Was waiting for this to come up. I'll say this... I remembered my friend who died, my thoughts went to his family. In no way did this event stop me thinking of that. As horrific as this is, I'm tired of watching 0.001% of Islam give the rest of it a bad name.
Only catch to that being is that we have laws to prevent people sighting racial hatred; that means being anti-british is just as bad as being anti-muslim. If laws were enforced a bit more often ( re: labour introduced thousands of new laws that were just an attempt to appear to be doing something about crime when existing laws were more than adequate ) then you wouldnt even have a BNP or captain hook & his mates spouting off encouraging other weak-minded muslims to kill british people and whatnot. Freedom of speech is a right people shouldnt abuse; if you cross the line between having an unpopular opinion & insighting murder, expect to be punished.
They have the right to do this. Free speech is free speech. They have a right to be pissed of, the west has F***ed over the middle east, going in a thousand years. I don't find it offensive people expressing an opinion, I don't find it offensive that they think thier religion makes tham right and other religions are evil (Chrisitanity has done more and worse). I don't find it offensive the Afgans, Iraqis, Iranians and a miriad of predomantly muslim countires want us out and to stop bothering them. I find it offensive that we can invade another country under false pretenses, cause the deaths of over a million civilans, asset stip the country. and then no one gives a sh!t. We make one of the leaders of that a f**ing peace envoy. Hi Isreal, meet Dr Mengele, peace envoy from germany. You can't tell people what to think. You can't tell people how to feel. You can't force people to agree with you. Sometimes, if you listen, you might let them tell you what makes them so upset. Once you listen and try very hard to not knee jerk into a conflict, you might start a dialouge. Once you start talking and not shouting, maybe admit you have some of the blame, thats when you make progress. For the record I wear a poppy. I feel sorry for the soldiers, they don't set the policy, they die doing what they are told. I despise the British people (I'm British BTW) for allowing this middle east situation, for not bringing our goverment to book, for not even considering for one moment that we might have the merest hint of responsability. You don't like what you see, the the blame liea party with you. We need admit as an electorate we have to take some form of responsability for a situation that our country has help create.
All the politics of what where and why i think should have been put to one side. They should not have been allowed to protest on this day... nobody should have been allowed to. By all means let them all protest on another day. One should not disrespect the dead. As already said, these troops died following orders. Right or wrong that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they are dead.
Then they should be respected and remembered as well. Its not about remembering victories, its about the dead. A show of respect for lives lost. If people want to protest then fine, they do all year round... just not at these times.
It is not irrelevant to the victims of our latest two illegal wars. They do not have the luxury of putting politics aside. They are living and dying with it every day.
A) What do the dead care? they're dead. B) If the dead don't care it's for the benefit of the living, for the living to think about their dead. Then look at the numbers. 160 British service men dead in Iraq. over a million dead Iraqis. 10,000 to one ratio. I think they are rembering the dead. They are also remembering the injustice. You can choose to be offended by what upsets your sensabilities. You get offended by some one shouting and buring a paper emblem. I get offended by a totaly lack of interest over a million civillan deaths. go figure, I guess we just have different priorities.
I ended up involved in a similar discussion on my uni forums, but it was closed by the admins. Do you think I was being offensive? My exact posts were Replies: My reply: Replies: My reply: Replies: My reply: Replies: My reply: Reply: Moderator: Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread a little, I just thought I would put this past BT's excellent forumites and see what you make of it.
Its a free country. They absolutely have the right to burn any flag or symbol they want. Sadly some people take freedom to mean that we are somehow accepting or acknowledging or agreeing with what they are doing.
Unfortunatly in this case it's a flag and symbol that happen to be of great care and consideration to 99.95% of the population. Someone should have told them that they can't get high if they burn red paper poppies... unlike Opium ones :/
Everyone keeps spouting about free speech and their right to burn what ever they want, but what about everyone else's right to quietly reflect on the loss of life during the wars that this country has been involved in; regardless of whether or not they should have happened.
It isn't written down in any big special government book mate, therefore you don't have that right. Clearly they're legally entitled to force their opinions of blunt racist sadism (the religious idiots) against people who want to remember in silence everyone of our proud soldiers since WW1, they're legally and probably politically correct for all it matters. I don't get ragged off about it because they're idiots.... it's pathetic to think that they have the knowledge of 10 years of hatred against the west, when it's actually a tradition from before their fathers were born, hell some of their grand-fathers may have served with the Big Bad West, ironic, they're probably burning a poppy that helps some part of a distant family remember their grand-father, or great-grand-father. Madness eh? I repeat my previous statements that I thought of my friend and his family. These kind of idiots don't even offend me with such retarded sentiment.
My impression is that you were arguing past each other. You were basically saying that war cannot be justified by the 'protection' of human rights, and is in fact a breakdown of humanity. The other guy said: I disagree. There are plenty of socio-/psychopaths out there who are not fussed about your human rights, and in order to preserve them you may well have to engage in a war. You said: Defending yourself against aggression is justified. But it is immoral to start a war. He said: Morals are relative. There are plenty of people out there who feel it perfectly moral to try and kill your sorry ass. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Worry less about morals and more about being able to defend yourself. You said: My point is that such socio-/psychopathic behaviour is a breakdown in humanity. He said: Does it matter when someone is kicking you to death? Anyway Hitler called other people less than human too. It's all relative. You said: Godwin's law! He said: Oh, FFS... Moderator said: Mind the closing doors... So yeah, I can see why the thread got closed. You both made interesting points but you were talking past each other and so the discussion was not progressing. Moreover you invoked Godwin's law incorrectly. The mention of Hitler was actually pertinent to the point the other guy was trying to make: be careful before you label other people as less than human --you may end up making the same mistake that they are. Which is why we are so popular in Afghanistan and Iraq. So? Mohammed is the revered messiah of millions of Muslims, but that didn't stop Draw Mohammed day. Let's take stock here. Life in Iraq is tricky. Water a few hours a day, electricity unreliable. What was once the best health care system in the Middle East is now reduced to Third World conditions thanks to embargoes and two wars. The economy is on its ass, food is hard to get. You leave home every morning knowing a car bomb may get you. You risk getting shot in your own place of worship. Terrorists are having a field day; neighbourhoods have gun fights on a regular basis. 2 million people have been driven from their homes; almost all families have lost at least one family member to Gulf War v2.0. Kidnappings for ransom are rife because there is little law and order; police recruits get blown up as they line up at the station. Makes life under Saddam seem like the good ol' days. Life in Afghanistan? Cities are battlefields (with citizens regularly being told by NATO to pack up and leave their homes not to get caught in the crossfire. Where will they go?), refugees have had to abandon their homes, possessions and crops to live in a rocky desert somewhere with literally not a pot to piss in or a tent to sleep in. Refugees who made it to Pakistan are being kicked out of that country again. Villages get bombed. There is no health care, no law and order. The place is desolate beyond belief. All because, as far as the people are concerned, some Saudi nutters bombed a village called New York in some far away country. What has that got anything to do with them? And yeah, living under the Taliban was very bad too. But then again, we created that problem for the Soviets. Never mind that it would become Afghanistan's. And then, ironically, but oh so predictably, it became ours. So that's the reality for millions of people living in Iraq and Afghanistan. And here you are getting your knickers in a twist because a bunch of Muslim student drop-outs are burning a paper flower? Get a ****ing life already. Really.
No more pathetic than the pitiful lack of knowledge about our colonial past and foreign politics in the Middle East that I regularly encounter on this forum. These guys may have more of a point than you think. You just don't know it.
So what if its a flag or symbol? Thats irrelevant. It might get tabloid readers excited, but its irrelevant.
Nexxo - People did that to take the p*ss (Sorry no other words for it) because the Islamics were causing all kinds of grief to everyone and anyway? Either way I didn't respond, didn't even blog post... now punch an emo in the face day, that was important. Tisn't good, one ideology versus another. I'll stick to my original comments and continue to watch this threads rage fest
I couldn't give you a decent account of everything we've done to the middle east since 500a.d. Nexxo, I'm at work buddy so I try not to get too involved. I'm well aware the West has fubar'd the Middle East for hundreds of years... I'm also well aware of the reasons that groups such as Al'quieda (or however they are spelling it now) were setup on. However, the d+ckheads who decided to do this (See OP) are as you said, drop outs and will care for the past 10 years... more than the past 1000... Not everyone has a "pitiful lack of knowledge" some of us catch glimses and can't re-enforce their position without reference material. So get a grip yourself on your golden high horse, you're a smart guy with the response's you normally post in this section mate, but that just came across damn rude. *unsubscribes from topic contrary to previous post* +Retains the right to stick by his guns and state that it didn't get in the way of my own rememberance+
