No. The difference is that a man that lives in England can stand up in a public square and scream "I do not believe in God! Down with God! Down with God!" and you will harbor every right and protection under law. Christians will not raise up to destroy you. Your rights will not be violated and your life will not be in jeopardy. Your freedom is LAW. A man that travels to Palestine, stands up in a square and screams "Down with God! Down with God!" will be attacked, murdered, and his murderers praised publicly by government officials as heroes.

Here, those that blow up birth control centers and sports events (no matter what the reason) are breaking the law, outlawed and pursued by police for justice. Those that do so in the some countries of the ME are praised as heroes. That is the difference.

If you need proof take a trip to New York, stand up in a busy corner and scream out such a thing to see the reaction. Next travel to Palestine to find a busy street corner and try the same. I doubt you will get the same docile reaction. If you could not see the difference before you'ld would soon enough.

EDIT for wording.

Or for a quicker comparison, yell on a street in Israel.....eventually ppl will either start listening to you or laughing.

Every society has its radicals. The difference is in whether those radicals are contained or encouraged. Western radicals are informed upon, hunted down and incarcerated, whereas Islamic radicals are honored and revered. You don't see the difference?

I've worked 37 years for a major police dept. Retired. Co-spent 20 years with USN RM2 and the USAR, retired SFC. Finished my working career as a merchant seaman in the Persian Gulf carrying beans, bullets, and bandaids for Op Iraqi Freedom. On the beach now, due to heart attack. I'm closer to 70 than I am to 60. I've been around the block once or twice.

I stay away from ALL religious fanatics whether in DuBai or New York and keep my own console...and pray for the strictest Constitutional separation of church and state.

...all I ask is to be accepted for who I am, not my politics or religion. I've served my country and community and I'm dead tired of folks telling me how to live my life, who have not.

Each of us is the HERO of our own story. Keep it at that and we'll all get along. I've earned the right to my opinion(s) as well at the next swingin' Richard.

You know, I may have misread your original statement. You probably said:
there's no difference between the "religous right" here in the west...

But it read:
there's no difference between the religous "right here" in the west...

Which makes it sound like you were saying every person who is religous is a terrorist.

No, I wasn't saying that, LoBlo, but now that you've brought it up...

How many religious wars have been fought through the centuries? Would you consider the present one a "religious war"? (albeit one side is considered fanatic fundamentlist) but, which side :hmm: ;)

I have first hand knowledge/experience the people of the region consider it the extention of the "crusades". We've lost the pysop war and credibility big time, I'm afraid.

Terrorism is a tactic as old as Adam--nothing is new under the sun. I dare say every father practices a form of "mild-terrorism" on their children...I know my dad did...once I got that certain "look" from him, I would be scared sh_tless and soon corrected the error of my ways.

The Admin has it all wrong...how can there be a war on terrorism? Maybe they should change it to a war on folks who use terrorism as a weapon???
No. That still doesn't cut it, does it. All I know is when I was laid up in Landstuhl ICU, I was surrounded by a lot of young, unconscious G.I.s in adjoining rooms, laid waste by roadside IEDs clinging to life with life-support hoses and transfusions a plenty...it gives one a different perspective about religion and life in general. (EDIT: I felt unworthy to be among those young heros. It was an honor to be in the same room.)

The best way I can describe it is like what Abraham Lincoln once said of a young feller holding a Wolf by the ears. You've got it now, alright, but how do you let it go?

cheers,

Amen to that! :up:

PS: it seems we are of the same age. 04-40.

...salute, Fish. That horizontal tricolor is waving mighty proudly, and rightly so.

...you've undoubtably witnessed some difficult times in your youth, your parents (and grandparents) did for sure. We both can count our blessings and hope that the times won't get any worse than they already are; at least, for our childrens' and grand childrens' sake.

I really owe, LoBlo and apology. Looking over my rant(s) above...in my haste, I've omitted some very important punctuation.:oops: ...sorry, LoBlo, you were right to point it out and I fully understand your angst with me.

Well yes, my country was as poor as church rat after the occupation WW II.
There was realy nothing left, even the churchbells (copper) are stolen
I was born just before the war, 11 days, and my granddad leaves a day later for sea. He was a fisherman and was at sea when the war startded, they had to go to the UK.
He voluntered for the navy and became skipper on a minesweeper.
Came back after five years. His brother also skipper on a minesweeper died in England.
But thats a long time ago.

That was Thomas Jefferson. He was paraphrasing Cicero as a metaphor for slavery and America's economics of agriculture.

My all-time favourite example of sexed up news coverage was on Good Morning America. One of their correspondents was sitting in a canoe on a flooded street and describing damage, destruction, and flooding in New Orleans following Katrina; and in mid sentence a couple guys happen to walk in front of the camera next to her canoe and the water is ankle deep. :lol:

That was classic.

[EDIT] My bad, it was actually in Wayne, NJ and not NOLA where this blooper occurred. I found a nice link to the clips of it and what's interesting is that in the east coast feed, that presumably went live, they have the boat incident while in the west coast feed that aired later, its been editted out and replaced with different footage. Both clips I found here:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/...show-photo-op/

The mainstream news networks are obviously going to be biased as they now serve shareholder's only and not the common good formerly seen as the job of news media. It's about A telling people what they want to hear so that they keep watching and B following the political line which the executives give the lower downs.

Your only hope for real news is to develop a critical eye and watch all the news channels, sift through the crap, read newspapers and get a colelction of information and decide whats wrong, right, heresay, and editorial.

Also many independant news sources are more un-biased. Many of these are called liberal but that's largely because righties say everything that's not aggreeing with them is wrong or biased (the righties I mean are the ones with TV shows). Sometimes because the right owns news it can appear as liberal but often is just factual with a liberal flair for contradicting the right.

thank you, Takeda, for puting the proper source to that quote...I wasn't sure, but thought it was from A.L....:) shuda researched it; however, the point of it remains, re middle east...regardless whatever the newsies puke our way.

cheers,