THOMO

did you watch the anti usa feeling among the audiance . it was a absolute disgrace. the audiance i believe was hand picked from the internet.i felt for the american embassador.as for the muslim woman she had no feeling at all ,its people like her that will sense vengance amongst innocent muslims.i say fight for peace .

Chip

Everyones entitled to their own opinions. A lot said was right. A lot wrong.

As for fighting for peace. No chance.So long as we,ve got religion we,ll have fighting.

Yanks have been barging in to places for years. Thought they were beyond attack. Maybe they should sit back and wonder why so many people hate them.

As for Britain I just hope the USA doesnt make any rash decicions about invading or overpowering some mid-east state. If they do then look out UK cos Tony the puppet will start dancing to the tune of George.W.Bush.
Then we,ll all be in the ****e.

Just my personal view of course.

Chip.

zoog

I agree with Thomo, it was a very biased audience indeed, God knows how the BBC picked them.They overdid the "trying to get a balanced audience" bit I think. At least the BBC news hasn't sunk to the disgraceful level of remoteness and dissaproval I remeber in the Falklands.

At the end of the day, despite America's definite failings over the years, we ve got to be on their side. Those that aren`t should consider a spell living in say Afghanistan-they'd soon want to come back to the comfort and tolerance of the West. People take their freedom and priveleges here for granted,and are able to bite the hand that feeds.If the equivalent programme was made in an extremist state and such treacherous ideas were spoken they'd all be shot the next day. It is the right to free speech that is a hallmark of our society, but it means we have to tolerate such graceless dissent I'm afraid. Overall its a price worth paying of course.

Furthermore you have to realise that the audience will be a self-selecting group of opinionated types (of all persuasions)to volunteer in the first place. They are not going to be at all representative of general opinion from any quarters.

It will be an absolute disaster if this thing develops into a war between Islam and the rest of the world, that's my biggest fear.Noone will win and it'll be a decade or more of darkness over the globe. The international, inter-religious coalition has got to succeed and hold together.

Adrian

KF

They picked the audience so that it would raise a dialogue, on places like ScoobyNet. They succeeded. This is whole idea behind the program. If they picked demure and reserved people to go against the pervading opinion on the show, there would have been no dialogue.

Those that didn't care to listen to the debate gave a poor and occasionally laughable account of themselves. However they must have firm beliefs to put themselves in the firing line like that. That is nothing new on QuestionTime, and long may it continue.

An example of how to be intolerant and bigotted is just as valid for education as a reasoned and intelligent point made well. The BBC love it when that happens.
KF.

pslewis

I didnt see the programme, but heard second hand about it at work.

The UK, whether Labour led or Tory led dance to the American tune and for very good reason! The USA is as the biggest boy in the playground - if you are clever you are his best mate - as we are with the USA .... the UK boxes way above its weight in world politics for that very reason and that reason alone.

We will always stand alongside the USA and we can assist them truly, we are more considered, we have the best special forces in the world, we have the best listening post in Europe in GCHQ.

It is a simple matter to inform a country as to what you want them to do, to hand over the terrorists in their lands, or we enter their lands and take them.

No need to attack any country really but I fear that Iraq will get hit - we have unfinished business there.

One thing is for sure, we should NOT turn the other cheek .... they will surely hit that too

Pete

MichelleWRX1994

Here's to Peace on Earth and mankind.....

I hope it happens........

Michelle xx

Al Cook

Racial and Religious intolerence practiced my Islamic extremeists is one of the main cause for all our troubles today.
Their 'Jihads' prove it.

Couple this with jelously of the big kid, who is both rich and powerful make for, in their eyes, a hate filled cocktail.

We, The West, are not perfect. We cannot help and please everybody. Our democratic society is free and as fair as it can be. Look back at all the help, money and aid, we have poured into countries that are poor and helpless.

I am in the RAF and have served in Sierra Leone and Mozambique (to name a few) and I never saw any military or civilian help from any Muslim country.

We daily pass out millions in aid, food, medicine, human help to those less fortunate. Don't call me bad, just call me stupid for trying to help those that then turn against me because I didn't give them the attention 24 / 7.

Our free society is what I'm in the military to protect. Those Afghans and others trying daily to enter our country will tell you what it's like to live where women are refused education, not allowed to drive. Your hands are chopped off for stealing food when you are starving. There are no books, internet, TV. Only state sponsored music and programmes that tell their people how bad we are.

You are all part of the western world, your lives have made all this. We are all responsible for the way we live today. You don't eat McDonalDs because an American has a gun to your head, we eat them becuause we want, and are free to.

You don't drive expensive to buy and run cars because you are forced to. You are all priveledged.

We have to stop the person who thinks that what we have is too much, and that the way we live is wrong, and is willing to kill you for that belief.

End of sermon.

ScooBabe

RIMPY T,

I read that too, interesting piece of journalism.

TopCat

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Chip:
<B>Everyones entitled to their own opinions. A lot said was right. A lot wrong.

As for fighting for peace. No chance.So long as we,ve got religion we,ll have fighting.

Yanks have been barging in to places for years. Thought they were beyond attack. Maybe they should sit back and wonder why so many people hate them.

As for Britain I just hope the USA doesnt make any rash decicions about invading or overpowering some mid-east state. If they do then look out UK cos Tony the puppet will start dancing to the tune of George.W.Bush.
Then we,ll all be in the ****e.

Just my personal view of course.

Chip.[/quote]

I couldnt agree more with you Chip!


Moe

RIMPY T

thought this made a bit of sense IMHO ofcourse

They can't see why they are hated

Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad

Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.
Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.

As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.

If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response.

It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming.

It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth.

But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world.

All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. "What could some political thing have to do with blowing up office buildings during working hours?" one bewildered New Yorker asked yesterday.

Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed.

Source: The Guardian

ROBO

I`m living and working in the middle east (Saudi Arabia), and to see a lot of the local population celebrating the deaths of those innocent people and trying to encite some of the expats here, it does nothing for your patience.
You can say that it is a lack of education, but i think it is too much, we will never change the fundamental issues that they get taught.
They have a different outlook to us, big lessons need to be taught, they expect nothing less and will class it as a victory if none come. IMHO, of course

Type R

Harm to innocent life beit in war torn countries or in the West, results in sadness and acheives nothing. The World must unite against the guilty party or i fear we could be on the brink of War, the Americans should not bomb or invade with out backing from the World.

This disaster could have happened to us, and i am sure the opinions of some of us would have changed if it had. The Americans have been allies for many years and we have all received the benefits.

As a non-Labour voter, i have got a lot of respect for Tony Blair for handling this situation on our behalf. You never know he may even receive my vote.

Getting off my high Horse

Matt

THOMO

rimpty t are you shore the usa gave money to bin laden and trained him to kill. if thats so why is it not mentioned by anyone i.e question time. ( that would of been a question worth answering).

Funkii Munkii

Working in the aviation Industry it is very hard to believe what a lot of people saw live on TV on Tuesday, the B-767 hitting the 2nd tower, As terrible and disturbing as this whole episode is I still await someone from the U.S Government to answer the American public and the rest of the world as to why the security in the U.S. for domestic flights was non existant, had they forgotten about Lockerbie?? and to have the audacity to say no non U.S. carriers in our airspace until we say so, er, it was your carriers who the terrorists so easily infiltrated on your own soil, after such a tragedy it is so sad to see the Americans still being so insular.
I'm not having a pop at the yanks I spent one of the best times of my life in NYC it is an amazing city one of the best in the world but they have failed to notice for decades how insular they have become, the world outside of their shores does not always revolve around them. Lets hope they listen to all the major players from across the globe and dont do anything rash otherwise more innocent people will get caught up in this attrociousness and dont believe for one minute that we in the U.K. are safe from it with the sycophant Blair in tow.

THOMO

some good points .i fear the usa will go in all gun blazing killing innocent people,and that will mean revenge no matter what side you are on.if someone in your family was killed that way, you would think the same. which was not mentioned lastnight.question time was meant to give a balanced view of our society in the uk .i have not heard a bad word said about americans until lastnight at work at the pub shop anywhere.usa try and defend most countrys in the world. what would of happened in kuwait. we all would be running our scoobs on fresh air.

Diesel

Think more guys, and don't jump on this ridiculous bandwagon to demonise Americans or the West. It was Ho Chi Minh who said 'the biggest weakness of the Americans is their humanity'. It is maddness on your part to 'buy' this propaganda.


Sure they need to have a good long hard look at their policy on Israel, but they are essentially decent people who often take a difficult path in world issues - but invariably the right one. They protect Muslims - Kosovo, Kurdistan, and stopped Muslim killing Muslim in Kuwait. It's complex yes, but there is a whole lot more good than bad in the big picture.

I was sickened by the racism in that Question time programme. This was directed towards me and you - whilst we grow out of racism, they grow into it.

The US ambassador with tears in his eyes was a sad sight. He like most Americans is a decent person (whom I had a pint with once ;-) and was visibly horrified to be at the receiving end of this abuse, at this time. In their rush to get that programme together, the researchers got the balance wrong.

A friend of mine called Scotland Yard following a similar programme on C4 the same night. Our Muslim guest in this country was inciting and justifying harm to this country's indigenous population. Scotland Yard have the transcript, and may this ******* be sent home to his much more primitive country, and be deprived of our country's welcome and hard won services and civility.

We are all under this racist threat. These people wish us death and say this out loud. You can not speak softly and negotiate a raising of this kind of death threat (or Fatwah). The conclusion is obvious...

D

zoog

I saw the Ch4 thing - it was on their news, they had a discussion and a UK born Muslim leader of their Youth Council or whatever was basically saying if the USA does anything against the terrorists he will encoourage and expects UK Muslims to turn against us. Basically theres 2 million potential fifth columnists in our midst if that swine is serious.

matt d

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by RIMPY T:

Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But what have the people who were killed in the WTC towers got to do with American foreign policy? Some of them were not even American, half of those who were American probably did not vote. They have nothing whatsoever to do with what the American government has done abroad. And even amongst those who voted, a lot of them may well have disagreed with US foreign policy.

The attacks on the Pentagon (a military establishment) can be justified in a "you hit us, we hit you" argument, but the attacks on neutral innocent civilians cannot.

scoobynutta555

I agree matt. Furthermore, why hasnt anyone mentioned the fact that several hundred Brits died in those towers? Im willing to bet there were a good deal of muslims murdered as well.

If these fundamentalists are so keen on following the word of Allah, why are they killing anyone at all? I thought the Koran forbid killing.

I seem to remember another passionate believer in his faith and a leader to his people who was the exact opposite of bin laden. He managed to acheive his goal through non-violent means. Anyone remember Ghandi?

If the west is so wicked why are there so many "refugees" busting a gut to come over here and live off my taxes.

THOMO

i agree matt d.

carl

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by zoog:
<B>I saw the Ch4 thing - it was on their news, they had a discussion and a UK born Muslim leader of their Youth Council or whatever was basically saying if the USA does anything against the terrorists he will encoourage and expects UK Muslims to turn against us. [/quote]

If he said that, then he is an ****. I imagine the majority of UK-born Muslims are as disgusted as we are. Having been born and brought up here, the 'West' is their way of life too.

SinghSuperStud

iTrader: (2)

Hi,

When I first heard the news about the attack it was from somebody else and I didn't read much into it. However, seeing the pictures really sent a shiver down my spine. I can't see how anybody could justify doing this in the name of religion / salvation.

I am a Sikh by religion (ie. we are required to keep our hair uncut, keep beards and abstain from certain things and stick to others) and am 'fairly' religious - WE ARE NOT MUSLIMS. It's shocking to know that in NYC AMericans are launching reprisals against anybody who looks 'foreign'. As a result many innocent Sikhs (together with others, I'm sure) have been killed and hurt. Uneducated people are confusing Sikhs with Muslims as we may both wear Turbans and may look slightly similar.

I realise I'm risking being flamed but here's what I have got to say :

90% of conflict throughout the world involves Muslims in some form or other - ie, kosovon Muslims, Croatia etc.

It is one of the five pillars of Islam to convert a non-Muslim to Islam. I have seen letters written by hard core fundamentalists describing ways in which conversions can be carried out. Some followers refer to non-muslims as infidels and dogs etc. To a Muslim - a conversion by a non-Muslim will count more for them that anything else.

Despite what people say about how Islam practices equality etc. why are Women treated as second class citizens ? Not just in Afghanistan but elsewhere. Did you know a Muslim man can have upto five wives (i think it's this much !) and for a Muslim guy to divorce his wife he need only say one phrase three times ??!!

It seems as Islam condones violence in the name of God. It can be argued violence almost goes hand in hand with Islam.

I have friends that are Muslim and respect them a great deal. I don't get any bad feeling from them but I have from a great many others I come across.

Sorry if I've offended anybody,

Jai.

RIMPY T

Jai

To start with,as a Muslim,i can tell you that one of Islam's five pillars is not to convert a non-Muslim to Islam,don't believe everything you read.

You haven't offended me,by your comments,but i thought i would clarify that point,a muslim man can have up to FOUR wives,and i see no reason to justify it,as its something permissable for us to do.

I'll be the first to condemn any violence against innocent civilians and what happened on tuesday did not make me want to celebrate,thats for sure.

Many Muslims in the middle east do have a very warped understanding of the teachings of Islam,unfortunately.This is due to having a life of misery caused by whatever circumstances,and then being brainwashed into thinking that the US is the one to blame.

Having said that Muslim blood is very cheap,the wars you mentioned in the Balkans,were blatant ethnic cleansing,these people weren't brown with big black beards,they were white with blue eyes and fair hair,and the only way some serbs could determine a muslim male was by seeing if he was cicumcised.

I know why you feel Muslim women are treated as second class citizens and to be honest i cant blame you,but it is a HUGE topic of discussion,which i cant even attempt to start now.

I'm sorry to hear that Sikhs are being targeted by people willing to harm or kill innocents,whether they be Sikh,Hindu or Muslim.

Best Regards

Riz.(a fellow scooby driver)

Squizz

It's refreshing to see such contentious issues debated on here with (mostly) such good intent.

impreza_sports_nutter & Rimpy T, for example. Two diametrically opposite views that can discuss matters on good terms, to find a small amount of common ground.

Out of all this mess, that's given me some sense of right again.

Intelligence and education seems to be the only thing that separates certain elements of society from committing such unspeakable acts of violence. When one can reason what the consequences may be, one can decide on a better course of action.

It's a shame then, that America has such an ignorant and block-headed man as their head of state. Wouldn't it be nice to have a leader who was capable of speaking your own language properly?

I hope "reason" prevails...

THOMO

I HAVE SENT THIS THREAD TO QUESTION TIME ILL KEEP YOU POSTED ON THE RESPONCE. i was told today that on talk sport a man said bin laden enthusiasts where in tottenham .and one such person was quite open about it. i cant remember his name.this man is also signing on.unreal

THOMO

question time replied this morning . thankyou very much for your interesting debate in so many words. well at least they read it.