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RobbyG wrote
You're missing the point. It portrays your narrow vision.

shafique wrote:

RobbyG wrote:Well, besides the fact that Shahzad went to a Taliban/Al Qaida training camp in Waziristan, Paki where they preach and teach bombs for 72 virgins...hm?

Ermm - yes. Let's assume you are right and his trip to Pakistan did entail being brainwashed into thinking that he would get 72 virgins if he blew himself up. (Perhaps you are right?)

What has that got to do with him doing a Tim McVeigh and saying that this was retaliation for Pakistan being bombed?

RobbyG wrote:The region is quite known for its wonderful clerics ...

Yes, 'well known' - that's a bit like 'everyone knows' isn't it? The region is also well known for drug addicts and mad mullahs. But, again, I can't see the link between this and the attempt to do a Tim McVeigh (badly).


Is there a link that is not based on an assumption of what this guy may or may not have heard in Pakistan (rather than, say, over the internet?)

Cheers,
Shafique

Red Chief wrote:

event horizon wrote:Too bad the Taliban didn't exist until the early nineties and the facts do not show that the CIA helped al-Qaeda or had any direct connection with the Afghan Arabs (who were not necessarily al-Qaeda, in any event).

I have never made the statement that US helped Al-Qaeda or Talliban. So I don't understand which valid point I made. I raised question about supporting kind Muslim with sophisticated weapon and training on the territory of Pakistan.

Do you proclaim that US also was out of the game but Stingers were Russian propaganda only.

shafique wrote:Hmm - Shahzad emulates McVeigh's terrorist act (both American, both have a grudge against other Americans, both set off car bombs - only the one who didn't go to Pakistan is more successful).

RobbyG wrote:Shaf, at least Rambo was fictional, but you are mixing reality with fiction now.

RobbyG wrote:McVeigh was a Gulf War I American veteran, who suffered from his governments own actions. He snapped on his own territory in an effort to send a message to the country and his own leaders.

RobbyG wrote:Shahzad was a naturalized American citizen, who suffered from jobloss, under water mortgage and a sudden grudge against the country that gave him the opportunity as an immigrant. He snapped because the US drone attacks on Pakistani soil, his rooted country, that collaborates with the USA in a military effort to stop the terror. Or so he says.

RobbyG wrote:So, the difference here is that Shahzad goes on bomb training in his Pakistani home country, back to his roots.

RobbyG wrote: Normally you get stoned for being American, or homing with the enemy, but perhaps the militias spared him by doing a favor for them.

RobbyG wrote:You don't need to visit Pakistan for making a bomb Shaffy.

RobbyG wrote:I suspect his motivation to be rooted somewhere else... Faith based

RobbyG wrote:After all, he lost his life and job, so what is the last resort for a man without firm footing in a harsh capitalist system while missing the warm and gentle muslim family safety...?

Shahzad told investigators he was "supported" by the Pakistani Taliban, which initially claimed responsibility for the bombing in three separate videos, then later denied any role.

Officials have been investigating financing by the Taliban and in Pakistan, where prosecutors say Shahzad told authorities he received explosives training in the group's stronghold close to the Afghan border.

The official said that Shahzad indeed learnt bomb-making in Pakistan's restive region along the Afghanistan border.


"Shahzad did go to the people who are operating in those areas. He did have some contact with them," The New York Daily News quoted the official, who refused to be named, as saying.

"Shahzad was in cahoots with the Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but it has yet to be established which specific group taught him bomb-making," he added.

“We don't even know him. We did not train him,” Azam Tariq, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman, told two AFP reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

A video allegedly from the TTP claimed responsibility for the New York car bomb attempt. The credibility of that claim has been widely questioned.

The Taliban spokesman, whose voice was recognised by both the AFP reporters familiar with him, congratulated Faisal Shahzad on the attempted bomb attack, but suggested he may have been trained by other militant factions.

“The job he has done was a tremendous one and we praised him for this job but the fact is that we even do not know Faisal,” he said.

“He may be trained by any other militant group,” the spokesman added.

...

According to the US criminal complaint, Shahzad admitted to receiving bomb-making training in Waziristan, a fortress of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants with increasingly overlapping associations and ideology.

RobbyG wrote:
Shaf, at least Rambo was fictional. Faith has its own illusion.

What is painfully clear is that self-professed atheists - whether they truly do not believe in the existence of God or simply wished that God did not exist - are left with a void in their lives and in their ideology that they are constantly trying to fill. And in the process of refusing to acknowledge the existence of a higher power that asks us to surrender to His will as a condition for attaining the greatest treasure man can attain (i.e. eternal life in the presence of the Lord), then they refuse to acknowledge the need to surrender to the will of another. This leads to an obsession with controlling one's own life, because as much as man might like to think that life is a series of random events with no greater meaning, human nature still requires that we acknowledge that someone is in charge. In the absence of a higher power than ourselves, then, logic would dictate that we are in charge of ourselves. Holding this mentality, however, requires a great deal of self-deception. Given the inextricable bond between the existence of a higher power and the need for faith, it almost invariably follows that the man who refuses to acknowledge the existence of a higher power will refuse to acknowledge the need to have faith in anybody but one's self.

And yet, faith makes demands of all men, not just those who believe in a higher power. It requires us to trust to things that we simply cannot predict or control (whether we wish to acknowledge such a lack of control or not). Without faith, we'd never turn our backs to anyone, for fear of being betrayed by everyone. Without faith, we would never cross an intersection, because we could never trust that the drivers of other cars will obey the traffic laws that govern safe driving. Without faith, we could never eat food we did not prepare personally, because we would not trust others not to contaminate the food, whether by accident or design. We take so many things for granted, assuming that they will happen in a certain way because they always have happened in a certain way, such as a light always turning on when you flick the switch or a dog who knows you never biting you when you reach to pet its head. And yet, if we really stopped to think about it, as some poor souls unfortunately do, we realize that past experience is no guarantee of future performance, and we would be in a state of constant paranoia about things going constantly awry. Yet, even the paranoid person is forced to accept on faith that certain things, such as the beating of his own heart, will continue to happen, or else he would not be able to function at all.

Among many other things, faith is an acceptance of the fact that there are things beyond the grasp of both our reason and our control, and that we must entrust such things to the providence of beings who can grasp them. Otherwise, society itself would never materialize, as the cooperation between men that is so essential to the proper function of a society would be obliterated by a lack of trust between men. Like it as not, trust is a form of faith.

In a very irrational world, then, there is nothing more irrational than a conscious lack of faith, or its logical extension, which is a conscious refusal to acknowledge that we lack control over every facet of our life.

The only thing we can control is our own behavior (but not its consequences), and the irony is that the people who are most obsessed with the notion of control and who scream the loudest about being allowed to do as they please are the ones least inclined to exercise self-control. Not coincidentally, they are also the most likely to profess a lack of faith. They mistake freedom for licentiousness, and in the process they fall into the most insidious form of bondage imaginable: they become slaves to their own passions, all the while basking in the illusion that they are fully in control of themselves and experiencing true freedom.

Faith, then, is a surrender to the ultimate reality that man has only limited control over the circumstances of his life. In a world obsessed with controlling its own destiny, such surrender is seen as an action of the weak-minded and unenlightened. And that particular illusion is advanced by RobbyG , man whose disillusionment with the concept of faith and belief in a higher power has led to delusions of the worst sort in other facets of his life.

It's his loss. One can only hope that he will seek what he has lost before it is lost to him forever.

To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc, the mysteries of faith begin where human reason finds its limit. When seeking to understand the importance of having faith in our lives, acknowledging that fact - and understanding its implications for the level of control we can truly exercise over our own lives - is not a bad place to start. God bless!

shafique wrote:;)

So, the numpty is bigging himself up and saying the Taliban gave him explosives training! I presume he failed that course?

Let's see if there's more info.

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:Yeah, I know RobbyG - I'm just a bit anal when it comes to facts. (You may have noticed).

Thus far, it appears that the 'training' information comes from what prosecutors say he said, and only mentions that it took place in Waziristan. The press has helpfully given us the information that there are Al Qaeda and Taliban in Waziristan (no sh*t Sherlock).

I once went to Cambridge, and also went to Oxford. I hear that there are good universities in those places. I must therefore have been trained in debating by the Dons.

Joking aside, do you have any more info than my 10 minutes on Google has uncovered - concerning this 'training' that has so convinced you of his motivation of Islamic theology rather than US bombing?

I agree, he will indeed pay for his choices.

Cheers,
Shafique

Red Chief wrote:I agree that information from different sources is very controversial. Nobody knows what the guy did for 6 month in Pakistan. During two months ater arrival back to US he made an attempt. Probably those two events were connected somehow.

I know nothing about explosion, especially home-made from the available in every store materials, but I believe that it requires some skill, technical education and training, not only cooking book.

RobbyG wrote:Thats more like it.

Funny you mention the Tommies going to Afghanistan. There was this documentary about Russian veterans from Afganistan living somewhere in Siberia. Before they went to war there, they didn't had any problems with the Siberian cold, as they were hardened from it...

But after coming back from the hot temperatures in Afghanistan, some fella's weren't able to adapt to the cold anymore. Even a bottle of Vodka doesn't get the shivers out of him, some veteran said.

I guess the starwars program had its (government) benefits.

Dubai Knight wrote:Being a Jedi Master, I feel I am qualified to comment on the Star Wars programme.

Red Chief wrote:Mmmm... I doubt that you know what I am talking about. Don't make people laugh, you are a clown.