Terrorism and Nuance 934


There is no question to which the answer is to wander round killing people. It takes a few words or keystrokes for any right thinking person to condemn the killings in Paris today. But that really doesn’t take us very far.

It is impossible to stop evil from happening. Simple low tech attacks by individuals, a kind of DIY terrorism, cannot always be pre-empted. If you try to do so universally, you will end up even further down the line we have gone down in the UK, where people are continually arrested and harassed who have no connection to terrorism at all, often for bragging on websites. These non-existent foiled terrorist plots are a risible feature of British politics nowadays. Every now and then one hits the headlines, like the arrests just before Remembrance Day. Their defining characteristic is that none of those arrested have any means of terrorism – 99% of those arrested for terrorism in the UK in the last decade – possessed no weapon and no viable explosive device.

In fact the only terrorist in the last year convicted in the UK, who possessed an actual bomb – a very viable explosive device indeed, was not charged with terrorism. He was a fascist named Ryan McGee who had a swastika on his wall and hated Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims with no weapons are locked up for terrorism. A fanatical anti-Muslim with a bomb is by definition not a terrorist.

I am assuming that the narrative that Charlie Hebdo was attacked by Islamists is correct, though that remains to be proved. For argument, let us assume the official narrative is true and the killings were by Muslims outraged at the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Mohammed.

It is essential to free speech that it includes the freedom to offend. That must include the freedom to offend religious belief. Without such freedoms, the values of societies would freeze. Much social progress has caused real anguish and offence to some people. To have stopped Charlie Hebdo by law would have been wrong. To stop them by bullets is beyond any mitigation.

But that doesn’t make the unfortunate deceased heroes, and President Hollande was wrong to characterise them as such. Being murdered does not make you a hero. And being offensive is not necessarily noble. People who are persistently and vociferously offensive are often neither noble nor well-motivated. Much of Charlie Hebdo‘s taunting of Muslims was really unpleasant. That they also had Christian and other targets did not make this any better. It is not Private Eye – it is a magazine with a much nastier edge. I defend the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish whatever it wants. But once the shock dies off, I do hope a more realistic assessment of whether Charlie Hebdo was entirely admirable or not may be possible. This in no way excuses the dreadful murders.

The ability to say things that offend is an important attribute of a free society. Richard Dawkins may offend believers. Peter Tatchell may offend homophobes. Pussy Riot offended Putin and the Orthodox Church. This must not be stopped.

But that must cut both ways. Abu Qatada broke no British laws in his lengthy stay in the UK, but was demonised for things he said (or even things newspapers invented he had said). Most of the French who are today in solidarity for freedom of expression, are against people being able to express themselves freely in what they wear. The security industry who are all over TV today want to respond to this attack on freedom of expression by more controls on the internet!

I condemn, you condemn, we all condemn, and so we should. But the amount of nuanced thought in the mainstream media is almost non-existent. What will now happen is that conservative commentators will rip individual phrases from this article and tweet them to show I support terrorism. The lack of nuanced thought is a reflection of a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism which has poisoned public life in modern western society.


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934 thoughts on “Terrorism and Nuance

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  • Dreoilin

    @Resident Dissident

    Maybe? which implies “maybe not”?

    Maybe that’s why the Det were accused of being involved in the Loyalist bombings of Dublin and Monaghan (among other things).
    Maybe they just didn’t know whose territory they were working in at any given time.

  • Anon

    Mark Golding

    “Thousands of olive trees have been damaged and destroyed in attacks by illegal Jewish settlers across the occupied West Bank in 2013. The damning statistics have been revealed by Al-Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights.”

    And it was reported yesterday that 2,000 Nigerians are feared dead at the hands of Boko Haram. Where are you on that?

  • Tony M

    What’s that you say Resident Imbecile “Baa-aa?”

    Snow falling, I do hope the farmer has put some bales of hay out for and the rest of the flock, to tide you over for a few days. Baa-aa indeed.

  • Anon

    Dreoilin

    Mark is a fantasist who believes he is in contact with SAS officers in Dubai. It’s why he’s known as “Walt” Golding.

  • Dreoilin

    I shouldn’t be here. I finally got to sleep after 6am, and clearly I’m going to cave at some stage today …

  • Dreoilin

    “Mark is a fantasist who believes he is in contact with SAS officers in Dubai. It’s why he’s known as “Walt” Golding.”

    I’d prefer to see Mark answer for himself. But he probably won’t.

  • Paul Barbara

    A bit OT, but there is a Picket this afternoon at 14.30 against the ‘Cirque Soleil’ performing in Israel outside the Royal Albert Hall: 10th Jan – PICKET CIRQUE DU SOLEIL – SAY NO TO APARTHEID!
    Date: Saturday 10th January 2015 2:30 – 4:00pm
    Location: Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP (0.5 mile from South Kensington tube station)
    Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1521107814837244

    The link with this thread is that Israel had a motive to be involved with CH.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    RoS

    “But does that mean that they’re wrong to suggest, that something may well be a miss.”
    _______________

    No, they are entitled to have their say.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    “After all, the global media, and security services, have a penchant for misinformation, so in essence it would be foolish to meekly believe any incident upon first glance, would it not?”
    __________________

    As foolish as to immediately leap into “false flag” or “conspiracy” mode on various false bases, eg the MSM always lie or misinform – which is, experience shows, usual on here.

  • Anon

    Paul Barbara

    “The link with this thread is that Israel had a motive to be involved with CH.”

    Could you expand on this a bit, Paul? Thanks.

  • Mark Golding

    Is túisce deoch ná scéal – I remember ‘beating the drum’ Dreoilin; it was the end of the potato picking season.

    Cuir síoda ar ghabhar agus is gabhar i gcónaí é

  • John Goss

    IMPORTANT! Cage has communicated that the wife of the man, Djamel Beghal, says that her husband has been targeted constantly since his torture at the hands of the CIA (with British and French complicity) and wrongfully accused previously (in 2005) of planning to bomb the US Embassy in Paris. According to Sylvie Beghal a confession and conviction was extracted under torture which was later thrown out on appeal (though press reports omit this last detail). She says he has no connection with the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

  • technicolour

    Not surprisingly, much of the “where is the Muslim outrage” outrage is coming from… Fox News, as Media Matters notes. Fox’s own Monica Crowley, for example, said that Muslims “should be condemning” the attack and that she hadn’t “heard any condemnation… from any groups.” Fox News’ America’s Newsroom guest Steve Emerson complained, “you don’t see denunciations of radical Islam, by name, by mainstream Islamic groups.” Bob Beckel, a host of Fox News’ The Five host said Muslims were “being quiet” about the shooting and accused the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of keeping “their mouth shut when things happen.”

    46 examples of Muslim outrage about Paris shooting that Fox News can’t seem to find

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/46-examples-of-muslim-outrage-about-paris-shooting-that-fox-news-cant-seem-to-find/

  • technicolour

    Meanwhile, as people get their opinions from Fox News and other hate fests; this is absolutely true:

    “Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: “As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form.”

    This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.

    This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry. It is also, by the way, the very same logic that leads French non-Muslims, outraged by the Charlie Hebdo murders, to attack French mosques in hateful and misguided retaliation. And it’s the same logic that led CNN host Don Lemon to ask Muslim-American human rights lawyer Arasalan Iftikhar if he supports ISIS, as if the simple fact of Iftikhar’s religion — despite the fact that he is exactly the sort of liberal human rights activist whom ISIS hates most — made him suspect.”

    http://www.vox.com/2014/12/15/7394223/muslims-condemn-charlie-hebdo

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Paul Barbara

    Good to see you’re still around, but bad to see that you are still spouting bollocks.

    1/. “France had angered Israel with it’s pro-Palestine votes; what better way to both punish France, and further demonise the Muslims so the French people would be further brainwashed that ‘Muslims are our enemy’.”
    ______________

    So you are claiming that Israel was behind the killings? Come out and say it in the open, why don’t you.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    2/.” Supermarkets were raked with gunfire, policemen and random men, women and children were murdered, and it was all blamed on the ‘Reds’”
    _______________________

    .Here you are referring to the Brussels area supermarket killings of the 1980s (still unsolved, by the way).

    Well, I happen to know something about them and the reactions, and I can assure you that no one in Belgium, neither at the time nor since, blamed them on the “Reds”. On the contrary, the theory that these were attacks by an extreme right wing group was aired very early on.

    So you are lying when you write that. Please apologise.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    3/. “The probable scenario was the two brothers were taken to the siege, shot, and their killers ‘merged’ with their mates when the Fuzz entered the building.”
    ________________

    Now you do cover your arse by saying “probable” but you obviously are at least willing to entertain that idea.

    Could you please spell out in some more detail why you believe that this scenario is correct?

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    “I should expect then, that you approve of Clark’s solid endorsement of this blog’s resident Jew-hater, the irrepressible cut-n-paster, Jihad Mary. (note how she doesn’t make appearances on threads that cause her embarrassment)”
    ________________

    I have indeed noticed.

    But to be fair, she might be unwell at the moment.

    (Has she been posting on Squonk? I can’t tell because as you know, I’m banned from there and can’t access the blog).

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    “A bit OT, but there is a Picket this afternoon at 14.30 against the ‘Cirque Soleil’ performing in Israel outside the Royal Albert Hall: 10th Jan – PICKET CIRQUE DU SOLEIL – SAY NO TO APARTHEID!
    Date: Saturday 10th January 2015 2:30 – 4:00pm
    Location: Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP (0.5 mile from South Kensington tube station)
    Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1521107814837244
    __________________

    In which way would the Cirque Soleil be contributing to “apartheid” in Israel by performing there?

    To remain on the artistic front, demanding what Mr Barabar calls for is about as silly as some Israeli extreme right wing politician saying that Daniel Barenboim should be boycotted because Palestinians (terrorists, you see) perform in Barenboim’s mixed Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra.

  • Anon

    Busy trying to prevent a circus act performing in Israel while 2,000 Nigerians are feared dead at the hands of Boko Haram. The supposed “human rights” activists of the type you see forming in flash mobs all around London are in fact just Israel and Jew obsessives who can tell you the exact number of trees uprooted in Israel but don’t give a fig for the murdered and displaced elsewhere unless they can pin some of the blame on the West.

  • Anon

    Habbabkuk

    “(Has she been posting on Squonk? I can’t tell because as you know, I’m banned from there and can’t access the blog).”

    Delete all cookies, turn your wireless router off at the wall for ten seconds, restart your system.

  • Dreoilin

    Mark

    Nuair a bhíonn an braon istigh bíonn an chiall amuigh.

    Never mind. Maybe you were with the Det and maybe you weren’t. But we’re not going to find out here.

    If you had infiltrated the IRA, you might have been in Donegal. But not in a British Army camp.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Anon

    Thanks for that. But is it really worth the bother, I wonder?

    After all, Squonk has some merit when it comes to matters scientific, but for the rest, is it not something of a seedy waiting room for the disgruntled from Craig’s blog, where they can indulge their tiny rages (as Graham Greene put it) without fear of being upbraided by the likes of me and you?

  • Dreoilin

    “Has she been posting on Squonk? I can’t tell because as you know, I’m banned from there and can’t access the blog”

    Come on, Habbabkuk. You may be banned, but you have posted under other names, which for some reason get through. And yes, Mary posted there yesterday, about “superfast broadband”.

  • Dreoilin

    PS

    “This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.”

    I agree totally, Tech. Which is why this one on Twitter made me smile

    “As a random Muslim I’ll apologise for this Paris incident if random white ppl will apologise for imperialism, drone attacks and Iggy Azalea.”

    https://twitter.com/aamer_rahman/status/553008734293610497

    Bye now

  • technicolour

    Interesting, that both Isis and Jemand hate liberal human rights activists. I can imagine them getting on famously.

  • Tony M

    We must thank Resident Dissident for his earlier Christopher Hitchens link. I should point out when I posted a link to a Hitchens quote, I wasn’t citing his views, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass (as the Americans are sadly wont to say) for Hitchens’ views, but that he was forced to concede that something was the “undisputed blah blah blah of all experts and historians on the subject”. His article linked by RD however, so soon after 11th September 2001 is all over the place, pure speculations, not excused by their rashness so soon after the shocking and improbable collapses, shocking and improbable unless to the many who were unaware of the original provisions for the buildings demolition made during their construction.

    In belittling a correspondent who said “The fascists like Bid-Laden could not get volunteers to stuff envelopes if Israel had withdrawn from Jerusalem like it was supposed to–and the US stopped the sanctions and the bombing on Iraq.”

    Hitchens boneheadedly says: “If Husseini [his correspondent] knows what was in the minds of the murderers, it is his solemn responsibility to inform us of the source of his information, and also to share it with the authorities.”

    Then goes on: ” […] We know that the killers had studied the physics and ecology of the buildings and the neighborhood”

    “The central plan was to maximize civilian casualties in a very dense area of downtown Manhattan”

    “The ancillary plan was to hit the Department of Defense and (on the best evidence we have available) either the Capitol Dome or the White House. […]”

    and so on and so on …

    He’s doing exactly what he accused the correspondent of doing, you could say -if Hitchens knows what was in the minds of the murderers, it was HIS solemn responsibility to inform us of the source of his information, and also to share it with the authorities.

    He also then thought a US invasion of Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban, would fill the streets of Kabul with joy. That didn’t quite work out did it?

    The clincher that at the time Hitchens was clearly out of his tree when writing that article is this prize gem later in the article, a clear inability to comprehend his correspondent’s point, which was without the genocide of Palestinian life and culture, sanctions and bombing of Iraq, (soon to get much worse, very much worse), the Taliban and Bin Laden would have zero support, and no Muslim would be (misguidedly) fooled into do anything whatsoever, ‘stuffing envelopes’ was not intended not but was taking the point to the level of absurdity for effect, but it went right over Hitchens head completely, as he demonstrates as he says “The image of bin Laden’s men “stuffing envelopes” is the perfected essence of such brainless verbiage”. Missing The Point Completely. He rather conspicuoulsy avoids too, the glaring anomaly of well-known US support for the Taliban and for Bin Laden, who had by then in 2001 been on the US payroll and their darling creature for at least the past two decades.

    A linked article in the leftside frame was Hitchens declaration of his witless worship of Margaret Thatcher: http://www.thenation.com/article/173706/lessons-maggie-taught-me
    In this he babbles: “Thatcher has herself shown that there is power and dignity to be won by defying the status quo and the majority rather than by adapting to them.” Oh dear, not only was Thatcher what a surprise, but defying ‘the majority” he thinks is admirable, there certainly is power in that, we call it correctly however, dictatorship and in that there is precious little, infact no dignity.

  • Republicofscotland

    “This is the answer when certain commenters tell us that getting our news from the Internet is no different – after all, we just post links from the corporate media, don’t we? Ah yes, but the prominence is up to us, and there are contributions from all different sorts of commenters, leading to a very different picture.”
    ____________________________

    Clarke.

    I understand your points, and agree with them mostly, but one just has to look at debacles such as the “phone Hacking Scandal” which caused a significant national newspaper to fold, to see, how easy it is for the press to stray from the “Editors Code of Practice.”

    https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/cop.html

    In my opinion, one would be very foolish to believe that the national press omit, or print articles, in obscure sections of their papers carelessly.

    That’s why editors employ sub-editors.

  • Mary

    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-massacre-a-tragic-universal-failure/
    January 8, 2015

    Promoting Israeli democracy, exposing secrets of the national security state

    Charlie Hebdo Massacre: a Tragic, Universal Failure
    by Richard Silverstein

    The mass murder yesterday in the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which 10 staff members and two policemen were gunned down, represents a gross failure of so many. Most obviously, it represents a failure of the French security forces who failed miserably in their job. It represents the failure too of Francois Hollande and the nation’s political class, which have done little to address both Islamophobia, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments that seethe just beneath the surface of French life.

    Now let me say a few controversial things: it represents a failure of the French Muslim community from which the killers sprang. It represents a failure of the French press and public which fostered the puerile satirical farce represented by the magazine’s portrayal of Islam. It represents the failure of the French right which simmered the cauldron of Islamophobia to which the killers, at least in part, responded.

    charlie hebdo anti semitism islamophia

    /..

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