[geeks] FYI: CompUSA is offering OS X 10.5 for $99 (after rebate)

[Mike Meredith]

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:24:37 -0400, Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> Islamic terrorism is as old as Islam itself.

The earliest 'wars of conversion by the sword' can't really be
considered as terrorism in the modern sense of the word as they would
have been carried out by direct command of the caliph; thus fitting
more into the 'war crimes' category. It is foolish to impose modern
sensibilities on the past though ... wars of conquest were accepted at
the time.

> Modern terrorism is fairly young, starting in the 1600s, and the US  
> got involved when the terrorists first started attacking us in the  
> 1700s, hitting our commercial shipping in the Mediterranean Sea.  We  
> didn't cause that, it happened because the islamic people believed  
> that they had a right to attack and steal from anyone who wasn't  
> islamic.

I'm not aware of any terrorists operating in the Mediterranean in the
1700s. There were certainly pirates and slavers operating in the region
at the time, and had been since the decline of the Roman empire ...
certainly from before the foundation of islam. During the peak of their
activity (16th-19thC) the fact they were islamic probably stopped them
attacking their coreligionists; islam would have given them a
convenient excuse for pursuing a lucrative business.

> Europe's answer at the time was to try and pay them off, but it only  
> allowed them to buy better weapons, and increase the next ransom.   
> History repeats.

You don't really expect *any* group of politicians to follow a
consistent policy for 300 years ? Much of the ransom paid (to free
enslaved individuals) was paid by individuals or groups of individuals
although there was some government ransom. As to why there was no more
concrete action by governments at the time, there was a certain amount
of power politics involved ... it was convenient for some to see others
suffering from the problems of piracy (and sufficiently large-scale
land attacks that large numbers of sea-side settlements were abandoned).

> Thomas Jefferson sent a fleet to North Africa to deal with the  
> problem with some success.

Only after offering them money.

And by the way the piracy wasn't stopped by the US navy although that
started the process. It was the British and French who finally finished
them off.

It is foolish and ignorant to portray islam as a terrorist religion.
Early medieval islamic society was far more civilised than Europe at
the time ... so-called 'arabic' numerals is not the only piece of
knowledge that Europe acquired from the islamic world. Most muslims are
as horrified by islamic terrorists as anyone else; even those who (for
whatever reason) have decided that the US is 'the great satan'.

Just how many islamic terrorists are there ? Let us be *wildly* paranoid
and say there are 1 million; that's out of a population of 1.8 billion.
So 0.05% ? Just a lunatic fringe.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
  "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any 
   good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." Howard Aiken