Today, it's been 10 years since the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by hijacked planes.
1) Me on 9/11/2001
The common question that will be asked will probably be "where were you on 9/11?"
I was at University of Hawaii that time, living at the dorms!
Because of the time difference between NY and Hawaii, I was asleep when the attacks happened!
I first found out about it when my mom called me at 5:45. She mentioned that the World Trade Center blew up. At the moment, I was thinking it would've been similar to the bombing that occurred in the World Trade Center in 1993.
Only when I listened to the radio (the TV in my dorm room was screwed up at the time), when I found out it was actually airplanes that hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Later that morning, I was in the cafeteria, when a student was concerned that a class I had with him was going to be cancelled. He also fear that Pearl Harbor might get hit again.
I had 2 classes that day. In the 1st class, the professor mentioned about the 9/11 attacks, then went on with the lesson of the day. I think it was the appropriate way to deal with it.
Acknowledge what happen, but don't let it stop everything.The 2nd class that day, the teacher just cut it short.
In that semester, I was working at the UH dorms, both the Lokelani and Lehua buildings. Coincidentally, 9/11/2001 was the 1st day I was working at the Lehua building. Hectic circumstances.
3 days after the 9/11 attacks, I was hanging out with a long-time friend. We were talking about the week's events, plus all the racist hate crimes committed against Arab Americans occurring in the mainland. Then the friend said that I better shave (at that point I didn't shave for a whole week) or someone might look at me the wrong way. (Though I am Latino, some have said I look like I'm from the Middle East, especially if I didn't shave) Needless to say, I shaved my face that night (though I kept my infamous mustache).
2) American unity after 9/11
After the 9/11 attacks, there was a big wave of patriotism. There were American flags on everyday! Tons of new flags were bought! Same for any merchandise with the USA flag on it!
It was like the stories our grandparents told us about how the nation came together during World War 2! After all the divisiveness and bitterness surrounding the Vietnam War, there was a feeling like Americans would never go back to the unity expressed during World War 2! But it happened right after 9/11!
Of course, some Radical Left wing writers and professors basically blamed America for being attacked! They got a whole bunch of hate coming at them that they didn't see coming! It was like those Radical Left wing writers and professors were stuck in 1968! But we had no patience with those whose minds were stuck in 1968!
This isn't the Vietnam War where we just but in to someone else's conflicts! Those who attacked us were based in Afghanistan! Our involvement there is totally different than our involvement in Vietnam! Most Americans understood, and those Radical Left wingers stuck in 1968 got the ridicule they deserve!
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However, American unity seemed to decline since 9/11.
Part of it was disagreement over whether the US troops should've gone into Iraq! Iraq had zero involvement in 9/11, just like China has zero involvement in Pearl Harbor! Many felt it was a distraction from the war in Afghanistan! However, there were concerns that Iraq might still want to retaliate against the USA over our defending Kuwait from Iraqi troops back in 1991!
Other factors also caused the decline in American unity! Part of it was the anger over the slow action taken after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans! Part of it was the economic decline since the 2008 stock market crash! Part of was just war fatigue and 9/11 fatigue!
3) Anti-Muslim paranoia in Europe and North America
While the Radical Muslims have a very dangerous agenda, I still think there is too much anti-Muslim paranoia out there!
In Europe, where there are many immigrants from Muslim countries, many native Europeans are paranoid about a "Muslim takeover".
This fear has inspired Norway's white supremacist Anders Breivik to go on a shooting spree earlier this year, against those he felt were too tolerant on non-white immigrants.
Here, Gary Younge sets the record straight
http://www.thenation.com/article/162270/europes-homegrown-terrorists
The general framing goes like this. Europe is being overrun by Muslims and other non-white immigrants, who are outbreeding non-Muslims at a terrifying rate. Unwilling to integrate culturally and unable to compete intellectually, Muslim populations have become hotbeds of terrorist sympathy and activity. Their presence threatens not only security but the liberal consensus regarding women’s rights and gay rights that Western Europe has so painstakingly established; and overall, this state of affairs represents a fracturing of society that is losing its common values. This has been allowed to happen in the name of not offending specific ethnic groups, otherwise known as multiculturalism.
One could spend all day ripping these arguments to shreds, but for now let’s just deal with the facts.
There have been predictions that the Muslim population of Europe will almost double by 2015 (Oner Taspiner, the Brookings Institution); double by 2020 (Don Melvin, the Associated Press); and be 20 percent of the continent by 2050 (Esther Pan, Council on Foreign Relations). Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches: “The number I heard is every 32 years the population, the European population of Europe will be reduced by 50 percent. That’s how bad their birthrates are. This is in many respects a dying continent from the standpoint of European-Europeans.”
This is nonsense. The projections are way off. While Muslims in Europe do have higher birthrates than non-Muslims, their birthrates are falling. A Pew Forum study, published in January 2011, forecast an increase of Muslims in European population from 6 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2030.
The Norwegian terrorist Breivik feared a Muslim takeover. But Muslims make up 3 percent of Norway. Black Americans have a greater presence in Alaska.
[my note: that reminds me: when Sarah Palin ran for VP, she was mocked for being from a state with "hardly any black people", nevermind the same was true about "the 1st black president"! But yet, some fear a "Muslim takeover of Norway", when their presence is VERY TINY, even tinier than the presence of African-descendants in Alaska]
[When I posted a link to that article on facebook, a right-winger on my list mentioned some mullah saying
"we will take over Europe because we breed like mosquitoes."
My response was : yeah, but from the
3% they are today?
3%! Some mullah talks about "breeding like mosquitoes" but it's all talk! As the article said,
even the Muslim birth-rate WITHIN Europe has been declining! So much for "breeding like mosquitoes"! And even if the jihadis in Europe do have many kids, let's remember,
a lot of kids either rebel or ignore their parents! ]
More from Younge's article:
Nor do immigrants struggle to integrate. In Britain, Asian Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus all marry outside of their own groups at the same rates as whites. For most ethnic minorities in Britain, roughly half or more of their friends are white. Only 20 percent of those born in Britain have friends only from their own group. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism.
In most of Europe the official politics of multiculturalism that the likes of Breivik and more mainstream politicians rail against—a liberal, state-led policy of encouraging and supporting cultural difference at the expense of national cohesion—is an absolute fiction. Last year German chancellor Angela Merkel claimed the “multikulti” experiment had failed. Earlier this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the same thing. The truth is that neither country ever tried such an experiment. “We never had a policy of multiculturalism,” explains Mekonnen Mesghena, head of migration and intercultural management at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. “We had a policy of denial: denial of immigration and of diversity. Now it’s like we are waking up from a long trance.”
The real object of their ire is the existence of “other”—meaning non-white—cultures and races in Europe: the fact of “other” cultures, not the promotion of them. The single greatest obstacle to integration in most of Europe is not Islam or multiculturalism but racism and the economic and academic disadvantage that comes with it.
And, finally, Muslims are nowhere near the greatest terrorist threat. According to Europol, between 2006 and 2008 only .4 percent of terrorist plots (including attempts and fully executed attacks) in Europe were from Islamists. The lion’s share (85 percent) were related to separatism. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. But it’s not on the scale or of the nature that those first out of the gate on Friday claimed it was. Put bluntly, if you have to assume anything when a bomb goes off in Europe, think region, not religion.
[in other words, most terrorism in Europe has more to do with folks like the IRA who want Northern Ireland to separate from the UK. Or the Basque separatists who want their land to be separate from Spain. And similar folks in other European nations]
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And on the Muslim population in the USA, Steve Chapman sets the record straight!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/08/who-really-kept-us-safe-after
This surprising record has been attributed to excellent work by the FBI, CIA, and other law enforcement agencies, the war in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's aggressive treatment of suspected terrorists. But on the list of those deserving credit, the first is a group hardly anyone would have predicted: American Muslims.
(skipped paragraphs,)
There are too many targets to secure them all. It would have been a simple task for a handful of minimally trained volunteers to keep us in a constant state of fear.
But the volunteers, with rare exceptions, didn't come forward. Charles Kurzman, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes in Foreign Policy magazine that "approximately a dozen people in the country were convicted in the five years after 9/11 for having links with al-Qaida" and "fewer than 40 Muslim Americans planned or carried out acts of domestic terrorism."
That may sound like a lot, until you remember that there are 15,000 murders a year in this country. A report from the Rand Corp., a national security think tank, noted that of 83 terrorist attacks that took place between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three "were clearly connected with the jihadist cause." Three!
We hear a lot of allegations of radical American imams preaching jihad. If so, they are not getting through. The simple fact is that most American Muslims don't sympathize with religious extremism and almost none are willing to practice it.
And why should they be? According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, "They are overwhelmingly satisfied with the way things are going in their lives (82 percent) and continue to rate their communities very positively as places to live (79 percent excellent or good)."
In other words, despite the fear-mongering from the likes of Jerry Coffee, Michelle Maglalang Malkin, Pamela Geller and other losers, the amount of US Muslims involved in terrorism is
VERY TINY!
The ones most likely to kill you are those of the same race as you! And since, most of the US population is of European ancestry, most of them are in danger of being killed by another European-American, NOT by some North African or Middle Eastern dude screaming jihad!
But it's just easier to scare people about those from a different culture!
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Last year, there was a debate over having a mosque being built near Ground Zero.
People claimed having a mosque near Ground Zero is "an insult" to the victims. That's bull-stuff!
For one thing, some of the victims were Muslims. In fact, in BOTH the World Trade Center AND the Pentagon, there was a prayer room for Muslim employees!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11religion.html
Did that surprise you? If you're over 18 years old and that article surprised you,
then you are an EXTREMELY ignorant person!
A mosque near Ground Zero is only an insult to extremely ignorant people who think in stereotypes!
It is NOT an insult to the victims! The people who were working and visiting the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 were of many faiths! There were Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and yes, Muslims!
If that shocks you, you are mega-ignorant!
Are you really that lacking in brains that you didn't know there were employees within World Trade Center that are from Islamic cultures? Are you really that lacking in brains that you really thought only Christians, Jews and atheists were employed in the World Trade Center?
New York is an immigrant city, where people come from all over the world! Even Muslim countries!
Get over it already!
4) The Decline of Islamic terrorism
After the last 10 years of the War on Terror, it seems to me that radical Muslim terrorism has been in serious decline!
Part of that is Al Quaida being chased off their bases in Afghanistan, drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, crackdowns on terror cells worldwide. And off course,
Osama bin Laden being killed and dumped in the ocean!
But also, many in the Muslim countries are turning more of their anger at their own country's leaders. Already, the dictators of 3 North African countries have been chased out of power this year! And there are increasing anti-dictator protests in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran! In all those cases, the protesters are less concerned about past interference from the US, Europe or Israel.
They're more concerned about their everyday reality, which has less to do with foreign powers and more to do with their national leadership!
Some are concerned about radical Muslims taking advantage of the chaos that comes with the transfer of power when a dictator loses power. But every country has such chaotic transitions.
Do you think the USA transition to freedom was easy? Even though the Founding Fathers were writing beautiful words about freedom, it was followed by multiple decades of conflict over whether slavery should exist in the USA! It took a bloody civil war to resolve the issue! And even that was followed by a century or racist segregation! It was only in the 1960's that all racial groups had their official civil rights intact! That didn't stop all unofficial racism that continued!
I dont' write that stuff to bash the USA! In fact today, the USA is
WAY AHEAD OF MOST OF THE WORLD when it comes to personal freedom, religious freedom, economic freedom and racial integration! I mentioned USA's stuggles over slavery to point that the transition to a freer, more liberalized society in the Muslim world WILL NOT BE EASY! There will be decades of conflict with ultra-conservative Muslims and the more Westernized liberals! We have to give them time to get their act together!
We can't do it for them, real change has to come from within!
5) Soulja Boy's insult to the troops
Today's anniversary of 9/11 gives it very bad timing for Soulja Boy's controversial lyrics.
While Soulja Boy couldn't be destroyed by rap rivals like Ice-T, Soulja Boy destroyed himself with his lyrics to "Let's Be Real".
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/09/06/soulja-boy-apologizes-after-members-armed-forces-slam-his-anti-military-song/#ixzz1XOWi2ZO3
In that song, most likely just meant to be a freestyle in which rappers just say whatever rhymes comes to mind, regardless of whether it makes sense, Soulja Boy said "F**k the FBI and the army troops ... fighting for what? Be your own man "
Yep, this being the anniversary year of 9/11, and 10 years of the War on Terror, Soulja Boy really screwed it up this time!
And real soldier tells "soulja boy" off at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsSTKqzrIYk&feature=share
And he told DeAndre Way (Soulja Boy's real name) to "change his name".
I always thought it was bizzarre for DeAndre Way to call himself a "soulja boy" since he's NEVER been in the military! You want soldier status (even if you mispell soldier as "soulja)?
It has to be earned! It's NOT earned by swagger and boastful lyrics! It's earned by fighting real battles in real dangerous conditions where real death is a risk!
Verbal battles with other rappers don't count!
Real battles with real bullets and real explosives in Iraq and Afghanistan count!
