rad made a good point about the airlines actually. But that's so far down the list, it wasn't even what I was thinking of. Wire taps without the inconvenience of a search warrant not a violation of civil rights? Being held without a lawyer? Check out the protesters cordoned off in NYC then arrested over b.s. without reason. Do some research before you spout off and give one lame site.

aclu.org go browse around a little

While you're at it, also read up on ffrf.org and au.org

Just for beginners, because they're the organizations that get my membership dollars.

Google some more.

Watch the firstfreedomfirst video at au.org's site

You might learn a thing or two while you're thanking god you're not atheist. Like in a theocracy, you don't have to be a heathen nonbeliever to be in trouble.

I leave work in half an hour and don't have access at home. Have a good weekend. Make time for some light reading and to give that video a watch. See you Monday.

Donna - Compare and contrast:

PATRIOT and RICO.

PATRIOT is simply RICO applied to terrorism.

Which makes it bad law (overbroad and subject to abuse) but no more an abridgement of civil liberties than already exists in RICO.

And if you think, even for a moment, that this country is headed for any kind of theocracy (never mind a totalitarian one), you really have no understanding of how the world works.

Not to derail this boring bickering, but I can't believe that no one has mentioned the "appetizing vaginas." That is the best quote of the year. I wonder what exactly makes a vagina appetizing?

Well ken right off the top of my head the right to free speach and assembly have alreay been compromised.

And rad is right, have you ever seen 5 tsa shitheads surround and threaten a 65yr old woman because her knee brace set off the metal detector?

And here is another question.

How is it fucking possible that you brain dead morons find it comforting that the TSA is incapable of telling the difference between bottled H2O and semtex?

I don't find it comforting at all. I don't think TSA is worth a damn. If someone wants to get something on a plane, they will.

TSA's whole ban on liquids is related to the fact that two commonly available liquids can be combined to make a very unstable explosive. But they're reacting to LAST MONTH'S scare. They aren't prepared for what's next. In fact, the only stuff they actively protect against are things that are found out about just before they happen, or as they are in the process of failing (see bomber, shoe).

Personally, I say get rid of the TSA completely. Arm the pilots, let people with CCW carry, and go from there.

Gunfire in a pressurized cabin. The Ghetto Heavens. Fly-by rap songs.

Amy K,

I could answer that, but the Amy that runs this blog might consider that a little too off thread topic. :)

lujlp,

We need to approach security much more intelligently, agreed. For starters, we should just mimic anything they do in Israeli airports.

I have found some court cases overturning parts of the Patriot Act, but the Supremes haven't ruled on these yet.

We haven't been hit since 911, so some of these security exercises must be working, flawed though they may be. I just don't buy that they are "sitting back." Islam never sits back. A 1400 year history of Islamic hegemony attests to that. Incidently, the demographic jihad is going to be the doom of western civilization, not terrorism.

I'm more concerned that Amy has a commenter who spends her work day posting here, but has no computer access at home. Does she work for the government?

On the moring of 9/11 as Amercan airlines flight 11 was crashing into the North tower I was Online looking for flights from Boston to vegas leaving either Thursday or Friday morning. Flight 11 to LA and a connection to vegas was at the top of my list before I saw the news flash about the planes hitting the towers. Later when I realized that I could have been on that flight 2 days after they decided to do the attack I was a little freaked out. What if they had waited 2 days? I then learned that the reason they chose Tuesday was because it was a slow travel day and they would have less passenegers to control while they flew their "mission".
Does that mean that the date 9/11 had nothing to do with it? No. But I bet if 9/11 was a Friday they probably would not have picked that day.
In the terrorist things that freak me out category, I knew someone who was killed in the WTC and someone who was on the Lockerbie Scottland flight.

"How are my civil rights being violated by being required to take off my shoes before boarding a plane?"

Government goons, take note: part of your public is already thinking that presuming them guilty is a good idea - to the extent that you can strip-search them for merely wanting to travel - even after they have identified themselves in the ticket purchase process. They have properly come to know their place as puppets for your use, not citizens whom you serve. You can do what you want, now, especially if you let them vent all they want in that "free speech" thing; then they won't actually do anything to retrieve the presumption of innocence.

Cue BB.

I will agree that we lost some civil rights. Most of them because liberals would rather destroy our economy and country than refuse a visa to one minority, and most republicans would rather go along with it than be called racist.

If we were to stop giving visas to Muslims, start prosecuting so-called journalists for sedition (for blowing every imagined slight against Muslims and screaming it from the rooftops until those primitive monkeys riot and kill a dozen people) and then maybe shoot all the lawyers who seem to crawl all over each other to advance the Islamic cause (surprising how many of those lawyers and judges are Jewish), then we could take our country back.

But let us not hyperventilate over the imagined rights that we never had. If you think we have the right to call cell phones located in the caves of Pakistan with arousing interest, then you are an idiot.

Ken, just in case you think your question has not been answered --

The Lemuel Penn case established travel as a Constitutional right. Feel free to explain how many extra hoops you should leap through (roll over, sit, stay, good boy!) to exercise it.

We hoot at the idea of hearing "your papers, pliss?" at checkpoints behind the Iron Curtain and in wartime Germany while we set them up in the USA.

Rad - you don't HAVE to fly, you know. At this point, if I can't get there by car or motorcycle, I'm just not going to go. Let the airlines go bankrupt.

Besides, you think it's ok for the cops to set up checkpoint charlie to make sure you haven't been drinking, or that you've got the right sticker on your windshield, or you're wearing your seatbelt properly?

You've got no rights when you travel as it is, and they were gone long before Bush took office. The supremes have already ruled that there is no 4th amendment protection when you're in a car or walking down the street.

Radwaste,

Let me put the issue to you this way. The right of an airline passenger to refuse to take off their shoe, as a security check, ends at the point of all passengers rights to expect the airline not allow the plane to be boarded by a bunch of shoe bombers. I have a right to expect the airline to take some reasonable precautions here. Sometimes rights conflict, and there is a tradeoff. So because some dickhead jihadist tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb, I have to take off my shoes. I lost the right to keep my shoes on 100% of the time of the plane trip. Enforcing my right to keep my shoes on, negates a reasonable precaution I should expect the airline to take to prevent my boarding the plane with a bunch of shoe bombers. Can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater. Can't say you can't check my shoes to prevent a plane full of shoe bombers. There is a question of the greater good here. Doesn't mean I endorse the infringement, or that I endorse any expansion of the infringement. I just don't feel a need to draw a line in the sand here; the precaution is not unreasonable.

Wait until one of these jihadists nukes a city, then there may be some infringements that I will not go along with.

In a perfect world, I have a right to keep my shoes on 100% of the time.

Btw, we are at war, so there are going to be chekpoints, and there are going to be infringements.

"Gunfire in a pressurized cabin."

Not only is there no risk whatsoever of downing the plane because of small-arms fire to the airframe - there is no "catastrophic decompression" as portrayed in the movies - no commercial airliner has ever been downed by small-arms fire. See the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Center site, which has damage and loss data from the last 40+ years. Happy surfing.

Ken: you have not noticed we are not at war with anyone; it is the express duty of Congress to declare same, and they have not done so. As has been noted elsewhere, we have a system for bothering people, not an airline security system. You haven't lost a right - you gave it away meekly, never noticing you're now presumed guilty.

And goodness gracious, the nuking of a city might cause some infringements you won't "go along with"? Do you really have that kind of mental disconnect that you can't tell the difference between that and what we have now? So many people are completely inarticulate in trying to speak of any links between bin Laden and what we are doing that I despair of hearing anything reasonable about what happens after a nuclear event of any degree; most people have no idea what nuclear weapons actually do, but what's worse is that they cannot seem to remember that there is no way to retaliate in kind when a country is not the origin of an attack.

I especially love the breathless stories of all the "contraband" confiscated from people trying to bring it on planes: knives large and small, hammers, a leaf blower, etc. Hello? All of that was moving on airplanes before the hysteria started - without a problem.

I'm up to six ways to scare you senseless while you stand there shoeless, glowing with pleasure at the thought of pleasing the security guard. All that's missing is lowing and bleating.

Radwaste,

I can see I am waisting my time with you, but I will make one more attempt. I will refrain from insulting you, although the insult technique seems to float your boat.

The jihadists are at war with us, quite awhile before 911, actually. So we are at war with them. They take down the Twin Towers, and ram a plane into the Pentagon, and I need to wait until Congress declares war to say we are at war? ... uh, no. You can stand on semantics, the reality is quite a bit different.

"You haven't lost a right - you gave it away meekly, never noticing you're now presumed guilty." Perfect world absolutism, not applicable to the tortured world we are living in.

I think the way security at airports is being done is stupid and inadequate. But in any public venue, personal rights have a perimeter around them when they bump up against the public good.

You don't recognize the enemy. Bin Laden is only one outrageous part of a much larger whole. As I said in another post, terror isn't even the worst weapon. The demographic jihad could bring the end to western civilization.

So what your saying Ken is your perfectly fine with the idea that if some burecrat makes a mistke you, your friend, or familly member might wind up being tortured in Eygpt and held for yrs without trail.

Is that what your saying?

lujlp,

No that's not what I am saying. Perhaps you could expand on what you are saying.

Rendition, classifing people as enemy combatants and placing them in a categroy in which pesky things like due process, right to councel, right to now the charges agaisnt you and defend yourself agaisnt your accuseres and the evidence is denied. Habeus Corpus - you know pesky things like that

Ever hear of James Lee?

Ken. if you're insulted by the idea that I find being presumed guilty disgusting, the problem is entirely with you.

You are being presumed guilty. If you take nothing more away from here, take that.

And it's in the pursuit of techniques which time and again have been shown to fail. Success does not result from doing our best at the wrong thing. W. Edwards Deming showed the Japanese that in the early '60s, and they have shown the rest of the world he was right.

lujlp,

The people detained at Gitmo are not entitled to any of that, although in practice they are not being categorically denied all the "rights" you are listing, anyway, some of them, perhaps. Again, the people killing our troops is only one facet of the enemy we are facing. Robert Spencer is much more eloquent in describing what we are up against; I urge you to make frequent visits to this site:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/

James Yousef Yee? He was not being detained at Gitmo, and not classified as an enemy combatant.

Radwaste,

Perhaps you don't consider calling someone meek, a puppet, or mentally disconnected insulting, but I do. You don't make your case by shooting the messenger.

Please don't quote Deming to me, I had enough of that metrics speak when I worked in the government.

We are at war. Some rights are going to get infringed upon. There are more effective, less intrusive security measures than are currently being employed. But in lieu of these, are you proposing no footware checks? Because of the infringement of the God given, inalienable right to keep shoes on? How about boarding a plane with members of the Richard Reid Fan Club, without the footware check, that's ok with you?

concur in part and dissent in part.

While you are right, who, but the few far-left liberals and moderate-to-fundy muslims, still think that Islam is not culpable in the problems of this world, and, more specifically, is 'a religion of peace'.

If there has been any problem created here in the United States as a result of Islam, it is laregely the erosion of civil liberties in 'defense'.

While I'm at it, why was it not until after 9/11 that this type of topic only came to prominence? What about the 70's/80's/90's? It just seems to be trendy to illustrate the obvious.

You can point to the footwear checks all you want to downplay the loss of civil liberties. But illegal search and seizure is outlawed by the fourth amendment, very clearly and specifically..."The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ... "

As for the patriot act andthe ability of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to gather personal information without the need for a warrant using national security letters is horrifying. Did you realize that the Patriot act allows the FBI - without the need for a warrant - to get a list from your local public library of any books you have checked out?

Being safe is a nice thing, but let us not forget Ben Franklin's warning "Those that would sacrifice essential liberty for a measure of temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Any of you who put yourselves in the detainee's shoes when you say "we" are losing civil liberties are ignorant beyond words. Any person, who is fighting out of uniform, or who hides behind or co-mingled with civilians, is an "unlawful combatant". They can be shot in the field, even if they surrender. Per the Geneva Convention.

The Gitmo detainees could be legally shot at any time. If you liberals want to take a bullet with them, we are better off without your treasonous butts anyway.

Smarty, your comment just bugs the hell out of me. In the first parapgraph you say that anyone not in military clothing (civilians as you say, like you and me), can be shot in the field, even if surrendering.

yet in the second paragraph, you tell those who are fighting against such disastrous consequences of neoconservative lawmaking to 'get the hell out'.

You clearly don't get that when the government can define the crime, define the nature of the crime, you exist by the power of the government. The government could very well call dissenting opinions as 'threats' to national security if they wanted to.

This isn't an issue of treason. It's about whether you're for the government expanding its power, or decreasing it's power. Clearly you've drawn a line in the sand and you support giving more power to the federal government.

People like you give such power to those who hold power. Thanks for being faithful to the government. I'll continue siding with The People.

Well, said, jd! Very well said. Particularly that last sentence.

And good choice of a quote, steveda. Frankly, Ben Franklin was right but he should have added that they will wind up with neither. When you forfeit your rights, you do just that and are "safe" only as long as you are just another cog in the government machine, a willing little slave to its dictates -- not an individual.

In the kind of government you endorse, ken and smarty, they can make a rule one day that you can be shot or imprisioned for disobeying then the next declare the direct opposite and shoot you for adamantly following it, even if you are just because you missed the news that day and didn't hear about the ban.

Not my idea of "safety" and not one anyone sane can trust in.

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