Make a counter offer!
One more attack and 100,000 Muslims get selectively eliminated.
Home | Make a counter offer!
One more attack and 100,000 Muslims get selectively eliminated.
Or lets invite him for some negotiations. Your are all invited, too. Then can we shoot... er... discuss the terms of peace.Originally posted by L@mplighterM
Make a counter offer!
Great! I bet he'll set up a booth and I can get autographed copies of his videos and soundtracks.Originally posted by Roland
Or lets invite him for some negotiations. Your are all invited, too. Then can we shoot... er... discuss the terms of peace.
That takes the biscuitThe only thing you can do to stop terrorism is find an equitable and lasting peace in the M/E. Unfortunately, this is not what Mr Bush is aiming at.
Just who attacked who ???......... both 1948 and 9/11 !!
"they" do not want peace .... they want us in the sea.
If Hamas's fantacy of a Jew free M/E came true tomorrow ... they would then come after you my friend.
Osama is clever... its the old divide and conquer ploy.
"They want peace".Originally posted by Ophra
"they" do not want peace .... they want us in the sea.
As for the minority who does want to see israel destroyed, you have to live with them and make sure they won't prevail. You can't "kill them all".
they want us "in the sea"
And you? Where do you want the palestinians?
Haven't we got some people here who want to see them "in the sky" or wherever ?
In Palestine. Jordan is Palestine.Originally posted by Olivier
And you? Where do you want the palestinians?
"That the Muslims take their religion seriously and literally appears beyond the grasp of European comprehension."Originally posted by Olivier
"They want peace".
- The ethos of Islam
"They want peace".
C'mon Oliver!
I am neither a Jew, or an Israeli or a religious person but am a Canadian, from a country with a similar political landscape as your own, a protestant who has never been too church and one who is socially quite liberal in my views.
And even I can very clearly see why the Palestinians do not deserve a state of their own and also adamantly understand who attacked who first.
Neither side is 100% innocent or pure, and I understand this but I am afraid you have naively chosen to side with the morally corrupt equation of the two, I am afraid.
I backed Israel long before 911 and I understand some might be seen as doing so today in an effort to simply rid the world of the Bin Ladens first, and then the Yassins secondly but not this chick.
I consider much of the Islamic problems today a result of the world NOT taking Israel's problems seriously decades ago.
Had we all done what was right decades ago, perhaps neither Israel nor the rest of the world would be held hostage today by these fanatics.
Very SIMPLY put today, regardless of who you believe is morally right and/or who is wrong, your choice to back the Palestinians today is akin to backing any Islamic terrorist state.
You should sit back, take it easy and read through some of the better posters on this board who offer compelling arguments against the viewpoints such as yourself.
But truly read through and absorb them properly, instead of just looking to post little remarks to those comments you may not like.
I am not sure if it was you that I saw in an earlier thread ask for Americans to speak out in this forum, the ones you believe share the same views as many American newspapers?
Some might disagree with me and I am sorry if I do offend anyone that might be reading this, who is a reporter today but I and many others hold very few reporters and their respective newspapers today, in high regard.
I often find that the papers today are either a day or two late in their stories and are often just recycled bias over and over and over.
Many of the reporters that do attempt to write articles concerning Israel, haven't got the basic facts right in many of their articles and only serve to show how ignorant many of them are.
I personally find this forum to be very informative and have learned a lot but even so I still have to pass over the odd poster here and there because I may not agree with them or consider their views a bit too radical and believe they hurt, more than they help, but if you do open your eyes, you may find that your initial stance may not be altogether correct.
One doesn't have to be Jewish or Israeli to see and understand quite clearly what the Israelis are up against with the Palestinians today.
I heard that announcement. Did anyone else hear the beat track behind Osama? It sounded like the Neptunes or maybe N*E*R*D.
Sorry but I dont have time right now to read through all of the posts in this thread but I would like to have it clarified if this was simply a joke, OR was there in fact such music as N.E.R.D in the background yesterday of the Bin Laden tape please?
Please tell me that was simply a joke, yes?
N.E.R.D wasnt in the background, correct?
It sounded like that. Life steals from art borrowing from life, I guess. As Jon Stewart said "Reality is officially like reality television."
I don't think that even if you got to know that, it would all of a sudden give you a proper way to peace.Originally posted by Kev
And even I can very clearly see why the Palestinians do not deserve a state of their own and also adamantly understand who attacked who first.
You bet they are not 100% innocent or pure!Originally posted by Kev
Neither side is 100% innocent or pure, and I understand this but I am afraid you have naively chosen to side with the morally corrupt equation of the two, I am afraid.
I do not "choose side" as you say. The fact that I am persuaded israel should stop colonization doesn't mean I want her destruction. Quite the contrary actually. I think ongoing colonization means war and terrorism for us all.
I have seen several times here the assumption that it's a win-loose situation and you necessarily have to make someone loose. Is there something as a win-win situation sometimes for you?
for sure there have been wrong turns on several occasions by both parties. You can't change history. I think Bush took a hell of a wrong turn recently.Originally posted by Kev
Had we all done what was right decades ago, perhaps neither Israel nor the rest of the world would be held hostage today by these fanatics.
name some, I'll do. Don't expect me to engage in sophisticated talks about this or that or read pages and pages about who did what to whom, but i'll do. Provided it leads to some credible peace plan.Originally posted by Kev
read through some of the better posters on this board who offer compelling arguments against the viewpoints such as yourself.
Yes could be me, I've been reading US newspapers and opinion columns and I find them very very different from what you read here.Originally posted by Kev
I am not sure if it was you that I saw in an earlier thread ask for Americans to speak out in this forum, the ones you believe share the same views as many American newspapers?
name some, we'll compare our lists!Originally posted by Kev
I still have to pass over the odd poster here and there because I may not agree with them or consider their views a bit too radical
I wonder what you call 'odd'. Some guys here are just monsters
I believe these guys are part of the problem, not of the solution.Originally posted by Kev believe they hurt, more than they help
Posted by Olivier:
I think Bush took a hell of a wrong turn recently.
I think Bush took the hell of a right approach with the war on Iraq. On the other thread I've asked you of how you would personally resolve the issue of Mid East terrorism.
Suppose you were Bush what would you do given all the resources (political/military/other) of the United States. Lets discuss exactly that. Without any malice I really want to hear your opinion on the matter.
http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA4D7.htm
Made in the West?
by Josie Appleton
After the recent arrest of nine young British Asian men suspected of plotting a terrorist bombing, worries have been raised about the issue of home-grown extremism.
As one counter-terrorist official told the Guardian, 'It is one thing having foreigners doing things against us, but to have our own people - born and bred and raised in the UK - allegedly engaged in preparing a terrorist act is pretty shocking' (1). The fact that they had not, at this stage, been charged, never mind found guilty, was no barrier to the outpouring of concern. Newspapers fretted about the 'enemy within', noting that these were ordinary young suburban men, who hailed from places such as Ilford, Luton, Slough and Reading. They were described as 'regular English guys' who 'lived with their mums' and frequented their local pizza parlour - one had even captained the under-18 Surrey cricket team (2).
As evidence of the terrorist time-bomb, we've been shown images of young British Muslims burning the Union Jack outside the Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, to shouts of 'UK, you will pay, bin Laden on his way' (3). Numerous crackdowns have been proposed. The head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Iqbal Sacranie, sent a letter to UK mosques, calling for 'the utmost vigilance against any mischievous or criminal elements…provoking any unlawful activity' (4). Apparently there are plans to raise MI5's budget by 50 per cent to pay for 1000 new agents, many of whom will infiltrate British radical Islamic groups (5). The Home Office, meanwhile, is working on the extradition of a number of radical Islamic clerics, and plans an immigration clampdown on those it describes as rural imans trying to enter Britain, who do not speak English and 'have little formal education about the Koran'.
This concern about the terrorist threat is vastly overblown. There aren't hundreds of Muslims trying to blow up Big Ben: of the 548 people arrested under the Terrorism Act since 9/11, 91 have been charged, mostly with minor offences, with only 15 of these leading to convictions (6). Six of the nine British Muslims who were arrested for a terrorist bomb plot have now been charged - although the evidence against them has yet to be tested in court - and three were released after questioning (7).
The flag-burning and aggressive threats are just postures struck for the TV cameras, rather than statements of intent. Although they are headlined as aggressive extremists, Omar Sheikh Bakri Mohammed's al-Muhajiroun are just big mouths who tell scary stories to the media. At the demonstration outside the Finsbury Park mosque, 'Captain Hook' Abu Hamza and his followers raged against America, while a counter demo by the National Front burnt pictures of Osama bin Laden (8).
Yet there is a real issue here. Western towns and cities do seem to be particularly fertile ground for nurturing the kind of nihilistic terrorism that we saw on 9/11. A number of the hijackers, and the plot leader Mohammed Atta, met while students in Hamburg, Germany. Before he went to Germany, Atta had been involved in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which opposed the government and aimed to build an Islamic state in the country. It appears that it was in Hamburg, rather than Cairo, that Atta developed a more terrifying, anti-Western brand of terrorism. Meanwhile, the 'twentieth hijacker', Zacarias Moussaoui, was a French-born Muslim who fell in with fundamentalists at a mosque in Brixton, London; and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the key planners of the 9/11 attacks, studied at university in North Carolina (9). Richard Reid, the 'shoe-bomber' who tried to blow up a plane over the Atlantic, was brought up in Bromley, south-east London, and also met fundamentalists at the Brixton mosque.
Al-Qaeda is often seen as hailing from the mountains of Afghanistan, but many of those who carried out al-Qaeda-style attacks in the 1990s had Western connections. The World Trade Centre bomb of 1993 was organised by a 25-year-old Pakistani, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who went to college in the Welsh city of Swansea - and he found his volunteers for the job in a mosque in Brooklyn, New York (10). Meanwhile, Ahmed Ressam, the 33-year-old Algerian who was caught trying to plant a bomb at Los Angeles international airport in 1999, had left Algeria when he was 25 to escape the rising violence caused by radical Islamists. He drifted around the ex-pat community in France for a while, then moved to Canada - and it was in a Canadian mosque that he became attracted to Islamic extremism. A group arrested for planning an attack on the US embassy in Paris included an Algerian-born man, who had lived in France and married a French woman before moving to Leicester, UK; and a Tunisian who had converted to radical Islam in Belgium (11).
This evidence has often been passed over, perhaps because it raises uncomfortable questions for the West. There has been a tendency to externalise terrorism, to see it as an assault by enemies from foreign lands - after all, it is much easier to bomb Afghanistan for 'harbouring terrorists' than Brooklyn or Hamburg. While the issue has been brought to attention in Europe, Americans still seem to want to believe that it doesn't affect them. A recent article in the Washington Post discussed home-grown fundamentalism as a European problem, saying that while 'Europe is on alert at home', 'America is at war abroad': 'Muslim communities in the United States are not seen as the breeding grounds for Islamic extremism.' (12)
That some individuals are turning to fundamentalism in the West points to a malaise at the heart of our societies. This terrorism can't be blamed on the peculiarities of Islam or particular ethnic groups - on 'foreign elements' brought in from outside. Instead, it suggests a failure of mainstream institutions to cohere society and provide individuals with a sense of identity. These issues affect everybody, rather than only immigrants. Across the board we see a growing atomisation, confusion about personal identity and a cynicism about public life.
When individuals are more isolated, they often find change and development disorientating, rather than exciting. Western cities that in the past would have seemed exciting and ripe with opportunities may today just inspire unease. There is a tendency for individuals to kick against society, and lash out against change - something that we see in anti-globalisation protests' brand of anti-modern rejectionism as much as in the terrorism of 9/11.
It is difficult to imagine the globalised, nihilistic mentality of a Mohammed Atta developing in a Pashtun village or Palestinian refugee camp, communities which tend to be more preoccupied with local struggles over power and religion. In Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, Jason Burke insists on the distinction between Islamic movements such as the Taliban, and al-Qaeda-style groups. While the Taliban had an incredibly narrow worldview, focused on the intricacies of religious behaviour and deeply rooted in rural Pashtun tradition, al-Qaeda's attacks against Western interests tend to be carried out by worldly freelancers. Operatives' detachment from traditional Islamic communities is almost a precondition for their terrorism: rather than building an Islamic society, they are lashing out at symbols of the West, wherever in the world they might find them.
For all the panic about Britain's home-grown extremists, the depth of the problem is rarely acknowledged. Extremists are overblown as a security threat, but the issue is often seen as one of fanatic individuals, who can be controlled by encouraging Muslim communities to inform, or employing more undercover agents. Instead, cases of Western-bred extremists are symptomatic of deeper, and more troubling, problems in our society, which affect us all. Merely reining in the hotheads will leave the roots of the question untouched.
Read on:
spiked-issue: War on Terror
Creating the enemy, by Brendan O'Neill
(1) Arrests point to radical new threat, 1 April 2004
(2) 'Our 3 boys are not fanatics', Mirror, 31 March 2004
(3) The Times, 3 April 2004
(4) Letter to mosques and Muslim leaders, Guardian, 31 March 2004
(5) In Europe, The Enemy Within, 26 February 2004
(6) Cited on Newsnight, BBC 2, 31 March 2004
(7) 'Terror' five remanded in custody, BBC, 10 April 2004
(8) HATE V HATE, Mirror, 10 April 2004
(9) Al-Qaeda: Casting a shadow of terror, Jason Burke, IB Tauris, 2003, p103
(10) Al-Qaeda: Casting a shadow of terror, Jason Burke, IB Tauris, 2003, p98; 93
(11) Al-Qaeda: Casting a shadow of terror, Jason Burke, IB Tauris, 2003, p199
(12) In Europe, The Enemy Within, 26 February 2004
By the way anyone who can read Russian check this out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/tal...00/3629215.stm
I disagree, and retreat offended.Originally posted by Oh Jerusalem
In Palestine. Jordan is Palestine.
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