Now is the time for all good men to stand up for what they truly believe in ....

Now is the time for all good men and women to stand up for what they truly believe in .... The future of our world may well depend upon your voice and your action.

It's late and I've yet to sleep, but as I lie in 'bed' and contemplate the notion of sleep I find my head is pounding and my heart is heavy. Another, in a long procession of terror attacks --over the course of the past two years-- has most recently struck on the streets of Barcelona, with a rented vehicle being used to run down innocent pedestrians enjoying a warm summer day on the streets of beautiful Barcelona.

I find myself perplexed by the response among people here, in the United States, to this most recent terror attack in Barcelona. Perhaps a lack of proximity to the the devastation and carnage, being an entire ocean away, helps to explain the lack of a sense of outrage, concern and a determination to do something –anything tangible-- towards the end of preventing another such attack. The response I mainly seem to be getting from people I've encountered is –and I'm paraphrasing here-- “Yes, it's a horrible tragedy. But it happened [thank God it didn't happen here] and its going to happen again; it's just a question of where and when.” Call me crazy, but I'm not okay with that, the notion that this type of violence is somehow inevitable and part of our new way of life in these modern times … violence being unleashed upon defenseless, innocent bystanders merely going about the business of their daily lives, while trying to find pockets of happiness in a world that seems to have gone blanking mad. I stop and ponder the vehicular tragedy we experienced here, in the USA, in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend, when a white supremacists plowed into a crowd of anti-supremacist protesters which wound up taking the life of a young woman and two police officers. It too was a terrible tragedy. Most people you ask will say the two events, the one in Barcelona and the one in Charlottesville, have no connections whatsoever, but I wholeheartedly disagree. When I think on the events in Charlottesville, VA, it occurs to me that while the things that white supremacists believe in and stand for run counter to the very notion of the things I believe America stands for, the rights of these supremacists to march and to say these things they supposedly believe in is protected by our constitution. Moreover, while the white supremacists have the right to speak their hateful and divisive rhetoric, in America, we have hundreds --perhaps even thousands of people-- who found the courage within themselves to meet these hateful supremacists on equal ground in order to speak out against their evil way of thinking. While I do not condone the violence, on either side of this equation, I am somehow comforted by the notion that in America we have a strong voice advocating for truth, reason and the values we as a majority in this society espouse.

When I think on the radical beliefs being inculcated in so many of the youth practicing the faith of Islam these days –followers of radical Islamism advocating the use of terrorism and violence in order to advance their agenda of hatred, intolerance and oppression-- however, I do not see this same counterbalancing force we witnessed in Charlottesville, VA, over the weekend. That is to say, I see no counterbalance within the larger faith of Islam that would –or has-- organize(d), in large, meaningful numbers, speaking from positions of truth and power, in order to courageously speak out loudly against the evil being unleashed by radical Islamist extremism. I truly believe if these young men, so susceptible to being recruited by the extremists, actually had another voice to turn to for a check and balance upon the radical beliefs --by way of an examination of the radical beliefs within the context of the mainstream interpretations of the Quran and its teachings-- that so many of these men would find their way free from the grasp of extremism. And quite frankly, until this counterbalancing voice from within the faith of Islam emerges with strength, numbers and the courage of their convictions, I truly believe the violence we have seen in terrorist attacks like Barcelona will continue to be sown upon our streets, both here and abroad, wreaking havoc upon the innocent and the defenseless.

“The thing to be feared most, above all, is that good men will choose to do nothing in the face of true evil.”


Late a.m. ... Thinking further on the above, in the light of day, it occurs to me that the one thing the alt-right, alt-left and Islamism (radical Islamist extremism) all have in common is a driving force to shut-down open dialogue, thereby eliminating any possibility for meaningful, multi-way discussions to occur.  In the absence of dialogue, things tend to escalate rather quickly towards the end of violence.


[I also have some early detection and technology driven prevention/disabling ideas  to thwart terrorism, but I'm too tired to share them here tonight.  Perhaps, I'll share tomorrow after a night with at least a few hours sleep.]


8/23/2013 Then there is that … That the leader of the Free World might actually assume a leadership role in addressing the elephant in the room by putting an end to the era of appeasement and cowering,where terrorist are concerned. After nearly a decade of speaking softly, Trump, in his role as Commander in Chief, is finally dusting off America's Big Stick … “Speak softly, but carry a big stick”, ever heard that one before? Well, thankfully, President Trump has. On Monday, President Trump stood in front of the rest of the free world, addressing his troops, and announced to them and to the nation at large that America, along with its allies in the Middle East, was finally going to get about the business of bringing the fight to the terrorists.

During his address, President Trump informed his troops that unlike the previous administration the military has his full backing and support. Moreover, from this point forward America is not going to be pre-scripting their play-by- play moves for all the world to see. Trump assured his troops that they will have adequate funding, training and the resources necessary to do their job in real-time. President Trump also announced that he is going to hold our allies in the Middle East (Saudia Arabia and Pakistan in particular, Jordan seems to have been holding up their end of the bargain) accountable for the commitments they have made toward the end of actually hunting down and eliminating the radical Islamist terrorists, hell-bent on unleashing their ideology of violence, intolerance, hatred and oppression upon the innocent and defenseless.

These terrorist have now been warned that the era of inaction, whereby governments have done little to actively combat terrorism at its source, is over.  We're through putting colorfully worded band-aids on the very real problem of radical extremist violence.  We will mourn tragedy, but moving forward we will take decisive offensive actions. The Free World is about to shine one heck of BIG light into the deep dark holes where violent Islamist extremist ideology seems to fester and breed, and soon there will be no more safe places for these terrorists-in-the-making to hide.  Perhaps the moral courage demonstrated by the President of the United States, in identifying the true evil that exists within our world today, and then putting a decisive plan of eradication into immediate action, will inspire other world leaders to finally take a definitive stand towards the end of tangibly removing the threat of terrorism from their own lands. Perhaps the leaders of the true faith of Islam will also find the moral courage to speak out against these violent extremists, using the wisdom and peaceful teachings to be found within the Quran in order to show misguided young men a better path in this life. In the face of true evil, President Donald Trump, has chosen to do something meaningful and I find, strangely enough, that his voice, his action gives me hope for this world of ours after all.