Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

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bazzaj

Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by bazzaj »

I know Neil f won't agree but with this latest terror attack there could be now exposed a network of ex light entertainment celebrity jihadists.
Cricket, Boardman, Davro, Tarby, Lynchy and Tommy O'Connorery to name but a few potential candidates..
Lets face it they've got the previous.with their years experience of bombing on both stage and screen.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BaggyTrousers »

justinr73 wrote:
BaggyTrousers wrote:
Cap'n Grumpy wrote:
bazzaj wrote:All eyes surely on Lionel Blair now if the intelligence agencies have any sense.
Lionel?

Tony? >EW
Lionel, eh? Great name, I think all English people should answer to the name Lionel, must try it out on Justin this season.

Of course being gayer than most, my favourite Lionel is not even English though. Nope sirree Bob, my favourite Lionel was as American as mama's apple pie, Lionel Bender.
Is that Lionel Blair, the Canadian born son of Russian Jews?!

I'll give you Lionel Jeffries from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but I don't think Richie and Messi are English either!
And I'll give you the Lionels, Bart, Daiches & of course General Dunsterville and tell you that Lionel derives from middle English with a former Bishop of Salisbury who died almost 600 years ago being a bloody Lionel.

That apart Justin/Lionel you miss my point entirely. It is not that all Lionels are English, it is merely that all Englishmen would make damn fine Lionels. Tarquins be damned, you are a nation of Lionels, whether that is your given name or not. By the cuts of your gib, ye are a nation of Lionels.
NEVER MOVE ON. Years on, I cannot ever watch Ireland with anything but indifference, I continue to wish for the imminent death of Donal Spring, the FIRFUC's executioner of Wee Paddy & Wee Stu, and I hate the FIRFUCs with undiminished passion.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by big mervyn »

Lionel Bart was alright.

Jeremys is still probably the best collective noun for the male species of the home counties.
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Russ
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Russ »

Seems terrorist attacks at bus stops are now just ignored

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Rooster
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

Russ wrote:Seems terrorist attacks at bus stops are now just ignored

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Was it a terrorist or just Mohammed crashed his car ?
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by HwoodMike2umate »

I think this is the right time and place to post this from 1977 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvtVrY4KoDg
http://www.cryptome.org/

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Russ
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

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Suicide bomber shot in Barcelona

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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

Russ wrote:Suicide bomber shot in Barcelona

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Proper order.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Russ »

Rooster wrote:
Russ wrote:Seems terrorist attacks at bus stops are now just ignored

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Was it a terrorist or just Mohammed crashed his car ?
8.15 crashed his van into a bus stop
9.15 crashed his van into a second bus stop

"Motives unclear"

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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

Russ wrote:
Rooster wrote:
Russ wrote:Seems terrorist attacks at bus stops are now just ignored

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Was it a terrorist or just Mohammed crashed his car ?
8.15 crashed his van into a bus stop
9.15 crashed his van into a second bus stop

"Motives unclear"

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Ah right, bad driver then !
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by againstthehead »

I think the suicide element to this new brand of terrorism is what sets it apart. Pretty hard to stop these guys if they don't give a feck about their own mortality. In addition, they arn't just attacking the likes of the UK, France and the US. It slowly seems to be an attack on western society in general which is a bit frightening in terms of what this could morph into. Previous terrorist organisations tended to have some kind of political aspiration - I'm not quite sure what these dudes are hoping to achieve and the question is how many more of these nutters are there. I suspect a lot and growing.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Neil F »

againstthehead wrote:I think the suicide element to this new brand of terrorism is what sets it apart. Pretty hard to stop these guys if they don't give a feck about their own mortality. In addition, they arn't just attacking the likes of the UK, France and the US. It slowly seems to be an attack on western society in general which is a bit frightening in terms of what this could morph into. Previous terrorist organisations tended to have some kind of political aspiration - I'm not quite sure what these dudes are hoping to achieve and the question is how many more of these nutters are there. I suspect a lot and growing.
I'd actually say that it's quite ironic that people view IS (differentiated here from al-Qaeda for a specific purpose) as carrying out an all-out attack on "the west". I say ironic because that isn't IS' aim at all. IS' entire MO is the creation and maintenance of a hardcore Islamist state somewhere / anywhere. al-Qaeda, on the other hand, served only to attempt to destroy "western civilisation". The interesting question that comes out of this is whether it is simply some residual hatred of "western civilisation" that lead IS to attack so many "western" targets, or if there is some purpose to (claiming) these attacks.

The former seems highly unlikely to me. Why would an organisation be so ill-disciplined that it would let people carry out attacks in its name that could harm it's wider aims by inviting potential retaliation from the countries that are under attack? Yeah, yeah, I get it. Terrorists are mad bar steward and all of that but let me tell you this: most terrorist organisations (if not their foot-soldiers) are quite rational. As ATH above says, most have some sort of political aim. Most have also proven quite adept at getting rid of foot soldiers who don't toe the political line or work against such wider political aims. I don't know why anyone assumes that IS are so different?

It does beg the question, though, about what IS would gain from carrying out attacks that achieve little and have the potential to invite retaliation from opponents? It'll seem mad when I first say this but in recent months, I have become totally convinced that the answer lies in the "somewhere / anywhere" part I write above. IS, taken as a political entity, doesn't give a feck if it's lands are in Syria, Iraq, an enclave in Libya, or anywhere else. What it cares about is that it has lands somewhere. How does IS get lands? Weak state capacity; fragility; power vacuums; a lack of Weberian monopoly held by the government. All checked in the places where it has proven 'successful'.

What happens when Western powers intervene? Power vacuums grow; state capacity is weakened; and another actor is undermining the Weberian monopoly. In Syria, in particular, it really is impossible to isolate IS, no matter how well guided bombs and ground troops are. Attacking IS outside the context of the civil war there; or outside the context of the civil conflict in Libya; or state fragility and sectarian violence in Iraq is next to impossible. In Syria, attacks on IS change the dynamics of the rest of the conflict, given who will move into a given region vacated by IS. At some point, whoever else holds those lands is going to face other enemies. The idea of the Kurds just giving up the land they've gained at the end of the conflict, for example, is laughable. All of that means more instability and a maintenance of the kind of fertile power vacuums that organisations like IS grow in.

When foreign powers enter civil conflicts - as any attack on IS would effectively amount to - we know they get longer; we know they get more intense; and we know that peace agreements and long-term peace building are therefore harder to come by. Ironically, IS or some future iteration of the organisation founded on a similar principle, actually probably stands to gain by provoking Western powers into attacking it, as perverse as that all sounds.

Just remember that the next time you think it's a good idea to start levelling houses and killing families in the MENA region as a deterrence.

And just in case you think this all sounds like theoretical academic bullshit, don't forget that amongst the various other things found in bin Laden's compound were scholarly texts on terrorism.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by justinr73 »

HwoodMike2umate wrote:I think this is the right time and place to post this from 1977 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvtVrY4KoDg
Some good harmless banter from Brucey there.

After her phone number like any other self-respecting referee but no mention of Ebola, or any other tropical disease for that matter.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BaggyTrousers »

When getting our panties in a bunch about anything that happens in Europe, we should not lose sight of the fact that they have been raping enslaving and massacring people wholesale in the Middle East for the last few years. European losses are like a handful of sand in a desert, albeit each individual's demise is tragic in its own right.
NEVER MOVE ON. Years on, I cannot ever watch Ireland with anything but indifference, I continue to wish for the imminent death of Donal Spring, the FIRFUC's executioner of Wee Paddy & Wee Stu, and I hate the FIRFUCs with undiminished passion.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

Indians appear to have a strange outlook on rape :scratch:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-41049705
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