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| Five Muslim Soldiers Arrested at Fort Jackson in South Carolina |
| 2010-02-19 |
| CBN News has learned exclusively that five Muslim soldiers at Fort Jackson in South Carolina were arrested just before Christmas. It is unclear whether the men are still in custody. The five were part of the Arabic Translation program at the base. Patrick Jones, the Deputy Public Affairs Officer for Fort Jackson, confirmed for CBN News yesterday afternoon that an investigation was ongoing . Prior to this posting, CBN News learned that these details were also confirmed by a government official with knowlegde of the investigation. The men are suspected of trying to poison the food supply at Fort Jackson. A source with intimate knowledge of the investigation, which is ongoing, told CBN News investigators suspect the "Fort Jackson Five" may have been in contact with the group of five Washington, DC area Muslims that traveled to Pakistan to wage jihad against U.S. troops in December. That group was arrested by Pakistani authorities, also just before Christmas. Coming as it does on the heels of November's Fort Hood jihadist massacre, this news could have major implications. Stay tuned to this blog for more details. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #15 the language is fundamentally poetic in nature compared to most European langauges. It evokes rather than denotes and to evoke meaning requires that the hearer have a substantial shared frame of reference That sounds like a Star Trek TNG episode -- the one where the aliens only spoke in metaphors that referred to their epic poems. (Always wondered how in the heck such folks could could be specific enough to build a spacecraft and travel the galaxy. Kind of explains the Arabs, though...) Darmok And Jalad At Tanagra. Mafia, at Rantburg. The things I learn when the walls fell. |
| Posted by: Mizzou Mafia 2010-02-19 18:16 |
| #14 "The Jackson Five". Gosh how I long for the old days... |
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| #13 Its not as if we are using known Al Queda folks. It is more like getting Austrians to teach German. Nope. Eisenhower and the main designer of the Mustang were of German ascent. In WWI a soldier who had been approved for the Medal of Honor revealed his real name: not Smith but Schmidt. But here we are talking of peole who share at least part of Al Quaida's ideology. Say that it was like admitting Moderate Nazis in the Armed Forces. |
| Posted by: JFM 2010-02-19 14:01 |
| #12 The problem with statistical NLP is always the training corpus, SteveS .... |
| Posted by: lotp 2010-02-19 11:56 |
| #11 the language is fundamentally poetic in nature compared to most European langauges. It evokes rather than denotes and to evoke meaning requires that the hearer have a substantial shared frame of reference That sounds like a Star Trek TNG episode -- the one where the aliens only spoke in metaphors that referred to their epic poems. (Always wondered how in the heck such folks could could be specific enough to build a spacecraft and travel the galaxy. Kind of explains the Arabs, though...) |
| Posted by: Gabby 2010-02-19 11:49 |
| #10 Fascinating, lotp! I recently did some work on automated Arabic to English translation using NLP techniques and Markov chains. I'm not sure if the program was working or not because everything came out as "Kill the Jews!" |
| Posted by: SteveS 2010-02-19 11:38 |
| #9 IIUC one issue with training Arabic translators is that the language is fundamentally poetic in nature compared to most European langauges. It evokes rather than denotes and to evoke meaning requires that the hearer have a substantial shared frame of reference. There are a relatively small number of 3 consonant word stems from which the vocabulary is built up. Word meanings build on one another through a lot of metaphor and indirect reference. This includes indirect evocation of books, famous speeches and themes from music etc. So to get at what a Friday preacher is really communicating, say, or a jihadi website, requires more than the ability to literally translate words and grammar in a linear fashion. It requires a fair degree of cultural immersion. There's also the problem of many dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible, vs. standard arabic which most educated speakers can use - but don't need to use if they want their meaning to be harder to discern by outsiders. Much bigger problem than training, say, Russian translators even though Russian grammar and word forms are very complex compared to English. |
| Posted by: lotp 2010-02-19 11:19 |
| #8 JFM, I see your point but the Nazi connection is overdone. Its not as if we are using known Al Queda folks. It is more like getting Austrians to teach German. No idea if they are Nazi's or not. No idea if they support their fellow Austrian in his World Domination plans or not. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-02-19 11:08 |
| #7 I keep wondering how long it would have taken to train non-Muslim, native-born translators of Arabic that wouldn't be such security risks. There are plenty of Arab Christians who can teach good Arabic and wouldn't be security risks. They cannot teach the dos and dont's in company of Muslims but there are retired diplomats or CIA people who can. So no need to hire Muslims like having Nazis teach German during WWII hanging around. |
| Posted by: JFM 2010-02-19 10:58 |
| #6 I keep wondering how long it would have taken to train non-Muslim, native-born translators of Arabic that wouldn't be such security risks. Apparently the USA is bent upon the insecure route. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-02-19 09:45 |
| #5 As an aside, post commanders can be much like enraged grizzly bears when they feel their post is threatened, and a previous assignment for the current post commander was as commander, 2 ACR. Cav types can get right testy when teased or annoyed. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-02-19 09:43 |
| #4 Yup. The question is whether it's from a real fire or if someone lit a crumpled paper and held it up near the fire alarm. |
| Posted by: lotp 2010-02-19 09:38 |
| #3 Difficult to say what is taking place at Jackson. A drill sergeant in a training brigade would probably be the one to ask to get the straight skinny. Definately appears to be some smoke in the Teepee. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-02-19 09:18 |
| #2 I went to BCT there. |
| Posted by: GirlThursday 2010-02-19 09:14 |
| #1 Fox news |
| Posted by: tipper 2010-02-19 08:49 |