Terrorist Attacks in Madrid/To those who think...

[Pack Rat]

I dont think refugee camps are military targets tho the Isralean ( spelling? ) army keeps invading them almost every week.

 

and if I recall Iraq, a lot of civilian targets where destroyed.

[Peregrine]

Threads merged.

[Casuir]

Jesugandalf, yeah read that about the explosives, big step away from anything ETA's done before though, and I dont see how they thought it was going to help them in any way. Such an act is likely to turn the entire Basque region against them as well as the rest of Spain.

[vandorssen]

I was listening just now to NPR (National Public Radio in the US, for those unfamiliar with it) and am somewhat disturbed by this news. But from what they were saying, the ETA usually claims responsibility for such attacks, as well as giving a warning ahead of time, which was not done in this case. Apparently the political wing of ETA has condemned the attacks (which they have historically not done before), which is leading me to believe that it may not be ETA.

 

However, I do admit to some degree of ignorance when it comes to politics outside of the US, UK, and Germany. Unfortunately, I do not get Spanish television or radio directly (but I can watch the BBC and Deutsche Welle, as well as listen to NPR), so I cannot get information directly from the source, as it were. My heart goes out to Madrid.

[vandorssen]

Has there been any new information about the van full of dynamite? They only mentioned its mere existence on NPR. That should provide significant evidence as to who did it.

[Ëlwe (Thingol)]

If ETA really did this it is the most stupid thing they did ever, how do they want to get independent now? I'm sure Spanish government will be REALLY enfuried, the only thing ETA did is getting more research on them by the police and the small chance of independancy even got smaller.

I wish to pay my respects to those who lost family and/or friends on those trains.

 

Btw, I though I heard about 13 explosions or so, 190 dead, 1400 wounded, simply, simply inhuman.

 

Ëlwe

[Casuir]

Looks like Al-Queda are claiming it was them.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...pain_qaeda_dc_1

[ohGr]

i heard on the news (here in australia) 10 bombs went off, and they even threatened to set 10 bombs, 150 were killed, and 1,500 were injured, and all i can say is at least they arent idiots who run around shouting "allaahhh!", these are actually intelligent people who can actually think and know what their doing, so stopping them wont be a simple task, i did forget what their ransom was though, it was 10 million or something right?

 

Tho, the Palestina's are been slaughtered for years, the U.S. murdererd over 10.000 people in the last 3 years.

 

yeah, it was the countrys fault, their leaders stuffed up, they cop the blame, im quite sure there was nothing anyone could do to stop them, just put yourself in the situation of one of those soldiers out there fighting, having to face those fools run around looting their own country, killing their own people, and im quite sure you would do something about it, if not, let them rot.

 

Looks like Al-Queda are claiming it was them.

 

i find that quite hard to believe, but hey, if they can get the evidence i will, nevertheless, i find it hard to believe, some moron who cant get a shave and probably smells like a donkey could even escape from the US and run around saying "i bombed your country!"...reminds me of that time when i never thought straight in year eight, going around saying to asian people "we won world war 2 dammit!"

[Malchik]

Casuir, I'm aware of your point. It's why I put inverted commas around the word 'religious'. I think however you will find the underlying problem has been socio-economic, certainly in the past, and it was reinforced along religious lines. Catholic emancipation in the UK (of which Ireland was then a part) was very late in political terms, 1829. There is no doubt that being Catholic carried a certain stigma for a long time afterwards. The implication that Catholics were second class citizens kept them in less well paid and less significant jobs etc. So the rebellion, though not in itself of religious origin, did split on broadly religious lines. Protestants did not want change and in those counties where they had the majority and the power they voted against cessation. The latest referendum did not seek change indeed today the position seems more entrenched than ever.

 

As I said with ETA, Al Quaeda or whatever, the terrorists are not representative of the majority who, whether or not they would like to see changes, put living in peace and without fear for themselves and their families higher on the agenda.

 

Yet we are not always consistent when we define terrorism. Attempts to dispose of Robert Mugabe for instance might well be seen as 'an oppressed people struggling against a tyrant' whereas such moves by Aboriginals in Australia or Maoris in New Zealand would not. And although those cases may be extremes of the spectrum there are others that come in the middle. We tend to refer to terrorists as those who commit acts of violence against 'our side'. Using the term 'side' (or interests or country) indicates the existence of another side (set of interests/country) who can justifiably claim that military (i.e violent response) is equivalent to a terrorist response. It is why, on the whole, most of the world outside the US is not sympathetic towards Israel. It is such an emotive subject it is very hard to be objective.

 

What is clear however is that there is never any excuse for attacks on the innocent and I'm afraid this includes retaliatory strikes. Such behaviour is the politics of the nursery and completely contrary to the teachings of almost every significant world religion. (And most world leaders claim to be religious.)

 

Whoever perpetrates atrocities should be punished severely but we must be careful not to close our eyes to the fact that beneath it all there may be a genuine problem. It is hard to see this with ETA, I must admit, but that is not always the case.

 

Sorry if this is rambling on but I am so sickened by these horrors I tend to get a bit incoherent.

[Shakkara]

Why can't people that want to seperate and live on their own in peace do so if they want? And I am not only speaking of Pais Vasco/Pays Basque, but also about Chechenya (Russia), Aboriginals (Australia) and an independent Kurdistan (Turkey/Iraq). People should have the right to live in freedom, without a government or with a local government if they want to instead of having a government that is only elected by the majority of the country but does not fit with this local enclave.

 

Of course this does not mean that attacks like these are justified, however unfortunately peaceful means do not work either (Aboriginals).

 

I absolutely agree with Malchik and Packrat that the US and Israel are just as much terrorists as Muslim extremists, they are directly or indirectly responsible for threatening or overthrowing governments by force, the deliberate destruction of civilian property, murder of civilians, and unprovoked seizure of territory and daily harrasment of its inhabitants.