boston bombing

[kandrathe]

Yes exactly, this is a very important point. This is what I wanted to discuss when starting this thread.

The new buzz in security circles is automated behavioral profiling (Perpetrator-Motive Research Design). The governments computers analyze your behaviors (travel, banking, shopping), and if they fit a pattern, then you'll be on a watch list and "monitored" more closely. For example, you get fired from your job, and the next day you go out and buy a bunch of guns and ammo. From the detailed profile I read about Tamerlan, there were warnings noted by those close to him that he was going down a radical path. He had some outbursts in his mosque when he disagreed with some speakers who advocated assimilation to western traditions. That alone wouldn't be noteworthy, but his relatives knew he was becoming radicalized. In fact, his mother might have known enough to be considered complicit in providing material support to terrorism. So, again, as with the Newtown or Aurora shootings, or even OK city, it is those closest to the potential perpetrators who can act to prevent mass killing.

In a land of freedom, we must be considered innocent until we commit a crime (or at least conspire to commit a crime). Only in the most twisted of philosophies would it be considered acceptable to slaughter masses of innocents in furtherance of your cause. I think where the greater Islam and the world press fails here is in not totally debunking the mythology of "martyrdom" -- In the Quran, the word Shahid is confused with martrydom operations where it mainly means to "surrender ones life to the will of Allah". For example, for someone to have suffered their entire life while bearing witness to Allah is a noble act of Shahid. To commit a mass killing, or suicidal homicide is reprehensible to Islam. It is similar to the Christian verse from Matthew 5:11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." This does not mean one should seek ways in which to become persecuted, or become a social pariah in order to be considered blessed.

At some point, the costs of perpetual war, and a vigilant surveillance police state will either collapse us, or further make us into the dystopian nightmare we've read about in fiction since our childhood. It is the cost of TSA, electronic monitoring, , registration of weapons (and pressure cookers), metal detectors at public civic events, etc. which bankrupt us, rob us of our dignity, and reveal the lie that we live in a free republic. Are we free?