Out of the box

From time to time I have to step outside of the Roanoke-area mindset, and look on a larger scale. Worldwide.

We occasionally need to be reminded that Amphitheaters, Stadiums, and parking issues are only a small trivial annoyance in life.

After 9/11, the London Bombings, Madrid, and any number of smaller terrorist attacks and "near-misses," I found this article over at The Daily Mail out of London. It's one mans story of being your worst nightmare. A radical terrorist who believed in what he was doing.

It begins: "When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us."

You can read the rest here.

Eventually, and I'm sure if I was as widely read as some bloggers I'd get a ton of hate mail about this, you folks out there who try to blame Bush and try to infuse politics into the conversation might just realize that it's not politics. Not even close to being about politics.

It's about religion, theology and theocracy, and fear. And that's fear on both sides, thank you.

Anyway - it's a fascinating article - and much more important than a $2 parking fee, Darlene's latest hair cut, or playing "Where's Nelson?"

And lest you think we are sheltered from the rest of the world here in lil' ol' Noke..

A "Terrorism Expert" yesterday on Your World with Neil Cavuto was talking about how you expect attacks on the larger cities, the larger airports. But it's when you are not looking (and he said this specifically) that the smaller places like Roanoke, Virginia get hit - then we all have a problem.

Now why would he single us out like that? Makes you think.