Terrorism - Is the threat real?

[RVF500]

Then again, with a bit of education, some talks and extra trade I think the extremists will all calm down. Everyone is reasonable and they just want a bit of love and respect. Until then, if they bomb a couple other places, it's not as though they're going to destroy a whole nation. A few hundred people here or there, or maybe just the odd family now and then, no big deal really.

Sadly, I don't share your faith in human nature and have to disagree, not all people are reasonable. The leaders of extremist groups are often well educated and completely unreasonable. Osama Bin Laden as we know is a well educated man, as is his second in command. The leaders of the Baader-Meinhof came from good middle class backgrounds and a university education. No one can ever accuse them of being reasonable.

The followers on the other hand often are not educated or from good backgrounds. At least in the context of the current wave of religeous based terrorists (nothing here can really be neatly boxed up). Often such people are fundamentaly reasonable but have been 'educated' by the wrong people. Namely fanatics who are in positions of trust. The word of a cleric is basically law in the countries where these people tend to hail from. Now if the recruitment grounds are educated and a better standard of living is generated then the groups would have a harder time filling their ranks. But I very much doubt if they will go away completely.

I haven't seen the programmes, I did see a lead article about them. Interestingly at the end of the cold war when we got to talk to Soviet troops as 'squaddie to squaddie' it seems we'd been living under the same fears. They were as worried about us steaming through and wiping them out as we were about them. Mutual (unfounded) fear kept us beligerent. The only information we had to go on was given to us by our respective governments. All along it seems that the only beligerents WERE our respective governments. Perhaps they were afraid that if left to our own devices we'd have done what the troops in the first world war did. Down tools and go play football with the other side. An event that shook the establishment on both sides to their roots. Imagine what the world would look like today if those men weren't so bound by a concept of duty and had decided they would carry on playing football instead of picking up their weapons the next day. No Russian revolution, no Lenin (exiled in Switzerland), no Stalin (would have stayed in Siberia), no Mao (would have carried on as a peado school master). No 'stab in the back' so no Hitler (another painter and decorator). Food for thought?

[RVF500]

One more thing, perpetration of fear through misinformation inciting a country to go to war. Now where have I heard that recently?

[Zedmeister]

Part 2 was most informative. In part 2, they describe how the radical islamists try to used to terror in the middle eastern regiemes to try to topple corrupt (In their eyes) governments. It got to the stage where instead of bringing people together (Under the cloud of fear) they drove people away and ended up strengthening the governments. Then (Using the logic of the fanatic) decided the whole of society, including innocents, were all corrupt so they became the target! It became so extreme, that if any terrorist groups disagreed with each other, they thought the other had become corrupted and had to be killed!

On the other hand, the Neo-cons (Looking for a new Great Enemy after the fall of the soviets) failed to convince Bush senior to go to full war in Iraq (As neo-cons believe that war and strife bring people together to combat moral decay), and after clinton got elected, they waged a systematic political terror campaign to try to discredit him and turn him into the enemy. This also completely failed. So by the late 90's both the neo-cons and islamists were fringe groups with little power left. All this change on 11/9...

[KBeee]

the way they see it, a war unites a nation against a common enemy, and helps them get voted back in.

over a 1000 gi's have died in iraq, as much as i loathe americans, i wouldnt wish that on any family that has there son or daughter shot or blown up.

Goering on War -
During the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, psychologist Gustave Gilbert visited Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering in his prison cell.
"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction," Gilbert wrote in his journal, Nuremberg Diary.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged.
"Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? ... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament
or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

[Apex]

Death of a Nation says:
last part of
Death of a Nation says:
power of nightmares
Death of a Nation says:
bbc2 9pm

[KBeee]

And just in case anyone thinks HMG isn't a paranoid control-freak load of ******s, they've legislated to ban "long term protests outside Westminster Palace"....
Luckilly, we're all going to have compulsory ID cards to stop us "Terrorists" from doing that most heinous of crimes - thinking we're free....

[Rave]

Yay0r! ID cards. Sign the petition against them here folks:

http://www.no2id.net/

Anyway, what a good program last night. My friend who claims to be in the know says that a lot of it is factually untrue, so I'm going to attempt to verify some of it before I go off on one.

Rich :¬)

[RVF500]

I got the program video'd as I was on the road while it was being aired so I'll get to look at it later.

But knowing from an earlier time the actual numbers of individuals involved in the IRA. The fear of the threat seemed, in retrospect, to be exaggerated in respect to the IRA's ability to deliver on that threat. Though there were many hangers on who would do menial tasks there were only ever a handful of hardcore members. When you think that an IRA 'brigade' consisted of around a dozen individuals. Compared with a British army brigade strength of around 4-5000. You can begin to see the real capability in terms of projection of power.

When you think about it, we are scared to death of a sick old man skulking in a cave in Pakistan. If he could really project power then New York, Madrid, Baslan, Tanzania, the Aeroflot bombs, would all have happened at once. Those and a few more.

[Zedmeister]

Watching as Rumsfeld talks about massive underground bases of 'Al-Qaeda' only for the us troops to find empty caves and the odd small ammo dump was distinctly odd. The cave drawings he presented, looked like a SPECTRE control centre out of a bond movie! The montage of Blair talking about the terrorist threat, with footage of our boys search small caves with nothing in them was slighly chilling.

Also what do you think of the Dirty bomb theory? The nucleur scientist talking about how it can only kill people if they stand motionless for a year right next to the site of the bomb!

[Whalefish]

Claiming you are in the know and claiming the facts are incorrect is no argument. Providing proof of the errors is.
What constantly irritates me is when when we see the evidence for various concerns presented (global warming etc) clearly and then some 'expert' or talking head pops us and tells us it all wrong but giving no proof.

[spikegifted]

What constantly irritates me is when when we see the evidence for various concerns presented (global warming etc) clearly and then some 'expert' or talking head pops us and tells us it all wrong but giving no proof.

This is problem that is in evidence in almost every single subject you can think of. For those who really care about a particular subject and want to know more about it, they go and do their own research. In every given situation, you're going to be bombarded with conflicting views and interpretations. You, as an intelligent, are suppose to take on all the available information and advise and then come up with your decision - base on what you think you know.

Now, if you are an absolute 'no-body' (read: nearly everyone on the planet), you are now 'well informed' and you have a view that you have 'evidence' to support. However, if you're a 'powerful individual', when you make a decision and want people to listen to you reasoning, you've better get it pretty watertight.

Anyway, I digressed. The point is: the series is suppose to be informative in the sense that together, the programs provide a balanced view of what is and what is not. It is up to you, as an intelligent human being, to make you your mind.

I understand what you're saying about global warming and other issues. The difficulties is that, by and large, humans are lazy and they want to live for the moment (just look at our saving habits, or the lack of). Oil is another good example. Everybody knows that it will run out eventually, but it's not running out imminently, so people just keep burning more and more of it.

Fear is a very powerful weapon in 'focusing' the mass conscience. Moreover, fear for the self is the most powerful form of all. Nearly no-one cares about what's going to happen in 25, 50 or 75 years down the line. That's the time line of our children and our grandchildren. What people care about is now. And what they care about now is their own 'happiness'. Pure selfish human behavior, and completely true to form.

So by playing with our fears and your search for 'happiness', those in power are able to manipulate our views towards what they'd consider as 'dangers' and turn danger into a source of their own power.

[RVF500]

Interesting points made by spikegifted. I agree about the human nature thing. Humans are pretty easy to manipulate.

As an example: Out of interest I went over to CNN to see how they had reported the events of this week. Now my reasons for this is the constant griping from Joe Nobody over the pond that Britain is doing nothing in Iraq. That and some history of my own. I was in New Jersey when we went into Afghanistan and watching CNN the anchor asked a US General 'when can we expect to make contact with the Taliban' he answered 'actually the SAS has been in contact for the last 10 days'. She ignored the answer and moved on. She didn't hear Delta force/US Marines/Rangers so it wasn't newsworthy. Rumsfeld (dontcha just love him?) asked by a (US) reporter at a press conference as the main war was coming to an end 'would the US be following the British example in Basra to bring stability to Baghdad?' he ignored it and called for a question from another reporter. God forbid that any credit for anything in Iraq go to anyone but the Americans.

Which brings me up to the present day. With 3 Black Watch soldiers being killed back filling for US troops. I had a look at the CNN website. Not a word. The American people are not told about the contributions of other nations. They are only told about what their own forces are doing. Consequently they are embittered towards other nations they see as leaving them to do the dirty work. No wonder Bush got re-elected.

It's not what you say. It's often what you don't say. Non-information can be just as useful in manipulating people as information. It's up to the individual to go out and find out for themselves. But being lazy we often don't just as spikegifted has already said. Governments know this and use it.