http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/401720/Soldier-BEHEADED-and-two-men-shot-in-London-TERROR-ATTACK (http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/401720/Soldier-BEHEADED-and-two-men-shot-in-London-TERROR-ATTACK)
This is just disgusting.
That's just not right...
His justification "In our country we see this every day". HOW DOES THAT MAKE IT OKAY OVER HERE?! Surely if you had seen stuff like this you WOULDN'T do it in a country where it doesn't happen? He doesn't even make sense...
I just don't get why they thought it was such a good idea to go ahead and do what they did.
Well that's portugaled up.
his country... sounds like a fairly thick london accent to me
What makes it even worse is that this happens all over Europe and they're(extremists) proud of this, it's televised in 'their country'. It doesn't take half a minute to find a youtube vid of a fairly substantial group of Muslims in the middle of London preaching that the UK should accept Shari' ah and everyone who doesn't should be removed. Why we let these people stay, I'll never know. There is a difference between equality and fairness.
freedom of speech doesn't mean we have to listen to them
Ninjad >:(
Because if they aren't preaching hate or advocating violence then they're no danger and everyone is entitled to their views and, to a certain degree, freedom of speech. The vast majority of muslims aren't radical, and the majority of radical muslims aren't violent nutjobs (unless of course you define a radical muslim as a violent nutjob.)
Preaching Shari' ah IS preaching violence and hatred. Being a member of other religions are punishable, any woman without hijab is punished violently. It's not okay to give them freedom of speech in this. I have absolutely no problem with any religion(for the vast majority), even though I don't understand them and I won't pretend to understand them, I'm not blaming it on them being Islamic, but because these people are hatefully violent towards anyone that disagrees with them.
If the majority of the UK were to accept Sharia that would be fair enough since that's how democracy works, but very few UK citizens will support that regardless of the number of muslims preaching at them. If however those muslims were preaching that the UK must be forced to accept Sharia law against their will, then as far as I'm concerned they will be abusing their right to free speech.
Maybe I didn't make that clear, but that's exactly what is happening. There are preachers inciting Muslim gangs to enforce Shari' ah law in some places in the UK. They've attacked mainly prostitutes, though can't for the life of me remember the places mentioned. I think I found this from a channel called RT but not 100% sure.
I feel I should step in at this point with a note about Sharia law. Sharia is, as everyone knows, Islamic law. That does not mean all forms and interpretations of Sharia are the same, it's become very much a hate word for many anti-fundamentalists in the west as a result of extreme practices that are part of it in some aggressive readings and interpretations. I'm not denying that I really, really don't want extensions of Islamic law further into the public sphere, as for me law is and should be fundamentally a civil, secular form of jurisdiction. Nevertheless, throwing the term Sharia around like evil confetti isn't particularly accurate, as pretty much all Muslims would claim to be following sharia; the difference between extremists and radically liberal groups like Imaan (the UK's Muslim LGBT movement) is essentially based upon interpretation.
So, my thoughts, in no real order.
-> Yes, fundamentalist Islam is still a big problem, that should have been obvious really.
-> "Letting people stay" is not the issue as a large number of radicalised people are British. That disgusting video, with the guy with blood on his hands. He has a London accent. These people are often not first generation immigrants and quite a lot aren't even from Islamic family backgrounds (it's a general rule of religion that new converts tend to have twice the zeal of those who've just been passive brought up with a religion). We can't just kick them out, they have nowhere to be kicked to; they're our problem.
-> So what do we need to do? Firstly, target leadership structures and preaching, secondly, start putting out positive counter-messages. The worldwide fight against religious extremism may be partly fought with guns, but it can only be won with books (or, more likely, YouTube videos). A lot of Islamic terrorists are not evil genii; they're young lads who get a bunch of armadilloe poured into their head about all the things suffered by the Islamic world and how noble it is to fight etc etc - a lot of them are really probably a bit dim, and it's this "human resources" pool for terrorism that we need to make dry up. We can do that firstly by counter-arguing more effectively (because a lot of what these people are being fed is straight up lies), and secondly by discrediting the nutters who spout it to begin with.
-> What do we not need to do? Hold a fracking COBRA meeting and act as panicked as possible. This is political points-scoring and Cameron trying to look Prime Ministerial and in control. If we panic the whole country and hold top level emergency security meetings for a single murder, how effective are we claiming terrorism is and how much are we encouraging copycat attacks? There is absolutely nothing Cameron can do to make this situation better. Yes, it's a serious incident, yes, it deserves a serious and measured response, preferably a private visit to the family involved. This panic strategy is just a piece of showmanship by a scared Prime Minister with a fragile grip on his party.
Maybe it might be worth separating the posts related to this news story from this thread and move them into a thread dedicated to the topic?
Ta-da :)
Little bit off topic on the off topic news thread but...Doesn't it worry anyone we have a bunch of military guys in an organization called COBRA, anyone watch G.I JOE?
im sure cobra in the emergency council sense stands for something different to the G.I Joe cobra
a lot of eyewitnesses believe the two men were on drugs, drugs mixed with deadly weapons and deadly ideologies is not a good mix
I'm with Jubal here, in order to break an 'organisation' with as loose a leadership as many of these small groups of violent extremists we need to make sure there isn't a vulnerable pool of people to brainwash in this way.
Last I heard eyewitnesses were saying they seemed calm (as calm as you can be while commiting such an attack at any rate), either way in order to do it on drugs the ideas need to be there in the first place.
The COBRA strategy may have worked with a more organised group, but I suspect this is a small group, possibly only radicalised by a single preacher, or even over the internet, you only need to spend around 20 minutes on youtube to find radicalising videos.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22635379 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22635379)
I stand corrected, woman who confronted the man believes he was in total control, just very upset
@DD, yes I'm aware that GI Joe is merely a cartoon :P
If they're so fed up with how this country acts they can portugal off. No time for this kind of thing, nobody has the right to do this no matter what you believe is happening or what anyone tells you to do. This pisses me off more than all the X-Men movies combined. And seriously don't get me started on those.
Portugal off to where though? To afghanistan so they can fight our soldiers on the frontline? Does that make it better somehow?
We do see different events differently though.
I mean, racially motivated murders against Middle Eastern/African origin Muslims would be considered racially motivated murders, whereas this is being considered terrorism. I mean, this is a particularly disgusting, brutal and public murder, of course, but at the end of the day murder is murder.
Take a look at this case for example;
http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=109661
Obviously less public, obviously received less attention, but frankly anyone who's so fed up of this country being a tolerant, caring society that they feel the need to stab a 75 year old man to death can portugal off every bit as much as those who want it to be run by extreme interpretations of Sharia law. And therein lies this issue, there's nowhere for them to go. This is our problem, and no matter how comforting it is to think we can just kick the evildoers back from whence they came the underlying issues need solutions that consist of more than (admittedly entirely justified) anger.
I'd say it was politically motivated rather than racially, but I'm not sure if it should be considered terrorism.
(http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c91/thenodfather/Personal%20Favourites/stallone-cobra-poster.jpg) (http://s25.photobucket.com/user/thenodfather/media/Personal%20Favourites/stallone-cobra-poster.jpg.html)
Problem solved. :)
(http://www.moviecricket.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/judge-dredd-stallone1.jpg)
I AM THE LAW!
Quote from: Pentagathus on May 23, 2013, 08:19:12 PM
I'd say it was politically motivated rather than racially, but I'm not sure if it should be considered terrorism.
From what he said in the video it was quite clearly political. He addressed everyone in the country telling us to get rid of our leaders and withraw our troops. I'm quite certain this could easily have been done to a soldier of any race, or by an attacker of any race it just happened to be that it was these two. Also, it seems to have emerged that the security services identified the attackers as having extremist links, so perhaps it was a sensible precaution to convene COBRA as at the time it was possible it was just one attack of many.
I just a) don't think there was anything COBRA could reasonably do and b) I think COBRA meetings shouldn't be announced with the amount of fanfare there was, just panics people more.
Quote from: Pentagathus on May 23, 2013, 06:29:15 PM
Portugal off to where though? To afghanistan so they can fight our soldiers on the frontline? Does that make it better somehow?
Yes and yes. Our soldiers can then legally and rightfully kill them. (most)Citizens don't have the capability to fight back against armed assailants.
Yes Jubal, agreed about that case, if they think that in any way stabbing a defenceless old man to death is in any way justified, they can be sent away for the rest of their lives.
The reason the Woolwich muder was a political or terrorist killing was a) because they filmed it. Then it becomes a pornographic (not regular parlance use) item to be used to further fuel hate crime. b) They declared that it was for their religion, and being a part of a group that is politically islamic and is known to associate with terrorists. It's naivety to think that this was just a murder and that the two cases are comparable.
The reason COBRA was involved is because this is a terrorist threat. It's not just those two guys, they had a group of like minded people each willing to do the same in an attempt to martyr themselves(failed) and stand as a figurehead for 'Islamic freedom'. Reason to announce that COBRA was involved is likely to show that every effort is being made to stop this from happening again. Some people panic more, I'm however quite reassured it's being taken as seriously as it deserves.
Except of course we can't send them to Afghanistan because they're not Afghans.
I wasn't claiming the two cases were directly comparable, but there are similarities - any hate crime is in some sense designed to increase fear and mistrust in a particular community. This one clearly was an extremely explicit and disgusting act of terrorism and was very public for media effect, but I just think the Prime Minister wasn't dealing with it in quite the right way.
Been extremely disturbed by reports of revenge attacks on mosques this morning.
Quote from: Rob on May 24, 2013, 12:22:15 PM
Quote from: Pentagathus on May 23, 2013, 06:29:15 PM
Portugal off to where though? To afghanistan so they can fight our soldiers on the frontline? Does that make it better somehow?
Yes and yes. Our soldiers can then legally and rightfully kill them. (most)Citizens don't have the capability to fight back against armed assailants.
But they didn't attack any (civilian) citizens, although they had plenty of opportunity to do so. We are actually at war, and we have been for more than a decade. We also chose to enter these wars. That does make our soldiers legitimate targets for the enemy, whether they are at home or fighting in a foreign country. There isn't actually any wartime law that says if you invade a foreign country then you can't expect them to fight you on your home turf, and its ridiculous to expect that to be the case. The only truly controversial thing about this incident is the mutilation of the soldier and that the attackers were native britons, so wouldn't be expected to be the enemy.
Now I'm not agreeing with the attack, but I can certainly sympathise with the attackers (well, at least the one who seems to be from a nigerian christian family, haven't heard anything about the other guy) since they have actually tried to get us out of the war through peaceful protest (see his involvement with the Muslims against crusades movement.) They don't seem to be motivated by the fact that they are muslims, but rather by the fact that they believe our government is discriminating against muslims in an extremely heavy handed way, and has caused vast amounts of suffering and civilian casualties.
Soldiers outside a war zone are not legitimate targets (hence the dubious legality over the sinking of the Belgrano in the Falkland's War for example). And furthermore the Taliban aren't, in international law terms, a legitimate state so they can't really have legitimate targets. By international law we're not actually invading or occupying anywhere, we're in Afghanistan and other places with the express permission of their recognised governments. Furthermore, this was an act of terror rather than war since the aim clearly wasn't to remove military personnel who were threatening Afghan civilians. They were just killing a guy as a publicity stunt - both sickening, and stupidly and excessively counterproductive. Finally, as you point out, they were UK citizens so can't make an act of war on their own country. That's sort of the point of this democracy thing we have; the people of this country have a say in who runs the country, and they in turn control whether or not we're at war.
Muslims against Crusades was an organisation which believed Muslims are "not obliged to obey the law of the land in whatever country they reside". They were barely peaceful, and set out very deliberately to act in an inflammatory manner. People can believe what they like about what our government is doing to Muslims, but regardless of the intended ends the means cannot be sympathised with or justified in any sense to my mind.
The invasion I was referring to was the invasion of Iraq. I know we aren't involved in Iraq anymore but Iraq is still pretty much in a state of civil war, partly thanks to the invasion. And I don't think that our government actually had enough popular backing for the invasion of Iraq for that to be considered a democratic choice. As to soldiers outside a war zone, who gets to decide what is and isn't a war zone? If we were to attack another western country we wouldn't be able to claim they can't retaliate because our country wasn't a war zone.
I know that our involvement in Afghanistan was/is probably a good thing and not done for personal gain, but these guys have been led to believe it isn't, and they presumably believe that the withdrawal of western troops from middle eastern war zones will lead to a quick ceasefire. If that were the case then there could be justification for their actions if they also believed their actions would lead to said withdrawal of our troops. Obviously it isn't going to affect our foreign policy and I don't understand how they could expect it to do so, but at least I can see some logical reasoning for this attack, unlike the attacks of radical muslims who believe that any westerner is a legitimate target because somehow thats what they think their god would want.
Quote from: Pentagathus on May 24, 2013, 02:23:45 PM
But they didn't attack any (civilian) citizens, although they had plenty of opportunity to do so. We are actually at war, and we have been for more than a decade. We also chose to enter these wars. That does make our soldiers legitimate targets for the enemy, whether they are at home or fighting in a foreign country.
As an addition to what Jubal said. Not only is it extremely dishonorable to attack an unarmed soldier, even in a designated warzone, it's not the way the UN has declared is proper to conduct warfare. Crtisize my old fashioned expectation that war should follow rules if you wish but I do think there should be honor and pride in justified armed conflict (though don't start on whether this war is justified, that's a whole different debate and I doubt we'd ever finish it). If our soldier had been armed when this attack took place, it would still have been wrong, but it would have been less utterly dispicable.
Quote from: Pentagathus on May 24, 2013, 02:23:45 PM
Now I'm not agreeing with the attack, but I can certainly sympathise with the attackers (well, at least the one who seems to be from a nigerian christian family, haven't heard anything about the other guy) since they have actually tried to get us out of the war through peaceful protest (see his involvement with the Muslims against crusades movement.) They don't seem to be motivated by the fact that they are muslims, but rather by the fact that they believe our government is discriminating against muslims in an extremely heavy handed way, and has caused vast amounts of suffering and civilian casualties.
Again in addition to what Jubal said, about Muslims against Crusades. So their peaceful protest failed, you're saying that gives them the right to persue this protest in non-peaceful terms? That's simply absurd. I've also not said they use violent means or that the attack itself was because they're muslims. The
vast majority of muslims living in the UK are decent, regular British citizens who I'd be more than happy fighting
for the right to practice their faith and for their freedom. This attack
was in the name of the Muslim faith, it's not mere speculation because they're Muslim: they shouted something along the lines of 'allah is greatest' though the actual wording is mentioned in one of the links posted here.
Quote from: Jubal on May 24, 2013, 01:40:20 PM
Except of course we can't send them to Afghanistan because they're not Afghans.
I wasn't claiming the two cases were directly comparable, but there are similarities - any hate crime is in some sense designed to increase fear and mistrust in a particular community. This one clearly was an extremely explicit and disgusting act of terrorism and was very public for media effect, but I just think the Prime Minister wasn't dealing with it in quite the right way.
Been extremely disturbed by reports of revenge attacks on mosques this morning.
True, we can't deport them, they are British citizens that should continue to have the rights of British citizens. I was answering the questions directly and outside of context I guess. The attacks on the mosque were barbaric. The EDL are a group of racists and people living in fear. I guess I've come across a bit like one of those assholes but in reality I'm not. I'm not anti-Muslim and I'm sure as hell not a racist.
No you didn't come across as racist, although it seems I've come across as supporting the attack. I don't support it in any way, or think it was the right thing to do, but I can see how the attackers could think so.
War has never been honorable. Is it honorable that we use drones to attack Taliban members/supporters who have no means of defending themselves? Was it honourable when Bin Laden was shot dead whilst unarmed by US troops? You take any advantage you can in a war, providing it doesn't cost civilian lives. If we were to fight honourably in afghanistan then we would have lost already.
No I'm not saying Muslims against the Crusades have the right to pursue violent methods of protest, but if we were to accept that our forces being in A'stan is causing the conflict there then violent protest could be justified in the same way that using violence against the Taliban is justified. (I'm not against our involvement if A'stan by the way, although I feel that the invasion of Iraq was utterly immoral and has caused a great deal of suffering.)
I wouldn't even say the attack was necessarily in the name of the muslim faith, it seems more like it was motivated by the attacker's belief that british soldiers are indiscriminately killing muslims. If I believed that british soldiers were doing that I'd be utterly appalled, and I'm not a muslim. Obviously their involvement with Islamic radicals has led to the attackers believing that they were doing the right thing, but that doesn't mean their actions were carried out in the name of Islamic faith,
I didn't believe you did, it just seemed an odd (to my small mind) point that because their peaceful protest failed that this woud be the next logical step. I agree that the attackers would think they're in the right, everyone with those kind of convictions always does.
First off, I've only recently become interested in politics and world politics, so my knowledge on the Iraq war is non-existant(still catching up!) so I don't have a leg to stand on about the ethics or legality of that war. I have however seen interviews with soldiers posted in both Afghanistan and Iraq and almost universally they say that they're unsure of what they really accomplished in Iraq but in Afghanistan the reaction from the Afghan people was on the whole very positive, which corroborates what you have said.
Military service has a very long history of being honorable. Fighting wars decently and honorably is not the same now as it was during say (early)WW1 where marching towards entrenched heavy machine guns was the norm and while incessantly stupid from our point of view, anything less was considered dishonorable and no man worth his weight would consider running. Consider the Samurai with their code of Bushio (bear with me, I know this was a fair while ago). They would still use artillery to weaken the opposing army before closing with the enemy and initiating duels. Now take the drone example, that is the artillery in a sense. It's aim is to weaken the opposition, but ground troops still walk/ride in with every possibility of being killing and being killed fighting for their country, it takes bravery and courage associated with and contributing to militaristic honor. Yes I took a fairly tangential route to get to what I mean but I think it demonstrates my point a little more clearly.
The attacks were carried out in allah's name (last post refers to it more). It definitely doesn't represent the muslim faith but in the minds of the attackers, allah would be proud of them.
Well the official reasons given for invading Iraq was to disarm them of WMDs which were a threat to global peace. However WMDs have not been found in Iraq and there was never any solid evidence that Iraq had them, so that smells most mightily of bullarmadillo. The war led to the toppling of a brutally oppressive but relatively stable government and replaced it with a weak democratic(ish) government which has been unable to prevent sectarian violence throughout the country. It also happened a couple of years after we entered Afghanistan, so took resources from there and probably allowed the Taliban to regain power within A'stan, and almost certainly led to a rise in anti-western sympathies within the middle east.
On the other hand we were invited into A'stan by their government aid their civil war against the Taliban who were a minority group largely funded and supported by external parties (funded by Saudi Arabia and provided with military support from pakistan and with mercenaries from parts of the asia and africa) and who enforced very strict interpretations of islamic law, carried out massacres against the afghan population and a scorched earth policy as well as denying UN food supplies to starving citizens. AFAIK the only real reasons they're still quite strong is that they are still aided by external parties and the Afghan government is highly corrupt.
And as to military honour, yes I suppose it does exist. But its absolutely worthless. Samurai may have treated each other with honour, but many of them had no qualms about mistreating civilians and peasant troops.
Well the sub-point about military honor I was making is that it's the reason we can say we can conduct war in a foreign country as the good guys. Samurai mistreatment of peasants was a class thing not a military thing.
Thanks for the info! Good to get some grounding on it at least.
Yeah - though most of the main problems with both Iraq and Afghanistan were not our interventions per se but our totally dumb way of going about them.
Like when we went into Iraq the US guy in charge unilaterally disbanded the entire Iraqi army and security services, then was surprised that there were a armadilloload of unemployed men with guns wandering around. Also, for any intervention the main issue is reconstruction. That's been the issue in Afghanistan - the Afghan government is so corrupt that for law and justice people will often still go to the local Taliban who enforce strict Sharia but at least don't take bribes.