Anyone watching world events right now?


carlimac
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I heard on the radio last night - I was just passing through stations so I didn't know who was on the radio but it seemed like this guy used to work in the CIA or some Intelligence place. If I understood him correctly, he is retired now and so does not have access to intelligence documents except for those that are public.

So, all this information that he is giving on the radio can be verified by public documents, or so he said.

Anyway, one thing he said is that the attacks on the embassies were pre-planned for many months by this Islamic sect in Eastern Libya (can't remember what they were called but it starts with an S) whose leadership is tied directly to the head of Al-Qaeda. In the pre-planning, they needed a trigger to cause a snowball effect with the civilian muslim population so they can hide behind a civilian protest. The planners found this 14-minute video on youtube last June. Apparently, that video has been on youtube since June 1.

As of September 8, the video had less than 10,000 hits. As part of the plan, some guy in Egypt broadcasted a 2-hour show on TV about this 14-minute video on September 8. From September 8 to September 11, the video made over 300,000 hits. And on September 11 the riots started. The terrorists then took out the Ambassador to Libya under the cover of the riots.

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I wouldn't be surprised if it was a set up. If the video has been online since June, why now all of a sudden are they protesting?

On the other hand it goes to show how volatile radical Muslims are and how many of them don't seem to understand their own religion.

I was talking to a friend whose husband served in Afghanistan, and he said that many of the radicals are illiterate, and so really *don't* know what their religion teaches, just what the leaders who want to manipulate them tell them it "says". They're also told lies such as "It's illegal in America to say anything negative about Israel" and "America is out to colonize the Middle East". Being illiterate, they have no way to fact-check the information they're given.

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Last night I watched a British Channel4 show called "Islam, The Untold Story." It's not as nefarious as the title but it's about a historians effort to figure out where and how Islam began. What I found interesting is that it seems that it was brought out of obscurity into prominence when an Arab ruler who was waring for power and a united empire needed something to unite his kingdom, in the same way Constantine use Christianity to unite the Roman empire and brought it into the mainstream.

But the most interesting aspect of the show is that it tells how the verbal stories are taken as absolute truth because of the lack of a written record. Historians are not even able to come to a concrete history on how Islam began, where the Koran was written, who was Mohamed nor where the sacred city really is. All because of a serious lack of information because Islam began in such a rural area.

Now I know this is a TV show about one historian so I'm not taking it as the bottom-line truth. But it is quite interesting.

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As an American who lives in the ME I agree with what Jenamarie shared about how many radical Muslims are illiterate and therefore don't know much about their own religion. However, I would also point out that while many Americans--Christian or otherwise--are basically literate, the sad reality is that most Americans don't read much anymore much less take time to do their own research. And just as many Muslims get their views of Islam, current events, or politics from their local imam, many Americans seem to get most of their views of Islam, Christianity, current events, or political views from TV, the movies, their favort talk radio host, or their particular religious leader. I remember a quote I saw once in a hall at BYU that asked, What advantage does a man who can read but doesn't have over the man who can't read. Sadly, for many in both East and West it's as though the printing press had never been invented.

The fact that many of those rioting have never seen the movie reminds me how the Wyoming tourist bureau was flooded by Americans wanting to visit Brokeback Mountain after having seen the movie Brokeback Mountain. Evidently, they didn't realize that there was no Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming, where there aren't a lot of mountains to begin with. Nor had they looked at the credits, for if they had, they would have learned that the film was made in Canada, not the US.

With respect to what the BBC show "Islam, The Untold Story" said of Mohammed, those of us who are LDS should remember the LDS First Presidency Message of 1978, which reads in part:

"Based upon ancient and modern revelation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gladly teaches and declares the Christian doctrine that all men and women are brothers and sisters, not only by blood relationship from common mortal progenitors but also as literal spirit children of an Eternal Father.

“The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammad, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals . . .

“Consistent with these truths, we believe that God has given and will give to all peoples sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation, either in this life or in the life to come . . .”

Hence, Mohammed, according to the First Presidency, did receive a portion of God's truth (i.e., inspiration) that helped serve to enlighten people and bring them to a higher level of understanding as individuals. What individual followers of a particular religion do with their religion is another matter. But as I reflect on how some Muslims seem to fail to live their religion, I also appreciate what C. S. Lewis had to say about Christians: If we were arrested for being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict us?

As for the rioting one sees throughout the Muslim world, let me share the following article which makes a number of very good points that we should at least consider as we try to make sense of what we see--

US media angrily marvels at the lack of Muslim gratitude

NBC News, along with a leading US newspaper, insist that Egyptians should be grateful to the US for having 'freed' them

By Glenn Greenwald, 14 September 2012

One prominent strain shaping American reaction to the protests in the Muslim world is bafflement, and even anger, that those Muslims are not more grateful to the US. After all, goes this thinking, the US bestowed them with the gifts of freedom and democracy – the very rights they are now exercising – so how could they possibly be anything other than thankful? Under this worldview, it is especially confounding that the US, their savior and freedom-provider, would be the target of their rage.

On Wednesday, USA Today published an article with the headline "After attacks in Egypt and Libya, USA Today asks: Why?" The paper appeared to tell its readers that it was the US that freed the Egyptian people from tyranny:

"Attacks in Libya that left four US diplomats dead – including Ambassador Christopher Stevens – and a mob invasion of the US Embassy in Cairo, in which the US flag was torn to shreds, have left many to wonder: How can people the USA helped free from murderous dictators treat it in such a way?"

Did you know that the "USA helped free" Egyptians from their murderous dictator? On Thursday night, NBC News published a nine-minute report on Brian Williams' "Rock Center" program featuring its foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, reporting on the demonstrations in Cairo, which sounded exactly the same theme. Standing in front of protesting Egyptians in Tahrir Square, Engel informed viewers that this was all so very baffling because it was taking place "in Cairo, where the US turned its back on its old friend Hosni Mubarak", and then added:

"It is somewhat ironic with American diplomats inside the embassy who helped to give these demonstrators, these protesters, a voice, and allowed them to actually carry out these anti-American clashes that we're seeing right now."

That it was the US who freed Egyptians and "allowed them" the right to protest would undoubtedly come as a great surprise to many Egyptians. That is the case even beyond the decades of arming, funding and general support from the US for their hated dictator (to his credit, Engel including a snippet of an interview with Tariq Ramadan pointing out that the US long supported the region's dictators).

Beyond the long-term US support for Mubarak, Egyptians would likely find it difficult to reconcile Engel's claim that the US freed them with the "made in USA" logos on the tear gas cannisters used against them by Mubarak's security forces; or with Hillary Clinton's touching 2009 declaration that "I really consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family"; or with Obama's support for Mubarak up until the very last minute when his downfall became inevitable; or with the fact that the Obama administration plan was to engineer the ascension of the loathed, US-loyal torturer Omar Suleiman as Mubarak's replacement in the name of "stability".

Given the history of the US in Egypt, both long-term and very recent, it takes an extraordinary degree of self-delusion and propaganda to depict Egyptian anger toward the US as "ironic" on the ground that it was the US who freed them and "allowed" them the right to protest. But that is precisely the theme being propagated by most US media outlets.

Even in Libya, where it's certainly true that many Libyans are happy about the Nato intervention, this bafflement is misplaced. It's always the case that some portion of the populace of an invaded nation will be happy about even the most unjustified invasions: that the Kurds are thrilled by the Iraq war is a fact still cited by Iraq war advocates as proof of the war's justness and wisdom.

But it's also the case that such invasions produce extreme anger, as well: among the families of those killed by the invading forces, or who suffer from the resulting lawlessness and instability. Combine that with the fact that it was repeatedly noted that US involvement in Libya meant that anti-US extremists, including al-Qaida, were being armed and empowered by the US, it is far from mystifying, as Secretary Clinton insisted, that some people in Libya are deeply hostile to the US and want to do it harm.

In the same report, Engel also spent several moments explaining that the primary reason these Muslims have such animosity toward the US is because their heads have been filled for years with crazy conspiracy theories about how the US and Israel are responsible for their woes. These conspiracies, he said, were fed to them by their dictators to distract attention from their own corruption.

Let's leave aside the irony of the American media decrying crazy "conspiracy theories" in other countries, when it is the US that attacked another country based on nonexistent weapons and fabricated secret alliances with al-Qaida. One should acknowledge that there is some truth to Engel's claim that the region's tyrants fueled citizen rage toward the US and Israel as a means of distracting from their own failings and corruption.

But to act as though Muslim anger toward the US and Israel is primarily the by-product of crazy conspiracy theories is itself a crazy conspiracy theory. It's in the world of reality, not conspiracy, where the US and Israel have continuously brought extreme amounts of violence to the Muslim world, routinely killing their innocent men, women and children. Listening to Engel, one would never know about tiny little matters like the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon, the almost five-decade long oppression of Palestinians, the widely hated, child-killing drone campaign, or the attack on Iraq.

And it's in the world of reality, not conspiracy, where the US really has continuously interfered in their countries' governance by propping up and supporting their dictators. Intense Muslim animosity toward the US, including in Egypt, long pre-dates this film, and the reasons aren't hard to discern. That's precisely why the US supported tyranny in these countries for so long: to ensure that the citizens' views, so contrary to US policy, would be suppressed and rendered irrelevant.

It doesn't take a propagandized populace to be angry at the US for such actions. It takes a propagandized populace to be shocked at that anger and to view it with bafflement and resentment on the ground that they should, instead, be grateful because we "freed" them.

But to see why exactly such a propagandized populace exists in the US and has been led to believe such myth and conspiracies, simply read that USA Today article or watch the NBC News report on these protests as they convince Americans that gratitude, rather than resentment, should be the sentiment people in that region feel toward the US

.

SOURCE: The Guardian, UK

Edited by Sean1427
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  • 3 weeks later...

Oye! Lots of Anti-American bandwagon jumpers. Kinda scary. :o I'm so grateful my son is at school in Provo and not in the Middle East this semester.

Altho i hope people saw the recent news about libya... The people were asked to hand over their arms and they did that in spades. I was very impressed.

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Altho i hope people saw the recent news about libya... The people were asked to hand over their arms and they did that in spades. I was very impressed.

I'm not. Now you got a citizenry even more helpless from getting stamped by the boots of terrorist organizations... and possibly a corrupt government. Now, if you got Al-Quaeda leaders handing over their rocket launchers... hey, now we're talking.

But what do I know. I've never been to the Middle East.

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I'm not. Now you got a citizenry even more helpless from getting stamped by the boots of terrorist organizations... and possibly a corrupt government. Now, if you got Al-Quaeda leaders handing over their rocket launchers... hey, now we're talking.

But what do I know. I've never been to the Middle East.

I'm sorry but when i see citizenry hand over weapons for killing, everything from automatics to armored cars and rocket launchers... I am touched by the sincerity displayed in such an act. They are willing to take that chance, to make an example. I'm sure that many of them are awrare of that fact that the ones that really do need to hand over their weapons won't. But perhaps their sacrifce will

A ) spur the U.S to help them more

B ) spur others to do the same (lay down theri weapons)

C ) show the world that they are not warmongers.

I really really hope that others will take note of this. Seriously how often does someethign like this happen willlingly, ever?

Ask for something similar in the U.S and we'd have another civil war on our hands.

Edited by Blackmarch
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I'm sorry but when i see citizenry hand over weapons for killing, everything from automatics to armored cars and rocket launchers... I am touched by the sincerity displayed in such an act. They are willing to take that chance, to make an example. I'm sure that many of them are awrare of that fact that the ones that really do need to hand over their weapons won't. But perhaps their sacrifce will

A ) spur the U.S to help them more

B ) spur others to do the same (lay down theri weapons)

C ) show the world that they are not warmongers.

I really really hope that others will take note of this. Seriously how often does someethign like this happen willlingly, ever?

Ask for something similar in the U.S and we'd have another civil war on our hands.

Of course, because the idea is the anti-thesis of a free people.

This sounds really gooshy and romantic - handing over your weapons as an example - but it is naive at best in an unstable region such as Libya. Why? Because, it is ALWAYS that only the good people hand over their weapons. The ones that need to be disarmed never do. So, I put forth that this "display" of peacekeeping is propaganda taking advantage of naive do-gooders.

As a prime example, the Darfur genocide was a civil war between armed rebels and the Sudanese government. An unarmed civilian population had no beef in the conflict. It is well documented that the Sudanese government provided weapons to the Janjaweed to aid the militia. And we all know what the Janjaweed did with them.

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Of course, because the idea is the anti-thesis of a free people.

This sounds really gooshy and romantic - handing over your weapons as an example - but it is naive at best in an unstable region such as Libya. Why? Because, it is ALWAYS that only the good people hand over their weapons. The ones that need to be disarmed never do. So, I put forth that this "display" of peacekeeping is propaganda taking advantage of naive do-gooders.

As a prime example, the Darfur genocide was a civil war between armed rebels and the Sudanese government. An unarmed civilian population had no beef in the conflict. It is well documented that the Sudanese government provided weapons to the Janjaweed to aid the militia. And we all know what the Janjaweed did with them.

IS it?

It may well be that someone is taking advantage of do-gooders but nevertheless this is an act of dogoodism that should not be dismissed or ignored.

I agree getting rid of your weapons when you are in the midst of danger flies in the face of reason. Yet how long ago were the saints in the similar situation?

I"m not sure i'd stick it in the same boat as the darfur genocide either. Here we have the people already armed unlike that scenario, and we also have a government that looks like its trying to do something right at least enough to keep recieveing US assistance. And if the folsk that are bringing in all these weapons are not being brainwashed or bribed I think its a pretty serious statement, as i doubt they are completely naive to how people generally are in the area.

And let us suppose it does end in that the gov decides to cut ties and relations with US and decides to commit genocide, are we going to stand idly by again?

Edited by Blackmarch
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Many forget that Sodom in Iraq was first a US ally that turned again us. Currently we support both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as close allies. Many may think these countries are moderate but my Middle East friend when reading the Book of Mormon was sure that the Royal Saudi Family is the modern equivalent to the Gadeanton Robbers and if anyone were to study the history of Bahrain they would be appalled with how oppressive our ally is where one of the USA’s largest naval bases out of the USA is located.

What many do not understand is that if western civilization were to leave Islam to itself it would immediately turn on itself in inner faith civil war between Shia and Sunni. Thus any ally we establish in Islam will immediately result in alienating the other half of Islam. Sort of like the Catholics and Protestants of the Middle Ages but much better armed for deadlier combat.

The Traveler

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