Us vs. Them, a perspective
 

Them:


updated 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
KHOST, Afghanistan - Taliban militants shot dead a teenage boy in southeastern Afghanistan for teaching English to his classmates, police said on Thursday.

Taliban militants have killed a number of teachers and students in recent years for attending government-run schools, taking part in classes for girls or what the hardline Islamist militants consider un-Islamic subjects.

Armed men arrived at the school in the Sayed Karam district of Paktia province and grabbed a 16-year-old student and dragged him outside.

"Taliban militants took the boy out and killed him outside the school just because he was teaching English to his classmates," said General Esmatullah Alizai, the police chief of Paktia province.


Us:
LAPD shelves Muslim mapping program
Department scraps heavily-criticized plan, but continues outreach efforts
Stand and be counted

updated 3:21 a.m. PT, Thurs., Nov. 15, 2007
LOS ANGELES - A police plan to map out Muslim communities, a proposal that civil rights groups sharply criticized as racial and religious profiling, has been shelved, a police spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The LAPD planned to have its counterterrorism bureau identify Muslim enclaves to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to "violent, ideologically based extremism."

Several Muslim groups and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized the plan and sent a letter to Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing expressing their concerns.

"There was a clear message from the Muslim community that they were not comfortable with it. So we listened," said Mary Grady, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. She couldn't immediately say when the plan might resume.

Grady said the remaining part of the initiative, which includes outreach efforts to strengthen ties with Muslim communities, would continue, and police planned to meet with Muslim leaders Thursday.

Muslim leaders hail decision
In a statement, Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, praised the decision.

"I am glad to hear (Downing) is putting the plan aside," Al-Marayati said. "All Muslim organizations are united in purpose to defend the rights of Muslim Americans while developing a positive and constructive relationship with the LAPD."

Downing and other city officials had defended the plan, saying the idea was to deepen ties with Muslim communities. The plan would have had data assembled by the University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.

There are an estimated 500,000 Muslims in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties.

Has anyone taught them to speak English?

If so, then you could ask them if anyone ever taught them to take a bath.:D

you got it all wrong..your are supposed to learn 'their' language, and adopt 'their' custom's.
What do you think this is ..America..
Rika

I'll eat their food................good stuff.:)

and of course, all 500K of the muslims in LA county are Taliban militants...ie "them".

Proving that the "Us vs. Them, a perspective" is somewhat universal.

Thanks Sam. I was feeling pretty relaxed preparing my lecture on pediatric immune deficiences for a class of med students tomorrow morning. Now I feel disturbed and overfilled - smoke coming out of my ears from fueling my negative sentiments toward muslies. Am I completely off charts or are they totally mad!!! Killing a teenager for teaching a language!!!

It is the unfair assymetri I have hard to digest. If WE come to them and do something they do not approve of we are just shot. If they come here and do something we do not approve of we may express a lame complaint before they suicide bomb us on our own soil.

I must be missing something. They can´t be that bad. Can they?

It's quite likely that they speak English better than most of us.

Hold it, this is too easy to do. Any LA cops reading this? Just look for the satellite dishes, they don't watch American TV, they watch 20 channels of Al Jazeera in their own language.

I can post pictues of this in Dearborn, Michigan...........it's all very interesting how technology allows ethnic communities to remain isolated and not mix.

I can guarantee you that some of them are militant extremists. You may be comfortable with them living next door to you, but I'm not.

Right you are! Since we have a report, in fact multiple reports of violence perpetrated by Muslims, we can confidently conclude they are all dangerous and should be treated as such.

And......by this same reasoning, we would also find that Christians should be similarly regarded. Indeed, this program of tracking Christians should have started right after the Timothy McVeigh incident.

In fact, since we find that virtually any community can produce a homicidal monster, we should have the gubmit just track everyone. For a stronger America.

Xenophobia is not the sole purvue af any single culture.

When you shoot those that disagree with you, you don't have such problems. Not exactly an ACLU in Afghanistan.

Of the terrorists that are here, do you think they laugh at us? I would think probably so. It amazes me that we are facing terrorist organizations made up primarily of middle-eastern muslim men, but you aren't allowed to look at race when investigating terrorist organizations. Just amazing..........

Preventive maintance...not a bad idea
Rika

Couldn't agree more. Let's just put numbers on everybody. It'll be safer that way!

"Have the gubment just track everyone...."


Done.

..

Not quite everyone... just us "law abiding citizens" :)

My Camp, my rules/laws.....should I want to live in your camp..I will abide by your rules/laws
Rika