Pakistan will make a play to get Afghanistan to give up bin Laden on Monday, September 17th. Success in that effort is highly unlikely.

Regardless of the Afghanistan response, Pakistan is likely to provide support for U.S. use of Pakistan air and ground should it come to an attack on Afghanistan. The debate in Pakistan continues, however, with the force of Islamic fundamentalism steadfastly opposed to Pakistan being supportive of U.S. efforts to fight Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Source:

• MSNBC [link inactive]

Potential U.S. Efforts in Afghanistan

Is it likely that the Afghan people would rise up against the Taliban and the bin Laden characters, with food, supplies, and support provided to the Afghan people willing to rebel if given adequate resources to do so, by the U.S.?

Could some kind of widespread Afghan-supported rebellion would be operable with massive U.S. assistance?

It would be invaluable if the Afghan populace could rebel against their captors and that has potential, even though it's improbable, since the U.S., with supply overflights, has the ability to provide the resources, both food-medical supplies-other needs -and- arms if there was any sign that there was any stomach by the Afghan victims to rebel ...

If not, if there is (due to the enormous suffering the Afghan people have been subjected to -and/or- a core sympathy by Afghans for bin Laden or the Taliban) no impulse or energy to rebel, then it's up to external forces to enter the country, helping the Afghan victims of war/drought recover in whatever means possible, as we traverse that land which has swallowed up foreign armies throughout history, searching for shadows ...

And that, I'm not all that certain, the American military has the resources to succeed at.

Perhaps, with all our investment in technology, we do, but I'm unaware of any of our military resources that facilitate a war in mountains, hills, caves, and the terribly hostile environment that Taliban and bin Laden forces thrive in ...

Another comment ... of course, the rebels in the northeast can be supported-supplied but it appears that they reside far away from the terrorists.

Source:

• Pro-Humanist FREELOVER

Biological Warfare Concerns

Nerve gas, anthrax, smallpox, bubonic plague, ebola, botulism, and tularemia, known as the poor man's alternative to an atomic bomb, could cause much more havoc than that wrought by the recent attack on America.

Per reports, Iraq, Iran and Libya have pursued germ warfare. Even the bin Laden character has been reported to be dabbling in chemical weapons.

Will it happen? Unlikely ... but then again, how likely was the kidnapping of 4 commercial airliners before Tuesday, September 11th ...

Sources:

• World Scientist / AP [link inactive]

Hell On Earth

Here is one element of what we of non-faith are up against when it comes to the judeo-christian-islamic view ...

Please, when you read the following, don't obsess on all of the varying interpretations of hell that are present in religions around the world, but instead, try to think what it would be like for you if you were raised from birth in an Islamic state whereby hell and all of the quran was taught to you as if it was "THE TRUTH" ...

Hundreds of millions who are born and raised in parts of the world that are throwbacks to a time when GOD or ALLAH was treated as "THE TRUTH" have a difficult time comprehending what they've been taught as mere human-manufactured "make believe" journeys to ...

Hell On Earth [link inactive]
by Judith Hayes

Excerpts from article that pertain to Islam, an item of interest as recently some steeped in that faith have taken it upon themselves to torture / murder thousands of Americans ...

"...The Muslim Hell (boiling, freezing, tongue piercing) seems most unappealing, a very nasty place all the way around.

... You have to wonder who sat down, quill pen in hand, and dreamed up these ugly, venomous torments. Whoever they were, were they drooling with salacious pleasure as they did so?

It seems likely, since descriptions of Hell are unambiguous examples of pure sadism. Those of us who wish this kind of pain on others are sadistic, plain and simple. Such descriptions also validate my theory that Christians (and Muslims, for that matter) aren't merely excited at the prospect of spending eternity with God.

They are thrilled at the prospect of their enemies, real or imagined, spending eternity in Hell. Judging by some of the unabashedly violent sermons preached about Hell, this appears to be the case. It reflects an ugly aspect of human nature.

... Islam teaches that in addition to Hell, there is also a fair amount of suffering that takes place in the grave, prior to Judgment Day. A demon will continuously crush the head of the sinner with a sledge hammer until the day of resurrection.

Moreover, the sinner's body will be slowly crushed by the narrowing of the grave. I am not making this up. Aside from the obvious bio-chemical factors overlooked here (such as decomposition), the omission of which reflects a childlike, primitive world view, there is also a childlike nature in the type of punishment being described here.

Sledge hammers? Any talented 9-year old could come up with something more imaginative than that. All you can do is shake your head and sigh.

Will we ever stop this nonsense? Will the day come when we stop screaming threats at each other about some outlandish place of torture in some unknowable afterworld? When will we cease to believe in this maliciously cruel myth called Hell?

When are we going to learn to appreciate our wonderful world and our all-too-brief visit here? When will love and tolerance finally dominate hate?

I fear it will not be in my lifetime."

- - -

One comment - The seeds of hate are planted in the minds of children exposed to the ancient myths of the bible/quran ... that which humankind has sown, and continues to sow, is that which humankind shall reap, as evidenced by the insanity/hate causal in the devastation of the World Trade Center ... )-: ... !

Source:

• Pro-Humanist FREELOVER

It is extremely important that as Americans consider battling the evil of terrorism as evidenced by the recent horror, we recognize the nature of the cause of the terrorism ... we must come to grips with the underlying reasons that 19 men were willing to commit suicide and mass murder, assisted by many accomplices ... the underlying reasons reside in the following.

Study and learn about the foe we face, and turn away from the tendency for many to use "denial" of religious causality in an effort to "prop up" the notion of religious faith ...

Don't attack Muslims - Don't hurt anyone ever, if there is any way possible to avoid doing so without risking your own life and the lives of those you cherish (in other words, harm is only allowed if it is in self-defense to prevent a greater harm as will likely be the case in the upcoming American war on terrorism) - Do read the following and ponder the underlying causality of Islamic terrorism ...

Review of "Why I Am Not a Muslim"
by Ibn al-Rawandi

Excerpts:

"... These facts and arguments concern

o the wholly human origin of the Quran,

o the wholly tendentious and invented character of the hadith (a tradition of the sayings or practice of the Prophet, one of the main sources of Islamic law),

o the sexually-obsessed and anti-feminine nature of the sharia (Islamic law consisting of the teachings of the Quran, the sunna [a custom or practice, and later narrowed down to the practice of the Prophet or a tradition recording the same] ... which is incorporated in the recognized traditions; the consensus of the scholars of the orthodox community; the method of reasoning by analogy),

o the Arab empire spread by the sword and maintained by terror,

o the persecution of religious and intellectual minorities in that empire in the name of Islam,

o the incapacity of Muslims for any kind of critical or self-critical thought, and

o the abject intellectual and moral poverty of Islam compared to the modern secular West.

The amazing thing is that it has taken so long for such a book to appear and that it has been left to a non-Westerner to write it, since the material for its assembly has been around for anything up to a century.

The mealy-mouthed and apologetic character of so much Western scholarship on Islam springs from the fact that many of these scholars, were, and are, believers, albeit in the rival creed of Christianity.

While they might be willing to show Muhammad in a poor light compared to Jesus, they were not keen to press the non historical and non-divine arguments too far, since they realised that such arguments could just as well be used against their own cherished beliefs.

They preferred a complicity of intellectual dishonesty with the Muslims in the face of an increasingly skeptical and secular environment.

Perhaps the most important thing demonstrated by Ibn Warraq is that Islam is fundamentalist by nature, and not by some peculiar and aberrant recent development.

All Muslims, not just the fanatics, believe that every word of the Quran is quite literally the word of God, absolutely and unquestionably true for all times, places, and people, and practically the same goes for the hadith and the sharia.

Anyone who wishes to argue that the fanatics' interpretation of these elements is wrong and that a far more 'liberal' interpretation can be made and that that is the real Islam, have really only their own tastes and inclinations to support them.

There is no Pope in Islam, nor any Councils with authority to impose a Creed.

The fanatic who thinks that all unbelievers should be killed has just as much authority as the Sufi who thinks that all religions are true and that even atheists go to heaven.

Both parties could adduce Quranic texts and hadith to support their positions, and both would be drawing, in their own minds, upon the immutable word of God.

As Ibn Warraq observes: 'Even if we concede that Muslim conservatives have interpreted the sharia in their own way, what gives us the right to say that their interpretation is the inauthentic one and that of the liberal Muslims, authentic? Who is going to decide what is authentic Islam?' ...

Another important achievement of Ibn Warraq is that he explodes the myth of Islamic tolerance, a myth largely invented by Jews and Western freethinkers as a stick with which to beat the Catholic Church.

Islam was never a religion of tolerance and it is not tolerant by nature.

Despite the way the apologists would like to depict it, Islam was spread by the sword and has been maintained by the sword throughout its history, not to mention the scourge and the cross.

In truth it was the Arab empire that was spread by the sword and it is as an Arab empire that Islam is maintained to this day in the form of a religion largely invented to hold that empire together and subdue native populations.

An unmitigated cultural disaster parading as God's will.

Religious minorities were always second-class citizens in this empire and were only tolerated on sufferance and in abject deference to their Arab / Muslim masters; for polytheists and unbelievers there was no tolerance at all, it was conversion or death.

These repulsive characteristics are written into the Quran, the hadith and the sharia, and are an ineradicable feature of the religion.

There is no way that Islam can reform itself and remain Islam, no way it can ever be made compatible with pluralism, free speech, critical thought and democracy.

Anyone convinced they already possess the truth have no need for such things.

Although Muslims resident in non-Muslim countries clamor for every kind of indulgence for their own beliefs and customs, there can be no doubt that given any kind of power they would impose their own beliefs and eliminate all difference.

In short, as Ibn Warraq describes it in his Dedication, Islam is religious fascism, and it is only a feeble-minded political correctness that prevents it from being recognised as such.

Finally, we should note two further important points made by Ibn Warraq.

First, that Islam never really encouraged science, if by science we mean 'disinterested inquiry'.

What Islam always meant by ' knowledge' was religious knowledge, anything else was deemed dangerous to the faith.

All the real science that occurred under Islam occurred despite the religion not because of it.

Second, how indebted the Muslim world has always been to the West, not only to the Greeks in the beginning, but particularly in modern times in knowledge of its own intellectual and cultural history.

These unpalatable, half realised home truths are manifest in the contemporary Muslim world in the form of a massive resentment and inferiority complex:

It is a depressing fact that during the Gulf War almost every single Muslim and Arab intellectual sympathized with Saddam Hussein, because, we are told, 'he stood up to the West'.

In this explanation is summed up all sense of Islamic failure, and feelings of inferiority vis-a vis the West.

The Muslim world must be in a dire way if it sees hope in a tyrant who has murdered literally thousands of his own countrymen.

Indeed, and a Westerner can hardly imagine the courage it must take for Ibn Warraq to say as much.

The problem with a book such as this is that it will most likely never reach those most in need of it.

That is to say young people in general and young Muslims in particular, those whose minds have not already been closed by fanaticism. ..."