Politics

The only reason they let the Lybian terrorist out is because the train robber was allowed to leave for similar reasons...my family strongly believe that the english, scottish and Lybian Governments all got together and their going to give us oil for their "hero"

Whatever the truth maybe i think its disgusting. anyone found to be an affiliate to terrorism should be taken round the corner and blindfolded then shot by a firing squad.
Lets face it....i was watching live at the apollo lastnight and Patrick kealtie(not spelt right i know) was on and saying about terrorism and was mocking them saying "atleast if it was the IRA, they'd have crashed those planes into the twin towers and survived....suicide bombing? In the IRA blowing yourself up counts as a fail"

and although i don't like the IRA, i knew what he meant. basically saying if your stupid enough to believe that you killing yourself will send you to heaven...then you deserve to die. but do it on your own and leave everyone out of it.

Atleast the IRA blew up other Irish, they where terrorists n their own country (ignore the fact its north V south)

on the whole....terrorists are simple minded morons that follow such stupidity that they believe that killing others will make things better.
 
I wasn't personally affected by the Lockerbie bombing, but a lot of people (including families of the victims and official observers at the trial) question weather Megrahi really did it, and that blaming Libya would help cut off their support for other terrorist / revolutionary movements. True or not, it certainly worked.

Thing about this suspected 'deal' is, you saw Gadhafi on TV praising the British Government, Gordon Brown and The Queen(!) afterwards. The Yanks might be pissed off at us now (for the short term), but the Libyan government and people are likely to warm to us quite a bit as a result of this. And yeah, part of that probably means oil... But it's oil we'll be getting and the Yanks won't. Giving them a man who's about to die in exchange for better bilateral relations seems like a pretty good trade off to me - Megrahi's only going to last three months, goodwill with Libya should last a lot longer. You have to think Machiavellian about these things...

I don't believe in terrorism (but there are times...) because threatning and killing innocent people who are in no way to blame for your own suffering (real or imagined) isn't justifiable. But then that happens in war too. How many innocent people have been killed by war in the past decade? A whole lot more than have been killed by terrorism, that's for sure...

Kenny MacAskill's currently on the news, speaking a lot of sense. Almost improves my opinion of the SNP. Almost.
 
Since i assume this is on the libya malarky here's my take: Its Stupid. End off.

Ok yes he was suspected of being the cause of the bombing, and found guilty, but he's going to die and so letting him off on compasionate grounds seemed appropriate. Now i don't see why everyone else has to get involved. Obama and such have no grounds to make a statement on this, one: because america where not directly involved with the incident and two: It has no affect on what happens to them. So the whole "we're gonna stop selling scottish produce" and such is rather pathetic and childish. Now if what is written in the times is true and Magrahi is going to release an autobiography which will include new evidence proving his innocence, then if they turns out to be proper evidence and he is then proved innocent..what will they do? It'd mean they locked up the wrong person for the past what..20 years? And the finger will probably be made to point at someone else, but who knows whats gonna happen anyway.
 
Arbalest said:
Now if what is written in the times is true and Magrahi is going to release an autobiography which will include new evidence proving his innocence, then if they turns out to be proper evidence and he is then proved innocent..what will they do? It'd mean they locked up the wrong person for the past what..20 years? And the finger will probably be made to point at someone else, but who knows whats gonna happen anyway.
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Most likely Iran. Hmm. Who's government, co-incedentally, we would we really like to see the back of right now (after they helped us in Afghanistan and offered to cooperate peacefully at the start of the Iraq War. The Americans ignored them). This is starting to read like a conspiracy theorist's nightmare. Whatever happened with Iran's nuclear progress anyway? That was looking a bit dodgy for a while there, as in potential World War III dodgy.

Edit: Finally, someone with some balls stands up.
 
The big thing here is the cultural differences between the UK and the US. The US has a death sentence for certain crimes and that's something we've moved beyond because while there is still doubt (and there always will be) you cannot condemn someone to die, no matter their crime.

While we may speak the same language as America the British viewpoint on what is fair and just is so radically out of touch with America's as to be far past the point at which we, as a nation, should even be allowed to exradite there (after all, there's plenty of other nations we don't extradite to on the basis that those extradited may be tortured or killed on their arrival. Not that this helps...until Obama entered power US policy was that it was legal to go to other countries and abduct people for the purposes of trying them).

Yes, Lockerbie was a tragedy, yes the guy (assuming he is actually guilty as the courts found him) was involved in that tremendous loss of life, and yes 8 years is far too short a sentence to serve for that kind of thing...but he is dying. He has about 3 months to live...he has terminal cancer...our justice system is meant to be restorative/rehabilititive not punitive....we lock people away to protect society...with him at death's door there's really no need to protect us any more.

As for the right to comment, sure, let the US do it all they like, but they have to realise at some point that they cannot simply bully themselves into getting their way all the time...it's simply not fair or ethical.
 
MrChom said:
The big thing here is the cultural differences between the UK and the US. The US has a death sentence for certain crimes and that's something we've moved beyond because while there is still doubt (and there always will be) you cannot condemn someone to die, no matter their crime.

While we may speak the same language as America the British viewpoint on what is fair and just is so radically out of touch with America's as to be far past the point at which we, as a nation, should even be allowed to exradite there (after all, there's plenty of other nations we don't extradite to on the basis that those extradited may be tortured or killed on their arrival. Not that this helps...until Obama entered power US policy was that it was legal to go to other countries and abduct people for the purposes of trying them).

Yes, Lockerbie was a tragedy, yes the guy (assuming he is actually guilty as the courts found him) was involved in that tremendous loss of life, and yes 8 years is far too short a sentence to serve for that kind of thing...but he is dying. He has about 3 months to live...he has terminal cancer...our justice system is meant to be restorative/rehabilititive not punitive....we lock people away to protect society...with him at death's door there's really no need to protect us any more.

As for the right to comment, sure, let the US do it all they like, but they have to realise at some point that they cannot simply bully themselves into getting their way all the time...it's simply not fair or ethical.
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best post ive seen on the subject so far, well done :)

also, they dont even speak the same language as us...we have this letter here known as U, they dont seem to keen on it ;-)
 
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