The Park51 Mosque Is a Win for Muslim Extremists

Rambling, non-poker posting time. Caution: This is a political issue.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, I'm sure you've come across the news that there are construction plans for a mosque in NYC, a couple blocks away from Ground Zero. Unfortunately for us all, this is very, very bad news. Before you left-wingers start saying I'm trampling the Constitution and the right wingers start saying "I told you so," let me explain why it isn't bad news for the reasons most people have been talking about lately.

I studied International Relations not too long ago, and we covered things like National Security and that little ol' problem of Muslim extremists. Pretty extensively. And I can say with almost absolute certainty that the Park51 mosque debate will increase the number of violent, Islamic extremists in the United States. That's right, I said the "debate" would. Let me walk you through how this happens, giving you a bit of history that the FBI and CIA have found out since 9/11.

Basic Recruitment in Armed Groups

So how do those guys recruit people to blow themselves up and kill innocent people in cruel acts of terrorism? By rallying the marginalized, downtrodden section of a society and giving it a "higher path" where a culture of murder and terrorism is embraced.

Society's marginalized people suffer. They begin to resent the majority because it spurns them. For the extremist looking for followers, this presents an opportunity. They show the downtrodden that the society those people live in is out to destroy their ideals, their culture, and their livelihood. They snatch them from their suffering and their aimless lives, shoving them how the cruelty of the world isn't really their fault, it's society's. They give them a renewed sense of purpose in life with the "higher path," and the recruits' newfound sense of pride, self-respect, and self-righteous anger will lead them to do whatever you want them to, up to and including butchering innocent people. It's a universal recipe, used throughout the world by warlords and armed groups everywhere.

Application to Radical Islam

The "higher path" in the Islamic extremists' case is a twisted version of Islam. It's simple for them to corrupt the message because the Quran is in such a high, pure, and perfect form of Arabic that literally NOBODY can perfectly translate it anymore. It is not too difficult for extremist imams to turn "Jihad for the defense of Islam" into "Jihad for murdering anyone for the promotion of OUR Islam" when they teach it to gullible people who can't read Allah's divine work for themselves.

The societal marginalization of Muslims came after 9/11.

As humans, people tend to be bigots when dangerous things happen. We fall into an "Us vs. Them" mindset because our brains like to make confrontation simple. It's the product of thousands of years of evolution and survival in a world where quick stereotypes helped mankind to survive. If something is big and has large teeth like what ate your friend last week, but isn't exactly the same as that other beast, it's better to assume that it's deadly and kill it or run away than it is to ponder the various possibilities in search of the truth while being eaten. So we all naturally stereotype to simplify our decision making processes.

The 9/11 attacks were an act of strategic genius by Osama bin Laden that used this human tendency against us. The resulting backlash against the Arab Muslim community after 9/11 was enormous because our attackers were Arabs and "did it in the name of Allah." Ding, the stereotype switch goes off in peoples' heads, and suddenly every Arab is subconsciously feared to be a Muslim terrorist.

You had old, conservative fogies trying to run down Muslim women to "save America," kids nicknaming or outright calling their Arab classmates "terrorists." It was not a good time to be an Arab in the Western world, particularly if you were Muslim. As a group, they became marginalized by society's predictable and misdirected hatred.

As became clear in the years since, Islamic, al-Qaeda-inspired militants made full use of this. Arab Muslims became a marginalized part of the Western world. As a result, militant recruitment into terrorist cells increased. Not in Arab, Muslim countries, but in developed, first world nations like the United States and the UK. What’s worse, these recruits have full access to any number of targets in their countries of residence. The terrorist plots in NYC and the terrorist cells popping up in London were the new breed of extremist; these terrorists were not foreign nationals formally tied to a vast organization plotting the downfall of the US. They were dangerous in a new way, being local residents who could come and go as they pleased, almost completely isolated and self-sufficient, separate from al-Qaeda. All of these cells were created within the span of a few years, something that was literally unprecedented in the history of Islamic extremism; all because of 9/11. Thankfully, the post-9/11 NYC and London plotters and the shoe and Christmas day bombers were incredibly inept and got caught thanks to the vigilance of ordinary citizens and the efforts of law enforcement, but it only takes one to slip through security, one lucky group flying under the radar to do incredible damage.

The 2004 bombings in Madrid, Spain show that in spectacular and tragic fashion. It was an attack planned, coordinated, and executed by Muslim extremists who were Spanish locals "inspired" by al-Qaeda through the internet. It's impossible to catch them all when they pop up on your home ground. What's even worse is that the cycle is a self-propagating, positive feedback loop. You carry out a terrorist attack, society recoils from Muslims, you get more converts to the cause. Repeat.

The Park51 Mosque debate is a cog in the wheel of that process.

Whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf realizes that or not is a matter of some debate (personally I think he's just misguided and self-righteously naive), but his decision to build the mosque and community center in an emotionally significant area has put the wheel in motion.

People react strongly to the news of the Muslim mosque. It's a polarizing piece of news that it's being built near Ground Zero. Either you're against it because you feel it's too soon, too close, insensitive and inflammatory, or you are for it, citing freedom of religion, its several-block distance from Ground Zero, and the need to uphold Constitutional protections for all. And of course, because it's a polarizing piece of work, the issue has gotten vast amounts of media coverage and has become an important debate in the public arena, spreading that polarizing, confrontational idea around the nation.

This is creating the same bigotry and backlash against Muslims that we saw post-9/11. We have conservative right wingers, the most strongly evolved stereotypers, going completely off the walls and protesting not just the "Ground Zero Mosque" but also other mosque projects around the country. There is national blowback against the Muslim community, and it's all over the news. Again.

No, we won't tolerate that community center and mosque here because it's insensitive, because Islam in general is clearly bad. Congratulations to us and our highly evolved, stereotype reasoning.

Recruitment season is on its way. It is now more likely than ever that there will be yet another "home grown" terrorist plot in the US. Maybe we will catch them. Maybe not.

Lost with a Straight Flush... Yay?

Darn you NL 25. This hand knocked me below my BR requirements for it again.

Idiot end of a straight flush. I'm in such disbelief that I lost with a straight flush, I'm almost... happy. Like I've seen something special, that only the guys who put in a ton of volume get to experience...

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 837736

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $28.05
Hero (UTG): $25.00
MP: $12.04
CO: $24.62
BTN: $100.27
SB: $35.01


Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG with 6 7

Hero raises to $0.75, 3 folds, SB calls $0.65, 1 fold
Flop: ($1.75) A 9 T (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $1.15, SB raises to $4, Hero calls $2.85

Turn: ($9.75) J (2 players)

SB bets $6, Hero calls $6

River: ($21.75) 8 (2 players)

SB bets $24.26 all in, Hero calls $14.25 all in

Poker Update: Up and down... and knockin' fools out!

The good news is I did it! I ground my bankroll up to $750 and moved up to NL 25 in short order.

The bad news is I hit a downswing and promptly lost 6 BIs in ~4,000 hands to knock me back to a measly $596 (hah, alright, so I'm still happy I've come so far). My confidence was pretty shaken. Although a good amount of it was unavoidable (I lost 2 buy-ins with 99 on a J92 rainbow flop... he had JJ), I was wondering if there were too few fish for my style. I rely on the stations paying me off with their whole stack to make a profit, and there just weren't enough of them willing to give me that. May be variance, may be not.

Either way, it's a habit that I've picked up on my path to continual poker improvement; I won't chalk it up to variance unless I actually start winning with the same game next time I try.

I took a bit of a break, went back to the very comfortable NL5 to grind up to $600 (I actually made it to $601!). Then I decided to move half my roll back over to PokerStars to try some tournaments. I've been eying the knockout tournaments lately and decided to try mass multitabling tournaments this Sunday, trying out both Stars and Full Tilt. I'm glad I did; I made another $23 on 20 games of assorted $1.75, $3.30, and $6.50 90 man knockouts spread out over both Stars and Full Tilt. Stars treated me much better, really. I only broke even on Full Tilt; all my profit came from Stars. The Stars structure is slower, and therefore has less variance, but it takes a good deal longer to finish a tournament... I'm on the fence as for which structure I like more.

On a related note, Rush Poker prepares you really, really well for some important aspects of mass multi-tabling tournaments. Solid fundamentals and quick decisions are all you really need to win at these low level stakes. The fish are plenty, and the bounties really bring out the crazy in people...

Also on a somewhat less related note, the inspirational true story of Boku87 gives me hope! This crazy robot (because really, what human can play that much?) took a $100 bankroll and turned it into $10000... all in 15 days, over about 7,000 sit n gos. How he fit in that much volume (50-tabling 500-600 games a day) boggles my mind...

Power Company FAIL

We take some things for granted in first world countries. Like working electricity. We've got that down, right? Right? Wait, what's that, power company? Your power lines are all precariously built by tall trees and a little seasonal storm completely screws up the power grid? And you let it get so screwed up that you're calling in teams from as far away as Ohio to help, and you STILL can't fix the problem in less than 3 days? What the hell, it went out last Sunday, and I still don't have power. I'm mooching off a friend's netbook at the moment. And I'm jealous my fiancee and her roommates have power. They live 3 blocks away. They had power restored the morning after the storm.

Rub it in, Pepco. Rub it in.

No lights, cell phone charging, refrigeration, cooking, or TV? I'm good to go. No internet? No poker?!? FML.

Addicted? Perhaps just a liiiiittle bit.

Poker update, lovely rakeback

Got $60 in rakeback for this week!

Although I'm still gnashing my teeth at fulltiltrakeback.com, because my balance said $97, not $60. And that's not including whatever I've played the last 3 days. They're frustrating me.

As far as hitting $750 on my FTP account, the rakeback brought me up to $400. I'm on track to get there by mid-August... although I'm not sure I'll be ready to move up by then. Why not, you ask? Well, because I haven't fully made the transition to NL 10 yet. Yup, I lost 5 buy ins and moved down as per my BRM guidelines (hooray discipline!), and then stacked donkeys at NL 5 to get back up to $315 (13 buyins, woot woot), and then I got rakeback and "cheated" with FTP's quick deposit bonus of $15 for a $10 deposit, adding the last $25 to get me to where I am now.

I love me some deposit bonuses. Thought briefly about making my goal $800 instead, but nah, we'll see how we are in another week.

Good luck at the tables!

Thorn's Big Mistakes #6

So I 4-table Rush Poker now, getting in around 1,000 hands an hour. Yup. 1 grand. That's like 14-16 tabling a normal internet table. Or playing 50+ hours at a live table. I squeeze that into one hour. Thank you FTP. Truly.

So how is that a big mistake? Well, it isn't, really. But it's led to an entirely new mistake that I not only didn't have before, but also can't just look at and quick fix it like my earlier leaks.

The mistake: Mistyping bet amounts. Going so fast, I just type numbers into my numpad and hit enter. Once, that led me to lose about 4/5 a buy-in more than I should have, essentially going all in instead of just betting pot in a bet/fold situation. That was my first encounter with the issue, and it made me die a little inside. Since then, I've mistyped a few bet amounts, betting $2 instead of $1, etc. Thankfully, most of the times it didn't matter, villains folded or I minraised preflop instead of 3x BB.

Heck, it even probably made me money once. I was dealt everyone's favorite aces in MP, I open with a standard 3x BB bet, half-stacked button calls, 100BB stack 3x 3-bets me from the BB, and I go to 2.5x 4-bet him... only to end up sticking my whole 180 BB stack in the middle due to a typing error. Amazingly, by the grace of the poker donkey spirit, the button calls. Even more amazingly, the BB tanks for a while, and then HE calls! They show 77 and QQ, respectively, the BB says he put me on AK since I shoved so hard, I dodge the 4 combined outs, and it's suddenly Christmas in July.

Still, I'd rather be able to control my bet sizing a bit better.

Massive Update: The winning life?! + Poker goals

Disclaimer: LONG post! It more resembles a Hoyazo lifestream thesis than my usual posts. You've been warned!

I know I haven't updated in a while. No, I'm not dead, I didn't get crushed by the 4k water bill (still not resolved, btw, don't wanna talk about it), and I haven't lost my liferoll to poker.

Quite the opposite, actually. As the sharper ones among you may have gathered from the title, I've been running incredibly well at the poker tables. So well, in fact, that I have a very hard time believing it's true. Just a month ago I was almost positive I was just a marginal tournament winner and a cash game loser. The numbers since then are pointing to the possibility that all my hard studying and review might be showing really, really good results.

My bankroll on FTP a month ago was around $60. It's now $300, and I'll be getting $51+ in rakeback soon. How? Well, it started when Waffles posted about superturbo sngs. I tried them, ground out a few hundred of them, and rolled myself up all the way to $145. Woot, hooray for the run good!

And then, just a week ago, I decided to hit the Rush Poker tables again in preparation for Rush week. This is when the fireworks went off. I made a few significant changes to my cash game, and suddenly shot up 12 buy ins at 10NL! Sadly, that was over maybe 5k hands (hardly a good sample size), and another few thousand hands later, I lost 10 of those buyins, putting my roll at $156. So I studied my game again, closed a few big leaks that I noticed, and moved on down to 5NL (hooray good bankroll management!). I've played somewhere from 15k-20k hands at 5NL since then and got myself up the 19.5 buy-ins to $250, accumulating $50 in rakeback along the way (Rush Poker spits out rake and rakeback like a BP oil well!).

Then yesterday I moved up to my previous nemesis, 10NL Rush Poker, and promptly lost 3.5 buy ins. But lo and behold! I felt I was just running bad, and gave myself another 1.6 buyins to lose before moving back down, and just 20 minutes ago I finished grinding my way to finally breaking $300.

Rakeback's gonna be enormous o.O (Can't tell, www.fulltiltrakeback.com doesn't update very often, maybe every 3 days. So meh, no link for them).

And I've set an ambitious poker goal! I want to grind my bankroll up to $750 by mid-August, and move up yet again to NL25 Rush Poker. I know even the 20-30k hands I've played recently are most likely largely due in part to running really, really well and FTP's Rush Week, which has probably brought all the donks out to play. I've got like a 8-10 pt/bb win rate, not certain because my PT3 trial ran out, which is ridiculous since I was a losing player a month ago. Still, I figure I'm playing really well and I'm probably at least a 5 pt/bb winner at these tables that I've been crushing.

I'll try and post goals and progress reports more to keep me motivated. Oh yeah, and I 4-table the Rush. Boo yah. The sky's the limit, and I'm gonna run with this as far as I can.

Best. Hobby. Ever.

May the run good be with you!