Weighing Compassion Against Public Safety - The Syrian Refugee Debate

At present, American politicians are moving forward with plans to import approximately 10,000 Syrian refugees. The governor of my state (Pennsylvania) and the mayor of my city (Pittsburgh) have both vowed to accept the refugees despite the opposition being voiced by a large percentage of their constituents (in full disclosure, I don't know the percentage of opposition at this time and that's why I didn't say "majority"). As usual, everybody on social media is having vibrant and heated debates about this policy, as if our opinion matters even a little bit.  I assure that in today's political climate, our opinion matters not.

However, I don't mean to imply that my opinion is the opinion of all. There are plenty of people (some of my friends & family among them) who feel that it's perfectly acceptable to bring the refugees into the U.S. This is despite the fact that Islamic terrorists in Paris France, who entered the country under the guise of being refugees, killed scores of people less than a week ago. Many of the dead aren't even buried yet. The bullet holes are still in the buildings and the scenes are still stained with innocent blood. Just yesterday, there was a breaking news story in the U.S. stating that 5 Syrian nationals have been caught trying to enter the U.S. with stolen/fabricated passports.   Another recent story, receiving almost no coverage at all, was about an investigation that has revealed that 73 TSA workers are on terrorism watch lists.  These are the people who are in charge of ensuring that you're safe when you board an airplane.  And they have links to the people who are hell bent on flying more airplanes into more buildings.  Who does that make sense to???

Look, I totally get why a lot of Americans are welcoming the refugees with open arms.  The stories of suffering are very compelling.  And it's human nature (at least for good-hearted humans) to reach out to help others who are in need.  I think the world needs a lot of more of that kind of attitude.  But this conflict boils down to a simple question:

Should our compassion be allowed to outweigh the obvious security risks?

I say "obvious" because we know for a fact, with 100% certainty, that ISIS (or whatever we call them today) does indeed plan to strike us here in the U.S. and they have already demonstrated that they will take advantage of our compassion and use the refugee crisis as a vehicle to facilitate that goal.  Those are their words (and actions), not mine.

It would be fantastic if we had a fully reliable system to weed out the bad guys from the good - if we could definitively verify the intentions of these people via background checks.  But that's far from the reality.  The government is not capable of conducting such flawless checks, nobody is.  The teachings of Islam instruct its followers to utilize deception as a means of compromising & infiltrating the enemy (that's you and me - we're on the same team here).  According to sharia, in certain situations, deception – also known as 'taqiyya', based on Quranic terminology, – is not only permitted but sometimes obligatory. For instance, contrary to early Christian history, Muslims who must choose between either recanting Islam or being put to death are not only permitted to lie by pretending to have apostatised, but many jurists have decreed that, according to Quran 4:29, Muslims are obligated to lie in such instances.  You don't have to believe me, you can research it yourself.

Regarding the background checks: we keep being told that there's nothing to worry about because the background checks are a lengthy (implied to be thorough) process.  I can tell you from my own experience, as somebody who had one of the highest security clearances obtainable by a citizen, that the process is indeed lengthy.  But not because it's thorough... it's because the government is extremely inefficient and lousy at their job.  What takes place during a background check could be done in a week instead of a year.  And I can guarantee you that no refugee will go through the level of checking that people like me go through.  They will be entirely different from the background checks that are conducted for security clearances.  They will be extremely shallow in their integrity and will no doubt be conducted by people who know little about security.  The background checks will do little to ensure our safety.  Especially since it will be impossible to verify even the identity of these people, let alone their past.

Those of you who know me, are aware that I work in the personal security industry as a firearms/self-defense instructor.  Anybody who's serious about this subject matter and wants to keep their skillset current and relevant, studies all aspects of violence extensively.  That means following crime trends and reviewing case studies.  It means an exhaustive examination of any & all information that you can get your hands on.  It means reading the reports and works of experts in the field.  It means breaking down incidents and following them back to their points of origin.  We are constantly asking ourselves "what specifically went wrong that led to [fill in the blank event]?".  And in studying violence, quite often (a HUGE percentage of the time), the single most common factor that led to somebody being victimized, was their willful suppression of intuition.  In other words, they had some indication (often just a "gut feeling") that they were in potential danger, but chose to ignore those primal warning signs.  There have been decades of extensive research done on this area of study and there are countless cases that can be studied.  In discussions with victims, researchers and investigators often hear the victims verbalize that they somehow knew that they were walking into a dangerous situation but proceeded anyway.  Why?  Because we are conditioned by experiences to dismiss these warning signs as mere paranoia.  Because the vast majority of the time, things turn out to be OK.  The "creepy" guy the elevator rarely attacks you.  The drunk homeless man ranting about nothing and invading your personal space rarely stabs you in the gut & robs you.  So, we learn over time to suppress intuition & instinct.  We become conditioned to err on the side of risk rather than caution.  This is especially true when emotions are dragged into the equation and we are made to feel like heartless monsters if we don't accept a risk to extend a helping hand to somebody who could potentially be a ticking time bomb, but could also just be a harmless soul in need.

One of the leading experts in the study of violence and how it can be successfully mitigated is Gavin DeBecker.  His #1-selling book, The Gift of Fear, should be required reading for anybody in the law enforcement or protection community and I highly recommend it to anybody who ever leaves their house.  All of the cases in the book are true stories.  It opens up with a horrific review of a rape case where a very security-conscious woman goes against her better judgement by allowing a charming stranger to help her carry her groceries to her apartment (you'd have to read the circumstance for full context).  She dismisses her intuition and misses several opportunities to avoid her fate.  Ultimately, it leads to her being raped for 3 hours and narrowly escape her murder.  And by the way... she avoided that murder, as the rapist/murderer was heading to her kitchen to get a knife, by finally paying attention to what the warning signs were telling her and acting on it.

I am very fortunate to work under the direction of, and study under, one of the most impressive security professionals in the industry: Sam Rosenberg, founder and president of INPAX.  If you've never seen one of Sam's presentations or trained with him, you don't know what you're missing.  It is absolutely captivating and inspiring.  I've read lots of books and I've seen lots of professionals talk on the subject of violence. I've never seen somebody who has such a firm grasp and command of self defense topics.  The dude is an absolute bad ass.  Anyway... in the active shooter trainings that we conduct for schools and businesses, Sam explains how "violence is as predictable as boiling water, if you know what to look for".  That extends beyond the personal security construct and applies to public safety on a macro level as well.  We delve much deeper into this concept when we conduct more extensive personal training for individuals.

Most of the time, violence can be avoided or minimized by being properly prepared and by trusting your gut instinct.  It requires an unemotional analysis of available data and the willingness to act on that analysis no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient it may be.  In the case of the Syrian refugees, we need to take the emotions completely out of the equation and ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Is this action going to actually address the root cause of the crisis and prevent it from getting worse?
2. Is this action consistent with the way that we've successfully dealt with similar crises in the past?
3. Given the data that we have on Muslims from the Middle East, is it reasonably safe to integrate them into our culture?
4. Given the direct warnings that we have from the terrorists, does it make sense to put our citizens (your kids, my kids, etc.) at risk of violent senseless deaths for the purpose of being the world's security shelter?
5. Should we be ignoring data, intuition, and common sense (which isn't so common these days) because it "might" be OK to do so?

One of my family members that I love and respect posted a picture today of a Syrian child (allegedly) sleeping in filth on a mattress in the dangerous streets of the middle east.  The wording of the post stated that fear is a good thing because it is an indication that you are about to do something brave.  I have a differing opinion.  Fear usually means you're about to do something stupid and dangerous, not brave.  It was an attempt to play on the emotions of Americans and encourage them to go against their better judgement and ignore the fact that the world around us is on fire right at this very moment as a result of allowing Islamic terrorism spread into the western world.  There simply could not be any more compelling data and warning signs to support the fact that it is too dangerous to proceed with such a reckless policy.

Dangerous times require an escalation of safety measures and a resolute focus on security and victory.  My friends, we ARE in the most dangerous times that we've ever been faced with.  The wolf is at the door.  We should be grateful that the terrorists are kind enough to announce & broadcast their intentions.  We could be in a much worse position of not knowing what they're going to do.  But we absolutely know.  If we dismiss that knowledge and continue down a path of self destruction, then we unfortunately deserve what's coming our way.

I respect your compassion and I think it's admirable.  But the stakes are much higher for me now.  I have two little girls at home that I need to keep safe.  So no... I'm sorry but your compassion and foolishness, as demonstrated by your willingness to suppress the warning signs, cannot be allowed to supercede the security of myself, my family, and all of the other innocent Americans that have a heightened sense of awareness.  If even an ounce of innocent American blood is shed as a result of letting in a terrorist who uses the cover of the refugee crisis, then the cost of your compassion is too high in this case.  And if my family's blood is among that of the fallen, then I will count you as an enemy along with the terrorists.

This isn't a republican/democrat or liberal/conservative issue.  It's a straight-forward common sense issue.  We have so much data to support a halt of this policy that it's laughable that we're even discussing it.  I'm all for helping the innocent Syrians (if we can identify them).  But we should be helping them OVER THERE.  That doesn't make me racist or bigoted.  It just means that I'm more in touch with intuition and data than other people are.  Let's help the Syrians.  Let's do what we can to make their homeland safe.  Let's fight the tyranny and oppression the way we always do, with military might and decisive action.  Heck, I'll even send food & money.  I'll buy a blanket for that poor kid who's sleeping on the mattress in the street.  I'll even send the bed frame for it.  But he cannot sleep in a bed in my house and I don't want him shacking up down the road from me either.  I know too much about the indoctrination of Muslims in the middle east that begins at birth.  I know too much about their intentions.  I know too much about their actions.  And I know too much about the innocent lives lost.

There is no ISIS

Let me ask you a question: How long has ISIS (called ISIL by the U.S. government) been in existence?  Do you know?  Here's a better question: What is ISIS?  Can you define them, other than by defining the meaning of the stupid acronym based on what your favorite search engine tells you?

Let me set the record straight in case you're confused by the title of this article: I am NOT some whacko conspiracy theorist here to tell you that ISIS is a made up entity used by the government to distract people as they (the government) stage elaborate hoaxes to further an agenda.  That's the kind of tin-foil-hat bat-shit crazy stuff that gets spread on the Internet every time there's an attack.  That's the kind of thing that's spread by people who call themselves "9/11 Truthers", believe that the arlines are systematically poisoning them via "chem trails" as part of a conspiracy, etc.  And that's not at all what the title of this article is indicating.  There really is a group of people who are actively slaughtering people by the hundreds & thousands simply because they follow an insane religion and have brains made of mush that have been filled with garbage since the day they popped out of their equally crazy mothers.

My beef, is with the use of the term "ISIS".  Not because it's an acronym (although I do hate acronyms).  But because these people are exactly the same individuals that were called Al-Qaeda only a few short years ago.  When's the last time you heard about Al-Qaeda, other than a historical reference?  And before that, we called them the Taliban, at least in Afghanistan.  And before that, the Mujahideen.  And before that, "freedom fighters" - but that's when we were foolish enough to think that they were our friends and their mission was honorable.

I know... some of you are jumping through the screen about to tell me that I'm wrong and that there are differences between these entities.  Well I'm sorry, but you're wrong.  Sure, there are some subtle geopolitical distinctions between these groups.  But the reality is that ISIS is made up mostly of people who were called Al-Qaeda as recently as two years ago.  They didn't switch teams.  They didn't form a new mission and set new goals.  They are the same exact crazy mother fuckers who have been shooting innocent people and lopping off heads their entire lives.  The term ISIS/ISIL is simply a marketing identifier (for lack of a better term) slapped onto them for their current campaign of violence.

The reason that you occasionally hear about old groups like the Taliban "making a comeback" is because, IT'S THE SAME FUCKING PEOPLE.  It's all one big group of goat-humping, camel-sucking nut jobs that all share the same insane ideology and all want exactly the same thing... the rest of us dead!

This silly divvying up of the crazies into easily identifiable little groups with fancy labels serves little purpose, other than as a mechanism for our government to dumb it down for the average American citizen who has the attention span of a fruit fly.  In other words, it helps to keep people engaged in the idea of fighting the enemy if the enemy gets a face lift every few years.

Frankly, I don't care what we call them or what they call themselves.  At the end of the day, they are who they've always been and they will never change.  Their tactics may advance.  Their weapons & methods may evolve.  They may (and are) advance deeper into civilized western territory.  But they are simply Islamists who are brainwashed from the get-go.

So... I guess it's time we discuss the terms "Muslim", "Islamist", and the use of the pointless qualifier: "Extremist" used by some to distinguish the actively violent ones from those who are not.

I once had somebody actually say to me (in a Facebook discussion), that I shouldn't use the word "Muslim" to describe people who are part of "Islamic" religion.  My head exploded with confusion when I read that statement.  Once I explained to them (probably rather abrasively) that the definition of a Muslim is a person who studies an adheres to Islam, they simply stopped responding because they realized that they are too dumb to continue the discussion.

So now that we agree Muslim = Islamist, what about the term "Extremist"?  This is what gets people all bent out of shape and why they jump on my shit every day.  Any time I (and others) criticize Islam as being the cancer of humanity that it is, people jump in with "you can't lump them all into one category.  Not all of Islam is bad, only a very few bad apples who give it a bad name".  Well my friends... that's BULLSHIT!

Somebody much smarter than me once put it this way: "A Muslim extremist is the guy who chops off your head.  A moderate Muslim is the guy who holds down your feet and lets it happen.".  You may think that's an over-simplification, but it's exactly right.  The reason that people get so bent out of shape about this is because they are confused (misinformed) about what it means to be a Muslim.  These are people who went to college with somebody who claimed to be a Muslim.  And that college buddy never blew himself up.  Maybe they drank alcohol and engaged in regular relationships with the opposite sex.  Maybe they listened to cool music and didn't seem to mind that the women around them weren't dressed like Casper the ghost.  Well I hate to break it to you and your college buddy, but that dude is not a Muslim.  He may think that he is, but he's not.  Here's a good test of that theory: ask yourself how long their head would remain attached to their torso if they moved to Syria.  Because those crazy fuckers in places like Syria (really all of the middle east), are the real Muslims.  They are the ones that follow its teachings & writings WORD FOR WORD.  They are the ones who understand that the religion is built on the concept of viciously slaughtering ALL non-believers, including those who don't fully commit to its teachings.  The Koran (Quran) has many many passages that provide clear instructions for them to kill us. If your college buddy doesn't subscribe to those instructions, then he's not a Muslim.  He may be a really good dude and he may practice a form of religion that is rather honorable and admirable.  Heck, maybe he should start his own religion.  But... he is not a Muslim.  And neither is the guy fresh out of prison who has reformed himself into a peaceful, tolerant pacifist.  Islam and peace are mutually exclusive.  Completely incompatible concepts that cannot coexist.  They tolerate only one thing - themselves.

I once used a Star Trek analogy to describe Muslims.  They are blend between the Borg and the Klingons.  The Borg are the singular collective of cyborgs who assimilate entire species and destroy anybody who refuse to be assimilated.  They are where the phrase "resistance is futile" comes from.  In their mind, you assimilate and become one of us, or you die.  The Klingons are the guys who are an ancient barbaric species of aliens who know only violence.  They speak of "honor" and use it as an excuse to drive an axe through the skulls of whoever pissed them off that day.  They fight for fighting's sake.  They want no alliances with anybody else and they look at every other way of life other than their own, as inferior and irrelevant.  Sound familiar?

Look, I don't care what we call these people.  They are a scourge on the human race.  Does Islam have some beautiful concepts and respectable elements?  Probably.  But in this case, the bad heavily outweighs the good.  And the way that it's actively practiced (the elements that drive its following) are directly responsible for the murder of millions of innocent people.  And it's no longer just "over there".  It's here in our homeland, in New York, Detroit, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Paris, Madrid, London, etc.  We no longer have the luxury of ignoring the true nature of these people and this religion.  We can no longer dismiss the fundamentalists as rare artifacts that don't represent the moderates.  The moderates really have no place in this discussion at all.  They are a side topic that has absolutely no bearing on the matter at hand.

If you're thinking of responding to this with some reference to times when violence was committed in the name of Christianity, save your breath.  The Crusades were a long time ago and were an isolated time in history.  Christianity, with all of its warts and rocky past, has reformed itself and flushed out its corruptive elements that detracted from its peaceful teachings.  Don't bother pulling out some Old Testament references.  Because that doesn't represent the way that Christianity is taught and practiced at all.  Everybody was nuts back in those days.  I think that two thousand years of a good track record pretty much clears the table.  Sure... every once in a while there's a nut job who claims to be Christian that does something crazy & violent.  The difference is that these are isolated incidents and that true Christians stand up against them and denounce them.  That's something that simply doesn't happen in Islam.

To sum up: ISIS = ISIL = Al Qaeda = Taliban = Mujahideen = Freedom Fighter = Islamist = Jihadist = Muslim = [Fill-in-the-blank identifier of the day]

You can only polish a turd so much.  It's still going to be a turd when you're done with it.  The only change will be that you're covered in shit.

To be honest, I hate blogs

I've decided that my first blog post will be about the fact that I hate blogs and have resisted them (as a consumer and a writer) for many years.

I remember when the term "blog" first started being thrown around and how much it annoyed me because it is basically just a new term assigned to an old idea.  Initially, the only people who used the word blog and who actually referenced them, were members of the media.  For some reason, the news media really wanted the blog concept to catch on.  And none of them had any clue that the term originates from the words "web log".  I doubt that most people today are even aware of that.

A blog is essentially just a journal - a poorly organized (in my opinion) collection of writings.  It's a bit like a forum, but worse and more boring because you generally have only one, or a small handful of contributors.

I waited many many years to dive into the blog world because I was really hoping that their format would improve.  It has not.  I find them to be stupidly organized and difficult to navigate & find old entries.  Unless of course, you know exactly what you're looking for.  I've always been a do-it-yourself kind of guy when it comes to software development.  And I've always been able to develop and implement more usable platforms for my needs.  To be clear, blogs are stupid!

Despite the fact that I've worked in technology for my entire adult career, I am usually a slow adopter of technologies.  And being about a decade behind on this bandwagon, is not unusual for me.  I'm kind of old fashioned.  A bit of a purist.  When the Internet started becoming popular, I can remember making fun of people who used their computers to get online.  To me, they weren't "real" computer users because they weren't writing code, getting actual work done, etc.  I was convinced that once the novelty of the Internet wore off, it would fade out or take on a more practical use, entirely owned by other computing purists.  I was wrong.

Another reason why I waited so long is because I know me.  And I know that I will sometimes write a bunch of stuff all at once.  Then I will go months and months without writing a damn thing.  I have waves of productivity, padded by huge chunks of uselessness & laziness.  I enter this endeavor knowing full well that I will probably forget to write blog entries for long periods of time.  With my goldfish memory (as my wife calls it), I will even forget that I have this site.  Then when I do remember, I will forget exactly which service I used and I'll spend hours BINGing my name trying to find the service that hosts my blog site. (I don't use Google.  Google is for communists, but that's a later blog entry).

The past few years, I have come to be a big Facebook user.  I wasn't at first (remember, late adopter), but then it finally got me.  Social media is a really strange and silly world.  There's a lot about it that makes me ashamed to even be a human.  But... it's provided a good forum for my rants.  However, I tend to be long-winded when I rant and Facebook is not good for long writings.  It definitely has a lot of limitations and restrictions.  I consider myself a "Seinfeld" type writer.  You know... the show about NOTHING.  There's no consistency or organization to my writings.  However, there is one constant: I accidentally offend over-sensitive people all the time.  I honestly don't mean to, it just happens.  I have set a record for the most un-friended person on social media.  Seriously, that's no joke.  That being said, I usually don't care when they get offended and part ways with me.  If they are that weak and insecure in their positions that they can't tolerate an opposing viewpoint, I say "good riddance"!.  It is notable, however, that the people who have trouble tolerating my viewpoints are always the people who claim to be proponents of tolerance & acceptance of everyone.  We call these morons: liberals.

But I digress... there's another reason that I hate blogs.  And I don't mean to offend anybody who writes blog entries.  A lot of my friends do.  But, generally speaking (I'm a big generalizer and it gets me in trouble), most bloggers are people who are full of themselves and just like to hear themselves talk.  I think that most blogs go completely unread, as I'm sure mine will.  Whenever I see a blog post, I always think "gee that's great... so you and your mom are pretty much the only people that are going to read your stupid post".  Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed reading many meaningful and well thought-out blog posts.  They're not ALL garbage.  But the vast majority of them are absolutely pointless.  Bloggers tend to be self-important douche buckets.  You can say that "yeah but... blogging is modern journalism and traditional journalism is a dying media".  Fine... but journalists have always been self-important douche buckets so my point is still valid.

But nonetheless, here I am... "blogging" if you will.  As silly as I think they are, it's hard to argue against the fact that they are very simple to use and provide a zero-effort turnkey solution.  I'm going to try hard to make this particular article the last time that I actually reference the term "blog". People often refer to my writings as "rants" so I'll use that more appropriate term.  You can expect my writings to be sporadic, often unrelated, and usually offensive to some people.  I am an unapologetic rabid conservative American.  I have strong views about just about everything.  But I'm told that it's entertaining to some.  If something I say makes you mad, don't take it personally.  I enjoy differing opinions and I'm always happy to help people understand how & why their wrong (relax, it's a joke).  If something I say doesn't make you mad, hang in there... you'll probably be next.

If you haven't caught on yet, I'm an asshole.  So let this first post set the stage for everything that I write going forward.