Sabri Oncu wrote
What is interesting however is that an Economics PhD student of mine, who was writing a PhD thesis on some high-level time series stuff, told me and other students in my stochastic calculus class that Americans did this to themselves.
. Yup, I believe. Absolutely... and I get slammed every time I broach the subject on pen-l BTW, did you see how quickly the attempts to get you to rationalize your statement happened? That's called evasion. You've created the scenario for an admission that our financial/industrial desires created the monster, and you won't get too many Americans to admit that their very (untenable) way of life got a bunch of civilians killed on 91101 and undoubtably will get some more dead as well. I was having a conversation with a guy I know the other week and mentioned that there's really only two options. 1) Ameliorate whatever situations would cause people to hate Americans enough to drive an airliner into one of our skyscrapers et al. Or: 2) Relegate ourselves to living in a police state to protect us from those who have come to hate us and continue doing what we do so badly (colonize). The gentleman looked at me and said: Oh! You're one of THOSE people. Like I was spouting off some friggin' conspiracy theory or evil untruth. You see what we're up against in the heart of the beast Sabri? Leigh
