Mid-air bomb plot 'a major threat

[Chimbu chuckles]

I live in an Asian Islamic country and see a very great difference between it and ME and west asian Muslim countries.

The difference between the peaceful Islamic countries and the violent ones is simple...standard of living.

In Malaysia and Brunei essentially everyone has a good standard of living and is well educated...the same is true to a lesser extent in Indonesia....and yes I know the Bali bombers are Indonesian...those 20 individuals as well as the other 290 million who were as horrified as we were.

You don't see much in the way of anti western sentiment in these places...what little you do see is a vague anti US/Isreal sentiment but they don't feel strong enough about it to really be bothered one way or another.

The violence in the Islamic parts of southern Thailand is not directed at the west but at the Thai Govt...because that part of Thailand is fairly poverty stricken....same thing in the southern Philipines...small groups of unhappy young men attacking their respective Govts.

In Iraq there was no anti western sentiment (in the population) until the west went in and completely fecked up getting rid of Saddam.

I have been to Pakistan and Iran post 911 and did not detect the slightest anti western sentiment in the people I met and dealt with....some people asked if I was American and that was it...they smiled broadly when I said no. The Iranian Govt is fairly fundamentalist in its views but the population is certanly not. Iranians are not Arabs they are Persian..there is a difference. Iranians by nature are very moderate in their outlook. Pakistan is only a center of terrorism because so much of the place is completely beyond any Govts control...it's western border country is truly the wild west...it is essentially a geographically handy place for feckwits to hide and no bastard will ever find them....likewise Afghansitan.

Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and a host of other Islamic countries have minority Christian populations who worship in churches openly and without drama. If the Quiran really said kill all christians where-ever you find them surely they would start with the people 3 streets across just because they were handy....but they don't. Islam in fact believes that JC was a great prophet...not the son of god but definately a cool dude.

The common factor in all this terrorist BS is a small group of radicals with unlimited access to LOTS of poor, angry, disaffected young men. Rather like the IRA really.

And therein lays another truth. Islamic Terrorism is to Islam as Irish Republican Terrorism was to Catholicism. Basically **** all.

Seperate 'angry and disaffected' from 'young man' and you'd go a long way to solving terrorism...what 17 year old with a sense of a happy, fulfilling, positive future will willingly strap a bomb to himself?

I would suggest the number would be so small, but not zero, as to be an insignificant problem as opposed to the all consuming problem we seem to have now.

When Islamic countries in the ME are not run by dictators who hoard the resources of their countries unto themsleves we might have a chance to live in a peaceful world...because the grunt labour will have been removed from the clutches of the fundamentalists.

Hezbollah and Hamas is a slightly different version of that same problem.

Like North Korea is the last bastian of fundamentalist Marxist doctrine, Hezbollah is the last really big group who's avowed policy is the destruction of the State of Israel. Everyone else in the Region, certainly all the nation states, has had a go and received a sound flogging, subsequently given up, and made permanent peace with Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas are the last two groups hanging on to power, and that is what it's about, by attacking the State of Israel...and Iranian Clerics are happy to feed them money and whatever else they need to keep bashing away at a dead idea...maintaining a local boogy man...ending the state of Israel.

Hamas and the PLO under Arafat DID NOT want peace because then Arafat and his cohort would lose power. Arafat died and there seemed a chance to resolve the Palestinian problems...but Hamas got stuck in to stir things up so the west bank is in turmoil too....funny that...when there is a vague chance that Palestine might get what they apparently want...autonomy...Hamas and Hezbollah start a war. Hezbollah got what they wanted 6 years ago when the Israelis pulled out of southern Lebanon..so they spent 6 years hoarding things 'what go bang' and digging fighting positions then attacked Israel.

Do you think the populations under their control voted for it? Of course not...but it aint hard to convince a population living in poverty that the big boogy man who lives over there is attacking us again..for no reason....they have been at it so long nobody in the general population can remember who started what...The Israelis keep bombing us so our angry, dissaffected young men go to defend us with the only weapon they have....or is it the other way around...who stands to lose the most if the general population works it out?

Not the Israelis that is certain...maybe the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah?

Syria's big 'want' is the Gollan Heights back....Israel kept them after Syria attacked them one time. Lets see the last time Israel gave back territory it was used as a quiet spot to build an arsenal...what do we think will happen if Israel gives Syria an elevated quiet spot....one with a really good view of Israel? Does anyone think that Hezbolah might set up shop?

Tomorrow, actually today Oz time, I will operate LHR-DXB and I will fly over Beirut and about 20nm east of Damascus...which is in the Bekaa Valley just north of the Gollan Heights...which is a mountain chain that separates Syria from Israel. That whole portion of the flight, from overhead Beirut to the Syrian/Jordanian border, will be about 30 minutes...it aint a very wide area...a crossroads is a good analogy... and yes, you can watch the war happening under you as you fly by.