They’d place all the bombs in various places then call them all in. One would be real, so the bomb squads would just have to hope that they found and dismantled the right one before time ran out. The locations of these bombs would be public places with lots of civilians, including children.
Source?
Are you referring to this: Bloody Friday (1972) - Wikipedia?
Yeah you just try that. Yesterday I did that as I do everyday and as usual it was enlightening but not terribly actionable.
Yesterday I was advised that the cat was stronger than I am and can eat way more food than me, and later I was told that if tomorrow wasn’t Christmas that my face is stinky. Then I witnessed some running in a circle chanting “Spoons are for throwing! I don’t want to fly them!”
You can’t negotiate [when Christmas is] with terrorists.
I told you my source: having lived through it. The two-in-one-day I spoke of that affected me personally was Saturday December 17th, 1983. No, I did not need to look up that date.
To a certain extent, I think this is fair, but then much of what happened in Iraq after the American invasion is muddied. People don’t like occupations and under Bush, the “liberation” was terribly mismanaged. There was a multiplicity of factors that contributed to attacks on Coalition soldiers, which are often called terrorism regardless of method or ideology. I think with identity and often, nationalism, being so closely entwined with religion, it can be less useful to try and assign the correct ideology at times. It becomes absolutely 100% hopeless to make such assignations in the Israel-Palestine conflict, where pretty much anything and everything has become a provocation.
What’s the link and the nature of its significance with particularity to Islam? I never see that pointed out. Ever. It’s always just brought down from on high that the religion is responsible, and its mostly brought down by people who know literally nothing about the theology to make that statement. You have to know at least a little before that’s a legitimate articulation. There needs to be more than just, “This person said something Islamic before a violent act.”
I meant a source for the bit about the fake bombs and bomb disposal teams. You seem to be referring to the Harrods bombing in London, which was a single bomb where a warning was given*, but there was no evacuation.
Again, I’m trying to excuse the activity of the IRA in even the teeniest bit, but I think a failure to recognise the difference between their activities and the deliberate targeting of civilians by Islamist terrorists (who are not innocent in their eyes, the people attending the Bataclan were “pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice” according to them) is a problem.
EDIT * apologies, seems there were two bombs mentioned in the warning, and later a 3rd one in another shop (though this was made after the first bomb had exploded)
The second bomb threat that day (about 9 hours later) isn’t covered much BECAUSE they found the real one in time. I was at St Martin-in-the-Fields for a Messiah concert, and that was one of the clever fakes. The police explained to us at the time what was going on and how it was a common tactic for the IRA.
weirdly I can’t seem to find any reference to the planting of fake bombs bar a few comments online, wasn’t something I had ever heard of before. fake warnings seemed to have been fairly common and widely reported though.
Where did you read me saying that? Where is this straw man you were speaking to?
What I’m saying is that terrorists are identifiable by the beliefs they espouse (Doing things that may ruin innocent lives) and the worst of them eventually resort doing the damage themselves. The problem is that the people who are in charge, the ones who have platforms in the media, and the ones you are getting riled up by are barely a step better and many of them deserve to be called terrorists themselves.
At the very least, the people in authority should be those who genuinely would only consider hurting other people as a last resort, because we have flaws in our biology and it takes a responsible person to overcome them. Also, as it happens, hurting other people is how you create terrorists. How many Iraqi-born ones were there before we invaded? Hmmmmm?
What we currently have is a system that gives people who are exploiting those flaws all the advantage and it’s the reason we’re in the mess we’re in.
Where did you read me saying that? Where is this straw man you were speaking to?
Not straw manning, maybe I’m misunderstanding you. You list 1-4 as the only acceptable responses (5-7 are people who ‘are not helping’), 5-7 would encompass self-defence surely? Surely they’re helping themselves not get killed and that’s something that is to be defended?
How many Iraqi-born ones were there before we invaded? Hmmmmm?
Probably less than you think, the majority of ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Iraq before them were foreigners (most of the locals who are with them are just fighting for a pay-check, many of them have switched sides many times). After the Sunni awakening in Iraq the local Sunnis who had been somewhat receptive to their presence turned on them and turfed them out of the country (back to Syria for the most part, where they had arrived from with Assad’s help) - they mostly returned after the Americans left.
The ones who are able to overcome basic flaws in our biology (let’s start with Dunbar’s number) are the one who are responsible enough as adults to DESERVE a platform and positions of authority.
Sure, it would be nice if all of us were in the 1-4 group, but the point of civilization was to put the best of us in charge and to not have everyone ruining everyone else’s day. Currently, things are completely back-asswards.
It’s about who is put in a position to make those final decisions and who is in charge of the media that people listen to when forming their (currently mostly batshit crazy) opinions. Humans suck at risk management, after all.
There were almost zero. Glad you agree.
How many are there now?
How did they get created?
A: Because childish easily worked up people thought it was okay to go in there and ruin everybody’s day, and the ‘collateral damage’ is angry, ruined people who are easily radicalized and looking at us.
There were almost zero. Glad you agree.
How many are there now?
How did they get created?
A: Because childish easily worked up people thought it was okay to go in there and ruin everybody’s day, and the ‘collateral damage’ is angry, ruined people who are easily radicalized and looking at us.
Sorry, by ‘less than you think’ I actually meant there are probably less than you think there now.
The locals were far more pissed at the Shia government than they were with the Americans, the Americans gave them money and political power, which evaporated as soon as they left the country.
Really? How many do I think there are now? Are you SURE you’re not talking to a strawman here, because this is the second time that’s happened now.
How about the greater point?
Terrorism is not an ‘Islamic’ thing, it’s a predictable response to chaos being created in somebody’s home when combined with immature angry loud people who are more than happy to encourage a person who could have been a farmer to become a murderer.
And actions that are committed by people who are totally okay with ‘collateral damage’ are a primary reason why we have so much of it going on right now. A kid doesn’t care if his uncle was sympathetic to ISIS, he just cares that his uncle was fucking murdered and our first instinct is to vent that rage.
Again and again: Immature asshats exploiting our flaws instead of reasonable adults trying to help us overcome them.
Are you SURE you’re not talking to a strawman here, because this is the second time that’s happened now.
It’s not the 2nd time, didn’t we already establish that?
This isn’t a straw man either, I’m not being very precise with what I’m saying exactly because I don’t know what your position is exactly (i.e. ‘probably’). Most people I talk to about this don’t seem that knowledgeable about the details, and from what you were hinting at it seemed reasonable to assume you thought the figure was higher than what I think it is.
A straw man is either a deliberate misrepresentation of someone’s argument, or a mistaken or ignorant mischaracterisation of a given argument. If you haven’t provided the full details then I’m going to have to make some assumptions.
How many do you actually think?
Terrorism is not an ‘Islamic’ thing, it’s a predictable response to chaos being created in somebody’s home when combined with immature angry loud people who are more than happy to encourage a person who could have been a farmer to become a murderer.
But the terrorism of ISIS was not created by Iraqi civilians who had been radicalised by the US led removal of Saddam Hussein, in fact they were mostly pretty happy about this at the time. The Iraqi insurgency was lead by foreign fighters who entered into Iraq to fight jihad for doctrinal religious reasons, and sectarian attacks between local Sunni and Shia groups. It is an Islamic thing in as much as those two factors have a significant Islamic character, failure to recognise that is hard to understand really.
And actions that are committed by people who are totally okay with ‘collateral damage’ are a primary reason why we have so much of it going on right now.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s the case at all. Syrians are actually more worried that we’re bombing the wrong people than that we are bombing at all, they don’t see ISIS as as much of an immediate threat to them as Assad’s forces and the Russians, and they kind of have a point, not that I think bombing Assad is the right thing to do, but from their point of view it’s perfectly understandable.
btw “Salafist Terrorism” is a perfectly accurate description, and if more people started using it it would be a big improvement on the level of discourse we’re having in general (outside of bbs). for a lot of people in this thread though, even that would be a bridge too far it seems. and I still see no good reason to stop using Islamic terrorism, or Islamism, or Jihadism as relevant.
However may have been happy at the time is hard to say, but Bremer’s “reconstruction” that left more than half the population unemployed for years while factories stood empty and foreign contractors came in, and the subsequent wars, have made sure that’s changed. From what I’ve seen, for instance interviewing ISIS prisoners, a great deal of their recruits come from exactly that sort of thing.
yeah, definitely. the complete lack of a coherent reconstruction plan was one of the main problems as well. it’s not the whole story though.
Why is it so important to you that we use definitions that only capture a subset of the venn diagram and don’t address the root causes?
Are you opposed to ‘religious fundamentalism’ or ‘fundamentalist extremism’? This isn’t ‘PC’, it’s ‘not being deliberately inaccurate and inflammatory’.
I mean, there are freaking BUDDHIST terrorists. Religion is just an excuse that is used once a number of other factors have been fulfilled. It’s like blaming your toes instead of your eyes when you walk into a wall.
Or do you blame your toes?
but religion is one of the root causes, one of the main ones. it’s not an excuse in any way.
Except when it’s not…which is the majority of the time.
So again, why is it so important to you that we use a red herring in the terminology? Why is it NOT important that we instead focus on the root causes (inequality, poverty, lack of hope, separation from a power seen as foreign, etc.)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10576100600704069
http://samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/9781134265626_sample_529650.pdf
http://www.nature.com/news/root-causes-1.18916
http://www.nature.com/news/terrorism-science-5-insights-into-jihad-in-europe-1.18923
