whatever the the causes of todays unrest across the globe ive got to say that the present position is scary beyond belief........
i for one have experienced terrorist attacks at a personal level on a number of occasions and the singular common denominator is that the none of the perpetrators have ever directly been punished.... and i was nearly killed through no fault of my own ... other than because i was regarded as the enemy...
i seriously hope that the end result would be for men and women the world over to live in peace and harmony without the killing and the bloodshed... but i have to be a realist.... it isnt gonna happen........ not without thousands more dying.
The sad fact is that there are powerful people out there who want war and theres no shortage of willing troops to fight their war for them... whilst they sit on their arses with the benefit of security around them.
We need to be strong, forceful and non-comprimising ............ otherwise we're gonna get a shock when things turn even worse than they already are....
OOOhhh pleeeeeze can we stop now? This is an emotive issue we're all discussing and lets face it none of us here are ever going to get to the bottom of all the why's and wherefores or agree with each other on all things. Can we not just agree to disagree on some things and leave it at that otherwise there will be people falling out all for no reason and what for? nothing! or at least nothing any of us can do anything about. Sad but true!
Love
FIRE xxxx
Come over to the GFZ room we're having fun in there!!!
Just one more comment for this evening before I depart for the Friday night entertainment……….
What was it you did Tania when you couldn’t get your operation in this country? Did you fly to another country and get it there?
Unfortunately people living a more moderate lifestyle (as you put it) in a collapsing economy do not have that luxury of choice.
It is worth thinking about what it really means giving up.
leaves some people making judgements in ignorance.
I know I said to stop, but actually I must agree with this from my own point of view. I'm one of those people. I never know the names of the people in power, who's fighting who unless it's on my doorstep so to speak or why they are doing it and I'm certainly not a history buff. It's not because I'm an airhead more because I don't buy the papers ((they depress the hell out of me and tell me lies) and I'm not an avid listener to the news (I do try to catch up at least once a day) my work tends to get in the way of TV and radio. So in the past I have been guilty of doing just what you said.
If most people here were open to hearing the views of others and learning things they perhaps did'nt know from others, threads like these would be a great place to be, but they always seem to descend into personal stuff because people are not open to other views or opinions and only want to get their own across.
So thats why I said what I did :cry:
Love FIRE xx (who has'nt a clue if that made sense or not!)
No one should take any of these comments personally - it is a healthy (IMHO) debate about things that, at the end of the day, we have little control over.
Politics will always divide people - and this thread highlights the fact. If we can't speak out here, where else can we? Surely no one expects MPs to be listening? Surely we should be able to voice our opinions, educated or not? Surely by reading others' opinions, we are more informed?
Some think the terrorists are wrong - some think they have a point - some think we should pretend none of it is happening and carry on enjoying our lives of opulence and luxury, outraged that terrorists seek to disrupt our holiday plans. (This is a general comment - not aimed at ANYONE). I wonder how many Iraqis or Afghans have the time/means/inclination to sit and chat on a swingers' site all day.
The first causality of war is the truth.
Terrorist or freedom fighter?.
Democracy is not perfect, but until something better comes along, I will suffer it.
Winston Churchill.
i am been dithering over whether to right in this or not... i know that some of you have low opinions of americans (that was just a flippant remark....no need to read into it anything, because there is no ulterior motive behind it)
the intelligent and the police are going to take flack whichever side you view it.. damned if they do or damn if they don't...
mohammed siddique khan was known to the intelligence services... did they think he was enough of a threat to bring him in and arrest him.. no...
the result....the 7/7 london bombings... I think that is what you would call an "intelligence failure"
they thought jean charles de menizes was a suicidal bomber.... the inteligence services failed to notice that he wasn't at various occasions between the time he left the house and the time he got the stockwell station.....
the result..... 1 innocent man dead..... again another "intelligence failure"
I was rather that if they were going to get in wrong... they get it wrong in the "forest gate" incident than either of the ones above... before the horse has bolted... if there is any evidence to prosectute the CPS will..
at the moment there are approx 60 prosectutuions going thru the uk judical system with regards to various terrorism acts at the moment... yes they are going to get some wrong, but remember that they are also getting some right..... and if it comes down to the old addage of better being safe that sorry, then I would rather bust in before... they try to clear up the messes after
if is as being reported some of this intelligence did come from pakistani intelligence and well as survailence of there own then i didn'y think they had any option but to go in....after all if they had sat on that and did nothing, could you imagine the amount flack they would be getting now..... if there is enough evidence to charge i am sure they will... if not they will be let go.....
sean (american and proud...I not voted for "G.W" twice!!!)
p.s the most interested element of all this for me.. are two things...
1) if certain people are being radicalised... the one place it hasn't really happened yet is in the main country targeted... the US..... i wonder why this would be?
2) are 2nd generation asian kids going thru the same phase of feeling "disenfranchised" as 2nd generation afro-carribean kids did in the 80's with the inner city riots?
p.p.s
With regards to Blair being on "holiday".... it is not like he is in the middle of nowhere where get is away from a phone or anything... if every other worker in the u.k gets 4 weeks annual leave why shouldn't he???? he has a family as well, some of them are young and i am sure he would like to spend time with them... would you deny him that right?????
firelizard, i understand your sympathies, and agree with many of your arguments, so no flaming here, ok? ;) by way of general reply, rather than to you specifically . . . .
first off, our past actions have definitely made us high on the list of targets. compare attacks on the U.S. and the U.K. with, say . . . attacks on France, then compare those countries positions re: the middle east / iraq / israel etc. seems a fairly onbvious connection!
i could argue that al-qaeda are the direct result of the west's support for the mujaheddin in afgfhanistan; the funding and arming of afghan warlords; the deployment of CIA / Special Forces operatives to help them set up their training camps, and show them how to fight a campaign of terrorism and insurgency against the USSR? i could argue that it's a bit rich to bomb the taliban out of afghanistan when we assisted their rise to power, and turned a big blind eye to heroin exports that decimated our council estates so long as they spent the money on arms to fight our own little proxy war for us. i could offer possible explanations for those who walk into tel aviv cafes at lunchtime with explosives under their shirts. and no, the war in lebanon, and the posturing about the iran issue ain't exactly helpful or constructive?
but . . . .
much as i understand how the naive come to be radicalised to the point of self-destruction, so long as it takes out as many innocent bystanders as possible, i know that the guys who sent them in there care nothing for "liberation struggles against the forces of occupation." they don't even really care about that whole shia versus sunni thing that's tearing iraq apart, and threatens to spill over to the whole region. all they care about is power and control, possibly with a touch of pathological hatred thrown in, but the kind of terror we are seeing these days is very different from IRA versus UK re: 1921 and partition, or FARC versus Columbian Death Squads, or even Tibet versus China.
the terror in iraq these days is mainly muslim versus muslim. not muslim versus the US / UK forces occupying them. we took the lid off a pressure cooker that already existed, and was kept quietly simmering so long as saddam was in power repressing and murdering them both indiscriminately, but our responsibility only goes that far. we made civil war probable, if not quite inevitable, but the ethnic and religious tensions that lead to mass executions aren't down to us. Moqtada al-Sadr is rubbing his hands and thanking his god that he now has the opportunity of absolute control over his patch of iraq, thanks to the toppling of saddam. he might want to see us gone, but he's damn glad we went i can tell you!
bin laden and his ilk? what exactly is they're row, cos they were hitting the west long before iraq, and they bore no love for saddam, as he bore no love for them, so it weren't gulf war one that kicked it all off? i think, the simple fact is, they had a taste of power in afghanistan, defeated the USSR, in their imagination, and think they can now defeat the one remaining superpower? that's their goal. nowt more. no moral high ground to cling to there? their war is every bit as economically and strategically motivated as ours. we're all playing the same game.
course, we're playing right into their hands when we use military options against terrorists, cos that's exactly what they want. it justifies them no end, and means we can hardly demand they drop their weapons, sit down, and thrash out political solutions when we're not exactly prepared to do that either? self-defeating and pointless all round, but hisbullah rocketting haifa has little to do with occupation, palestine, 1967, etc, just as bombs in baghdad markets have little to do with democracy versus islam, freedom versus fascism. power games all round.
neil x x x ;)
The intelligence service carry out alot of behind the scene work we never know about.
To only reason we are talking about current events is because it is high profile and affecting the travelling public.
Unless you have worked in the intelligence services/army it can be hard to understand how they work.
"Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted".
I'm watching this thread for ANY personal abuse. If you can't have an interesting debate about a contentious issue without resorting to personal comments then go back to the threads about favourite music! If it continues then Mod buttons will be fully deployed.
As I have said before, the site AUP applies to everyone - take your personal comments elsewhere..
*goes off wondering why.....*
but behind closed doors we talk to anyone given the chance. Hell we made most of them…..
when he comes in along with a lecture about how he can answer his own posts thank you very much :giggle:
