If somebody wishes to be a ghazi, I should much prefer them to do it in Tikrit rather than in Peterborough or Penicuik. To that extent I agree with Bob Quick. The periodic media scares about Sunni families going to Syria to “join ISIS” are very peculiar. We appear, with no public debate, to have adopted a de facto system of exit visas. Ronald Reagan famously said to Mikhail Gorbachev that we never had to lock our people in. It seems that now in the UK we do.
We have companies that recruit and control active armies of mercenaries, which are responsible for thousands of deaths overseas. I detest the violence of “ISIS” but it is not morally different from Executive Outcomes machine gunning villages from helicopters in Angola or from Aegis killing random vehicle occupants in Iraq who happened to be near their convoys. Yet Tony Buckingham and Tim Spicer became extremely rich after founding their careers on the latter killings, and now are respected figures in the London establishment. Apparently killing for money is good; only killing for religion is bad.
Nor is there any official objection to the young Britons who go to Israel to fight with the IDF, and were involved in the war crimes that last year killed hundreds upon hundreds of little Palestinian children.
Terrorism is appalling. The desire by some of the inhabitants of the Middle East to establish a Caliphate run on what they interpret as theological lines is a legitimate desire, if that is the kind of society people want. We devastated Iraq: we bombed Iraq into a failed state. We we were part of the nexus of interests that conspired to arm and facilitate armed insurrection in Syria. In the Blairite creed, we apparently believed that unleashing death, devastation and destruction of physical infrastructure and social institutions, would result in an embrace of democracy and western values by the people.
You would have to be mad to believe that, but it appears to remain the guiding principle of western foreign policy.
Even the remotest claim to wisdom would lead to the embrace of two principles. The first is that we cannot dictate how societies very different to our own ought to organise themselves. We can try to encourage a dialogue leading to respect of universal human rights, and hope for gradual improvement in that direction. But the second lesson is stop bombing. It is plainly counter-productive.
Today the BBC is wall to wall 7/7 commemoration. The coverage keeps focusing on military uniforms, even though the military were in no capacity whatsoever involved in 7/7. It is inappropriate militarism, just as we saw with the return of the bodies of the Tunisian victims.
There is an elephant in the room. Nobody is mentioning the starkly obvious truth. If we had not invaded Iraq, 7/7 would never have happened. Let me say it again, because it is not sayable within the corporate media and establishment consensus. If we had not invaded Iraq, 7/7 would never have happened.
Our response to “Isis” illustrates that we have become no more sophisticated than the Victorian portrayal of the “Mad Mahdi”. The difference is that, due to globalisation, we cannot just pound foreign lands into submission without provoking the blowback of terrorism elsewhere. I detest terrorism and do not believe random killing of civilians can ever be justified. But it is not an inexplicable manifestation of evil. We are causing it.
It is a fact that ISIS was never implicated in any terrorist activity in the UK before we started bombing ISIS in Iraq. We created the appalling mess in Iraq and Syria. By bombing we continually make it worse. It will take some time for the Middle East to recover from the profound effects of the Western wars against Muslim countries at the beginning of the 21st Century. Our response to the provocation of Bin Laden has been so stupid as to attain most of his goals for him. We have of course also attained most of the goals of the armaments and security state industries, which have sucked wealth from the rest of us. A spiral of despair for us has made billions for them. When a policy is as obviously counter-productive as our continual Middle Eastern wars, then ask cui bono?
I am not claiming that if we stop bombing then terrorism will stop instantly. There will be a lag effect. And in even the most benign scenario, Iraq and Syria will take decades to normalise. That is our fault, but we can best now help by staying well away.
The Medialens editors on Cameron’s request to the BBC to refer to Islamic State as Daesh.
Chapter and verse.
Daesh, The Revolutionary Neoliberal Party and British Falsehood Corp
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2015/796-daesh-the-revolutionary-neoliberal-party-and-the-british-falsehood-corporation.html
Excerpt from the the Chancellors speech today July 8 2015
“Britain has always been resolute in defence of liberty and the promotion of stability around the world. And with this government it will always remain so.”
Note the words promotion of stability around the world.
What about Iraq Libya Syria and Ukraine ?
Items connected with Khan were found at other sites but what were they? Not unreasonable for him to have lent something or other to his mates.
His DNA was only found at one location though unless the bone fragments were surgically implanted in the victims.
” … the military were in no capacity whatsoever involved in 7/7.”
Well, that depends on what you think about a special type of C4 being identified as the explosive used.
John: Could you reference a positive cite about that special type of C4, with info about its significance? Mind you, if a disgruntled SBS dude wanted to, he could probably have got hold of it.
Glenn, this might be what you are looking for. Scroll down to the section on ‘the changing type of explosive used’.
http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/july-7-mind-the-gaps-part-2.html#explosives
the Irish Examiner and Canadian TV, well they were close to the seat of the action.
The explosive was TATP; easy enough to transport as long as it’s kept cold as it was until the four bombers got to Luton.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7682-explosives-linked-to-london-bombings-identified.html#.VZ7MSd7_cy4
Craig Murray: “If we had not invaded Iraq, 7/7 would never have happened.”
I don’t want to appear too harsh Craig, as we are all entitlked to our “opinions” of course.
But, that has to be the most naive comment I’v read from you. Ever.
The “blowback” myth has been reasoned into oblivion Craig.
Here’s why the London 777 event occured:
*
London 777 – Tube & bus bombings on 7.7.2005
Since the British Mandate for Palestine CIF on 29.9.1923 is:
INTerval = 777 months, 777 weeks, 777 days
*
and here’s why thge lead patsy was chosen for his role …
From the British Mandate for Palestine CIF on 29.9.1923 to Mohammad Sidique Khan born on 20.10.1974 is:
INTerval = 777 + 777 + 777 weeks, 777 + 777 + 777 days
More here:
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1062483771#post1062483771
Best regards
Mark Gobell
Islamic State are not going to go away now even if western governments change their policies to ones based on enlightened and benign non-involvment.Pieter Van Oestyn the Belgian arabist has an excellent non-partisan website choc full to the brim of translated documents and speeches from Islamic State amongst others. The feud between Al Qaeda (Al Nusra) and Islamic State is particularly well documented here. Al Qaeda are reaching out to the west now to form an alliance against Isis who they see as dangerous millenarian lunatics who would take the whole world down to achieve their vision in Dabiq.
https://pietervanostaeyen.wordpress.com/page/2/- see link.
They are the Middle East’s equivalent of the Khmer Rouge with expansionist millenarian desires tenfold. The fact that the tabloid press here have latched on with pantomime zeal does not diminish this. If we become so fixated on our own fights here at home that we form our opinions, not from what is actually coming out of the mouths of islamists and others in the Middle East, but solely in stubborn opposition to our leaders and the mainstream press, we will reap the consequences of our one-sidedness. Others will also reap this. Regardless of who is culpable for the rise of Islamic State, I agree with Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah’s view that it is now an existential threat to everyone and that everyone needs to work together to stop them gaining in strength. Quite how we should do this without making matters worse either in the Middle East and the muslim world in general, I am not sure of. This is a difficult, difficult problem that is sadly going to take more brains than we appear to have in order not to make things worse. You have my agreement on the bombing to an extent Craig. Most of you will have heard Nasrallah’s thoughts, but for those that haven’t –
he-levant.com/hezbollah-leader-warns-isis-growing-threat-region/
With regard to Iranian’s blaming the west solely for the rise of Islamic State I would only make the observation that if you are going to have a fundamentalist revolution and threaten the existing emirs who are in the majority sect – you would have to be remarkably short sighted not to see that they would try to promulgate their own brand of fundamentalism to counter yours. The Iran/Saudi cold war started with the Iranian revolution and Iranian threats to topple the House of Saud. The House of Saud then began pumping money to Sunni fundamentalists in unrivalled amounts globally. The rest is history. The Iranians essentially lit a fuse that led to their own house. By frightening the life of the Sauds they helped created a cult that has the elimination of the Shia as one of it’s main pillars. Yes, the west is also culpable in many ways, but if you leave all of this out, none of what is happening here will really make any sense. The Middle East has a life and will of it’s own beyond the West and we should not be so arrogant as to forget this. I have a particular sadness regarding my fellow liberals and leftists in this region of the world who are currently being airbrushed out of the picture by their fellow travellers in the west who no longer want to seem to acknowledge their existence. The final straw for me has been to hear again and again amongst fellow leftists here, the view that the Arab Spring in Syria was a construct of western and Saudi machinations. All of the Syrian leftist, liberal intellectuals, everything they have written, spoken and dreamt about, been tortured for and died for, all dismissed as window dressing for the real machinations of the west.
We have become so self-obsessed here in the West now that even those of us who are benign in our desires towards others, cannot see the world in any other terms except as a game we play and argue amongst ourselves about. We need to wake up.