Existing Users: Because of an update to the forum software you will need to reset your password. Please use the "Forgot?" link on the sign in form to do so. If that doesn't work, send me an email at feedback@forzaminardi.com and I'll sort you out!
Just made it out of London in time
Comments
1. Survive the current crisis. Not easy for those closest to the tragedy.
2. Find out who did it.. Be absolutely sure because if you go after the wrong people, the real culprits remain free to attack again.
3. Catch and prosecute the culprits using civilised and lawful means.
4. Stop fomenting more terrorism or this will never end.
The best that Bush and his supporters can do is watch the Brits and try, please TRY, to learn. Londonners have shown, bless 'em, that they actually know and understand more about this than the average American.
If I hear Bush or Rice talk about RESOLVE once more, I'll scream. People already feel strongly enough about protecting their freedom, ...don't doubt that, ... but don't be so stupid as to "stay" the wrong course. Bush's course is taking the world to new heights of terrorism, not solving the problem. Bush's slogans about Ts hating freedom misrepresent the underlying problem. Ts hate occupation, arrogance, and others assumed superiority more than freedom or American values.
Now it's up to us. I'm so glad not to live in the capital:o
We've had our heads up Israels you know what for so long that to even ask the slightest moderation in Israels position is seen as anti-Semitic. This needs to change and we need to actually be the honest broker we claim to be.
We do need to stem the tide of their recruits - some of what you and Spin and Facty say HAS merit.
HOWEVER, who do you talk to? Who represents this bunch? Thats right the convert or die crowd. The push the Israeils into the sea crowd. The death to Israeil crowd.
Plus, IF you did cut a deal with them to stop killing innocent people by trading israeil and lining their pockets with money what would be their next demand.
No. If these people REALLYT believe that their religion is one of peace then they must throw the radicals in their midst out and make the stand that what the nut jobs stand for is not what they stand for.
I think islam needs to have a reformation - all of the other big religions have had one. You don't see the Pope putting an Army together, you don't see jews stoning adulterers do you. But you still see the Jihad crowd going great guns.
It's a two pronged approach, punishment for those who have hit us - f'ed that one up already- while at the same time instituting policies designed to help create a middle class with a stake in good relations with the West, as yet not even discussed on this side.
The tragedy of Iraq is that it squandered the opportunity to have any honest debate about what really needs to happen.
Islamic reformation is needed but WILL NOT take place as long as the means to twist the religion are so plentiful. It's not going to happen as a response to American intimidation, quite the opposite.
Who is going to sort that balance out?
Also, name the Islamic nations that REALLY want a stable capitalist or at least market economy middle class. This is a serious question - I really don't think Syria wants a middle class that no longer can be riled up because they now had cable tv and netflix.
Still need an answer on the Israel question. Seems to me that with the exception of Egypt (mainly the govt paolicy not the people) that the Arab world wants Israel GONE and the people dispersed and or dead.
Who is going to broker THAT deal?
A relatively prosperous middle class is an absolute prerequiste for stable, elected government with orderly power transfers. We should do all we can on our end to bring this about.
Israel does need to be sorted out, and the ultra hardline on the face of it positions of Arab nations have more to do with mollifying the extremists in their midsts. Remember what happened to Rabin, Sadat, and Michael Collins? All killed by their own for compromising. What is neccesary is that when the opportunity comes less than total victory is accepted as a start. I only hope the next Pal. Authority leader and/or Hamas leader (fat chance after Sharon kills them off one by one) will have the backbone to cast the die. Arafat had the chance and declined. Pretty tough to condemn him for not signing his own death warrant but what had his life been building towards? At the moment of truth the emperor had no clothes.
[Edited on 9/7/2005 by dst]
If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 8, 2005
Yesterday's bombings in downtown London are profoundly disturbing. In part, that is because a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country. In part, it's because one assault may have involved a suicide bomber, bringing this terrible jihadist weapon into the heart of a major Western capital. That would be deeply troubling because open societies depend on trust - on trusting that the person sitting next to you on the bus or subway is not wearing dynamite.
The attacks are also deeply disturbing because when jihadist bombers take their madness into the heart of our open societies, our societies are never again quite as open. Indeed, we all just lost a little freedom yesterday.
But maybe the most important aspect of the London bombings is this: When jihadist-style bombings happen in Riyadh, that is a Muslim-Muslim problem. That is a police problem for Saudi Arabia. But when Al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London Underground, that becomes a civilizational problem. Every Muslim living in a Western society suddenly becomes a suspect, becomes a potential walking bomb. And when that happens, it means Western countries are going to be tempted to crack down even harder on their own Muslim populations.
That, too, is deeply troubling. The more Western societies - particularly the big European societies, which have much larger Muslim populations than America - look on their own Muslims with suspicion, the more internal tensions this creates, and the more alienated their already alienated Muslim youth become. This is exactly what Osama bin Laden dreamed of with 9/11: to create a great gulf between the Muslim world and the globalizing West.
So this is a critical moment. We must do all we can to limit the civilizational fallout from this bombing. But this is not going to be easy. Why? Because unlike after 9/11, there is no obvious, easy target to retaliate against for bombings like those in London. There are no obvious terrorist headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan that we can hit with cruise missiles. The Al Qaeda threat has metastasized and become franchised. It is no longer vertical, something that we can punch in the face. It is now horizontal, flat and widely distributed, operating through the Internet and tiny cells.
Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.
And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.
What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough.
The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.
Some Muslim leaders have taken up this challenge. This past week in Jordan, King Abdullah II hosted an impressive conference in Amman for moderate Muslim thinkers and clerics who want to take back their faith from those who have tried to hijack it. But this has to go further and wider.
The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.
Emmet, you have captured part of the problem here in that statement/question.
It's very American to say:
Send in your leader, we'll talk to him!
Terrorists and the movements they spring from, don't necessarily follow national or even organised, as we understand it, structures.
Do deal with the problem, you have to recognise the two groups DST mentioned:-
1. Those who are already terrorists. Take them out as legally as possible.
2. Those who might become terrorists:
This is the really big problem still being ignored by Bush.
Here we have potentially millions, even though they are a minority of the 1.2 billion Muslim world.
Bush has recognised that he must treat Muslims, as any other major religion of large group with respect. But practising that where every little negative action screams louder than all the good work is dificult. Bush has to do more to eliminate the potential for abuse.
Then there is the really big question of America demonstrating its practice of democracy and freedom.
* jailing a journalist for safeguarding a source,
* eliminating dissident groiups from Presidential meetings,
* clearing the streeets of demonstrators whenever the President is out and about
* lacking resolve to eliminate torure,
* lacking resolve to ensure fairness in elections in America
* lacking respect for the UN, at least as an Institution, if not its decisions and record
* lacking respect for Congress and its Constitutional role
* lacking a fair and objective approach to ME issues
* imposing its own religious views on others
* thumbing its nose at world and scientfic opinion and fact on world environmental concerns, etc. etc.
While these and other deficiencies continue in the US, the future terrorists margin will grow.
That's what so scary, and what needs RESOLVE to change.
Sorry I haven't written more lately but I've been pretty busy building infrastructure, addressing greenhouse gas issues, and dealing with terrorist threats. Theer's a lot of work to do.
I thinkand hope that Emmet knows I'm not anti-american and I do appreciate that need for change in Muslim thinking and actions. But changing views in that larger community, where freedom of expression does not really exist, and the penalty for saying the "wrong" thing is maybe death or even eternal damnation is going to take both time and effort.
As Friedman rightly says, that will have to come from within, and unless we can constantly show ourselves as friends rather than enemies, our views won't be considered.
mcsf asked whom do we speak to? how about trying bush and all those who start wars, kill enmass and produce mass decimating orange agents and the like?
how does one get this message to all the decadent war-mongers and war inclined mass arms producers?
lemme try here...
even in the west, for their education and for their more rational way of analysing things and thinking through issues, we can find hundreds of thousands who are easily "brain-washed" with issues much in contradiction with what's normal or inevitable...for example, the greenies...they are educated and analytical but yet they are up-in-arms against the big 8 in their call to fight polution...now that's not a bad thing...but can you imagine a few corporations like bayer, exxon and bethel asking around "how do we stop these fanatics?..." who do we speak to to stop their actions which block [progress]?..." "who are their leaders?"...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this point is made as the problem with the islamic world are not the muslim suicide bombers but those that can convince these people (be they educated, poor or illiterate) that there is a worthy cause to do what they ask against the whites and western world, that the palestinians are dying, that the cause to stop the white world from invading the brown and black worlds in iraq and somalia justify you guys dying for the sake of islam and islam is the only faction that can protect you against these evil people...and so on...
so, you can imagine how much ammunition (read suicide bombers) these real evil minded faceless murderers can raise...
the answer therefore is remove the root causes, stay homw america and these recruits will soon evaporate from the face of this earth...just like the ku klux klan got less and less members when less and less whites are persecuting blacks and just like how the communists rapidly became capitalism converts as the west got rid of poverty...
like spin said, this scorge is no way like a union general asking the indians to take me to chief crazy horse...maybe bush is too dumb to realise that or he's too smart after having been brainwashed by cheney...
[Edited on 9/7/2005 by FactyCrab]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4652991.stm
As expected the acts of crazed Islamic fanatics has been turned into another bash of the US. It really is amazing. Spin you have some points but I don't know if discussing it is worth the bother.
Facty - the 1st Trade Center bombing, the USS Cole and Somalia all happened on Clinton's watch. You can't put that on Bush but somehow it is all Bushs fault.
Oh, did we and are we not still helping oput the "ethnic Albanians" aka Muslums in Kosovo with US troops, money aid etc? No thanks from the Islamic community for that I guess.
It is funny that nobody on this board asks the people from the "religion of peace" to make adjustments to people in their communities behavior. No, the attack happened in Britain but it is Bushs fault.
BTW - most of you know I am no fan of W so you can leave that one alone.
Lastly - and you can answer or not as I am done with this thread - will one of you please answer the question as to whom is going to explain to Israel that, in the interest of world stability, they all have to leave their country and or die.
So good luck Britain. Gather up the SAS, the SBS MI5 and 6, James Bond, George Smiley and go after the bad guys. Good hunting.
The Israelis don't have to leave or die and that hasn't been a realistic objective, while being a formal aim, since at least 1967. Even the PLO gave that up.
You can't seem to understand that Islamic leaders can't drop down and kiss the American Presidents ring publicly grateful as they may be.
please do not take my posts in the wrong context. my posts were not intended to attack any one person, persons or groups nor did they meant to represent my views of what "bad" things had been commited by any body.
i am merely saying that these actions cited (invasion by force and attitudes) are fodder for the weak-minded muslims who do what the real criminals bid. i don't personally care about what anybody, groups, governments or leaders do for their hidden or open ulterior motives just as i said i didn't care of saddam committed genocide...i care about the no-border attacks by stooges/walking deads in the name of the religion which harm innocent people be they whites, christians or muslims, black, yellow, child or women.
i don't care if the "hitler: type leaders cause havoc within their borders as we just don't travel there and like you say, their leaders from both sides can be identified for an internal solution and their problems are confined within their borders...
the men who is visibly the leaders of america and britain cannot stop these babaric attacks even if they did what we suggested but they will initiate the first steps, then the second step is for the world media to stop calling these babarians "islamic" terrorists...just as the world media never called the ira, the kkk, the croatians, the red army, the basque resistant movement etc. "christian" terrorists.
if these are in place, the islamic nations, people and leaders would then have the power to speak out strongly and for the muslim people to be convinced to not offer themselves as recruits for these very un-islamic fanatical, evil and perverted acts...removing these obstacles will give them more ammunitions to whack these terrorists with greater credibility and effect...it IS then the muslim communities to stop these terrorists...otherwise, the faceless osamas (perhaps there are thousands of osamas already installed around the world) will exert greater influence on these walking-deads...
not that the muslim people are not seen as being strongly against these terrorist acts already but the media never or hardly report the calls by muslim leaders to stop these barbaric acts nor do they highlight the muslim national leaders' condemnations as the media which are owned by the jews mainly have white leaders to serve therefore highlighting the white leaders' disgusts will serve their purpose of making their political masters' popularity to their electorates.
Well they were smart enough to know they wouldn't solve the problem with mere force and bluster!
GWB ignored sound advice and poked the hornets nest, but from afar so that others get stung.
What sort of person would take their fight, legitiamte or not into a city full of innocent civilians and explode bombs which kill and maim indiscriminately?
Apparently"crude" bombs are bad.
We need not speak of cluster bombs or the legitimate weapons of the west.
Londonners are "good"
We need not speak of the people of Fallujah ( who of course were warned to get out, to where?) so that's OK, of wedding parties, of civilians driving the airport road, of Afghan villages or anywhere "over there" so "we don't have to fight them at home".
Bush (and Blair, who got drawn in because he couldn't persuade the RESOLVED ONE) are the ones who "upped the ante" without understanding or planning for the consequences.
Emmet, how can you compare the scale and community effect of the 1st WTC bombing or the Cole to 911 or 6-7 or the ongoing disaster in Iraq?