jalal

Girly, Sassa, Tribal thanks for your answers, its good to see we can have smart contributions on this forum. To the two others(ray and "killallmuslims", whatever your real name is): you obviously missed my point and are irrecuperable. But that's fine with me, I have always been convinced that everywhere in the world, stupid people are a minority, and that common sense always prevails. Regards J

Horrified like everybody else. I wanna say something though, after having read some of the reactions on this forum, particularly those that describe people who are muslims as collectively responsible for this kind of things: so let me start by setting the record straight, I am Algerian, Arab and Muslim. In the past ten years in my country we had terrorists who killed about 150000 people, made about 1 million victims according to official figures (probably twice in reality). A lot of people were killed like Daniel, sometimes hundreds of inhabitants of a remote village had their throats cut, we even heard about an instance where a pregnant woman in a village was slaughtered along with the rest of her family, her feotus removed form her stomach, and burned in an oven. I am telling this with no censure because I agree that the world has to know what these people are capable of. Now I would like insist on something in case you have missed my point: the tens of thousands of people killed in Algeria were my fellow muslims and arabs. They have been slaughtered because like everybody in Algeria, they refused not only to help those terrorists, but also to surrender to their diktat. They intended to continue to live like they wanted, on their land. They were horrendously killed also because they knew, like we arabs and muslims all know, that what these crazy fanatics want and do has nothing to do with our culture or religion. In Algeria, back in 1988-91 before mass massacres occured the people who later became terrorists were nick-named Afgans because they were dressed like Afgans, that is very differently from us algerians who usually dress like all Mediterranians. And people knew that they were former anti communist fighters in Afghanistan. Actually in my neighborhood, we had one of their recruiters one day and he explained to us that all we had to do to become what they called freedom fighters was to go to the Saudi Cultural Center (a reputed CIA outlet) to get free money and a plane ticket (they called it a joint US-Saudi scolarship) to learn to fight the infidels in Kabul.... This is real life experience my friends. But most of us didnt take that seriously, I mean for us they were like a bunch of fanatics asking you to enter a lousy Sect.... Unfortunately as a result of this, a lot of pople died and far more people have been killed by those so called "islamist" terrorist in the arab and muslim world than in the western hemisphere. Anopther fact for you to know: for about ten years, from 1991 to 2001, Algeria has begged the USA, France, the UK and Germany to crack down on the terrorist networks that were responsible for this mess BECAUSE IN REALITY LONDON HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE OF A TERRORIST HAVEN THAN KABUL OR TORABORA. If you dont beleive me just read news paper archives like that of the NY times or Washington post in the US, Le Monde in France, the Times of London, Republicca in Italy or El Pais in Spain and so on. The western world refused to listen to us, and even granted asylum to those killers under the impression that they could be used to secure western influence on destabilized countries as long as they were not launching terrorist attacks on the western soil. So I wanna make something crystal clear here: to all I would like to make a request that is based on my knowledge of both the Middle East and the Western world - You have the chance to live in democracies. Exercise control on your government according to your interests, and make sure this never happens again, or else you will have other 9/11s. And always remember that Binladen has started his lethal career as a CIA operative in Afghanistan. Dont get me wrong: I am not the kinda guy who believes in US govt conspiracies. I think the reason why a Binladen guy became powerful enough to plan the destruction of Afghanistan, the terrorist campaigns in Algeria and the 9/11 events is because too often, the most powerful nations of the world tend to exercise a foreign policy that is too influenced by powerful lobbies who end up pushing for nonsense policies PRECISELY BECAUSE THE CITIZENS OF NATIONS LIKE THE USA ARE NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE OR INTERESTED BY FOREIGN POLICY. Keep in mind state department employees are people like you and me, they are actually often less competent than their grad school buddies who ended up working in the private sector! Now I lived in the US and I understand why Americans are not that fond of foreign policy, i mean for gods sake people need to pay their bills and they just think Washington politics are not gonna add a penny to their pay checks. But I hope that the 9/11 events will make people realize that indeed foolish foreign policies can backfire, and that citizens of a democracy should ABSOLUTELY exercise control on what their govt does overseas. Again the mass massacres in Algeria, the 9/11 events, the Daniel Pearl murder would not have occured if a young man named Bin Laden had not been recruited along with others by the US government during the cold war under the policy of containing atheist communism with sectarian fanatics. One last thought to the people who promote more violence as an answer to more than enough violence: war aint good. Just look at thousands of years of wasted human lives in History to convince yourself before you enlist in the military. There are others ways to solve problems. Use your brain power instead. May Daniels soul rest in peace along with that of the tens of thousands of anonymous Algerian villagers and 911 victims killed by human madness in the past ten years. My 2 1/2 cents Regards J