Pakistan Taliban storm Peshawar school and kill 100. Horrific.

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BBC link

Fuckers.

The Taliban saying the attack was in response to x y or z is a pile of self serving shite and repeating it, as if it in anyway justifies a bunch of men standing in front of terrified 5 year olds and aiming at the hearts, is fucking obscene.

This act was so depraived, cowardly and foul that the Taliban in Afghanistan have denied any connection.

An act so disgustingly, unfathomably cruel that even the Taliban renounce it. That's some going.

I can't understand the depths of this depravity - what kind of sickness convinces people that if they slaughter children they will go to Paradise?

for my part i wasn't justifying but answering a q as to what the 'rational'/message of it would have been in their minds.

there is no justification whatsoever.

it's not about paradise - please don't mix this up with that.

this is a mega patriarchy - essentially that is what the taliban is. it's not about god but about power and privilege and a sense of entitlement so deep (using religion as a prop obviously) that children can be slaughtered to make your point.

these are men who will tolerate no challenges to their self appointed authority.

unfortunately the west didn't give a flying fuck when women were being murdered, when female lawyers were being beaten in the street or murdered for not having a male relative to own/escort them and when women were laying catatonic outside hospitals for a place to die because they had no means to live on after the taliban had stripped everything from them. they only cared after george bush's little cowboy speech and attack.

it's not bombs that are needed it is armed guards to get girls to school, armed guards to allow women to vote, imprisonment for men who murder. beat or imprison women. the taliban is like the modern pinnacle of patriarchy and where it leads you. people should have stepped up and intervened decades ago. the poor women and children of afghanistan have seriously shitty times ahead once again.

I'm another who cannot actually find the words to express my absolute horror and despair at this inhumane act by animals. My heart breaks for all the families involved.

Well HoneyBadger, clearly you are more in the know than I am.

Whatever the cause it is inexplicable and inconceivable barbarism.

I wasn't responding to you Honey

It was more - "there were many comparable horrendous acts during England's medieval period - and many many since, and as the Taliban has said that the school was targeted due to the school's connection to the army, which is very anti-Taliban obviously, and that this attack was in response to the West's drone bombing and military actions in the north"

And I'm not having a go at the poster, it's the idea that anyone can even try to justify these acts.

I was just watching the BBC where the journalist was being shown the school hall where the front rows are covered in blood from where the children tried to run and get out but were mown down.

And re people should have stepped up and intervened decades ago, I think part of the problem is that the Taliban rose and took over so very swiftly. Wasn't it only the late 90s that they seized power?

In Afghanistan that is.

What could have been done, given that the history of that region is so very difficult and that no foreign power has ever managed to impose its will on it.

Such horror Pag. Such horror even reading those words you wrote let alone seeing it, let alone being caught up in it all.

There are really no words.

thanks pag - was worried you thought i was justifying.

i remember petition and campaign groups desperately trying to publicise the plight back when i was at uni which would have been 97 i think. UN etc didn't give a monkeys and no help was sent for those poor women. then after 9/11 it was raining bombs and destroying any infrastructure that had been built up and punishing a whole people for the alleged involvement in an event that actually had far bigger links to saudi but they were pals with the bush's.

poor bloody country has been put through it so many times by so many sides and then repeatedly just dumped worse off than they were when those sides lose interest.

I'm not trying to justify at all, I was responding to whataboutbob who said that there was noting like that in England's medieval history as many called it medieval - as I put at the start of that post where I called it horrendous and disgusting act which seems to have been ignored. Calling out the disgusting acts of the West and how they contribute this atrocity doesn't justify this atrocity - it ensures that this atrocity isn't used to justify other ones done in our names to supposedly protect us.

The continued rhetoric that there has been and is nothing like this vile violent act against innocent children in the West like this act is obscene - it erases the deaths of thousands of children and the trauma of those remaining -- Western actions in West Asia have caused children to fear clear blue skies (among many other events in Western history that still causes trauma today that keep being swept under the carpet when the West rhetoric puts ourselves above others and for which we will not deal with our own monsters until we recognise them openly).

The continued rhetoric by the media that this attack was about education rights or paradise or religion when we know why the school was targeted is an obscene, obvious show of propaganda to continue further drone bombing, military violence by Western nations, and Western economic control of the resources of the region which hurts everyone.

What they did was barbaric - and what is needed now is global support to help that community heal and help them combat their monsters while the West should deal with how our society and "ideals" is creating monsters of our own that we need to combat.

I think I covered that when I said "I'm not having a go at the poster"

So no, I didn't ignore any part of your post. I was specifically responding to the bits where the ways in which the responsible group tried to justify their actions was described in your post.

I don't ignore bit of posts. I explained what I was responding to and that it wasn't you/the poster.

The main difference between now and the medevial times is that people didn't have access to machine guns and bombs back then. These animals want to live in the past and yet they are prepared to use tools of the present to get their way.

In the staff room I heard two TA's (work in a primary school) talking about how there are far to many foreigners coming into the country and one turned around and said "I know, that's why I don't feel any sympathy about those kids in Pakistan getting shot as that is 150 kids that won't come over hear to breed 150 more out".... This really shocked me tbh

I wouldn't be able to keep my trap shut hearing that, Lonely. If imanaged to restrain myself, I'd be ranting to the head.

I was giving the reason they gave for their attack because saying it was education, paradise, or religion that motivated the attack is an obscene erasure of the situation in favour of media propaganda that is already being used to excuse previous and encourage further atrocities and xenophobia by Western governments and groups done in our names.

Saying that we have nothing like this in our history while our government is actively part of a programme that is murdering thousands of Pakistani people, including children, along with a long history of atrocities supposedly done for us means that they will continue and things will not change.

This attack was about revenge, intimidation, and power during conflict, and we should call it as it is and support the community in healing, not create more palatable versions of otherness to justify xenophobia and Western violence in the area and erase how the West's actions in West Asia is based on the same motivations with far more deadly results.

Majorie - and Western governments are using far more advanced tools to kill thousands of children and innocent people to maintain power in our names, shall we tell them they are animals that are living in the past?

Are you still addressing me? Because I have explained that I was responding to the views you were explaining rather than that you shared them.

Although ironically in the same post you do seem rather to be intent on explaining why people other than the 7 murderous cowards are reponisible.

Could you maybe go and criticise the west elsewhere? I am sure you have plenty to say that is worthy and correct but personally I am still reeling from the boy who told how his teacher stood in front of him and his classmates so they set fire to her. And in her agony she still screamed for her pupils to run and save themselves.
I am not feeling in the best place to be lectured.

Pagwash. Yes I feel that way too. My focus remains on the atrocity of yesterday. I am still stunned and flabbergasted that children were specifically targeted in this way to be slaughtered. And the magnitude of what these poor children endured is my focus.

It's horrifying but it's what they do isn't it. They commit atrocities, the scale of this one and the fact it's so many children has garnered attention, I just think there is stuff going on all the time and it's just so so awful and I don't know what on earth can be done about it. Fight them and you end up raising support for them, leave them and you are not acting when things like this are done. I just don't know.

Just a horrendous act they've carried out, totally impossible to understand how they thought this was a reasonable act.

Yes Spork I agree that western governments behave like animals by killing children in the name of war. War is not the answer.

It's not quite the same as the Taliban in Pakistan though is it? The Taliban deliberately set out to kill children. The Taliban recruit children to blow themselves up. The Taliban are filled with hatred. So please don't try to justify or explain away their actions. Western governments have made things worse but they didn't create this. The UK or USA or any other Western country did not directly or indirectly stick the guns in the hands of those animals yesterday. If the Western world was wiped off the face of the earth the Taliban would still kill children and rape women. It's not an East V West situation.

Well done Marjorie. It seems some people cannot tolerate any criticism of the taliban without instantly screaming "drones" . As far as i know the CIA is not targeting schools with drones. But i am quite prepared to accept that Western interference in muslim lands has often been disastrous.
I do feel however that there is an unresolved tension in the Islamic world (for want of better words between modernisers and fundamentalists) which can result in extreme violence . Recent events such as boko Haram kidnapping Christian girls and blowing up church congregations in Northern Nigeria, to al Shabab selectively massacring bus passengers who cannot quote from the Koran in Kenya , to Isis targeting non muslims for slaughter (or the "wrong" kind of Muslim according to their sick perspective) and in the longer term there's South Sudan, Al Qaida in the Maghreb, the targeting of Coptic christians in Egypt and more. There is a very nasty, intolerant tendency, maybe it's peripheral to Islam but it's there. I'm sticking my neck out, not expecting anyone to back me up and no doubt soon someone will be along to flame me.

It's important to try to hold on to our own humanity, even in the face of the most barbaric acts, imo. Maybe we can't control our first reactions, but as soon as we can, we have to try to apply cool logic, or we'll just descend to their level. Except that no normal person could ever go quite as low as these monsters.

We've just got to try to understand something that is beyond comprehension. We need to be able to express our communal grief and horror, but we have to move on. There is no chance of it ever ending unless 'we,' ie normal human beings, can grasp what is going on.

Spork was trying to provide a balance, I think. No-one could or would ever try to justify this massacre.

A PP remarked that the Taliban stepped up and began their pursuit of power relatively recently. The backdrop against which they did that, like a lot of extremist groups, was legitimate enough. Afghanistan's impoverished and ignorant society, off the back of various wars (such as with the Soviets) was subjected to violence, corruption and general lawlessness on a wholesale level. The Taliban, claiming to be motivated by religious principles, offered a 'holy' alternative. No more having to fork over half your takings in bribes, for example, so long as you adhered to stiff fundamentalist rules and anyone still demanding bribes disappears in the night. A dressed up protection racket, basically. They were quite popular initially.