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Bin Laden's unpaid media push

By Judy Cannon - posted Tuesday, 9 February 2010


Much to my private dismay, conference speakers, debaters and activists are, are at times hired - and paid - by organisations to present a particular line in both formal and informal settings, such as seminars. Should an army of volunteers be gathered to go to conferences, meetings, schools, rallies and religious assemblies to present another view to potential bomber-suiciders? The media could certainly report them.

And can we convince politicians, eager for re-election or perhaps electorally desperate, to abstain from using the race or faith card? Not to use fear of terrorists for their own political ends? At the moment, this, and easily understood innuendos, happen unforgivably often. Maybe voters should stand up and say: no race or faith card rhetoric or else!

Can we further persuade law-abiding clerics that there is a much greater need to persuade young people to care about their own life and living it? According to the BBC, Al-Qaeda terrorist cells have trained women suicide bombers, of ''non-Arab'' appearance travelling on Western passports for attacks on Western targets. But in February when at least 50 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a suicide bombing in northern Baghdad, Iraqi police said a female suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt as she walked among female Shiite pilgrims, the ABC reported. Al Qaeda and Sunni extremists are thought to target Shiite Muslims to destabilise the Shiite-led government. and two suicide bombers on motorcycles in Pakistan struck a bus and hospital, targeting Shiite Muslims in Karachi for the second time in six weeks, killing 23 people and wounding 75 others, the ABC reported, also in February.

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And how can it be that the elders, who offer hatred and death to the young, truly care about them. Why do they not, instead, volunteer themselves? It seems England and Japan are prepared to lead a $500 million effort to lure fighters from the Taliban with jobs, security and amnesty in an effort to bolster a proposal by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to reintegrate low-level Taliban figures. Australia is to contribute $25 million. Is this too an opportunity to persuade there are other ways?

A social worker informs me that in some circumstances when young people threaten suicide, they somehow, irrationally, do not fully realise that really they will be dead if they suicide. It seems some truly do not understand that. Illogically, they somehow expect still to be around - to watch the resulting grief or effects.

For some future suicide bombers it is already too late. But a significant contribution the media could make to vulnerable young people would be to carry an ongoing collective, persuasive message to the upcoming generation, which sadly is likely to include potential bomber-suiciders: spell out that there are more persuasive reasons to stay alive; that there are many ways to express an opinion, that there are people who care about them. Why be born to be blown to bits?

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About the Author

Judy Cannon is a journalist and writer, and occasional contributor to On Line Opinion. Her family biography, The Tytherleigh Tribe 1150-2014 and Its Remarkable In-Laws, was published in 2014 by Ryelands Publishing, Somerset, UK. Recently her first e-book, Time Traveller Woldy’s Diary 1200-2000, went up on Amazon Books website. Woldy, a time traveller, returns to the West Country in England from the 12th century to catch up with Tytherleigh descendants over the centuries, and searches for relatives in Australia, Canada, America and Africa.

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