When will people wake up and realize that this kind of vulnerability is what occurs when we allow "the other" to infiltrate the border. In the modern liberal society - what we now refer to as Western Civ. - there is just no way to prevent such occurances. You see, the Saxons and Gauls didn't have to worry about an enemy of this kind lurking[ or hiding] among them, and i feel that we should not have to either; but the despicable fact is that we do, the result of our idiotically maladaptive policies. Western democracy is western, i.e. created by, and for, westerners, right? I'm confused as to how Britain and other Western states ever got the idea that extroliberalism was adaptive. Maybe, the great Western powers all have some sort of mass guilt about their imperialist pasts. The question must now emerge: how much do we "owe 'them'", and do/should "their" wants and interests take precedent over those of our own. What could possibly be the value in diversity in a world where men have died in large numbers just to secure, or carve out, national delineations. I've always thought that if our liberal propagandists would call us ignoramuses or savages for naturally rejecting diversity, they should have an explanation ready as for why anyone needs the ethno-national state-system at all. Why not abolish all national borders and call the west something like "greater europe", while inviting huge numbers of eastern occidentals and orientals to the cities. Oh, how modern, how civilized that would be!! :-(

Aspie terrorists.

It's high time for that 13% to be given the opportunity to pursue their life goals elsewhere.

Goddamn IT grads. Its not a surprise that engineers and IT folk are terrorists. A liberal education ought to be mandatory. Nothing worse than an engineer with a political opinion.

Nothting?  Try a scientifically illiterate and innumerate "liberal arts" grad trying to make decisions on public policies that they not merely don't, but can't understand.

Albion? Google didn't help me figure out what he meant by that.

"Albion" = "Albino", that is, ultrawhite nationalism: a society with no "melanocytes", i.e. nonwhite inclusions, and "pink eyes", representing the possibility of pure socialism ("pinko") in an ethnically homgeneous state. See Australian Extremism entry for related info on marsuponationalism.

Regarding those dismal employment figures for British Muslims, are there any indications of how they may differ according to national origin? For instance, do those of Indo/Pak origin do better than Arabs, or vice-versa?

"Albion" is Britain.

My comments were not directed at you personally, engineer-poet. I'm sure you're a moderate engineer. But the fact remains that engineers, IT guy etc are the ones that fly planes into buildings and make bombs. Either terrorists are drawn towards engineering or an engineering education lead people to become terrorists.

sr,
That is the biggest hock of bullshit I have ever heard in my life. Albion is the ancient name for Britain!

Educate yourself a little; Wikipedia is a good start.

Ikram, you said:
Either terrorists are drawn towards engineering or an engineering education lead people to become terrorists.

So say that's just silly would be an understatement; it's downright absurd and is nothing but a rhetorical tactic. The point about some of the terrorists being engineers is that they're not poor socialist radicals, but that they're your typical, middle-class Islamist terrorist. If you look at the various studies out there, you will see that almost all of the worst Islamist terrorists were educated, middle-class folk.

Interesting that the Russians/communists specifically targetted "Oxbridge" in the '20s/'30s for recruits, sympathizers, long term moles and spies. They were aiming at the elite in British society, who would later have access to the upper reaches of government and industry. Why should we assume that Islamic terrorists would not learn from this vulnerablity in western society?

But the fact remains that engineers, IT guy etc are the ones that fly planes into buildings and make bombs. Either terrorists are drawn towards engineering or an engineering education lead people to become terrorists.

Freud would say that they are just sexually frustrated and in denial.

We need more females in engineering and IT in order to fight the war on terror!

sr writes:
"Albion" = "Albino", that is, ultrawhite nationalism: a society with no "melanocytes", i.e. nonwhite inclusions, and "pink eyes", representing the possibility of pure socialism ("pinko") in an ethnically homgeneous state. See Australian Extremism entry for related info on marsuponationalism."
Pardon? ...well, As Homer Simpson asked, "don't they come from Albania?"
I have always been familiar with the word "Albion" or "Alba" as a word for Briton.
http://historymedren.about.com/o...a/ 11_albion.htm

Albion was used in ancient times by the Romans, was probably a word of Celtic origin, and referred explicitly to the white cliffs of Dover, a striking geological feature and frequent inspiration for Britons of a poetic inclination. It had nothing to to do with the concept of "white" people, albinic or not. They weren't thinking in those terms in those days as they were all roughly the same sort of color. Get over yourselves.
That being said, the term does invoke a sort tribal nostaligia (perhaps like Persians calling Persia, Iran, or East Pakistan changing its name to Bangladesh, or Ireland becoming Eire)
"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars . . .
This precious stone set in the silver sea . . .
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.." Richard III, John of Gaunt's speech.

I would like to some numbers on what percentage of the general population in England feels patriotic about UK or thinks that another attack on the US would be justified.
In fact they should have numbers for similarly educated people. I would imagine that English graduate students also have a percentage of people who dont feel patriotic towards England and feel that another terrorist attack on the US would be justified. For example a majority of Britons believe that the US is the biggest threat to World Peace. So I wont be surprised if some of them also justify attacks on the US.
Statistics without any context or comparison can sometimes turn out to be very misleading.
Having said there is very little chance that the Non Muslim English unpatriotic graduate students will start blowing up buses. The most they will do is maybe vote for Liberal Democrats or the Greens.
Muslim unpatriotic graduate students in Briton can however be indoctrinated enough by radical jihadist ideology to resort to violence ( Remember the Paki Brit dude educated at LSE who was reported to be behind the murder of Daniel Pipes and the hijacking of an Indian plane)
It is high time that England starts deporting radical sheikhs from Syria and Egypt who preach jihad and are living on welfare.
Remember these people were too radical for Syria and Egypt and they were foolishly given refuge in England.
Lets face facts. There is a problem in the Muslim population of UK. However tiny the trouble makers, they pose a grave threat to the 'Londonization' process and to liberalism itself. Societies under siege are usually not very 'progressive' and 'forward thinking'.
It is now incumbent upon the multi-culturalists who have advocated for open borders and immigration to now find solutions to this problem.

Terrorists are not just middle class, they have technical/scientific/engineering backgrounds. To ignore their occupational affiliation would be to stick your head in the sand. I'm not saying all engineers are terrorists, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the correlation.

Why do liberal arts grads, religious studies grad, or social science grads avoid terrorism while engineers and technical grads flock to it?

If we can figure that out, we can try to reform engineering curriculums to reduce their propensity to kill people -- or alternatively, put greater scrutiny on engineers when they travel, etc.

Hey, don't knock marsuponationalism!

Omar Saeed the guy I alluded to in my post did not graduate from LSE but was there for a year only.
Here is his profile: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/18.../uk/ 1804710.stm

Al Mujahid, thanks for a coherent statement in an incoherent thread. One correction, though: It was Daniel Pearl whose murder was facilitated by that British-educated Pakistani chess master (does anyone know what happened to that guy? I seem to remember him being sentenced to death, but I wouldn't be surprised if he slipped out the back door...). Daniel Pipes is still alive and writing.

P.S. I'll never forget the jocularity of a British acquaintance of mine after the 9-11 attacks. I imagine he's not terribly upset that the "poor, oppressed" terrorists have now hit his (self-)hated country.

MC write:
Albion was used in ancient times by the Romans, was probably a word of Celtic origin, and referred explicitly to the white cliffs of Dover

Not quite correct. The Irish Gaelic word "Alban" referred to the whole island of Britain originally and only much later just referred to Scotland - probably after the Juto-Saxo-Angle invasions - this was probably adopted by the Romans.

However many words with "Alb-" or "Alp-" exist in Europe, which IMO may point to the original name of the pre-Indo-European substrate. For instance we have, Alban, Alps, Albania, etc.

Yes, it was Daniel Pearl and not Daniel Pipes. I sure hope it was not a Freudian slip ;)

Al Mujahid wrote:
I would like to some numbers on what percentage of the general population in England feels patriotic about UK

Well according to NationMaster, only 53% of respondents from the UK were Very proud of there nationality, but 74% said they Will fight for their country.

Which compares to the US at 77/78, France at 35/66 and Germany at 20/47 and Japan at 27/23 respectively

ikram is right, there are way too many engineers in radical movements. you see the same thing in many american mosques with engineers lecturing people one "true islam."

i have to run, but someone can find the world-wide survey of terrorists which does show the connection between technical educations and religious zeal in the archives. date = good.

p.s. the creationist movement is in large part pushed forward by engineers.

pconroy wrote "Not quite correct. The Irish Gaelic word "Alban" referred to the whole island of Britain originally and only much later just referred to Scotland - probably after the Juto-Saxo-Angle invasions - this was probably adopted by the Romans."

Well, that's not correct either. The term Albion was used by the Romans *before* the coming of the English. I quote from 'The Place-Names of Roman Britain' by A.L.F. Rivet and Colin Smith, which is I think the standard work:

(p. 247, ALBION - sources)

Pliny NH IV, 102: ALBION ipsi nomen fuit cum Britanniae vocarentur omnes

In other words, it was already obsolete at the time of the early Roman empire. First mention was reputedly in an anonymous periplus (account of a circumnavigation) of the 6th C B.C. quoted in a 4th-C A.D work, the Ora Maritima of Avienus.

Oh, by the way, I am of course a software engineer ;-)

Why do liberal arts grads, religious studies grad, or social science grads avoid terrorism while engineers and technical grads flock to it?

Well, back in the hayday of the Soviet Union it was not at all uncommon to find such individuals in revolutionary movements that used terrorism. But we're talking about religious terrorism here, so...

but someone can find the world-wide survey of terrorists which does show the connection between technical educations and religious zeal in the archives. date = good.

Does anyone have a copy of Understanding Terror Networks? I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet, but it seems like that would be the place for that info.

Very true, madrasas graduates of muslim religion abhor violence and terrorism. SR was most correct on discussion of albionism. All others are making excuses, deplorably so.

i doubt that Ikram is being serious but, however...

The fact that the terrorists we are talking about are militantly Islamic is more pertinent than the fact that they are often Engineers, no?

If engineering somehow produced terrorism, or even radicalism, regardless of the super-strata of belief systems then it would do so across all different cultures - and adopt different reasons for radicalism in each different society. That is not the case. Engineers are not common among the terrorists produced by the Basques, Northern Ireland; or the RAF ( in Germany), the Red Brigades, the Shining Path and so on. *

The reasons why engineers are more likely to become terrorists in the Islamic world is manyfold. Off the top of my head

1) The Islamic world probably has more engineers in university than social scientists -relative to the West, at any rate. Poorer societies need producers, not talkers. These engineers may be middle-class but are upwardly mobile - and have some association with poorer areas, or lower middle class areas.

2) Local Middle Eastern terrorists - or insurgents - are not from the middle classes, nor are they engineers. For instance the groups in Iraq, or Palestine. The 9/11 terrorists were - but the West prioritizes migration of engineers, and not social scientists, or radical imans.

3) I suspect that Islamic undergraduate populations already in the West are more inclined to undertake degrees in Engineering and IT, as these will not challenge their belief systems. Despite the takeover of the universities by cultural marxism - the social sciences university is still not the place for religious believers, misogynists and homophobes, although it wont shake any anti-Western belief systems either, or course :-)

Engineering will not produce radicals per say, but radicals will not be majoring in Queer studies, either.

So lets not worry about Chinese Engineers becoming radical Buddhists in the West, and focus attention elsewhere.


* Each one of these groups has a different class structure, from privileged to peasant. Most European Marxist terrorism is Upper Middle class ( as is Anarchism) and none of it is heavy with engineering graduates.

The Islamic world probably has more engineers in university than social scientists

Actually...an overflow of Humanities majors is commonly considered to be a major cause for the economic underperformance of Israeli Arabs. It's one of the main "PC" arguments, if you will.
It wouldn't surprise if this was true throughout the Arab world.

Also, Palestinian suicide bombers are generally not 'lower class'. Here's a source which probably does not have a pro-Israel bias.

http://www.ecaar.org/Newsletter/...Nov04/ saleh.htm

Thank goodness for pedophiles. They seem to have finally put an end to the Judeo-Christian Dark Age. How can God allow priests to molest children? Easy. He doesn't exist. Now even Ireland has wriggled free of Christian domination and come into the light. Its economy is booming under science, technology and reason.

The same principle could be applied to Islam. Prove their religion is bunk and they will be unwilling to die for it. They make it easy because Islam is centered on a single city and a holy meteorite in a big black box. Take Mecca, blow up the meteorite, spread pig shit on the city and watch Allah evaporate.

Graham Asher wrote:
The term Albion was used by the Romans *before* the coming of the English.

If you re-read my comment you will see that this is what I said - assuming that you are connotating Anglo-Juto-Saxon with English.

If so, how does that make my comments incorrect?!

Abdul wrote:
Very true, madrasas graduates of muslim religion abhor violence and terrorism. SR was most correct on discussion of albionism. All others are making excuses, deplorably so.

Are you going to backup your bull-shit comments with some citations??

pconroy responded when,
"Graham Asher wrote:
The term Albion was used by the Romans *before* the coming of the English.

If you re-read my comment you will see that this is what I said - assuming that you are connotating Anglo-Juto-Saxon with English.

If so, how does that make my comments incorrect?!"

It seems to me you are both so right as Tevye (of Fiddler on the Roof) would say. The link I linked does talk about Albion being an old Roman term, probably referring to the white cliffs. It was just a "surmising" that the word had a celtic origin, and I did suddenly remember hearing it associated with Scotland more than England. As pconroy points out, variations in "alp" and "alb" do mean white in varous european languages.

I think Razib has commented on this before, but (even if it wasn't him) whoever said this on GNXP had a good point that bears repeating.

Engineers learn science in an absolutist form. There isn't room for debate like in the humanities, F=ma. That's true, there's no argument, no shades of meaning, nothing. F=ma. I think learning to think like this would make engineers vulnerable to the allure of other systems like radical islam: God wants you to kill infidels like F=ma. They are both incontrovertibly true. Humanities majors, OTOH, have to discuss six different ways to view Moby Dick.

Also, I think one of the previous posters' points about sexual frustration may have some truth to it: men are much more likely to be willing to sacrifice their lives when they have nobody to hold them back. So the lack of girlfriends among engineering and IT people helps too.

So the lack of female nerds is not only responsible for D&D, but for TERRORISM! :)

Fields like engineering, math, and computer programming require sharp minds, but you don't necessarily have to be well-grounded in reality to pursue them...you can have bizarre religious beliefs and still fare well in these fields. These folks can compartmentalize their various interests.

On the other hand, it's awfully hard to be a modern biologist or physicist and subscribe to the Genesis/fundamentalist account of things. These beliefs don't meld well with the world you observe in the lab and in ordinary life.

I also think that engineers and computer programmers have the analytic and creative skills needed to construct and deploy intricate explosives, plus they are also used to following detailed procedures exactly, so are well fitted to timed execution of manoevures needed to pull off an operation. They also have the smarts and the somewhat anti-social tendancies to fool neighbours that they are pacific types.

Combine that with the often lack of social skills needed to pick up women, and this must be even more difficult in a society where they are scarce to begin with, due to polygyny, and the isolating effect is even more intense.

So in effect they make perfect candidates for the Jihadists

SciFiGeek sez (no blockquote because effing HaloCrap disallows it):

"Engineers learn science in an absolutist form. There isn't room for debate like in the humanities, F=ma. That's true, there's no argument, no shades of meaning, nothing. F=ma."

You must not have heard a bull session among engineers talking about the different ways you could accomplish some particular end, or the different ends you could accomplish with some particular principle or device.  Natural laws are like rules of a game; they're bounds within which human ingenuity gets to create.

I've seen a rather different speculation regarding the attraction of Muslim engineers to jihadist philosophy.  I may be mis-remembering parts of it, but as I recall it proposed that the disciplines of mathematics, physics and such have such heavy emphasis on the application of abstract, ineffable principles to the real world that people trained to literal obedience recoil in reaction to the cognitive dissonance.  Interesting if true.

(Why no preview button?  Somebody's too cheap to buy one?  Nobody should ever have to post something that they can't see first in its final form - ditch HaloCrap and get a REAL commenting system!)

Engineer,
(Why no preview button? Somebody's too cheap to buy one? Nobody should ever have to post something that they can't see first in its final form - ditch HaloCrap and get a REAL commenting system!)

A donation to Gene Expression would allow us to update it. Interested?

Whyever did you get rid of the excellent Movable Type commentary system?

My old MT comments all turn up on google, which is extremely useful

Searching the HaloScan archives seems to be impossible

Perhaps it is not engineering that produces terrorists, but the type of personality that is conducive to certain types of terrorism is the same type of personality some engineers possess.

I knew a couple of guys who went into engineering because they saw it as exacting and it being the field where there was one way of doing things. They were very traditional socially. That they, possibly, are wrong, was not something they knew at the time. The personality type more likely to push creationism or fundamentalist Islam or another traditional rigid belief system requires that same view.

It might not be that most engineers are like this, but those who are end up popping up in Islamic extremism and creationism, so they get noticed.

It seemed to me natural scientists hated engineers more than anyone else, perhaps because they had the most contact with them (some of the same classes). I've always thought of some natural science fields (theoretical physics, ecology, and astronomy) as having naturally rather poetic people actually.

Whyever did you get rid of the excellent Movable Type commentary system?

little drunk, so excuse issues...but MT was cgi so each process is CPU intsensive.

will comment later on stuff, but i my personal experience with chemistry majors makes me skeptical about the politcal judgements of science ppl....

(i'm a science person who had a fixation on anarcho-capitalism)

Here goes my theory for 'why engineering graduates become terrorists?'.
After slogging out to get admissions in the engineering colleges, the student becomes bit relaxed. His newly acquired indisciplined lifestyle and numerous distractions take their toll on his studies. And one fine day he finds himself flunking one or two subjects. It's a great shock for him(he never failed before). He really doesn't know what went wrong. It looks some unseen power interfering with his life(sometimes the power might be his professor's fancy). Until an agnostic, the student goes to places of worship with a new found belief. Just like a new convert he laps up the religion with full zeal.
Well, many of my Hindu friends became theists(many of them were hardly indoctrinated with any type of religious educatation till then)either because of fear of failure with examinations or once they really failed in some of them in engineering. A

btw, i'm not dissing engineers, i have many in my family, but there is something in the relative precision in their field which i think they unfortunately carry over into other aspects of their life....

most engineers are not religous fundamentalists, but most muslims are not radical terrorists. it is the reverse which we are concerned with.

If sexual frustration is the cause then Hindus of India would be the biggest and greatest terrorists in the world. Well, Indian muslims beat us easily when it comes to girls.

If sexual frustration is the cause then Hindus of India would be the biggest and greatest terrorists in the world.

i think the problem is that ppl have a tendency of thinking in terms of one effect. it is in fact multiple intersections, after all, asian indians and east asians experience as much, if not more, sexual frustration and cultural alienation than muslims. but their cultural priming does not make them susceptible to violent radicalism to the same extent. that is the issue: people have a hard time thinking in terms of mutiple factors.

There's a simpler explanation: people angry at the West will gravitate towards engineering because that's a subject with obvious and immediate military applications

There's a simpler explanation: people angry at the West will gravitate towards engineering because that's a subject with obvious and immediate military applications

most ppl are way too stupid to finish a degree in engineering. anyway, a lot of these guys are civil and electrical engineers. you can do as much (more?) damage as a chemist or microbiologist.

can someone PLEASE find the recent report which showed that islamic radicals tend to be concentrated in engineering and the sciences??? i need that data point for future posts (i've wasted 45 minutes already!).

It has been said that the unabomber (not an engineer, but math a Ph.D.)had asperger's. Also William Cottrell, the eco-terrorist who firebombed the Hummer dealerships a while back was working on a Ph.D at Cal Tech. Both defense and prosecution agreed he had Aspergers syndrome.

"Engineers learn science in an absolutist form. There isn't room for debate like in the humanities, F=ma. That's true, there's no argument, no shades of meaning, nothing. F=ma. I think learning to think like this would make engineers vulnerable to the allure of other systems like radical islam: God wants you to kill infidels like F=ma. They are both incontrovertibly true. Humanities majors, OTOH, have to discuss six different ways to view Moby Dick. "

Well, they also learn that Newton's "Laws" weren't quite as absolute as Newton and hundreds of years worth of his successors thought. Einstein showed that these abosulte, set-in-stone, inescapable laws were actually approximations - excellent approximations as long as you stayed in your little village out in the sticks (a.k.a. Earth), but as soon as you started venturing out in the Universe, you'd see that they way things are back home aren't necessarily the way the way things are everywhere in every situation.

And if you learn anything about quantum physics, you'll become intimately acquainted with the fact that "there's no argument, no shades of meaning, nothing" doesn't exactly describe the universe we live in or our knowledge of it.

But maybe the jihadis skipped school that day...

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/ ...1998060501.html

I think that engineers may be terrorists because they have never been taught about the enlightenment. The Scottish/British enlightenment is the key to modern government.

On the other hand, I often wonder how Marx could have read Hume and Adam Smith (I assume he did, maybe he didn't?) and still come up with his cockamamie theories.

So maybe studying the enlightenment would not help Muslim engineers either.

I think that engineers may be terrorists because they have never been taught about the enlightenment. The Scottish/British enlightenment is the key to modern government.

In India, most of the 'western philosophy'(highly simplified version) will be forced upon the students before they reach 16. Generally, it's the 'big picture' that you have to study for your 'social sciences'.
How about in western countries? Is there a special place for 'renaissance' in there curriculum?

I found this IMO particularly good article on Autism and its more social cousin, Asperger's Syndrome at BetterHumans.com, titled Revenge of the Nerds.

In it the author states:

Once outcasts, some autistics now see their condition as a cognitive gift and even the next stage in human evolution — at the dawn of the transhuman age, who's to say they're wrong?

OK. I was only partly being serious, but since Razib has gone and ruined the joke by brining up data, here goes:

Theories as to why (Muslim) Engineers blow up buses:

1) Engineering trains a mind to solve problems and find straightforward solutions. Fine for building bridges, but it results in some very poor political opinions, especially if your assumptions -- like a belief in God -- are off..

2) Engineers think in absolutes (or black and white). This both attracts extremists to the discipline and influence individuals to become extremists.

3) Engineers have worse social skills than arts or science students. In a society that does a poor job socializing young men, this leads them to join odd or extremists cults.

4)All Muslims want to kill people. The only thing that prevents Razib's family from blowing up Portland is a lack of knowledge in bombmaking.

5)Middle-class Muslim terrorists are people who suffer from identity issues. They don't know who they are or where they belong, and thus wind up in cults. A arts and science background forces you to read and think, and goes some way to establishing an identity. Force engineers to read Orhan Pamuk, Sadat Manto Hasan, and Shakespeare, and you solve your terrorist problem.

I go with theory five, though I also have some sympathy for theory three.

" Force engineers to read Orhan Pamuk, Sadat Manto Hasan, and Shakespeare, and you solve your terrorist problem."

That didnt solve the terrorist problem in Europe in the 1970's. I go with the first part of number 5.

Here's another interesting link to Asperger Syndrome, in which it is said:

In September 2004, Marc-Antoine Alexandre Bourget has published his master thesis at UQAM showing that 29% of autistics have a mitochondrial DNA anomaly that allowed him to formulate his hypothesis of a mitochondrial neanderthal Eve that six genetic markers dated circa 27000 BC. While his hypothesis is considered controversial, it could explain the origin of autism by hybridation of neanderthal characteristics in homo sapiens lineage.

Perhaps what is occurring is yet another manifestation of "high intelligence makes people more susceptible to utopian ideologies" quoted from Useful Fools and linked by Godless in blast from the past . The well educated status and obvious intelligence of the adherents of Islamic terrorism fit quite well with this theory.

"The legend states that when the British Nation is in the greatest peril, the Albino will awaken from its sleep and sally from its den deep in the white cliffs of Dover to rescue the British people. The Albino is said to be the only marsupial in Britain, of prodigious size and ferocity." -- Janes Guide to Military Myths, Legends and Anomalies

It is very interesting and amusing to read some comments that believe West will be in peace without foreiners or different ethnicities. People are lack of either historical knowlage about West or simply ignore it.

The truth is that human will find reason to fight each other no matter what. Competion is force behind human evolution. European have fight against each other for thousands years. Ethnic cleansing and genercide have be norm for Europeans themself for very long time. Even Great Amercan find reason to slaugher each other after revolutional war against England.

It is time due for another great world war.

Common enemy is best unifier for people. If you remove all those muslim or different race or different ethnic group from your land, it is time for civil war or internal conflict.

Perhaps what is occurring is yet another manifestation of "high intelligence makes people more susceptible to utopian ideologies"...

Nazi IQs: http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives...ves/ 003155.html

Common enemy is best unifier for people. If you remove all those muslim or different race or different ethnic group from your land, it is time for civil war or internal conflict.

Switzerland has few external enemies, and not many internal problems... the idea that you must be at war against somebody outside the country to prevent people from inside the country turning it inside-out is absurd.

If one considers that the average IQ in the Islamic countries tends to be in the low 80's, those in the sciences and engineering will be close to the average IQ of the first world countries where such terrorists are operating. So elite in the context of one country is not the same as in another. This gives rise to frustrations and enmities; many will wonder why being the best in Egypt, is ordinary or even backward in France. Professional status doesn't have the same meaning between countries which differ in average IQ; the standards for a given profession are almost certain to vary hugely.

That neanderthal hybridization idea is extremely interesting. Too bad I can't find any information about it.

Never mind. I was looking in the wrong place. Here are some overviews:

http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm

http://www.farviolet.com/~entrop...py/neanderthal/

As far as the terrorism/engineering connection is concerned, now there's a report that one of the London bombers was a "sports science" graduate.

I thought the IQs of south Asian children raised in Britain were pretty close to the white average there. Is it not true that in predominantly rural or impoverished environments, such as Iraq and India, you can expect iqs to be depressed by about 10 to 15 points compared to what they would be in a more intellectually stimulating environment? After all, Albania (not those pinko Albionians) averages low 90s while their very similar but more urbanized neighbors, the fightin' Yugos, score several points higher. Same with the Irish. Even allowing for emigration of the fittest, I always found 93 to be unaccountably low for Ireland, even considering certain relatives of my acquaintance. Also, that would explain the iqs in the 80s and 90s that immigrants from rural Europe obtained when tested during the 1920s.

I have been trying to find the article mentioned in Answers.com, by Marc-Antoine Bourget - CTRL-F for "AUT-037" - but couldn't find the full article.

But here's an old favorite, pointing to the Neanderthal Theory of Aspergers.

Most engineers are into making things work, not blowing things apart. Muslim engineering students may be different somehow. In reality, I suspect that it is the islamist clerics who are the real terrorists. Constantly preaching violent islamist supremacy over the infidel, inciting hatred and murder.

I can recall one american terrorist who was a mathematician, but none who were engineers. I am not familiar enough with the Irish terrorists to match them with their vocation.

Just a quick observation. Most of this is a bit over my head. The observation in the initial post that UK Muslim extremist fall into two categories, seems to validate the "Diffusion of Inovation" social theory, which postulates that society is composed of "drivers", "riders" and "draggers". The draggers refuse to submit to the norms of social expectations from purely solipsistic impulses. The drivers refuse to conform to the norms of social expectations because their creative intelligence leads them to question dogma. This is a situation mirrored in the race debate. Race realists often find themselves sharing the same objectives as some real low-brow dinosaurs. Strange loop!

Cheers! Cool site.

here's some solely anecdotally/life experiece supported speculation:

It could be that engineers are more successful at being this kind of terrorist. Al Qaeda's (and similar, downgraded) efforts require meticulous planning and precise logistics--not the kind you would expect out of a slacker humanities grad like me or a theoretical mathematician--even with a little of that training. btw, is Zawahiri a surgeon? Of the various professional mentalities I've seen among doctors, surgery seems to be the one closet to the applied hard science profile.

On the other hand, it makes sense, somewhow, that Palestinian suicide bombers are often teenagers or young men (and now women). I thinmk that's the case, anyway. Different method, different type of bomber. Seems like more the brainwashed kid (maybe with raging hormones) enduring daily frustrations.

I wonder if anyone's compared different methods of political violence (or even political protest) to profiles of the actors that have adopted them across a broad range. People seem to fixate on the particular ideological cult too much, and not enough on psychology, social conditions, etc., in trying to understand what's going on.

One things for sure, though--large numbers of frustrated (and often unemployed) young men are bad news for any ruling regime.

People seem to fixate on the particular ideological cult too much, and not enough on psychology, social conditions, etc., in trying to understand what's going on.

to be a bit too facile, the ideological cult seems a necessary condition for violence. the various indignities and stresses that arab/muslim males deal with day-to-day are par for the course in much of non-muslim africa, latin america (where americans have intervened a great deal more than the middle east, believe it or not) and lesser extent asia. yet no violence of the same international scope or magnitude. of course, the various psychological and social variables might also be necessary conditions, that once removed, result in the end of violence....

don't forget that palestinian suicide bombers are often well educated.

Well, just because it's not organized into a network of violence to be inflicted against Western tourists, that doesn't mean that it's not being inflicted somewhere (whether on the self, acting out the violent norms of the society, etc.) For example, today, there were, I think, about 200 people killed in Kenya in what a newspaper article described as a "clan war."

The disturbing thing about possible Al Qaeda style violence, to me, is that it has technological and financial capital behind it, a high level of sophisticiation in the planning, and logistical support. Most of the world lives with the potential for the kind of damage the London bombings caused, but if they were able to put together something really horrendous, like a nuclear weapon or a biological epidemic--something with immense damage and longlasting consequence--well, that is what separates out Al Qaeda and its allies from run of the mill terrrorists.

None of the other regions you mentioned really had the same kind of resource-driven, unearned wealth that makes the kinds of attacks I described above possible. I'm not dismissing the ideology altogether--just that the particular features of the ideology are not as important to me as what I imagine is the closed nature of it and the intensity with which its pursued.

When will people wake up and realize that this kind of vulnerability is what occurs when we allow "the other" to infiltrate the border.

Reitzche Boknecht: I share your frustration. But perhaps it's people like us who need to wake up. The theory [Marx of course] is that a post nation-state world will be a superior world. The sincere and energetic attempt is now being made to transition us proles into that world. That is the current state of affairs.

Your post and a million others like it on these here internets reflects a bafflement. You are flummoxed. Stumped. Bewildered. Well here's the news: the VAST MAJORITY of international elites do not share your faith in the nation state. Got that? On this issue the tallying of leader's votes worldwide is not even close.

Americans in particular are flabbergasted by this. You can read all about it at the freeper place. It's because the nation state only really works well when guys like Madison Adams Jefferson set it up for you. "Works for me!" Is the real American motto. Unfortunately it hasn't worked very well for the rest of the world. At that is where the momentum is.

I see your name and figure your worried about EU overlords? But those white ethnic nation states are doomed man. The morality underpinning the homogenous nation state has been swept away mostly by affordability. Only a drastic reduction in affluence will alter the landscape. The affluent western society will never embrace the virulent in-group dynamic. Poor struggling whites will circle the wagons. Affluent whites simply will not.

So the answer to your question "when?" ...is the exact moment when affluences ceases and no sooner. The Al Qaeda engineering phd recruits are going to have to ramp things up quite a bit before it happens.

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