Shooting in Paris; casualties reported. Hope this isn't what it sounds like.

police lied saying he had jumped the barriers and ran to try and justify their actions.

Not sure if the police ever actually said that initially, or if they did mistakenly say it and not retract it immediately, or if someone else said it but they didn’t deny it. IIRC it was an eye witness who first said it.

Like all these things, there’s often a whole shed load of confusion and ‘fog of war’ (for want of a better expression) whereby things get speculated on and then repeated as fact, and the police, for various reasons, feel unable to just shut up and say nothing until the facts have been established (which may take some considerable time) – you only need to look at the deaths of Mark Duggan and Ian Tomlinson for that (from all sides) in spades.

He did not run. The media bandwagon backtracked on that statement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/06/jean-charles-de-menezes-death-anniversary_n_7714488.html

In the pics, you will see it is the police jumping the barriers not jean

He ran from the police, with a rucksack,

not true, but the police new it was incorrectly reported in the press and let the information stay out there so its now known as ‘fact’

This is one of the failings of our media – when the paper (I forget which) ran that story they were quoting an un-named source within the met.

UK papers quote un-named sources with such regularity in anything from cases like this to stupid celebrity gossip that we don’t notice they do it anymore.

For ‘un-named source’ you are supposed to read ‘someone on the inside who’s life or livelihood would be at stake if their identity was revealed’ but the reality is ‘if you knew who we were quoting you’d laugh and dismiss everything you’ve just read’ either because its the PR department, the cleaner or someone from the pub.

You’d think if a paper really believed and depended on the integrity of an un-named source and their information the first thing they’d do is expose that source as liar the moment it became clear the story they’d reported was bullshit

Jim Jam – I’m not so sure. Going by that wikipedia link in the decade preceding 9/11 you had one bomb attack in London, one in NY and one in Paris. In the decade preceding that, one in the UK, none in the U.S.

I don’t think I was wrong.

But you’ve missed the other attacks on european and american citizens . Does it really matter where the attacks were – the only constant is that citizens of countries in the west are seen as fair targets irrespective of where they are.

1993 – Attack on CIA in the USA
1993 – bomb at world trade centre in USA
1994 – bombing of an embassy in London
1994 – attack on air france flight
1995 – two bombings in France
1995 – bombing of US Air Force personnel
1996 – murder of 15 Greek tourists
1997 – murder of c50 european tourists at Luxor
1998 – bombing of US Embassy
2000 – attack on USA Warship

etc etc.

just5minutes

But you’ve missed the other attacks on european and american citizens . Does it really matter where the attacks were – the only constant is that citizens of countries in the west are seen as fair targets irrespective of where they are.

For the most part attacks on embassies and bases on foreign soil. As I commented “I don’t recall an atmosphere of fear of attacks from Islamic extremists pre 9/11” and I’d stand by that. I didn’t say there weren’t attacks.

Obviously the US and UK’s post 9/11 actions have gotten us to where we are today.

Obviously the US and UK’s post 9/11 actions have gotten us to where we are today.

….and got the Middle East to where it is today.

If America had shrugged its shoulders and done nothing the world would be safer for us and millions of others.

Obviously the US and UK’s post 9/11 actions have gotten us to where we are today.

By creating the vacuum that allowed these sick bastards to flourish.

Obviously the US and UK’s post 9/11 actions have gotten us to where we are today.

Who is to say Al-Q / IS would not have risen up if Sadam had still been in power ?

9/11 was an Islamist extremist suicide attack on a huge scale so it’s not surprising people where more aware of the risks after that. As posted above they’d bombed the WTC before with the van in the car park, my neighbour from when I lived in NY was evacuated from the WTC that day and from that moment onwards she was very wary of further attacks. As she was Jewish she was already more conscious of fundamentalist terrorism given the suicide bombing from 1989 onwards (roughly 800 people killed by 170 suicide bombers)

I think 9/11 brought into focus risks which most people had ignored. Much like the event in Paris on Friday, it forces people to confront the reality of the world in which we live

“I don’t recall an atmosphere of fear of attacks from Islamic extremists pre 9/11”

Not in the UK, but we’d had more than enough homegrown terrorism to occupy us. The US had a greater sense of a fear of ‘terrorism’ – perhaps all the more so because incidents of terrorism were comparatively seldom. Compare that list above of attacks against ‘westerners’ globally in the 90s against a list of IRA attacks on the English mainland in the same period. The US had a greater fear of terrorism than we had (or even have) because we were used to it – a fear of a known versus a fear of an unknown.

US citizens probably didn’t so much identify those 80s/90s attacks as ‘islamic’ as much as just foreign or anti-american given that at the same time the US as also tied up with things like Grenada, and was being targeted by Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigade etc. Anti-american sentiment from all quarters and all creeds. Much of anything that was perpetrated by any islamic cause was state sponsored (or strongly suspected of being so) such as those perpetrated by Libya (which under Gadaffhi was a fairly moderate and liberal in religious terms) rather than the stateless ideological campaigns we’re now familiar with.

Obviously the US and UK’s post 9/11 actions have gotten us to where we are today.

Where we are today is that there’s still infighting between Shia and Sunni muslims. It’s been going on for more than 1,400 years so far – it just has better weaponry now and most of the justifications are just designed to obfuscate this.

jambalaya

Who is to say Al-Q / IS would not have risen up if Sadam had still been in power ?

Well Al Zarqawi’s campaign didn’t start in Iraq till after the invasion so it’s difficult to say for certain, but it doesn’t seem like a massive leap to suggest that the fall of the regime was the catalyst and the insurgency legitimized it.

Like all these things, there’s often a whole shed load of confusion and ‘fog of war’ (for want of a better expression) whereby things get speculated on and then repeated as fact, and the police, for various reasons, feel unable to just shut up and say nothing until the facts have been established (which may take some considerable time) – you only need to look at the deaths of Mark Duggan and Ian Tomlinson for that (from all sides) in spades.

Or….. they leak a load of blatant lies that justify their behaviour to their mates in the press who print them as if fact (see Hillsborough, Orgreave etc)

Who is to say Al-Q / IS would not have risen up if Sadam had still been in power ?

do you actually believe that would’ve happened?

ISIS leadership is at least 50% former Iraqi army, IS was formed in Iraq fighting against the Western occupation and was able to recruit jihadis from all over the world to expell the ‘Crusaders’

It’s a bit like pulling up a floorboard and discovering dry rot – then saying that you wish you had never pulled up the floorboard… You may have disturbed some of the spores, but the rot was still there regardless.

I think crusaders is a term that we should use more often..

I can imagine muslims on the more radical (and brutalised) end of the spectrum looking through christian religious texts in much the same way that we cherry pick from the quran, and wholeheartedly believing that even by their actions alone, christians are determinedly trying to bring about holy war and the apocalypse..

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn’t widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was.

But when the architect of the Islamic State died, he left something behind that he had intended to keep strictly confidential: the blueprint for this state. It is a folder full of handwritten organizational charts, lists and schedules, which describe how a country can be gradually subjugated. SPIEGEL has gained exclusive access to the 31 pages, some consisting of several pages pasted together. They reveal a multilayered composition and directives for action, some already tested and others newly devised for the anarchical situation in Syria’s rebel-held territories. In a sense, the documents are the source code of the most successful terrorist army in recent history.

Until now, much of the information about IS has come from fighters who had defected and data sets from the IS internal administration seized in Baghdad. But none of this offered an explanation for the group’s meteoric rise to prominence, before air strikes in the late summer of 2014 put a stop to its triumphal march.

For the first time, the Haji Bakr documents now make it possible to reach conclusions on how the IS leadership is organized and what role former officials in the government of ex-dictator Saddam Hussein play in it. Above all, however, they show how the takeover in northern Syria was planned, making the group’s later advances into Iraq possible in the first place. In addition, months of research undertaken by SPIEGEL in Syria, as well as other newly discovered records, exclusive to SPIEGEL, show that Haji Bakr’s instructions were carried out meticulously.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

The people who aren’t here anymore.

At first I was a little surprised to see they’d published all the pictures and a mini profile. Now I’ve got used to the idea I think it’s appropriate so I’ve linked it.

In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later “caliph,” the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.

Bakr was “a nationalist, not an Islamist,” says Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, as he recalls the former career officer, who was stationed with Hashimi’s cousin at the Habbaniya Air Base. “Colonel Samir,” as Hashimi calls him, “was highly intelligent, firm and an excellent logistician.” But when Paul Bremer, then head of the US occupational authority in Baghdad, “dissolved the army by decree in May 2003, he was bitter and unemployed.”

Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies. Bakr went underground and met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth, had previously run a training camp for international terrorist pilgrims in Afghanistan. Starting in 2003, he gained global notoriety as the mastermind of attacks against the United Nations, US troops and Shiite Muslims. He was even too radical for former Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi died in a US air strike in 2006.

Who is to say Al-Q / IS would not have risen up if Sadam had still been in power ?

Anybody who understands the situation.

The Baath party was a running a secular state, where the Shia majority got a slightly raw deal but not bad enough to result in outright civil war.

We kicked out the Baath party and handed Iraq over to the Shia majority. The Shia mistreated the Sunnis so badly that there was an uprising and that’s where ISIS come in.

It’s impossible to imagine any of that happening without the USA stopping the Baath party running things. (Allbeit accidently – I think the assumed the CIvil Service, Baath Party would remain to some degree – it didn’t it went literally overnight.)

The Baath party & the Iraqi Army were incredibly effective at suppressing Islamic extremists. (Indeed from what I’ve read, at times, the one thing that stopped an outright mutiny against Saddam by the Iraqi Army was they realized that if they didn’t keep law an order the extremists would take over.)

Who is to say Al-Q / IS would not have risen up if Sadam had still been in power ?

Theres no way you can tell what would have been different and what would have been the same. Theres a difference in the way the UK and US deal with terrorism and insurgency.

Have presided over a collapsing empire the UK has a long history with having to address insurgency. The US has a policy of decapitation – removing leaders in a presumption that… well what … what presumption? That one man is capable of making a whole country do his bidding against its own peoples will?

The UK strategy has always been to leave the top of the hierarchy in place – if you know who the leader is – their history and their motives – you understand better what it is and have a better chance of predicting what they’ll do – thats how you arrive at the situation we had with the IRA where there was pretty a much a gentleman’s agreement – with phoned warnings and special code words from the IRA leadership in advance of attacks.

Looking back it just seems implausible – a 1.5 ton bomb, a £1billion repair bill, but not one fatality because the IRA and given one and half hours warning that they’d planted it. You can’t now really imagine an act of terrorist aggression that is so polite.

The problem with the decapitation of regimes is for every leader theres at least 10 people who’d gladly take their place if they got the chance. But you don’t know anything about those 10 people or what those people want to do or what they’ll do to achieve it.

The Baath party & the Iraqi Army were incredibly effective at suppressing Islamic extremists. (Indeed from what I’ve read, at times, the one thing that stopped an outright mutiny against Saddam by the Iraqi Army was they realized that if they didn’t keep law an order the extremists would take over.)

The apparatus they had for doing that was pretty much the one the British left behind in the 1920s

The problem with the decapitation of regimes is for every leader theres at least 10 people who’d gladly take their place if they got the chance. But you don’t know anything about those 10 people or what those people want to do or what they’ll do to achieve it.

Totally agree. They found the same with the Taliban, it’s just didn’t work, they never run out of leaders.

Not sure if the police ever actually said that initially, or if they did mistakenly say it and not retract it immediately, or if someone else said it but they didn’t deny it. IIRC it was an eye witness who first said it.

It was a classic Met Police smear. They’ve done it plenty of times: give an unsourced wild claim to an outlet desperate to be first with something when everyone is racing to publish, then a few hours later publish an official statement that makes no mention of the smear. They did it recently with the big rave on Halloween – floated the idea that there had been petrol bombs thrown at them, let it get currency in the first wave of reporting, and then ignored it completely. The relationship between the Met and the media was particularly odious at be time of the de Menezes killing. Fun fact: Rebekah Brooks borrowed a police horse for free!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-calls-for-sanctions-against-banks-and-countries-funding-isis-a6739081.html

So Jeremy ‘soft on terrorism’ Corbyn wants to go after ISIS funding from Saudi Arabia etc – can’t have that though can we Dave, what about those billions of pounds worth of weapons contracts we have with the world’s leading funder and supporter of Islamist extremism/terrorism?

Whoa, whoa, fella – I know things are looking grim, but surely we’re not at the stage when we need to interfere with business?

Corbyn wants to go after ISIS funding from Saudi Arabia etc – can’t have that though can we Dave, what about those billions of pounds worth of weapons contracts we have with the world’s leading funder and supporter of Islamist extremism/terrorism?

Of course Corbyn is going for a job that involves keeping Saudi happy to maintain those billions of pounds coming our way.

Rightly or wrongly ethical foreign policies don’t usually survive long. (IIRC some Aircraft Dashboards ended Robin Cook’s ethical foreign policy and that wasn’t billions, just a few hundred jobs.)

So what’s the solution?

Let’s have a list as you guys are going in circle …

1. Deconstruction of the ideology? You need to deconstruct Abraham too.

2. Physical reduction of the number? Nuking and nuke more – population cull.

3. Going after the funding from S.Arabia as suggested by JC(not Jesus Christ)? Are you prepared to stir the hornet’s nest? If you do then you will definitely start a global war …

4. Create a barrier between them and us? A zone of land that is totally radio active and unlivable so nobody cross over. If they do they are zombies.

5. Cold war style making people disappear? Any one belonging to sleeper cells just make them disappear then blame Alien abduction like X-Files.

6. Pussy footing tit for tat? They inflict damage on us we inflict damage on them …

7. Kill their leader(s)? How many do they have by the way? Nobody knows …

8. Cattle herd all of them to one region and contain them there. No way out and no way in … they do as they like with their belief etc.

9. Propaganda, counter propaganda and confusing propaganda?

10. Limit reproduction in their immediate family?

11. Armed ourselves to the hilt?

12. Negotiate? Ya, you convert or else – said them.

13. You bow to them and accept them as your new lord or master … they do your backdoor at will.

14. Deconstruct their community? Ya, I have better chance of winning lottery.

15. Divide and conquer? They are diving us at the moment.

16. Bay of Pigs approach? Ya, right … they will go native.

17. Absolute no human migration? You will cry seeing the weak being enslaved there.

Choose one.

Let’s hear what you have in addition to the above … :o

Lots of interesting thoughts here. Interesting to see some different articles and viewpoints that seem to get overlooked in our more day to day media.

One thing was the talk about the ISIS endgame…. Huge question but stepping back from the detail and specifics for a second, how about our (UK, France “The West”) endgame?

What do we really want to achieve in all honesty? Security for people in “our” country and other countries with our values? Or total “modernisation” (Westernisation?) of the entire World to impose our values on others? Is there another outcome where “we” will be satisfied?

I am far from clued up about any of this but it seems we are stuck putting ourselves in a cycle of an awkward middle ground.

Is it likely that the majority of the World will ultimately share out values? It seems likely there will always be places where we ourselves would perhaps prefer not to live to put it mildly. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned a lot but how about some States of the US? Is it possible to eradicate “terrorism” or “fundamentalism” for want of better labels. Probably not and statistically it will always exist.

So do you just try and keep a lid on things from as far away as possible and look after “home” or ….??? That sounds like now plus trying to make some pennies where possible too :? That’s worked well

I really hope there are far more intelligent people than any of us with some bright ideas for all, not just our benefit but for all

DanW – Member
I really hope there are far more intelligent people than any of us with some bright ideas for all, not just our benefit but for all

Once our mind reach the the limit of our brain juice we apply the ultimate solution … that’s that.

See my list and tell me if you can come up with something new.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/18/turkey-cut-islamic-state-supply-lines-erdogan-isis?CMP=fb_gu

The Christians were cleared out of Iraq by the Shias, any remainders will have been kicked out by the ISIS Sunnis.

ISIS are in control of the Sunni areas, they’ve already done their ethnic cleansing.

So if we depose ISIS who do we hand the current ISIS areas over to? Shias? If so won’t they just kill/kick out all the Sunnis an cause a new chapter in the violence?

A little voice in me says that stability is more important than anything. Maybe leaving ISIS alone to govern the Sunni areas will result in fewer deaths than deposing them and handing over to someone else.

Seems to my in many areas this civil war has already ended. Deposing ISIS will restart it for a lot of people.

Whatever we choose to do, if we do ‘something’ we’d better be pretty sure we’re going to improve things for the majority.

I fear our leaders have no more clue than we do.

outofbreath – Member
A little voice in me says that stability is more important than anything. Maybe leaving ISIS alone to govern the Sunni areas will result in fewer deaths than deposing them and handing over to someone else.

See 4,6,7,8,9,14,15 and 16.

Security of our energy supply is seldom mentioned in this context….but if LNG doesn’t keep flowing through straits of Hormuz to us those snazzy WiFi led lightbulbs everyone is installing will be a bit pointless.

gwaelod – Member

Security of our energy supply is seldom mentioned in this context….but if LNG doesn’t keep flowing through straits of Hormuz to us those snazzy WiFi led lightbulbs everyone is installing will be a bit pointless.

See 8. Nothing goes in and out.

Saudi Arabia has been mentioned a lot but how about some States of the US?

This is a comment that demonstrates ignorance of both the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Yep..not many realise how inextricable our contemporary society is with that part of the world.

outofbreath – Member

The Christians were cleared out of Iraq by the Shias, any remainders will have been kicked out by the ISIS Sunnis.

Still a bunch of them there apparently, estimates from 200000 to 450000.

Still a bunch of them there apparently, estimates from 200000 to 450000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq#Post-war_situation

“As of 21 June 2007, the UNHCR estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries with a large majority of them Christians, and 2 million were displaced internally,”

~4 million displaced in total, 200-400k left. That meets my definition of cleared out. YMMV.

Though obviously not anyone’s definition of “any remainders will have been kicked out”.

Those numbers need a pinch of salt btw. Taking “2.2m with a large majority christians” and a further 2m with no comment on religion and making ~4m is a stretch. It also doesn’t give timescales but much of that must have happened before GW1.

I apologize, I’ve completely misread those numbers and I did say “any remainders will have been kicked out” which is also clearly wrong.

Best part of 2 million, down to 200-400k.

It also doesn’t give timescales but much of that must have happened before GW1.

It was a secular country under Saddam, I assume Ethnic clensing of Christians will *all* be following the handing of the country over to the Shia majority and more recently I assume the Sunnis have have been the main culprits. Why would much of it have happened before GW1?