My thoughts are with those in Spain.

[galatea_world]

Oh lordy, this is horrible, and it really confirms all of my worst fears about taking the subway.  I feel sick just thinking about it.  An explosion on a Madrid commuter rail killed at least 173 people today - this was blamed on terrorism.

My lordy we live in scary times.  Terrorism is such a horrible thing, so unpredictable, so all encompassing

Comments

[grammatonkleric]

I'm getting so tired of these jackasses. "We want things. We will kill people unrelated to those things to get our message across." What are you pigfuckers accomplishing, other than killing innocent people and pissing off those who could actually deal with your demands?!?!? Murder will not earn you many friends!

Fuck. THIS is why the War on Terrorism is important. I just wish civil liberties didn't have to be casualties in the war as well.

[galatea_world]

I agree. The War on Terrorism is important, but it has sadly become an excuse to invade civil liberties. It does not have to be that way - there are other ways to fight terrorism. I don't think you can negotiate with terrorists, because I think these extremists groups can never be satisfied until they get everything. It's all or nothing for them. However, by perhaps instituting anti-poverty programs and being more inclusive to other religions, then the drive to BECOME terrorists would not be there. Just my two cents. And of course we need safety measures - I understand and wholeheartedly support airport screenings and the like. But reading private e-mails and intercepting phone conversations and allowing an unlimited holding period for suspected terrorists and taking away the lawyer-client priviledge...it's going too far. I don't see a strong enough link between those means used to combat terrorism and the ends of these measures actually successfully combatting terrorism to justify the incursion of those important civil

[__kali__]

ETA, (who apparently planted the bombs) are Basque seperatists have been around for many, many years, they're not a religious group, at least I don't think so. What they want is for the north eastern part of Spain to be ceeded from Spainish rule so they can rule themselves, they speak a different language to the rest of Spain are are very very scary people to get involved with. Obviously as the tourist season starts to crank up again they're going to start with the bombing, although I wonder if this one is to coincide with the football matches that are going on out there?

[galatea_world]

This is not going to achieve their goals. All this will do is alienate the ETA from whoever may be its sympathizers. *sigh*

[__kali__]

There's actually a lot of support for ETA within Spain, particularly in the Basque region because they see normal Spainards as 'lower' than them.

[galatea_world]

The world we live in is a scary place, I guess that is all I have to say...