July 5, 2007

"We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America."

Doctors.
Investigators have found no link between the Tsouli chat room and the group of doctors and medics currently in custody over attempted car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
Those were other doctors.

41 comments:

Tim said...

After we socialize medicine, it won't just be 45 jihadi doctors taking the battle inside America.

Seriously though, one of the facts that has come out of post-London and Glasgow car bombing attempts is how relatively easily doctors are able to immigrate to western nations, largely because of the need for medical professionals. As to why doctors are seemingly overrepresented amongst the organized terrorist groups is less well understood.

bearbee said...

What's up with Younis Tsouli's face? Face art? Acne? A good British thumpin'?

Jeff with one 'f' said...

Let's hear some more "root causes" horseshit!

KCFleming said...

In response to my comments a few days ago about the terror attacks in England, Beth remarked that it wasn't something we should be shitting our pants about.

How about now?

Hoosier Daddy said...

Let's hear some more "root causes" horseshit!

Indeed. Last I heard, Islamic terrorism was due to the poor, disenfranchised young Muslim men who have little economic opportunity live in tyranny and thus easily radicalized by extremists.

Anonymous said...

Bombers Without Borders.

Palladian said...

"The first target which will be penetrated by nine brothers is the naval base which gives shelter to the ship Kennedy... These are clubs for naked women which are opposite the First and Third units."

Gee, I thought the onion rings were ripe for Freudian analysis!

Is Freudian analysis haram?

Roger J. said...

Clubs for naked women near a naval base--who knew..........

Anonymous said...

f this truly is a clash of two civilizations (two philosophies, two mindsets, two societies, however you wish to frame it), then it is only natural that the best and the brightest among each society would be at the intellectual and physical forefront of the battle.

It's also true that doctors lead a lot of revolutionary movements.

Unknown said...

"As to why doctors are seemingly overrepresented amongst the organized terrorist groups is less well understood."

Are they overrepresented in general, or just in the group that we just discovered? As Rumsfeld might say, we don't know what we don't know.

Pogo, the terrorists have seemingly won the battle for hearts and minds here, so why bomb us? And as soon as Prez Hillary surrenders in Iraq, we shall be safe! Because everybody knows that poverty...er, Iraq is the root cause of terrorism.

Anonymous said...

Evidently, grueling med internship is the root cause of terrorism. I used to think beards were the reason.

blake said...

Is everyone spent by the whole Edwards-haircut issue? We had 66 posts on that and 11 on terrorism.

Well, there's an hour difference. Perhaps this one will catch on fire. (Ha!)

KCFleming said...

blake,

Haircuts are easy to mock, but it's best to ignore unnerving stories like this.

An effete coiffure is fun to deride, doctors planning on killing you with explosives far less so.

Anonymous said...

I'm just sorry that our government has the ability to monitor these websites without a search warrant from a judge.

Eli Blake said...

tim:

how relatively easily doctors are able to immigrate to western nations, largely because of the need for medical professionals

Part of the problem is that the AMA and state legislatures (who have to fund medical schools) have both done everything they could to restrict the supply of doctors in America.

Very few other professions are so strictly controlled in terms of the number of professionals. For example, if you don't go to law school, but have your heart set on being a lawyer, there are other ways to accomplish it (a cousin of mine's ex-husband studied independently to take the bar exam and passed it.) But try to be a doctor if you are not one of the inadequate number let into medical school-- good luck.

The artificially created undersupply (especially felt in rural areas like where I live) in turn causes prices to be artificially high.

Hoosier Daddy said...

We had 66 posts on that[Edwards] and 11 on terrorism.

I wonder if that car that they crashed into the airport had a bumper sticker on it.

That would be ironic wouldn't it?

Hoosier Daddy said...

if you don't go to law school, but have your heart set on being a lawyer, there are other ways to accomplish it (a cousin of mine's ex-husband studied independently to take the bar exam and passed it.)

Are there are still states that allow one to do this? I knew it was possible back in the 'olden days' but I'm betting that the nation's law schools have a vested interest in not seeing this being a loophole.

KCFleming said...

Re"...artificially created undersupply "

Partly true.
One can now have a majority of the MD privileges in less time by studying to be a PA (2 years) or an NP (2 years after getting an RN).

But bomb-making is all pretty much a self-taught skill. No artificial barriers to entry in this popular and growing field. Religion appears to be a prerequisite, but conversion is fairly rapid, so there's little wait.

Roger J. said...

and in addition, Pogo, there is very rapid turnover among the Jihadi practitioners.

blake said...

Eli,

Thank you for mentioning that. It's something nobody seems to talk about when discussing medical costs.

I'll go you one crazy step better and say that legal restrictions ("practicing medicine without a license") are another big factor. It's not just that there aren't enough doctors, it's that there are only doctors.

Yes, I admit it: I love me some snake oil and quackery.

Anonymous said...

"Jihadi practitioners"

More like glitch doctors. You'd think they'd carry out more successful operations.

Cedarford said...

POGO - In response to my comments a few days ago about the terror attacks in England, Beth remarked that it wasn't something we should be shitting our pants about.

How about now?


Beth has her little mantra set. "Just because a minority of Muslims aspire to religious fanatic butchery and mayhem doesn't mean there is a problem with Islam because The Vast Majority of Muslims do NOT commit acts of Jihad on infidels."

Similar in logic to Nazism not really being a problem because the Vast Majority of Nazis were good, peace-loving people that never harmed a hair on a Jew, Gypsy, Commie head. Those that did were the bad Nazis...in no way indicative of the progressive aspects of National Socialism.

Same can be said for Communists. Yes, 80 million humans were murdered in the Communist democides of the 20th Century - but the Vast Majority of Communists only wanted peace and a good life for their children and would be shocked and repulsed if asked to do what those "hardcore" Party members and State Security apparachniks did...

KCFleming said...

Aw, I like Beth. Our conversation, IIRC, was another in the it's Armageddon versus don' be such a scaredy cat, tain't nothin' happenin' tit-for-tatness.

I fear there is some whistling-in-the-darkness going on. The response I expect is it's only a web site or some deflator, even though it was the very same website that found the trio of jihadi docs in England.

So why not here?

Cedarford said...

Good quote from Irshad Manji, author of "The Trouble With Islam" explaining why she dismisses the "Vast Majority of Moderate Muslims" as having a constructive role.

Although the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, it is important to start making a more important distinction: between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones.

Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam but deny that Islam has anything to do with it. By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions, effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations. To do so would be admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there.

Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for reinterpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is over.

Reinterpreting doesn't mean rewriting. It means rethinking words and practices that already exist, removing them from a 7th-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a 21st-century pluralistic context. Un-Islamic? God, no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyse and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates and quite possibly more constructive.


For a long time, the gameplan of Moderate Muslims has been to stay on the sidelines, make no effort to prosecute radical elements, and deny that the radicals religious interpretation of Islam has anything to do with terrorist acts. (Its all about root causes the West did and are guilty of and need to fix to satisfy the radical Muslims grievances, don't yah know!).

At some point, "good people" that do nothing while extremists have their way eventually pay a collective price for their passivity. Lots of "good Russians/Germans/Chinese/Cambodians/Iraqis" have discovered that fundamental truth about societal and military consequences of "do nothing, say nothing, play it safe" as long as violent extremists only target "other people".

ricpic said...

"Uh, Doctor Mohammed, it hurts when I do this."

"Then keep doing this, infidel. The more you hurt the better I like it."

Peter Hoh said...

I thought that the identities of the 9-11 terrorists put to rest the idea that jihadists were recruited from among the poor.

Our own experience with radical terror groups in the USA -- the SLA for instance -- also shows that these folks don't start out poor and underprivileged. I don't know if the same held true for the IRA bombers.

Cedarford, the line of reasoning you ascribe to Beth
"Just because a minority of Muslims aspire to religious fanatic butchery and mayhem doesn't mean there is a problem with Islam because The Vast Majority of Muslims do NOT commit acts of Jihad on infidels."
sounds like something that GWB might utter. Has the President ever spoken plainly about Islamic terror in a way that satisfies you? If he did, might it upset his buddy, Prince Bandar?

Peter Hoh said...

Cedarford, it's that vast population of "moderate Muslims" that Dinesh D'Souza thinks he and other socially conservative Americans can reach out to. Comment?

DBrooks17 said...

These have to be the grungiest looking doctors I have ever seen. Seriously, would anyone be comfortable taking medical advice(much less bombing advice)from this motley group? The company that cares for my lawn has employees who look much more competent and professional than these "doctors."

KCFleming said...

Re"We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America."

You know, I could swear I saw this same wording on a billboard advertisemnt for a Kaiser HMO hereabouts.

Tim said...

"The artificially created undersupply (especially felt in rural areas like where I live) in turn causes prices to be artificially high."

Yes, that is certainly part of what is going on, but public policies aren't likely to improve matters (we could expand the number of med schools and provide loan forgiveness programs for rural practitioners) much. Primary care practitioners (PCPs) make less than specialists do (substantially so), but are subject to much greater demands, especially relating to things like "pay for performance," and standards of care, than are specialists. All the incentives in medicine promote specialists over PCPs - more money, less hassle.

Toss in state efforts to provide "universal coverage" as Massachusetts is implementing and California is seeking; which ostensibly seek to "contain costs" by expanding coverage (thereby reducing demand for E.R. services), and what you'll soon see is government capping provider rates (just as they do with Medicare and Medicaid), which in turn will suppress the labor supply.

For as much as we happily delude ourselves into thinking all doctors are Marcus Welby, M.D., called to medicine to heal the sick, many docs are just really bright people interested in professional status and making money - and medicine was their choice. Change the economics and working conditions in medicine (as so many doctors are already discouraged by insurance requirements) by layering on intrusive government regulations (similar to the deal with the National Health Service in the U.K.) and rate caps, and our provider shortage will become more acute, especially in rural areas. But we’ll have more international bankers, private equity specialists, M&A lawyers, etc.

So, in the end, we'll have more people chasing fewer docs which, anyone slightly familiar with basic economics understands, will only increase prices. Unless we import more docs from the third world, happy with lower wages than U.S. born docs would like, but substantially more than what they might earn back home. There are moral issues, of course, relating to the affect of brain-draining doctors from third-world nations, but just as white liberals don't have much empathy for their DDT prohibitions killing off much of sub-Saharan Africa, no one will much care about this either.


Hooray for us.

blake said...

You know, I could swear I saw this same wording on a billboard advertisemnt for a Kaiser HMO hereabouts.

Well, sure, Pogo: Kaiser!

Cedarford said...

peter hoh - Cedarford, the line of reasoning you ascribe to Beth
"Just because a minority of Muslims aspire to religious fanatic butchery and mayhem doesn't mean there is a problem with Islam because The Vast Majority of Muslims do NOT commit acts of Jihad on infidels."
sounds like something that GWB might utter. Has the President ever spoken plainly about Islamic terror in a way that satisfies you? If he did, might it upset his buddy, Prince Bandar?


I've never bought into Bush's "The Religion of Peace" nonsense, or his "only a small band of extremists have hijacked a great and noble religion" nonsense. Like Bush leading our Borders Open and unsecured, he has taken an oblivious attitude to the incompatibility of Islam as it currently is especially the cancerous Saudi wahabbi, Salafist, and Iranian Shiite extremist varieties, with High Western or Asian civilization.

In a sense, Bush's blundering may have been unavoidable because much of the West was in the grip of multiculti, the inevitability of all nations becoming democratic and eventually following France and Sweden to the Moral Summit of True PC. That deep down, elites believed history had ended with the collapse of Russian totalitarianism, and Islam was a perfectly great addition to "beautiful diversity" and compatable with enlightened liberal tolerant Western nations...

That all appears to be wrong. But the elites had to learn what happens when you give Arabs democracy. They elect extremists, they reject rule of law, they reject tolerance that conflicts with the Qu'ran.

Every American should get a copy, preferably an annotated one that explains the Sura verses and Hadiths meaning....and one of the more objective books of history of the Muslim World, it's dealings in the past with non-Muslims, and what contemporary Muslim society IS.
(I recommend British, French Arabists and Leb/Syrian Christians for having insight & objectivity. Muslims, any contemporary Jew tied up in Israel-centric thinking, or American "counter-terror/Mideast Expert - lack objectivity and especially for "recent" American "experts" that are one-year wonder morphs from some other field of study (like the Soviets or Israel) into "experts on Islam".

*******************

peter hoh said...
Cedarford, it's that vast population of "moderate Muslims" that Dinesh D'Souza thinks he and other socially conservative Americans can reach out to. Comment?


D'Souza approaches it like he thinks the intense love of Christianity and conservative family values make it possible for Islam and Religious Christian conservatives to be "compatable".

I don't think so from historical readings. Muslims consider their religion and the place of each Muslim as dominant and conquering over 2nd-tier people - the Children of the Book - who must submit to an inferior status to Believers. Others, like Chinese, European Commies/Atheists and Hindus are considered 3rd-tier godless pagans not entitled to the limited protections "People of the Book" may be allowed if the Muslim conquerers feel merciful enough to extend Dhimmitude (The Quran and Hadiths say it is a matter of discretion - the Muslim victor may just as legitimately kill, enslave, or convert infidels by force as give them 2nd class citizenship).

The history shows where Muslims defeated Dinesh D'Souza's type of conservative Christian deep-believing people, their existence then got pretty miserable, when their existence was tolerated. Think blacks in the US South after Reconstruction.

A goal of Islam on top of Dhimmitude is the fast or slow extinction of infidels. Egypt went from 100% Christian to 96% Muslim. Anatolia from 100% Christian to 99% Muslim. And so on from now 100% Muslim Morocco to 96% Muslim (once all Hindi and Buddhist) Indonesia. Syria and Lebanon benefited from the Crusades and more lenient "contracts" Christians and Jews were then allowed to negotiate with their Muslim masters and kept in place when the Crusaders were finally ousted from their fortresses.

Beth said...

Pogo, nope, still not shitting my pants, and confident that I won't be wearing a burqa to work next week. I'm taking my cue from the Brits, who likewise aren't screaming that the sky is falling, but who are nonetheless going about the business of their lives while they investigate this attack.

I don't dismiss this other group of doctors as "only a website"; I put it in the win column, and hope we're able to use what the website reveals to follow more threads to other similarly inclined jihadists. I bet there were some informants involved along the way, too, probably people in the Muslim communities these doctors inhabit.

And Pogo, Cedarford is insane. I've decided to not respond to him anymore. I don't know why he's not been banned, considering the filth he posted here over time.

Cedarford said...

And Pogo, Cedarford is insane. I've decided to not respond to him anymore. I don't know why he's not been banned, considering the filth he posted here over time.

What you are doing Beth, is called psychological projection. Casting your own flaws and doubts on others as a way of neutralizing their corrosive influence in your own life.

Far as I can tell, I'm a civil poster with the exception of Freder, who I openly question the patriotism of...

But I do respond in kind to ad hominems.

Like you with me, I have no interest in a back-and-forth with you. Not because you are "insane!!" or filthy - your psychological projection difficulties nonwithstanding - but simply because you are a vapid, not so bright poster. You don't get to be a better golfer by hanging around with people that are poor players, you don't get much out of debate if you bother to argue with stupid people.

Peter Hoh said...

Cedarford, are you really blaming the liberals for Bush?

You wrote: In a sense, Bush's blundering may have been unavoidable because much of the West was in the grip of multiculti, the inevitability of all nations becoming democratic and eventually following France and Sweden to the Moral Summit of True PC.

Seems that Reagan was able to find his voice and ignore those who wished to live in harmony with the USSR.

You go on to speak against the attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East, which the neocons have been holding up as the reason we're in Iraq once it was clear those WMDs were nowhere to be found. If you think that was a fool's errand, how come I haven't heard that before?

But hey, if you want to start dissing the President, go right ahead. It's kind of funny to hear these critiques from the right when those of us on the center-left (and center-right, for that matter) were routinely attacked for saying this sort of thing 4 years ago.

Anonymous said...

It was a nice idea to bring democracy to Iraq and the greater Middle East. It didn't work. Bush certainly knows that by now.

Having said that, Peter, I am more than a little disappointed in you because I know you to be a reasonable left-liberal.

The stated reasons for going to Iraq were the WMD threat and establishing democracy. Those were never the real reasons. They still aren't the real reasons.

The real reasons are stability for oil production -- blood for oil, to run hospitals and sewage systems, not to mention cars and airplanes and the trucks on our Interstates, and to get the U.S. military the hell out of Saudi Arabia, and to surround Iran.

You sound like a jilted lover. I can't believe she dumped me over that stupid argument we had. Of course, it was something else entirely.

KCFleming said...

Thanks Beth. Re: I'm taking my cue from the Brits. I am glad they are so quick to respond. They seem to have trouble saying the words, though, when answering the question about who they're fighting against. Makes it hard to target people, methinks.

They seem to be of two minds about it. And given their dislike for citizens with weapons, I am less certain about their ability to pull it off again and again.

They are at war with the Syrians, Palestinians, and Iran by proxy, but they think they're fighting a bunch of barely connected terrorists. And Brown is no Churchill.


I don't think your approach is entirely wrong, I just am given serious pause to consider that 45 MDs in the US are involved in this kind of crap. Not shitting pants, just serious as a heart attack.

TMink said...

Lots of opening for Jihadi Physicians. There is a bitch of a glass ceiling though.

Trey

Peter Hoh said...

Seven: I guess I'm just a little confused by your response. Maybe I'm too tired to unpack the irony. It's hot, I've been pulling weeds, and now it's time for bed.

Beth said...

Pogo, serious is sensible. No argument there.

The Drill SGT said...

Beth/Pogo/Cedarford... From the UK Daily Mail yesterday...

Gordon Brown's ban on the word "Muslim" in relation to terrorism can be blamed on the EU.

The prime minister has told Cabinet members not to mention "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath.


seems the UK has caught the same EU linguistic virus that infected the French about 2 years ago when "youths' started burning cars.

I fail to see how you can focus on a problem that you can't discuss. Put out an alert asking for the public to "watch out for diverse peoples doing ordinary stuff?"