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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (24307)	4/10/2002 7:29:11 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The communists took over in Russia during a crisis, defeat of the Russian Empire during WWI. The Nazis took over Germany during a crisis, an economy that had never recovered from WWI and could not cope with reparations and the rest of the onerous provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. In desperate times, people do stupid things. Take a look at living conditions in the West Bank, especially now, and ask yourself whether young Palestinians are more likely, or less likely, to turn to Islamism. BTW, fascism has a bad name because of Hitler, but Spain had a fascist government for over 50 years. The world managed to get along with fascist Spain, just as we are managing to get along with communist China. We don't like fascism and we don't like communism, but we manage to accommodate it.

To: frankw1900 who wrote (24307)	4/10/2002 8:50:48 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi frankw1900; Re: "It's become fashionable, that's why. It will become unfashionable, eventually. See Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Coibain." If the Irish had thought of suicide bombing, (and had managed to get their religious authorities to put a nice spin on it), they'd have done it for 800 years. To rebel against England was quite equivalent to suicide. As far as suicide becoming unfashionable, I doubt it. People have been killing themselves for aeons and will undoubtedly continue doing so. If the local authorities give big time benefits to the relatives, then I would expect that some of the people who were inclined to kill themselves would take advantage of those benefits. Especially since death by explosive belt has to be one of the least painful ways to go. Lets see what the Canadians are doing: [Canada] Suicides, and suicide rate, by sex, by age group All ages, Male and Female: 12.3 per 100,000 per year statcan.ca Since there's something like 5 million Palestinians living in Palestine and Israel, a suicide rate of 12.3 per 100,000 amounts to 615 per year. That amounts to 12 per day. Of course since life in the refugee camps is worse than life in Canada (though not by a hell of a lot), one would expect the suicide rate to be considerably higher. Here, Slovenia's rate is 30 per 100,000 per year: geocities.com Using the Slovenia figure knocks up the natural suicide rate from 12 per day to 28 per day. Since a suicide bomber rate of 1 per day is more than Israel can stand (without committing counter atrocities and becoming an international pariah state which is the whole objective of the suicide bombing campaign), I'd say that the Palestinians have more than enough suicidal individuals on their hands to reach an eventual victory. The problem here is that everyone (especially Israel) is making a big deal out of what amounts to a very small number of deaths. -- Carl P.S. Nadine, please do correct my figures. I'm probably off on the Palestinian population figures, but there is no question that you guys have a permanent problem on your hands. Today's news just bears this out.