Does anyone else wonder:

1. Why the media talk about finding/arresting the ‘mastermind(s)’ behind such events? I mean, is a ‘mastermind’ really necessary to send a bunch of hateful sub-humans into the streets with guns and grenades? Doesn’t seem to need much planning to me. And doesn’t it give the people involved too much credit?

2. Why countries such as France (and the rest of the West) wait until something happens before rounding up the hundreds/thousands of threats, instead of just going out now and bringing them in. I mean, if they could uncover a bunch of cells in the wake of Friday’s horror, couldn’t they have done it before? There was an arms cache in Lyons that included a rocket launcher or some such thing, FFS! Couldn’t they have detected that prior to what happened?

3. Why Daesh still exists, when the combined forces of the West could have obliterated it by now?

I know there are probably some very straight-forward answers to most of these questions, but sometimes politics and conflict just don’t make sense. 🙁

1) people refer to Gideon Osborne as a genius, so it clearly doesnt take much to be credited as a mastermind.
2&3) if we do that then were just about as bad as them.

It takes a ridiculous amount of time, planning and co-ordination to do something like this. You can’t just nip down to Aldi and buy a bootload of explosives and Kalashnikovs, you know. And as for persuading a dozen people to wear suicide vests, another level of complexity.

2. No, they couldn’t have detected that. Full surveillance is difficult, and needs resources.

3. Daesh exists because we created the conditions for it. Thank you, Mr Bush & Mr Blair. It’s easier to make a mess than clear it up. ISIL has clear roots in scriptures, so unless you bomb all the local schools it will grow until superceded or successful.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

I have a couple of questions. Who armed Daesh and who is buying oil from them?

Can of worms.

They can’t ’round up’ these pepole before they do stuff, because they don’t know who they are. They do try to find out what’s going on but that requires lots of surveillance which people don’t like – see STW for examples.

As for obliterating terrorists/guerillas – that’s a lot harder to do than to say. See 20th century history for many examples. The last time we tried to eradicate terrorists was a bit of a PR disaster*, don’t you remember?

* not to mention humanitarian…

Was faintly surprised at that aerial picture of where Jihad John was taken out

There was a large red arrow pointing to nearby building labelled as ‘ISIS HQ’ 😕

Maybe bomb that as well? Just an idea

3. Daesh exists because we created the conditions for it. Thank you, Mr Bush & Mr Blair.

I was washing the repeats of Time Trumpet at the weekend. On one episode they were focusing on Blair/Bush/Gulf War 2, particular a Bush quote (and I paraphrase) “every step we take towards democracy around the world makes the West safer”. Oh, the benefits of hindsight.

Re. point 1

Think about it for a minute. Imagine 8 idiots wanted to pull this off. What are the chances of 8 idiots going out and planning this and getting the materials without:

a) One of the 8 idiots letting slip to one of his mates / mum / dad that he was up to something and the word getting out to the authorities or someone alerting them. 8 + supporting people means a lot of folk knew about this in advance.
b) One of the idiots getting caught trying to buy guns and explosives
c) The idiots all falling out and the plot escaping (see gunpowder plot)
d) The idiots making a balls up of it (see Glasgow airport “terror” attack for an example of idiots do terrorism).
e) The authorities detecting that one of the idiots was up to something and uncovering the plot

These weren’t idiots, or at least some non-idiots were involved and kept the idiots on a tight leash.

2. Why countries such as France (and the rest of the West) wait until something happens before rounding up the hundreds/thousands of threats, instead of just going out now and bringing them in. I mean, if they could uncover a bunch of cells in the wake of Friday’s horror, couldn’t they have done it before? There was an arms cache in Lyons that included a rocket launcher or some such thing, FFS! Couldn’t they have detected that prior to what happened?

I would imagine as soon as France declared a “State of Emergency” that the police and security forces automatically are granted additional rights, which they have used.

Why countries such as France (and the rest of the West) wait until something happens before rounding up the hundreds/thousands of threats, instead of just going out now and bringing them in

them?

which are the “them” who are planning to commit terrorist activities at the moment? while I’m in no doubt that the various intelligence gathering agencies have a rough idea who “them” are, what are we going to do? Gauntanamo, and Abu Garib didn’t really work out that well for us, there’s a reason all the victims of IS beheading are dressed in orange jumpsuits…

I think IS want a big war in Syria against the armies of Rome, where there are just 5000 of them left, then Jesus comes down with a big sword and duffs up the infidel, and true old fashioned Islam takes over the world.
Or something.
Giving them what they want will validate their fantasy in many eyes and draw in loads of new recruits.

I’m not a big follower of Middle East history, but isn’t this “it’s all the West’s fault” a bit simplistic? Was it really all sweetness and light in that part of the world before Blair and Bush?

That’s not to say Western foreign policy machinations/ill thought out interventions haven’t played a (big) part in where we are now, but the governments of, say, Syria and the general trend towards brutal dictatorships and sunni/shia schisms has got to take some blame, surely?

There are around 2 billion Muslims…..
those who prefer to follow an extremist view and follow extremist groups such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram etc. make up less than 0.003% of the world’s Muslim community.
They ARE the minority and DO NOT represent the beliefs and values of the majority.
They are evil beings claiming to follow Islam…..but in truth they are the spawn of Satan.

Giving them what they want will validate their fantasy in many eyes and draw in loads of new recruits.

in response to that here is what one of my friends wrote…i think it explains the above well

Why is a massacre turned into a Circus?

On Friday night, more than a hundred innocent civilians were mercilessly killed in their own capital. Paris faced coordinated shootings and bomb attacks. They were inexcusable, inhumane, and indiscriminate. We all know this. We all feel this.

But as is familiar with every terrorist attack by now, a Circus ensues. Tim Montgomerie and similar political pundits, before the blood of the victims had even dried, immediately declared that “we are at war”. The chorus that followed blamed Muslims, refugees, immigrants, and anything in between for these attacks. This is Act One of the Circus.

Muslims and other members of the public then respond to Act One, pointing out that it is unfair to generalise the actions of so few, on to so many. And that, in fact, Muslims themselves are the biggest victims of this kind of terrorism. For example, on Thursday, dozens of Muslims were killed in a similar terror attack in Lebanon. This is Act Two.

Act One and Act Two continue to interact. Meanwhile, anti-Muslim sentiment drastically rises. Racist or discriminatory attacks follow, particularly against Muslim women. Perpetrators fail to realise that they are targeting innocent people, the very same way terrorism does.

As a result, a friction emerges within communities. This friction acts as a catalyst for extremism. Put simply, the more alienated Muslims are within Western society, the easier they become recruitment targets for groups like ISIS. The narrative of “You do not fit it, they do not want you here” will be easier to embed, because it is suddenly repeated by all sides of the discourse.

And the cycle rages on.

What makes this worse, is that it happens every time. After the first dozen times, you would expect that a comprehensive strategy of avoiding political statements and instead expressing solidarity and empathy within communities would have taken hold. This would counteract the poisonous repercussions (beyond civilian casualties) of such terrorist acts – it would avoid some of the confusion and terror.

But no, for a loud minority, the opportunity to capitalise on horror and massacres, to reinforce prejudice and hatred, is too difficult to ignore. It simply has to happen. For them, the Circus must commence.

And we’re back to square one.

But as is familiar with every terrorist attack by now, a Circus ensues.

There have been a lot of circuses in the last 10 years but I don’t see mass pogroms of Muslims in Europe?
I’m not saying that there aren’t incidents but nothing on the scale that the caption above would seem to indicate, I would say despite Madrid, despite 7/7 and despite Paris (and hundreds of incidents over the last 10 years including foiled attacks) Muslims have a good life in the west and are generally accepted into society.

Think about it for a minute. Imagine 8 idiots wanted to pull this off. What are the chances of 8 idiots going out and planning this and getting the materials without:
a) One of the 8 idiots letting slip to one of his mates / mum / dad that he was up to something and the word getting out to the authorities or someone alerting them. 8 + supporting people means a lot of folk knew about this in advance

This overlooks the act three of the idiots were brothers, their dad took them to Syria, the immediate family have already said one of them was radicalised and the mum has been arrested this morning because she knew about it and failed to alert the authorities.

The biggest mistake being made is to think of the event in Paris is a one off – it’s not. It’s part of the new norm sweeping across Kenya, Nigeria, Morrocco, Algeria and many parts of Europe as well . It’s name isn’t terrorism – it’s just a more aggressive and intolerant version of Islam, which itself is not at all tolerant of any other beliefs and is effectively a political, economic and social system designed to require complete unquestioning support from its followers.

Just spoken with my British colleague in Nigeria and he reports that Nigerians are quite peeved at the wave of public sentiment over the Paris events because things like this are happening almost every day in their country and nobody in the “north” seems to care a damn, assuming the media report the massacres at all.

@globalti: Regarding your colleague’s reort, see this thread.

^^^^ well said gonzy

Islamic attacks on western Europe go back several hundreds years so blamimg Bush/Blair is very simplistic.

gonzy – Member

There are around 2 billion Muslims…..
those who prefer to follow an extremist view and follow extremist groups such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram etc. make up less than 0.003% of the world’s Muslim community.
They ARE the minority and DO NOT represent the beliefs and values of the majority.
They are evil beings claiming to follow Islam…..but in truth they are the spawn of Satan.

On that account can we make them disappear cold war style? After all it’s only 0.003%.

1) because it’s one thing to stop the radicalised young man who’s hell bent on destroying the West, better to stop the truly evil **** who twists the mind of impressionable angry young men in the first place.

2) these guys don’t really care about leaving evidence behind, they don’t expect, or even want to survive their attack – once they’ve committed their act and the authorities know who they were, they raid their home and find the evidence to find the others who helped them, or put them up to it.

3) Daesh, ISIS, IS, ISIL whatever you want to call them – we are fighting them, with drones, but they’re winning because you can’t win a war with airpower alone, especially against a non-conventional force. If we wanted to wipe out IS we’d need to commit to a ground war, which is problematic because of the million different ‘interests’ in the middle east – the main ones are Saudi and Russia – we can’t piss of Saudi too much, because our bases are there and they control OPEC and we can’t piss of Russia to much because of the threat of another Cold War. Plus, we already fought that war, we won the conventional war and installed a friendly government in Iraq, the same fighters who we called Insurgents we now call IS. It’s the same War we couldn’t win a few years ago.

Are we completely sure it’s only 0.03% though?

Take a look at this video – it’s quite interesting. The audience view themselves as “moderate” but how compatible are their views with a stable society in Britian?

The interesting questioning starts about 1m 45 in – have to admit I was quite surprised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV710c1dgpU

chewkw – Member

gonzy – Member

There are around 2 billion Muslims…..
those who prefer to follow an extremist view and follow extremist groups such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram etc. make up less than 0.003% of the world’s Muslim community.
They ARE the minority and DO NOT represent the beliefs and values of the majority.
They are evil beings claiming to follow Islam…..but in truth they are the spawn of Satan.

On that account can we make them disappear cold war style? After all it’s only 0.003%.

They’re sneaky, they don’t wear ID badges or Uniforms unless it suits them too, their greatest asset is the ability to melt into the crowd until they’re ready to attack.

Don’t be fold into thinking we have spy satellites and drones monitoring all of them, all of them time.

P-Jay – Member
They’re sneaky, they don’t wear ID badges or Uniforms unless it suits them too, their greatest asset is the ability to melt into the crowd until they’re ready to attack.

Don’t be fold into thinking we have spy satellites and drones monitoring all of them, all of them time.

Ya, but I doubt you want to wear uniform if you are applying cold war style approach. Who? What? Who disappear? Must be alien abduction.

Deash etc represent the average muslim about as much as WBC represents christians. They use the word extremists, however I’m not sure it’s wholly fair. They claim to be a pure version of a faith, but they’ve just perverted it. Old Tariq down the post office cares for these perverts about as much as I do.
Round up the pervert sympathisers, enablers and activists, put them on a plane and **** them off out of it. Reallocate the dodgy mosques to proper muslims. You don’t even have to strip nationalities, just ban them as Belgium did to one of the Paris perverts (20 years IIRC).

just5minutes

Take a look at this video – it’s quite interesting. The audience view themselves as “moderate” but how compatible are their views with a stable society in Britian?

What about these guys?

They probably see themselves as perfectly rational and not racist at all, but how compatible are their views with a stable society in Britain? What’s the official party line on homosexuality from Britain First?

On a slight tangent, does anyone else think it’s ironic that the powers that be spent millions tracking and killing Mohammed Emwazi with the most sophisticated arsenal known to man for a “propaganda victory”, only to have ISIS massively upstage them with a few hundred pounds worth of rifles and fertaliser.

Where are you going to fly them to, Wrecker? Given they were born in France, Belgium, Germany, Britain or wherever they are living and are French, Belgian, German, British or whatever.

Syria, let them fight the good fight.

Drones and to a lesser (but not much) extent aerial strikes are the elephant in the room. They are practically indistinguishable from terrorist attacks in nature and effect.

Hatred in the absence of opposing ground forces to counter attack leads to retaliation of like for like, using the only means at their disposal, human drones.

Assad.

jimjam – Member
What about these guys?

Do they spray lead at innocent people? Take their lives away?

They probably see themselves as perfectly rational and not racist at all, but how compatible are their views with a stable society in Britain?

It’s inevitable consequences of all societies regardless of where you live. I don’t support them or their opposite … in fact I don’t support most ideologies. All shite!

The question is whether they use suicide belt or spray people with lead.

If they do then make them disappear otherwise at ease.

I have a couple of questions. Who armed Daesh and who is buying oil from them?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29052144

have a read of that, short and answers all your questions for you

chewkw

Do they spray lead at innocent people? Take their lives away?

Do the people in the video I was replying to?

Keep up.

jimjam – Member
Do the people in the video I was replying to?

Keep up.

Ahhh … okay … as they say in Merica ‘my bad’.

Anyway, same principle should be applied to all.

Drones and to a lesser (but not much) extent aerial strikes are the elephant in the room. They are practically indistinguishable from terrorist attacks in nature and effect.

Can you not see the difference between attacking combatants or civilians?

On a slight tangent, does anyone else think it’s ironic that the powers that be spent millions tracking and killing Mohammed Emwazi with the most sophisticated arsenal known to man for a “propaganda victory”, only to have ISIS massively upstage them with a few hundred pounds worth of rifles and fertaliser.

Nope. The west targeted one man who had committed atrocious acts against innocents. They killed him with no risk to their own personnel and with limited risk to innocents.

Isis killed innocent people and themselves died.

The two reflect different value sets, ‘upstaged’ doesn’t come into it.

1) In any military (or indeed Police) action you try and take out the generals as well as the foot soldiers

2) there are 350 returnees from Syria in the UK and approx 1,500 in France along with some 3,500 “suspects of interest”. The detention powers we had to round them up which Blair / Brown out in place where voted out by the Lib Dems in the last government. Whenever such powers of arrest are surveillance are discussed there is much opposition.

3) The coalition has been somewhat half hearted in its attacks on Daesh to date. This is in major part due to Obhama’s headlong rush to withdraw from Iraq and the total failure of the Iraqi military to put up a fight.

@Markie, I am not sure anyone in Raqqa can be described as an innocent. I would take the view everyone there is an IS militant or sympathiser, someone choosing to live in and support the Caliphate

I am not sure anyone in Raqqa can be described as an innocent. I would take the view everyone there is an IS militant or sympathiser, someone choosing to live in and support the Caliphate

Even by your standards you’re scraping the barrel there.

because it’s one thing to stop the radicalised young man who’s hell bent on destroying the West, better to stop the truly evil **** who twists the mind of impressionable angry young men in the first place.

the problem is that you can catch the young man before he is about to carry out his crime, hopefully he will have enough incriminating evidence to put him away or a along time…but in doing this another will only take his place
or you can try and identify who is radicalising these young men and go after them…but again the problem is someone else will again take that place and continue the work

on Thursday it was “proudly” announced in the press that they had finally killed Jihadi John…this made me wonder “why now? they could have got to him at any time so why now? and why are they sensationalising it in the press as some sort of major victory/good news for the public?”
immediately i had a feeling that there was more to this story nd that maybe they were trying to get some news out to either divert peoples attention away from something more serious or it was a precursor to some bad news….on friday we found out what that bad news was.
i just cant help but think that someone somewhere in the french/british government knew what was about to happen but would allow it to happen, but only after trying to soften the blow with some news about one individual in particular whose actions recently has morally abhorrent.
allowing it to happen ensures the people are in a state of fear and will fall under the control and influence of the state and allow the state to implement its greater control/surveillance measures and to further enforce its current foreign policies