Surely the key would be a better education so that people question and debate things rather than accept superstition?
why the down vote? i know it is a serious and sad thread, I was not trying to be rude or funny... the reality is in these cultures for some reason women are not to be educated and until these people can understand the merits of educating all (and all are equal) there is probably no hope
Not a downvote. I just disagreed with your statement is all. If education is the answer, then you have to educate everyone. If thats what you were trying to say, the I must have missed it. Sorry
one of the most saddening things for me is that the amount of fighters they have from this and other first world countries. We and the USA et al, have given these people excellent educations, freedom of speech and action and the platform to express their views without recrimination. Yet boys who have chosen to accept truths not by living them but by accepting what they are told/ fed in the context of their comfortable worry and trouble free lives and up sticks to go and fight for a cause and a nation that isn't their own. It's a shame that kids of mainly bangladeshi and pakistani origin who lets face it are the jewel of their parents eyes and want for nothing can take all this radicalisation in so easily and completely - probably not daring to question it, but embracing it for reasons known only to them. Are their lives so disaffected that they need to absorb this shite not see it for the farce it is. And all this posturing from our government who lets face it is still trying to play 'we can do war, when clearly we can't as unlike the US or others we're not carrier based so there's bound to be at least one refuel we're all forking out for (but that's another story). When will the USA realise that they are facing a very real army - not terrorists, labelling them just because they're not buying into asymmetric warfare - and lets face it short of another superpower vs the USA, who would! Like Hamas launching rockets from schools because they know that there arises the moral dilemma when the airstrike comes, and its easy to suddenly throw some pictures of screaming kids at the worlds media, there you go, the great power has indiscriminately bombed a school. Were it me, I'd say let the americans play real life call of duty. I think we should be concentrating on the british citizens who are being turned into killers by these men. We can't/ won't bring back hanging for treason but surely we can revoke citizenship? Controversial, but if a man is willing to endanger the right of others to a safe and happy existence then surely when he is found guilty that man forgoes the right to human rights of his own. Why should he plead human rights as his shield when he was so keen to see others die for beliefs that his victims didn't share? And when we find then why don't they just get put into an induced coma for the term of their sentence. No visits, no communications, no nothing until their time comes and then they can be released in whatever state they are with no sense of history, or passage of time or progress or identity. ISIS, helping the extreme right gain members to its cause better than any politician ever could. Sadly reading the Powell rivers of blood speech, one sees not a racist rant but a prophetic window on what has come to pass. I do feel that this ISIS / HAMAS / AL QUAEDA situation is the first world's Northern island. Nothing good will come of it. Those you went in to protect resent you for being there, those that you were fighting succeed in running around you because they don't have to fight with one hand behind their back due to protocol and duty. Also misinformation is rife everywhere - probably even in what I've written above. In the days leading up to the scottish election one twat at work said "after the appalling way the scots have treated us.. " I had to reply with "I don't recall the scots ever blowing innocents up with a pipe bomb to make their point..". Sad thing is that blokes like Henning are the hapless fall guys. in this new breed of soldier and way of doing war.
is it not strange that these people were applauded when they were going to join what was then portrayed as a peoples rebellion against a tyrant, Assad, but when the reality , which was always there to be seen by those who were not blinkered by embedded journalists, war industrialists, ambitious politicians and often self interested charities, rears its ugly head and the monster shows its true colours, then suddenly they are bad... double standards and hypocracy..
Think chizel was sayong education wont work because countries like that only allow men to be educated, rather than its only men who should be
They know where the hostages are but can't or won't mount a rescue mission due to the probability of success being less than 100%. There is no reasoning with this lot so if I was a hostage I'd prefer to be killed by our lot bombing the lot of them to oblivion than be beheaded on video.
It amazes me that anyone thinks that the USA actually wants this to stop, they get to stimulate their economy with weapons and arms manufacture, making more money for their rich, they get a theatre to test their new weapons systems in a remote (from them) location, they have the opportunity to stir up patriotism and fear, allowing them to create new laws and erode freedoms all in the name of protecting the homeland, calling and vilifying dissenters as unpatriotic. All the while projecting themselves as the worlds friendly and protecting force for good, looking after the rest of us poor wee ineffectual inhabitants. While really they have caused most of the problems the world now faces and are putting their own interests ahead of all else.
There is probably some truth in that, I.e some companies and individuals are 'happy' to make money/have power as a result of what is going on, but I don't believe the whole situation is engineered at all.
I agree that evangelising US foreign policy has caused many of the problems in the middler east, but they learned their brand of moral imperialism from the Europeans and I don't believe their policy is driven solely by narrow mercenary interests. The US economy as a whole has been harmed by the perpetual state of war the country has lived under since 2001 and American voters know it. They have no appetite for continuing to play the role of world policeman. Big business may be anticipating a dividend from minting brand new countries in the good ol' American mould whose shiny new economies they can exploit, but beyond a handful of companies in the arms and "security" business none of them are served by chaos, destruction and economic meltdown. The country's leadership is guilty of naive idealism, and Obama, for all his brown skin and liberal sympathies, which some foolish people thought were all the attributes necessary to save the world, is no smarter than his predecessor, possibly less so, and equally out of his depth. The American political and corporate establishment do not orchestrate foreign wars for economic advantage because there is none. Their motives are confused and utterly unrealistic. They have yet to learn to engage with the world as it really is and not as they think it ought to be.
I don't think we will ever get to a stable peaceful world, we just have to do what we can when we can and hope for the best. Whilst I have every sympathy for the family and friends of Alan Henning he must have realised that there was very real risk in what he was doing, it is sad that he paid the ultimate price.
When Obama was originally running for President, and competing with Hillary Clinton, it was often said that he was too inexperienced. Presidential candidates usually have lengthy apprenticeships either as Governor of a major state or as a US Senator or both, but Obama had very little. It was predicted he would be out of his depth and would struggle to achieve anything. The US political process is extremely complex - finding the right levers to pull is not at all easy, and a President has limited powers in practice.
He certainly isn't the messiah. It would seem that the checks and balances built into the US political system by the Founding Fathers deliberately limited the powers of the President unless there was widespread support; and that can only be a good thing. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing anything.
