quote:

'�Qu� culpa tienen las pobres putas?'

�malcriar a sus hijos (de puta)!
or not being there to show them the way.
thought that was obvious.

i liked the staple chant "el pueblo... unido.. no ser� vencido".

saludos,
jer...

quote:

I'd say it was the terrorist groups themselves that force organizations (especially the government) to label them as terrorists, by COMMITTING terrorist acts!! What about the human rights of the people on the trains?

I'm not worried about the human rights of the terrorists. I'm worried about ours. If you think that allowing the government to deny civil/human rights to those labeled terrorists will have no impact on you, then just take a look at what's going on in the United States and Guantanamo Bay. American and British citizens detained without charge, without access to lawyers, and subject to military tribunals. What happened to habeus corpus?

The "war on terror" in the end will cause more death and loss of rights than anything these attackers can do. All you have to do is look at Afghanistan and Iraq.

These perpetrators harbor no illusions of overthrowing the country or of taking away our freedoms. They are out for revenge and they know that the government will do the freedom-removing and repression for them.

Do not be stampeded in hatred, revenge, retribution, righteous-indignation, or repression. Don't follow your government's hasty finger-pointing and calls for attack.

Return hatred with love. Reject those who would commit violence against other countries in the name of "keeping us safe". If you return hatred for hatred, violence for violence, these attacks have indeed succeeded, the people will have died in vain and you will be brought down to the level of those who have committed this appalling act.

Honor the memories of the victims with peace and love.

Today i had a series of thoughts that may have changed my life. I realized that governments are virtually powerless to combat terrorism. The only way they can do so is to take away rights and privledges of everyday citizens by increasing security, giving govt. more power to curb our privacy, etc. There is no way to know if this is effective. Have we even found osama? No. We found Saddam, but did anyone else notice that he wasn't even missing in the first place?
Can we trust the governments of our Western Democracies to try to stop Al-Qaeda's terrorism? After all, it is not the government on which they are waging war. Al-Qaeda is waging war on US. We the mother-f*&%^ing people of this beautiful, decaying world. What have we done, we the people, we Americans, we Madrilenos, we Israelis, but try to live our lives? We try to live under democracies, but have no power to stop our governments from totally ticking off these crazy islamic militants. Years of foreign policy gone by, virtually unnoticed...the government has been and are completely unaccountable. We get punished for it, we pay the price. And WE have to stop it. WE do. People of the world, join hands, form a love train, and kick some Islamic Militant Ass. I have visions of millions of Westerners, everyday citizens, CRUSADING, for lack of a better term, in the Middle East, to join with our Muslim brothers and sisters to stop the madness. Y'all may think I'm crazy, but just remember that this idea is a work in progress. Now back to the true subject of this thread...

i am somewhat frightened by the reluctance to call ETA anything other than a terrorist group. yes, they ARE terrorists. disgusting terrorist pigs, even. but i stand by my conviction that they are portrayed as such in the media. however, they are ALSO Basque, they are ALSO separatists, and they ALSO have motivations. it is too reductionist to simply call them terrorists. if CNN, the Centrist News Network, simply referred to them as "Terrorists" the american people would have absolutely no idea where this group came from, and would probably associate them with a Spanish branch of Al-Qaeda.
ETA needs to be dealt with as a terrorist organization, meaning it needs to be STOPPED, but "terrorist" is such a generic blanket term that it virtually has no legal value. terrorism is a method; murder is the crime. there is no ambiguity in media reports calling ETA murderers and assassins. i don't know guys, this seems like such a semantic argument. do we really think that people associate ETA with other groups such as the Quebeqois (Sp)? Sorry this is so long. I hope ya'll read it. I'm out for now.

Why isn't anyone refering here to terrorist groups such as the Partido Popular and PSOE? Why isn't anyone here refering to terrorists such as Aznar, Rajoy, and Zapatero? Or to Bush for that matter?

Wouldn't manipulating trajic events like the one on Thursday for your own political gain make you a terrorist? In my opinion, YES it does. It's exactly the end goal of ETA and al Qaida anyway. Does it really matter who is responsible for this horrific act? To politicize terrorism is to become like the terrorists themselves.

boneshaker, and some would say that your extremist radical views are right up (or down) there with those of the terrorists

saludos,
jer...

i don't see what i just said as being all that extreme jer, but if it helps to clarify how extreme my position is, well i'll try a little better then.

i have been watching and reading the news (both spanish and english) almost non-stop since i first heard about the attacks thursday morning.

when i haven't been doing that i've been wandering the streets in shock. many times i can't control my emotion over this. i don't know why this happened. it doesn't matter to me who did it, either. it's the same thing: innocent people died for some lunatic ideology.

while i try to understand this, try to process it, i feel sick seeing how it is being played out and played with in politics. not just here in spain, but in the states as well. whether it is called terrorism, politically motivated murder, or war, i am sick of it and i want the violence to end.

that's my position. i don't care for any of the political parties. it makes me said (and scared) when they use the fear and memory of terrorist attacks to try to get people to vote for or approve them in anyway. i'm sorry if that is extreme. maybe you don't think that is happening at the moment. it just seems to me that it is.

No matter what they are called, we all know what they are, and how they accomplish their goals.
My heart, as well as most of the U.S. goes out to the good people of Spain.

quote:

originally posted by Roland:
I'm not worried about the human rights of the terrorists. I'm worried about ours. If you think that allowing the government to deny civil/human rights to those labeled terrorists will have no impact on you, then just take a look at what's going on in the United States and Guantanamo Bay. American and British citizens detained without charge, without access to lawyers, and subject to military tribunals.

American and British citizens who just happened to be on 'backpacking holidays' in Afganistan during a war.

on a healing note, i have set up a donations page at www.multimadrid.com/11marzo for anyone who wants to give to the victims of the recent madrid attacks via multimadrid.

you can also click on any of the...



... images at the top left of all the board pages.

please give what you can.

saludos,
jer...

Boneshaker,

The accepted, clinical definition of terrorism is "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion."

By this definition almost all major powers have been guilty of acts of terrorism. The United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, England's fire bombing of Dresden, and countless other examples, all show that every power is prepared to commit mass murder of civilians in order to terrorize them into submission and win their military objectives however noble they seem to them or us.

The excuse that "We were at war" is precisely that used by Al-Qaeda. They are at war with all those who are at war with them. They are quite prepared to bomb civilian targets in order to win their war, just as prepared as we were in WWII.

Their mindset is as lunatic as ours, the Germans, the Japanese, the French, the Italians, et al. The leaders of all of these countries were prepared (during the lifetime of our parents) to commit acts of terrorism to achieve their goals.

This is why I'm far more scared by what the US, UK, Spain, etc. will do that what Al-Qaeda might do. This is why we need to stop the hyperbole and deal with violence in a new way.

quote:

This is why I'm far more scared by what the US, UK, Spain, etc. will do that what Al-Qaeda might do. This is why we need to stop the hyperbole and deal with violence in a new way.

Why be more scared of one group than the other?? As you've already said they're all capable of the same thing!

whoooa...back the truck up, Alice! Al-Queda's stated purpose is to make the world a muslim world (this assumes Osama can be considered their spokesman)and they are quite willing to drive airplanes into buildings to make their point. Now, i really don't know what the U.S. is doing in Iraq other than to find WMD that don't seem to exist - nor does anyone else on the board! But I feel reasonably sure I could bet a few dollars that neither Bill Clinton (and lets not forget who was in charge of the U.S. when Al-Queda was getting strong..you can blame GWB all you want but someone else was watching the house when Al-Queda was operating) nor GWB are willing to directly target civilians for the purpose of spreading american ideology. Its time to stop storming the police barriers and acknowledge its a pretty frickin' complicated subject that cannot be summed up, much less debated, in three paragraph forum postings.

quote:

Why be more scared of one group than the other?? As you've already said they're all capable of the same thing!

Mainly because one group has the power to cause far greater death and destruction than the other. I don't know about you but I generally am more concerned about the machine gun pointing at me than the switchblade.

quote:

they are quite willing to drive airplanes into buildings to make their point.

Well actually airplanes are flown, cars are driven. But that's beside the point. They are willing to fly airplanes into buildings in order to end what they see as the desecration of their holy land (Saudi Arabia) by infidels (i.e. those who are not muslim), mostly the American armed forces that were stationed in Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to protect Saudi Arabia from invasion by Saddam. They are also willing to fly airplanes into buildings in order to end the one-sided American support for what is, in their eyes, Israel's occupation and subjugation of Palestine and its superpower status in that region.

They may want the world to convert to their extreme view of Islam but then fundamentalist Christians in the US want to convert the world to their extreme view of the world. Luckily for us Americans don't have other major grievances that push them over the edge into blowing up large public areas, killing lots of people...... oh wait.....

Timothy MacVeigh.

but Roland, Osama Bin Laden's manifesto does not speak of Isreal, it speaks of creating a muslim world as well as removing the U.S. presence from Saudi land, among other things. Certainly Al-Queda is able to use anger re: Isreal to stoke the fires, but the Isreal issue was not in his sights. And come on now, I would much rather have a rational neighbor with a cellar full of fire arms than meet some lunatic in the metro with a switchblade!

and touche.....drive vs. fly!!...careful or I'll get H.O.T.B. back on the board