bouncing of a point made by the sarge...

i think suicide bombing, kamakazi etc...
is more about brain washing...both from society and an organised group.

i think it would be wrong to class those people as suicidal...

i remember when a 15yr old arab BOY...with a suicide vest on...

walked into an army checkpoint...crying his eyes out...only repeating
"i dont wanna die!"

it was REALLY sad...

its strange though that some societys have more suicide than others...

Japan has a BIG problem with suicide...yet its a prosperous country
uganda has virtually NO SUICIDE though people live with extreme hardships...

i think therefore alot of it is due to "Social Programming" by society...
something most people dont realise goes on and is happening to them...

also regarding suicide bombers....
i quote the tamil Tigers comander regarding suicide bombers (not verbatum but near enough)

"yes we use suicide bombers...if we want to hit a well defended target...we will have to use 150 men..of those probably only 50 will come back and the likelyhood of mission failure is high... however..if we use a single suicide operative then mission sucess is almost garenteed and our losses are only one...so in effect that one operative would have saved 99 lives..and chances are if we used a conventional attack...they would have died anyway"

but yea...i DO think that the two are VERY different...because "martyrs" have been brainwashed to kill themselves....suicidal teenagers have not

Another interesting thought that reached into my cerebral cortez is that everyone who thinks their lives are horrible usually try to oust others whose lives are bad. Makes you wonder what's really important: that life that's horrible, or how horrible the life is. More importantly, does it really freakin' matter?

Life is just like a road, you must get up every time you trip and move on. But if you simply give up at the thirst hard obstacle without giving a fight, you might as well admit that you're pathetic and weak.

AlphaDuck, you are speaking from a very Western perspective, and not with a lot to back it up. You call ingrained cultural foundations "brainwashing" because they don't line up with your logic. You just can't see it from another perspective, which is OK, but you need to acknowledge that.

attitudes about suicide, communication styles, language, individual vs. group, food, these are all a part of culture. You are in no position to call kamikaze pilots who fought with their lives to protect Japan "weak", "brainwashed" or "idiots".

Here are the top 10 countries by suicide rates. Not all such nice places to live:

Suicides per 100,000 people per year
Country Males Females Total Year
Lithuania 70.1 14.0 40.2 2004
Belarus 63.3 10.3 35.1 2003
Russia 61.6 10.7 34.3 2004
South AfricaN/A N/A 30.0 2004
Kazakhstan 51.0 8.9 29.2 2003
Hungary 44.9 12.0 27.7 2003
Guyana 42.5 12.1 27.2 2003
South Korea N/A N/A 26.1 2005
Slovenia 37.9 13.9 25.6 2004
Latvia 42.9 8.5 24.3 2004

I resent that.

My point is that Alpha Duck seems to have concluded that people only commit suicide in very rich countries, while people in very poor countries don't commit suicide. I am just showing that can't be considered a fact, as most of these places are not very rich places.

im not calling ingrained culural foundations "Brainwashing"

but suicide in the face of battle IS brain washing...

having a DEEP knowledge of Hypnosis...you learn about brainwashing

it happens in MOST if not ALL armed forces....
especially when it comes to suicidal attacks...
the Kamikazi pilots of WW2 were brainWashed....

just as the suicide bombers of today are brainwashed....
that is a simple fact....
Brainwashing is EXTREMELY sophisticated...
it requires time and effort...
and is VERY dangerous...not to be underestimated at any rate...

everyone can be brainwashed...
inteligence or background do not protect you from this...

I could explain the moethods behind brainwashing...but i think thats getting off topic...

also i have seen this list before...its the wiki list... i noticed that you stopped right at the point where Japan comes in the list....

also lithuania, S korea, hungary, latvia...esp S koreo and Japan which comes next in the list...are nice places to live...Russia is messed up..and south africa has good and bad parts...the rest i have no accurate PERSONAL experience about so cannot comment.

but it is CLEAR that POVERTY and suicide are not directly linked...nor are hardship and suicide directly linked...and that was the point i was making...somthing your evidence supports.

Or it's an idea of culture?

American's saw the kamikaze pilots and soldiers as insane, willing to die rather than to live and surrender. Even today, we see car bombers are insane psychopaths who thrive on death.

In reality, those soldiers in Japan lived with honor, and to surrender meant a loss of honor to them, and for them, to live without honor was far worse than to die with it (don't quote me on that, that's just a generalized thought of my remembrance of history).

The car bombers today? It's mainly a religious thing, insofar that if you die while killing an infidel, you go to Heaven with 70-some-odd virgins.

Culture could be considered brainwashing to a certain extent, but brainwashing has a rather strong connotation with it.

AlphaDuck, you are still looking through western colored glasses.

Kamikaze attacks on American ships was not due to "brainwashing".

The "death before defeat" credo of Japanese soldiers goes all the way back to the days of the Bushido. Were the samurai brainwashed, too? Come on. It's a part of the CULTURE and suicide is looked upon very differently in Japan than it is in the west.

My list of top 10 countries was in response to this quote from you:

what i find funny is:....that all these suicidal angsty teenagers are always living in such NICE countries....

I am just saying that your line can't be taken as fact.