London Explosions
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]It's on my shelf but I have never got round to reading it. What happens?[/QUOTE]
Bombings and shit. It's a long read though, even for Ellis.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]It's on my shelf but I have never got round to reading it. What happens?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, bombings and shit. There's a pretty funny scene where Notting Hill gets blown up (or does it?). Anyhow, like you descibed, living in London right now does feel like a some weird film or worse: a Brett Easton Ellis fantasy. But scarrier, almost.
If this happens every other thursday it could become annoying.
[QUOTE=Undertow]Bombings and shit. It's a long read though, even for Ellis.[/QUOTE]
I heard it's [I]shit[/I]-dull. I always pause at it on the shelf at my local bookshop, put my hand out, but then hear the rumours and pull my hand back again.
[QUOTE=SnowWhite]I heard it's [I]shit[/I]-dull. I always pause at it on the shelf at my local bookshop, put my hand out, but then hear the rumours and pull my hand back again.[/QUOTE]
It is. BUT it's a must for a hardcore Ellis fan. Otherwise, I do not recommend it. He goes all out on structure-over-story. And the bombing scene mentioned is crazily real...
Police shoot a guy five times after pushing him to the ground at Stockwell station.
What the fuck is going on? This is like an episode of 24....
(and yes, it's kinda worrying how everything gets filtered through pop culture in my frazzled little mind)
I heard there was still an escalated incident somewhere...but I just awoke and may have my facts garbled.
[QUOTE=Earthbound]I heard there was still an escalated incident somewhere...but I just awoke and may have my facts garbled.[/QUOTE]
This is it. They shot a guy at Stockwell, and have also surrounded a mosque in East London.
Right-oh.
There was guy calling in to the radio station claiming to see a group of people burning the American and British flags in front of a mosque. Is this the same incident?
[QUOTE=Earthbound]Right-oh.
There was guy calling in to the radio station claiming to see a group of people burning the American and British flags in front of a mosque. Is this the same incident?[/QUOTE]
Not sure, but the eyewitness reports from the Stockwell incident and truly something to hear:
They shot a man while on the ground (possibly because they thought he was about to detonate something) five times just a couple of feet from passengers.
Damn. Though you can't expect them to dillydally with such business.
interegation could have been good.
But if you have a strong indication that a guy may blow himself up (and like La Gimp said, innocent people were a mere few feet away) you take him down.
[QUOTE=Earthbound]But if you have a strong indication that a guy may blow himself up (and like La Gimp said, innocent people were a mere few feet away) you take him down.[/QUOTE]
I agree - plus, it seems he was wearing something of a suspicious, bulging jacket.
I just chatted to my mate who has to ask permission to cross a cordoned off area in Shepherd's Bush to get to his house. I was sitting in a pub with him 2 weeks ago today chatting about the bombings and now that pub is closed and taped off. Weird.
Whoah - update too: It seems there might have been another one of these "smoking bags" associated with the Stockwell shooting. It may well have been another botched bombing. Fucking hell....
[QUOTE=Earthbound]But if you have a strong indication that a guy may blow himself up (and like La Gimp said, innocent people were a mere few feet away) you take him down.[/QUOTE]
well, with five bullets in you, you'd be well and truly dead.
It all just seems a bit futile.
[QUOTE=SnowWhite]
It all just seems a bit futile.[/QUOTE]
Understatement of the millenium.
Years from now, that is the sentence the 21st century will be remembered by.
[QUOTE=SnowWhite]well, with five bullets in you, you'd be well and truly dead.
It all just seems a bit futile.[/QUOTE]
But if you think he's a suicide bomber, what other choice is there? And if he is associated with the "smoking bag" then it was entirely possible that he did have some kind of detonation device. I'd far rather see him dead than another 25 commuters
[QUOTE=Earthbound]Understatement of the millenium.
[/QUOTE]
It's futile that our only way of pondering what to do next is by waiting for the police to shoot the next dog in the firing range.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]But if you think he's a suicide bomber, what other choice is there? And if he is associated with the "smoking bag" then it was entirely possible that he did have some kind of detonation device. I'd far rather see him dead than another 25 commuters[/QUOTE]
Yes, it is a big risk to take: to sit and watch him do the hornpipe on the platform, and in this circumstance it probably was the best thing to do to shoot him, but in some instances, a lot of information can be drawn through interegation: my father was telling me about doing it when he was in the army, especially around the northern ireland shit (1960s-80s) and it just seemed quite effective.
But the truly sad thing is that you [I]can't[/I] really react until they either have succeeded in their task or are caught in the process of it. Because it's not until these people reveal themselves that any kind of action can be taken or leads become available.
[QUOTE=SnowWhite]It's futile that our only way of pondering what to do next is by waiting for the police to shoot the next dog in the firing range.[/QUOTE]
It's better than pondering what to do until the dogs start blowing themselves up again.
I'm not saying the answer is to shoot the crap out of everyone who looks like a terrorist or reaches into their bag and pulls out a banana, but if this guy is a suicide bomber - he means to kill himself and everyone around him.
The botched nature of yesterday's bombings actually might prove to be the biggest forensic and evidence bonanza that the intelligence services ever get to catch these people alive and at least find some of the sources.
[QUOTE=SnowWhite]Yes, it is a big risk to take: to sit and watch him do the hornpipe on the platform, and in this circumstance it probably was the best thing to do to shoot him, but in some instances, a lot of information can be drawn through interegation: my father was telling me about doing it when he was in the army, especially around the northern ireland shit (1960s-80s) and it just seemed quite effective.[/QUOTE]
Oh I totally agree - if it was possible to interrogate him, that would have been far more useful than a dead guy who can't talk. I'm just talking about risk assessment....
[QUOTE=Earthbound]But the truly sad thing is that you [I]can't[/I] really react until they either have succeeded in their task or are caught in the process of it. Because it's not until these people reveal themselves that any kind of action can be taken or leads become available.[/QUOTE]
There have been some incidents where suicide bombers have been caught mid action/or in the process (like this incident) without being shot to death straight away, and then interegated. This would be unfeasable in the London tube station, but in one incident, the army quickly acted by using a robot to dispose of the bomb, which was disguised inside an israeli youth's jumper at an airport.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I wish I could muster this much conviction about something, even if it was misguided.
Futile indeed.
*sigh*
[QUOTE=Closercloser]Don't take this the wrong way, but I wish I could muster this much conviction about something, even if it was misguided.
Futile indeed.
*sigh*[/QUOTE]
Maybe you could just go on the Low GI Diet? Or try team sports?
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Maybe you could just go on the Low GI Diet? Or try team sports?[/QUOTE]
Ugh. There's no team in I, or something.
Here's a thought though. Imagine our Tony had half as much conviction as these nuts?
[QUOTE=Closercloser]Ugh. There's no team in I, or something.
Here's a thought though. Imagine our Tony had half as much conviction as these nuts?[/QUOTE]
That's a strange and unnerving thought.
I'm not sure I'm too keen on mein Fuhrer having quite that level of conviction, though his wife does have an unshakable faith in the healing power of crystals.
[QUOTE=SnowWhite]There have been some incidents where suicide bombers have been caught mid action/or in the process (like this incident) without being shot to death straight away, and then interegated. This would be unfeasable in the London tube station, but in one incident, the army quickly acted by using a robot to dispose of the bomb, which was disguised inside an israeli youth's jumper at an airport.[/QUOTE]
I see where your'e coming from, and I agree that it is possible to be pre-emptive and capture bombers with no fatalities and this should naturally be what the authorities aim to achieve. Though I'm sure If you were standing over a guy who could very well blow the two of you to pieces, your nerves would of course be called into effect over your judgement as a police officer.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]That's a strange and unnerving thought.
I'm not sure I'm too keen on mein Fuhrer having quite that level of conviction, though his wife does have an unshakable faith in the healing power of crystals.[/QUOTE]
No wonder the Bushes like them so much.
The reporting I was hearing was that the guy had been tackled, then shot five times. That sounded odd, but I have a friend who's a cop and I can think of scenarios he's talked about where deadly force is justified if counterintuitive:
You walk in a room and a guy is holding a pistol to his temple. What do you do? If he won't drop the gun, immediately, you are in your right to shoot him. This sounds crazy until you consider how quickly a gun can be turned from the temple and aimed at you (the cop) or another part (a hostage for instance) in the room.
And given how practically impossible it is to stop an attacker who is willing to sacrifice himself for the mission, I could see a situation where maybe the guy is down but refusing to show his hands. Or appearing to be tring to do something with his hands under the coat or whatever. You want to interogate him, but if it looks like he's about to trigger a bomb, yeah, you shoot him. Again, not ideal either way: it's been mentioned that people were nearby. I've only been in American subway stations, but I assume the London tubes are similar in that they're made of concrete, steel, and tile. In other words practically designed to guarantee unfortunate ricochets of any bullets that miss or overpenetrate.
I'm sure American critics will say the problem is that English cops don't know how to use guns (growing up in America you hear about how England is so civilized that the cops don't carry firearms).
The other thing that occurs to me is the apparent advantage U.K. authorities would have in dealing with domestic terrorists (because of hte IRA) isn't as big as the American press seems to be making it. I could be wrong (and I trust my Cultie friends, esp. the English ones) to correct me if so, but what I remember about IRA campaigns is that they didn't go for suicide bombings. They planted bombs in cars, in trash cans by department stores, at least that's what I remember. That and I remember a van pulling up to #10 Downing and firing mortars, which was so audacious it was almost amusing. If I recall no one, not even the IRA attackers in that case was hurt, and you'd think that would be pretty effective at killing at least some of the P.M.'s staff. And if you pulled that shit in front of the White House, I'm pretty sure the van would get so many Secret Service rounds it would take forensic investigators to discover the make and model.
It would be nice if the assholes who get pissed off about these things actually attacked Presidents and P.M.s instead of folks on their way to legitimate employment.
Of course, I hung in some radical circles where chat of blowing up federal buildings was a recurrent fantasy. Tim McVey wrecked that one for us. The idea was always to do it 'Fight Club' style. That book hadn't come out yet, but the fantasy went along the lines of figuring out the best combination of buildings to take out at Midnight New Years Eve. The idea was not to terrorize the public so much as to have the ATF or IRS wake up unemployed.
And lest anyone think I hung around with really dangerous types back then (or now) the most dangerous explosives we ever fooled with was melting dry ice in empty 2-liter bottles on the Fourth of July. Oh, and I knew a guy who made some fairly impressive firecrackers. Loud but harmless, about like quarter-sticks of dynamite. Enough boom to set off car alarms in the area, and I suppose we could have blown our damned hands off, but I know farmers who use bigger bangs to get rid of stumps.
When we call soccer 'football' the terrorists have won.
[QUOTE=Chixulub]The reporting I was hearing was that the guy had been tackled, then shot five times. That sounded odd, but I have a friend who's a cop and I can think of scenarios he's talked about where deadly force is justified if counterintuitive:
You walk in a room and a guy is holding a pistol to his temple. What do you do? If he won't drop the gun, immediately, you are in your right to shoot him. This sounds crazy until you consider how quickly a gun can be turned from the temple and aimed at you (the cop) or another part (a hostage for instance) in the room.
And given how practically impossible it is to stop an attacker who is willing to sacrifice himself for the mission, I could see a situation where maybe the guy is down but refusing to show his hands. Or appearing to be tring to do something with his hands under the coat or whatever. You want to interogate him, but if it looks like he's about to trigger a bomb, yeah, you shoot him. Again, not ideal either way: it's been mentioned that people were nearby. I've only been in American subway stations, but I assume the London tubes are similar in that they're made of concrete, steel, and tile. In other words practically designed to guarantee unfortunate ricochets of any bullets that miss or overpenetrate.[/QUOTE]
I don't get the impression so far that anyone is questioning the decision of the cops to shoot the guy. There is a diagram in the Guardian today going through the scenario step by step which basically shows that this guy ran on to the tube, stumbled and then turned upon which one of the armed cops unloaded 5 bullets into his head and upper body (it has been suggested that anti-terrorism police are trained to shoot the head and away from the body because of the possibility of setting off any device that might be planted on the body of the suspect).
Because in Britain we rarely see guns, even on the police force, this seems all the more shocking.
However, the cops that shot him were not ordinary policemen. They had pursued the guy from outside the station and there have been unconfirmed reports that he was wearing a "bomb belt" or had left some kind of device behind, hence could have had some kind of detonator. They appear to have been tailing the guy - so were likely a specialist anti-terrorism unit.
I think in general, particularly given recent events, that there is a trust that the cops don't take these decisions lightly and that this guy was shot because he posed a real and immediate threat.
[QUOTE]The other thing that occurs to me is the apparent advantage U.K. authorities would have in dealing with domestic terrorists (because of hte IRA) isn't as big as the American press seems to be making it. I could be wrong (and I trust my Cultie friends, esp. the English ones) to correct me if so, but what I remember about IRA campaigns is that they didn't go for suicide bombings. They planted bombs in cars, in trash cans by department stores, at least that's what I remember. That and I remember a van pulling up to #10 Downing and firing mortars, which was so audacious it was almost amusing. If I recall no one, not even the IRA attackers in that case was hurt, and you'd think that would be pretty effective at killing at least some of the P.M.'s staff. And if you pulled that shit in front of the White House, I'm pretty sure the van would get so many Secret Service rounds it would take forensic investigators to discover the make and model[/QUOTE]
You're right about the IRA. They never suicide bombed and I have also heard that there was a kind of unwritten rule (if you can have such a thing with people who blow up pubs and markets) that they would never target the tube.
These are the first suicide bombings anywhere in Western Europe. That's what has shaken the capital up the most, the sense that this is a new and practically unstoppable threat. If you're prepared to kill yourself to kill others then obviously it makes it a lot easier to get your device to the target.
Recently, the IRA threat has been reduced and there haven't been any significant bombs in London since the early nineties. However, I think that there is a degree of truth to the idea that Londoners and the anti-terrorism squad are used to attacks on London. During the seventies and eighties it was a real and persistent danger - the difference being that there was a more obvious single network of criminals and of course that they weren't prepared to take their own lives.
[QUOTE]It would be nice if the assholes who get pissed off about these things actually attacked Presidents and P.M.s instead of folks on their way to legitimate employment.[/QUOTE]
Too right, though unfortunately they seem to have worked out what unequivocally gets everyone's attention.
Holy shit.
Looks like I was wrong. This guy may have had nothing to do with the bombings. Yet another tragic victim of the climate of fear?
[URL=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711021.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711021.stm[/URL]
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Holy shit.
Looks like I was wrong. This guy may have had nothing to do with the bombings. Yet another tragic victim of the climate of fear?
[URL=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711021.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711021.stm[/URL][/QUOTE]
That's spooky stuff. It's pretty normal stuff for the U.S. with the drug war, though the shootings don't usually take place in an area with security cameras and masses of witnesses. The wrong door gets kicked in and people get shot, roughed up, etc., and the attitude of law enforcement (especially at the DEA level) is that it's acceptable collateral damage in the impossible effort to legislate sobriety.
You mentioned in the post before this one the head shots. From what I know of U.S. law enforcement training, they generally teach you to shoot at center mass. It's harder to miss than a head, less likely to overpenetrate (especially if you hit a guy in the throat, that bullet can easily come out the back of his neck and hit someone/something you didn't mean to hit). But in SWAT and gang interdiction training, I know there's some variation in the training. One I heard of trained them to practice two head shots followed by three to the chest. This was for a gang interdiction unit, and the cops in this unit even had their own 'gang sign' of two fingers over their forehead and three over their chest.
I'm sure the cop who shot the guy was sure he was saving a bunch of lives, including his own.
Which gets back to a point I've belabored earlier in this thread, that force is of limited use in fighting terrorists. We've got to pull our heads out of our asses and get at the root causes, the legitimate grievances that lead to that kind of desperate attack.
You mentioned that suicide bombings were new to Western Europe. In the U.S. there was a mentality that 9/11 changed everything. Still is, they're trying to renew the unPatriot Act and renew it without sunsets, even though nothing about the Act would have prevented 9/11. Hijacked planes had been used as missiles before, just not in America.
The tube attacks, Madrid, or further back, the Embassy bombings in Africa show, no matter what security measures you take, terrorists will figure out where your weak side is and hit it. And there will always be a weak side.
And if the U.K. had continued to ramp up the pressures in Northern Ireland that motivated the IRA campaigns, I'd bet the IRA would have targeted the tubes sooner or later. Maybe even resorted to suicide bombings. The human capacity for atrocity really ramps up when people are outgunned and shut out of the political process.
What's worse, soldiers and cops can slide to atavism just as easily. Lots of people trying to mind their own business get killed or have their civil liberties turn into abstract ideas, and the ones committing the acts of violence get to feel righteous and justified.
When we call soccer 'football' the terrorists have won.
[QUOTE=Chixulub]That's spooky stuff. It's pretty normal stuff for the U.S. with the drug war, though the shootings don't usually take place in an area with security cameras and masses of witnesses. The wrong door gets kicked in and people get shot, roughed up, etc., and the attitude of law enforcement (especially at the DEA level) is that it's acceptable collateral damage in the impossible effort to legislate sobriety.[/QUOTE]
Yeh - it's pretty shocking.
The guy turned out to be a Brazilian electrician. Speculation as to why he ran from the cops is that it was instinct, having grown up in the murderous Fevalas. It's a terrible thing, and the sheer violence of it makes it all the more horrible, but again - like you suggest - if there is a doubt the police can perhaps feel themselves justified to make a move. At the current time if a cop says stop but you run onto a tube train, you can expect to be tackled in the most aggressive way possible.
[QUOTE]You mentioned in the post before this one the head shots. From what I know of U.S. law enforcement training, they generally teach you to shoot at center mass. It's harder to miss than a head, less likely to overpenetrate (especially if you hit a guy in the throat, that bullet can easily come out the back of his neck and hit someone/something you didn't mean to hit). But in SWAT and gang interdiction training, I know there's some variation in the training. One I heard of trained them to practice two head shots followed by three to the chest. This was for a gang interdiction unit, and the cops in this unit even had their own 'gang sign' of two fingers over their forehead and three over their chest.[/QUOTE]
I was a bit unsure about that one myself, but I've heard a couple of so called "experts" on the TV saying that if the suspect is thought to be wearing some kind of explosive device or detonator, then if possible they try to get as close as they can and aim for the head. I don't know where this guy was shot, but it was effectively from point blank range and down into the ground, so I suppose there wasn't much danger of bullets travelling out the other side and hitting bystanders. It might also explain why they didn't try to take him down sooner (sounded like the platform was quite empty)
[QUOTE]Which gets back to a point I've belabored earlier in this thread, that force is of limited use in fighting terrorists. We've got to pull our heads out of our asses and get at the root causes, the legitimate grievances that lead to that kind of desperate attack.[/QUOTE]
I totally agree.
Again, people find it hard to to differentiate understanding why this is happening from condoning it. We don't have to agree with them to understand why it's happening. When people come on the news etc saying that these are "irrational" and "mindless" acts they miss the point.
They are very much rational acts. The people involved have rationalised it in their minds, they have worked through their reasons and decided that the taking of innocent lives is an acceptable conclusion.
Also - I think that the government here is actually doing a pretty good job of trying to deflect blame and anger away from the muslim communties as a whole. HOWEVER - I too often hear people saying - "it's not about Islam". Of course it's not about the kind of moderate, majority version of islam, but it's very much about their extreme version of Islam, and I think it's important to realise that.
Then there's our friend Blair - who says that there is absolutely no way in the world that this has anything whatsoever to do with Iraq at any level. Hmmm.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]
Also - I think that the government here is actually doing a pretty good job of trying to deflect blame and anger away from the muslim communties as a whole. HOWEVER - I too often hear people saying - "it's not about Islam". Of course it's not about the kind of moderate, majority version of islam, but it's very much about their extreme version of Islam, and I think it's important to realise that.
Then there's our friend Blair - who says that there is absolutely no way in the world that this has anything whatsoever to do with Iraq at any level. Hmmm.[/QUOTE]
It's a little dishonest to say it has nothing to do with Islam. Kind of like saying the Crusades had nothing to do with Christianity.
When I speak of root causes, it's more than the invasion of Iraq. The horrible violence of the Israeli state, sponsored mainly by the U.S., the unfortunate selection of allies (and selective support of them) based on Cold War strategy, there's so many mistakes the U.S. and by association the U.K. and the rest of Western Europe, Japan, etc., and they have a cumulative effect.
To look at it another way, the problems in Northern Ireland weren't just about Catholic vs. Protestantism, weren't even just about nationalism. The British government decided to put the boot down and left the Republican side little option but violence. And given an uneven fight, the weaker party is going to fight dirty. Unexcusably dirty. When the Republicans got a chance to advance their case through peaceful political means, even though they have not come anywhere near the stated goal of reunification, IRA bombings and other unpleasantries fell way off.
I can remember growing up, seeing tanks rolling through Belfast, the impression it made on me. The little kids throwing molotov cocktails at the armored personel transports, they looked approximately like me. And I thought at the time that I'd throw one myself if I was in their shoes.
Look at the tactics the Israeli state uses to enforce its Apartheid style regime on the Palestinians. A lot of Americans dismiss this, I think in part because the Palestinian kids don't look like them. But if you're growing up in Pakistan or Syria, I think that footage would look to you like the footage from Belfast in the late 70's/early 80's looked to me. And I was definitely an IRA sympathizier in my teens.
I'm NOT saying that suicide bombings or any other kind of terrorist attack is justifiable. The West needs to do more than pay lip service to Palestine, and it needs to lean hard on Israel to behave like a civilized country. If they won't, we need to withhold those big checks. Maybe use that money to build infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq...
When we call soccer 'football' the terrorists have won.
[QUOTE=Chixulub]It's a little dishonest to say it has nothing to do with Islam. Kind of like saying the Crusades had nothing to do with Christianity.
When I speak of root causes, it's more than the invasion of Iraq. The horrible violence of the Israeli state, sponsored mainly by the U.S., the unfortunate selection of allies (and selective support of them) based on Cold War strategy, there's so many mistakes the U.S. and by association the U.K. and the rest of Western Europe, Japan, etc., and they have a cumulative effect.
To look at it another way, the problems in Northern Ireland weren't just about Catholic vs. Protestantism, weren't even just about nationalism. The British government decided to put the boot down and left the Republican side little option but violence. And given an uneven fight, the weaker party is going to fight dirty. Unexcusably dirty. When the Republicans got a chance to advance their case through peaceful political means, even though they have not come anywhere near the stated goal of reunification, IRA bombings and other unpleasantries fell way off.
I can remember growing up, seeing tanks rolling through Belfast, the impression it made on me. The little kids throwing molotov cocktails at the armored personel transports, they looked approximately like me. And I thought at the time that I'd throw one myself if I was in their shoes.
Look at the tactics the Israeli state uses to enforce its Apartheid style regime on the Palestinians. A lot of Americans dismiss this, I think in part because the Palestinian kids don't look like them. But if you're growing up in Pakistan or Syria, I think that footage would look to you like the footage from Belfast in the late 70's/early 80's looked to me. And I was definitely an IRA sympathizier in my teens.
I'm NOT saying that suicide bombings or any other kind of terrorist attack is justifiable. The West needs to do more than pay lip service to Palestine, and it needs to lean hard on Israel to behave like a civilized country. If they won't, we need to withhold those big checks. Maybe use that money to build infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq...[/QUOTE]
I think we're on the same page man.
I definitely think it's misleading to say that it has nothing to do with Islam, and I also think that the root cause isn't Iraq. However, the Iraq issue certainly hasn't helped matters. It's yet another piece of recruitment propaganda for the figureheads of these terrorist networks to draw in the young, disenfranchised and angry. They can say this, whether or not it is strictly true:
"Look at the illegal occupation of another Muslim country on false pretences. Look at how the west kills and tries to control muslim nations. We can fight back"
It's just the latest in a long line of factors, but perhaps a very potent one at the current time. And like you say about the tanks in Belfast, the images of tanks and even torture scenes in Iraq is nothing if not a further incentive for extremists.
There will be a new documentary series on BBC2 tonight called "The new Al Quaida" at 9pm. Its in three parts, and will be examining these issues.
On a side note, i really hope that The Sun is forced to issue an apology over its "One down, three to go" headline. That is just shockingly negligent journalism.
[QUOTE=Corbain]On a side note, i really hope that The Sun is forced to issue an apology over its "One down, three to go" headline. That is just shockingly negligent journalism.[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't go so far as to accuse The Sun of journalism.
Not long after 9/11, a reporter for the Kansas City Star (I think it was) published a story she'd been researching in Pakistan on the now infamous madrasas. She'd been working on the piece before 9/11, but had been back to Pakistan at least once after 9/11.
She had some great bits in there, like the Imam who ran one of them talking about the need to destroy the Jews. "I'm Jewish," she told him. "And you're very welcome to stay," he told her. It was reminiscent of when Playboy sent Alex Haley to interview George Lincoln Rockwell.
Anyway, the people running the madrasas were quick to point out that there were no guns in the school. And she said it was true. You had to cross the street to buy a gun. Shotguns ran $35 and full auto AK-47s were selling for $50 if memory serves. Cheap by American standards, but the kids in the madrasas were mainly there because it was better than home. They got an 11th Century education and more or less fed. At home they didn't have food, and I don't know, probably didn't have access to any more books than the Koran anyway. They definitely didn't have $50 for a machine gun.
And one of the kids showed this reporter a picture of the Sears Tower. This was after 9/11, and she was doing follow up work, and this kid shows her this pic from a magazine he'd managed to get hold of, and said, "This one's mine."
I'm not a big fan of the homogenizing effects of globalization. As ugly as Wal-Mart and McDonalds is, I remember thinking that these kids needed, badly, to have minimum wage jobs in fast food restaurants and goals like designer sneakers.
Which is only part of the picture, obviously. Going to a madrasas instead of starving makes sense, and it's a situation that I can see inspiring hatred. But obviously the 'New Al Queda' Corbain mentioned the press speaking of, includes people who had full access to the abundance economy of the infidels.
I wonder how many Westerners think of Al Queda as being similar to the Symbionese Liberation Army or Black Panthers. A couple of shoot-outs and those organizations were pretty well cooked. The SLA was better armed and disciplined than most of the supposedly frightening 'militia' outfits Michael Moore has fun with.
Al Queda is more like the SLA crossed with Wal-Mart...
When we call soccer 'football' the terrorists have won.
[QUOTE=Chixulub]Not long after 9/11, a reporter for the Kansas City Star (I think it was) published a story she'd been researching in Pakistan on the now infamous madrasas. She'd been working on the piece before 9/11, but had been back to Pakistan at least once after 9/11.
She had some great bits in there, like the Imam who ran one of them talking about the need to destroy the Jews. "I'm Jewish," she told him. "And you're very welcome to stay," he told her. It was reminiscent of when Playboy sent Alex Haley to interview George Lincoln Rockwell.
Anyway, the people running the madrasas were quick to point out that there were no guns in the school. And she said it was true. You had to cross the street to buy a gun. Shotguns ran $35 and full auto AK-47s were selling for $50 if memory serves. Cheap by American standards, but the kids in the madrasas were mainly there because it was better than home. They got an 11th Century education and more or less fed. At home they didn't have food, and I don't know, probably didn't have access to any more books than the Koran anyway. They definitely didn't have $50 for a machine gun.
And one of the kids showed this reporter a picture of the Sears Tower. This was after 9/11, and she was doing follow up work, and this kid shows her this pic from a magazine he'd managed to get hold of, and said, "This one's mine."
I'm not a big fan of the homogenizing effects of globalization. As ugly as Wal-Mart and McDonalds is, I remember thinking that these kids needed, badly, to have minimum wage jobs in fast food restaurants and goals like designer sneakers.
Which is only part of the picture, obviously. Going to a madrasas instead of starving makes sense, and it's a situation that I can see inspiring hatred. But obviously the 'New Al Queda' Corbain mentioned the press speaking of, includes people who had full access to the abundance economy of the infidels.
I wonder how many Westerners think of Al Queda as being similar to the Symbionese Liberation Army or Black Panthers. A couple of shoot-outs and those organizations were pretty well cooked. The SLA was better armed and disciplined than most of the supposedly frightening 'militia' outfits Michael Moore has fun with.
Al Queda is more like the SLA crossed with Wal-Mart...[/QUOTE]
Interesting stuff.
It sounds somewhat similar to the situation where handing out a uniform, a small wage and an ideology gave a devastated generation of German men the opportunity to regain some respect after they lost the first world war.
However, I do think that Al Qaeda as an organised network controlled by one central division is something of a fallacy. The Nazis were more of an offical club than a ragged collection of disparate cells tied together under one catch all term (something a little like the May Day anti-globalisation marches!)
That docu that Corbain mentioned deals with this idea in part, especially the notion that it's really the internet that keeps these groups linked together and that before that they really were small-scale, ragged and ineffectual.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Interesting stuff.
It sounds somewhat similar to the situation where handing out a uniform, a small wage and an ideology gave a devastated generation of German men the opportunity to regain some respect after they lost the first world war.
However, I do think that Al Qaeda as an organised network controlled by one central division is something of a fallacy. The Nazis were more of an offical club than a ragged collection of disparate cells tied together under one catch all term (something a little like the May Day anti-globalisation marches!)
That docu that Corbain mentioned deals with this idea in part, especially the notion that it's really the internet that keeps these groups linked together and that before that they really were small-scale, ragged and ineffectual.[/QUOTE]
The Nazis are a bad parallel on many levels. They were public, and bent on taking over a government. They would have been easier to suppress by far, the Weimar Republic just didn't have the teeth to do it. They jailed Hitler briefly, but for similar offenses in America at that time he could have been executed for treason.
The diasporadic nature of Al Queda is exactly what makes it such a nasty beast to deal with. Remember how for decades after WWII was over there were Japanese isolated on little islands in the South Pacific who didn't know the war was over? Even if the West got smarter with foreign policy, you can't un-ring the bell. All you can do is try not to ring it again and again. And do what you can to disrupt attacks, though the U.S. approach of using the military is kind of like swatting flies with a bulldozer.
When we call soccer 'football' the terrorists have won.
[QUOTE=Chixulub]The Nazis are a bad parallel on many levels. They were public, and bent on taking over a government. They would have been easier to suppress by far, the Weimar Republic just didn't have the teeth to do it. They jailed Hitler briefly, but for similar offenses in America at that time he could have been executed for treason.
.[/QUOTE]
All I'm saying is that disenfranchised people with nothing to lose and nothing to hope for are easily mobilised when given the promise of, in this case, martyrdom and a counterstrike to the "enemy" and (in the Nazi's case) a sense of dignity and a place to focus anger and frustration. Beyond that, I'm not saying they're similar at all.
However - I do think that in the minds of many people, AL Qaeda are a single unit coordinating attacks across the globe, when in reality it's more piecemeal than that.
[QUOTE=Chixulub] though the U.S. approach of using the military is kind of like swatting flies with a bulldozer.[/QUOTE]
This is a wonderful summary.
So who watched the documentary? I guess you Americans can get a torrent somewhere, its really worth viewing.
The talks with the British webmaster were shocking, i just cannot believe we can let people who disseminate video of Ken Bigley's execution walk freely in our streets.
The last few lines were i think the most important, the US intelligence dude saying the west is losing the "war" because our governments continually lie to us about why we are so hated.
[QUOTE=Closercloser]Glamorama springs to mind.[/QUOTE]
It's on my shelf but I have never got round to reading it. What happens?