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[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I'm still on hiatus, but I find this discussion fascinating.

My understanding of last week's plot isn't great, but the media reports that I've read have led me to understand that a good number (how many, I'm not entirely sure) terrorists/conspiritors/persons of interest that were arrested/detained/whatever last week were British citizens, many if not most British born. With the exception of Jose Padilla and John Walker Lindh, neither of whom were born into Islam, the US does not appear (yet) to have a problem with home-grown Islamic terrorists. I'd rather keep it that way.

This leads me to believe that there's something in the UK going on that's very different than what happens here. It's been over a decade since I've lived there, but I do not recall the UK being the most inclusive or tolerant place I've ever lived. I have otherwise liberal, open-minded British friends who very dirisively refer to "Pakis" in not very nice terms on a very regular basis. Assimilation is not encouraged, and I think that leads to an easily disaffected population if the conditions are right. (see also, France, last year).

And yet some people want to model our immigration policy off of Europe... I digress.

Anyhow, I applaud the British intelligence apparatus for dismanteling the plot before lives were lost (and 12 hours after I finished flying last week), but I think that the analysis in answering Spanky's question should also look at the conditions inside the UK as well as the British activity abroad.

(Since I'm only here for awhile, I'll say a few semi-related things about the Middle East.

(On Iraq, I think we fucked up majorly by going in there in the first place, that we have diverted important resources that could have been devoted to more productive avenues against the War on Terror or whatever they're calling it this month. But, now that we're there, I'm not really convinced that we (or the brits) can pull out gracefully without causing an even bigger mess.

(On Israel v. Hezbulloh, Go Israel, but it'd be a hell of a lot easier to root for someone in this conflict if attacking Hezbulloh didn't require killing a shitload of civilians.

(On the middle east in general, I find that I don't have time to make bombs and incite dissidence and do all sorts of other shit to hurt the people that I hate, because I have other shit to do. I'd love to sit in a cafe all day and gripe about the man to my fellow shiftless lazeabouts and groan about how miserable I am and then do something about it to hurt the person whose fault I think it is, but I'm not that miserable, and I have to go to work. Seems to me that there are a shitload of people in the Middle East that need to find a job and a mortgage and deal with the headaches of everyday productive lives that are worth preserving. How that happens, I have no idea.

(Also, shit like this needs to be followed up upon regularly and we should loudly demand explanations from our "friends" as to why crap like this is still going on.)

Spanky, put me in the "confused" camp.

Invisibility cloak back on.

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