OT: Butch

[Guest guest]

Seems silly to just say stay safe.....but stay safe:)

Gea

 

 

, Butch Owen <butchbsi@s...>

wrote:

> Long way .. mebbe 250 miles. But that blast did affect some of my

> Turkish-Jewish friends. Its a very large but close knit community;

> throughout the country.

[Guest guest]

Hey Smilin' Effie,

 

> Yo Butch:

> How far are you from Istanbul?

 

Long way .. mebbe 250 miles. But that blast did affect some of my

Turkish-Jewish friends. Its a very large but close knit community;

throughout the country.

 

> Am very concerned about your safety over there!!

 

Thanks much .. sometimes I am too. ;-p

 

> Hope you are in a VERY safe part of Turkey.

 

I'm not sure there is a VERY safe place anymore. The Islamic and the

Marxist-Leninist terrorists seem to be out and about in all the European

countries now. Best one can do is to avoid being a soft target .. make

them work hard and they will probably choose someone else. Even that is

not sure fire as folks can be just plain unlucky and become targets of

opportunity by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

Overseas we must be aware of our surroundings, try to avoid patterns of

behavior, try to vary routes to and from work (which creates hassles for

bad guy planners as it forces them to take you down leaving/exiting your

home or work place. They don't like that cause it makes them vulnerable

while they are waiting for you) IF one is aware of their surroundings ..

and finally, cross our fingers and hope for the best. ;-)

 

One thing is for sure .. the assholes who hit the synagogues in Istanbul

were not really striking out at Jews as much as they were at Turkey. We

have a very large Jewish population here .. have had since the 1600s as

the Ottoman Empire opened their arms to Jews during the Inquisition and

later, during WWII, many Turkish diplomats put themselves in harm's way

by issuing false citizenship documents to Jews throughout Europe so they

could escape to Turkey. We have many prominent Turkish-Jewish business

persons here and our last Minister of State, Ismail Cem, is Jewish.

 

The Arabs have always hated the Turks .. one reason was because the

Ottoman Empire controlled them for a long time .. another is that due to

the efforts of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (check the upper left hand corner

of http://www.ataturk.com/ ) Turkey is the ONLY secular, democratic

country in the world with a predominantly Moslem population, and finally

because Turkey does accept Jewish-Turks as equal members of society and

Jewish-Turks hold responsible positions throughout the country.

 

Finally .. the assholes who perpetrated this dishonorable act are NOT

religious people .. they can't be. But they call themselves Moslems.

The so-called human rights advocates criticize American law enforcement

agencies for " profiling " Moslems within certain age groups .. but its

not Irishmen or Kenyans or Mexicans or little old ladies who are the

prime terrorists of the world now. And its not our fault that a small

handfull of assholes has placed an entire group of innocent Moslems

under suspicion.

 

As we all learned from 11 September, there are no safe places if one

wants to get at us .. more reason why we (the world) should/must remain

united and relentless in pursuit of such criminals to totally eliminate

the scourge of terrorism .. and change the attitudes of those nations

that support it.

 

> Do take care cuz I care.

 

Thankee m'am for the kind words and the concern. :-) Like ol' Johnny

Cash said " I keep my eyes wide open all the time. "

 

> Blessings and love,

> Effie

 

And to you .. and keep smiling. :-) Butch