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  1. #1
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    Decades of British and American intervention in the oil-rich Middle East motivated the London bombers, Ken Livingstone has suggested.

    The London mayor told BBC News he had no sympathy with the bombers and he opposed all violence.

    But he argued that the attacks would not have happened had Western powers left Arab nations free to decide their own affairs after World War I.

    Instead, they had often supported unsavoury governments in the region. Mr Livingstone was asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme what he thought had motivated the bombers.

    He replied: "I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil.

    "We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.

    "And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

    "They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators."

    No justice?

    Mr Livingstone said Western governments had been so terrified of losing their fuel supplies that they had kept intervening in the Middle East.

    He argued: "If at the end of the First World War we had done what we promised the Arabs, which was to let them be free and have their own governments, and kept out of Arab affairs, and just bought their oil, rather than feeling we had to control the flow of oil, I suspect this wouldn't have arisen." He attacked double standards by Western nations, such as the initial welcome given when Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq.

    There was also the "running sore" of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

    "A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," said Mr Livingstone.

    Suicide bombers

    Mr Livingstone said he did not just denounce suicide bombers.

    He also denounced "those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy, as we have occasionally seen with the Israeli government bombing areas from which a terrorist group will have come, irrespective of the casualties it inflicts, women, children and men".

    He continued: "Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves."

    Mr Livingstone also criticised parts of the media for giving too much publicity to certain figures who were "totally unrepresentative" of British Muslims.

    Tourist impact

    Mr Livingstone later took questions about the bombings from members of the London Assembly.

    He said the unity shown by Londoners in the wake of the attacks was a commemoration to those who died and showed a determination not to give in to terrorism.

    The mayor said most of the Tube would be working normally by the end of the week and the Underground should be working as before by the end of the month.

    But he warned Tube users they would have to put up with the kind of disruption caused by packages left on trains which was seen during past IRA bombing campaigns.

    There had been "very, very little" cancellations of existing hotel bookings and flights to London, said Mr Livingstone.

    But there had been an immediate drop in new bookings for long-haul flights and hotels and a "dramatic reduction" in British people bringing children into the capital.

    'Naming and shaming' hotels

    Before this month's attacks, the levels of American tourists visiting London were only running at 75% of the numbers seen before the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

    One way to counter the "turn down" in tourist trade was to attract more people from the UK and other parts of Europe, said Mr Livingstone.

    Mr Livingstone said he did not have information about hotels raising prices for people trying to stay in London after the attacks.

    But if there was evidence of "profiteering", the Greater London Authority would "name and shame" those hotels involved and refuse to do business with them in the future, he said.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4698963.stm

  2. #2
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    There is much truth in what he had to say about western governments interfering with the middle-eastern countries affairs. This still does not give them the right to take away the lives of the innocent people. If they were to attack anybody they should be attacking the governments and the people who make the decisions to interfere with their countries, not the innocent civilians who have to pay the price of what these old men are getting us into.

    Still, however, being from Australia terrorism has yet to be revealed directly to us and we are hoping it wont have to come to that.
    I do however realli wonder sometimes what drives these ideots to kill, wheres the justice in blowing up innocent people?

    And after they do blow up buildings and kill people, wonder why they get taken away to detention centres and get locked up in guatanamo bay. Stupid suckers. I guess two can play their game and if they wanna take the lives of innocent westerners then they only deserve to get thrown into prison camps.

    And until this issue is solved i will hate terrorists for their stupid acts of injustice against innocent civilians.

    This is no way attacking any sort of religion such as Islam, but my point of view about terrorism.

  3. #3
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    Mar 2005
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    Yeh he makes very good points.

    It is kinda retarded how we trained the man who destroyed our nation.

  4. #4
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    Thats the history of the cold war in a nut shell. remember it was USSR who invaded Afgahnastan. back in those days the idea of communism taking over the world was considered a serious threat. America at the time trained people to fight USSR in Afahnastan, but i doubt they could forsee what would happen when USSR collasped (which no one predicted until it was obvious).

    We also had the issue of a collective guilt on the part of the Allies after WWII about what happened to the Jews in the camps by Hitler. I know that Russia didn't want the jews and I suspect that England and America didn't want a massive influx of jews so they proposed to give them back Israel (well a part of the biblical Israel).

    The problem was that at the time Palenstinians lived what they gave to the jews and as a result they got displaced, Siria, Jordon, Iran and Egypt didn't want the Palenstinians, so they got put in camps all around israels new borders. This became religious and shortly there after there was a big war, which israel one. A while later a nother big one blew up, which again israel won. Ever since the countries that dont like isreal have encouraged terrorists to attack isreal, providing places to train up in, and to a limited extent, resources.

    So now we have today, where israel is where all the terorists wanna attack, but its an extreamly hard nut to attack, Isreal has become very good at defeating terrorist attacks. So they started to go after America, the main western supporter for Israel.

    9/11 saw America needing someone to blame, afganastan and the taliban where easy targets, but then it was Iraq (which ironcialy usa had supported in attempting to destabalise Iran's power base).

    Other countries decided to join in or not to.

    Bottom line is, terrorism is wrong. IRA is most prob the only Terrorist group who used it very effectivly, being about disruption and not about massive kills. If they wanted to, they could have made 9/11 look like a picnic, but they decided to go against military targets or distrupt civilian (with warnings). I know its not that simple, but thats the gist of it.

    Australia has had terrorists attacks, there was a bombing in Sydney back in the 60's, and another in Melbourne. There is the bali bombing which was against westerners, but they knew mainly Aussies would be in the bars that they targeted.

    All of the above attacks happened before Iraq. 9/11 was before iraq. Personly I beleieve that attacks against western societies are not based around Iraq, but about opportunities to do the attacks. I also beleiev that the terrorists will latch onto any subject that sounds good in the news, as they are opportunistic in their publicity.

  5. #5
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    so it all comes to hitler :huh:
    or sumthing else

  6. #6
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    I'm just saying it's not as simple as pointing to one action done by one group of people and saying thats why its happening. In most cases, especialy this, the reasons are a lot more complicated.

  7. #7
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    Originally posted by MetalSkin@9 Minutes Ago
    I'm just saying it's not as simple as pointing to one action done by one group of people and saying thats why its happening.* In most cases, especialy this, the reasons are a lot more complicated.
    [snapback]84795[/snapback]
    yaya i know im just saying sum random bullshit ^_^

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