Turkey Polls Poorly

Turkey seems to have the same mentality as so many others do when it comes to acts of terrorism and what causes it. In a report (see web address below) from Turkish Weekly, it appears that, "Sixty-six percent of participants blamed US Middle Eastern policies as the cause of global terrorism, yet 20 percent pointed to inequality in income distribution and economic problems as the reason for terror."

Global Terrorism is a nifty and possibly meaningless term if it is to include the Bali bombing since the US did not have anything to do with that at all, nor would it go very well for the bombings in Egypt or Turkey itself since Turkey did not let the US send troops into Iraq, and while Egypt is not nearly the same as Iran, Egypt is still not quite in bed with US policy either. But somehow the US is still to blame.

It is also sad to see that one in five Turks still think that poor people are the ones blowing up stuff. Osama bin Laden isn't poor (or we wouldn't be freezing al Quaida's assets), and most of the terrorists we see from 9/11, and London are / were educated, have / had jobs, and know / knew how to use soap too!

By far the saddest survey question found the following: "Only four percent of the Turkish public link terror with religion."

Only four percent, but two-thirds can blame the US for it all. According to a video with ObL in it from December 26, 2001, he said, "After three months passed since the blessed attacks against the global infidelity, against America, the head of infidelity, and after almost two months passed since the beginning of the vicious crusade campaign against Islam, we would like to talk about some of the meanings of these events. These events revealed many issues that are significant to Muslims."

Let's count religious words: blessed, infidelity, infidelity, crusade, Islam, Muslims

That's six in fifty-seven words. Since one is a duplicate, and adds only emphasis, we can take out the " against America, the head of infidelity" and we have five out of a total of 51 words. Almost ten percent - and only four percent of Turkey thinks that religion plays a role in terror.

The US has not run a very good PR campaign in a very long time and it shows. To me, this is the weakest link in our ability to fight terror because we are not doing a good enough job of explaining why this needs to be done. While it seems obvious to me and many others in the US, much of the rest of the world is far more isolated from our ideas and since we are not communicating effectively there is indeed a growing lack of sympathy and understanding.

Full Article: http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=16971URL of ObL quote: http://www.adl.org/terrorism_america/bin_l.asp

Regrets of NARAL - Not enough regrets at all

While I'm prepping to finally go to college and have the amount of hours I'll be working diminish greatly, I've been quite busy either working (getting hours in), or doing all that needs to be done for school.

I've found many items worth conversation, but haven't had time to address them at all. Once this situation stabilizes I will be very happy indeed.

One subject that is quite pathetic is the attempt by liberals to slam John Roberts. From trying to dig for information about his adopted children to the last garbage passed as 'information' by that wonderfully out of touch group called NARAL, this man has been dealing with items that would not be brought up by statesman, nor sophisticated critics.

NARAL is now pulling the ad from television, but not because of the actual statements they made, but because it seems many people seem to be too stupid to understand the true meaning of it I guess:

"We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record," NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

How does something get 'misconstrued'? Usually it is either because the item does not contain enough substance or it lacks validity, or if not, then it is because the target audience is simply too stupid to grasp the depth of the subject and draw their own conclusions.

I personally side with the first possibility over the second, but what is telling is like with so many other points of interest these days, people are not regretting the fact that they put up an ad so very bereft of facts and then decide to blame 'many people' for the results instead of themselves. This is in line with the modern version of the timeless idea to blame others for what goes wrong and shrug off any and all responsibility.

In the end, I am still undecided as to how I personally feel about Judge Roberts, but either way, it does not excuse the tactics being employed against him.

Full article: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050812/D8BU4B8G0.html