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.
Did you see the tweet sent out by the Jihadi bride in Syria the other day regarding news of the Tunisia attacks? “LOOL”, she exclaimed.
British citizen, innit. Somehow I don’t think the wrongs of the Iraq War are foremost in her mind.
This is not a conspiracy theory that Operation Galdio was used by the Italian government and other European governments to foment terrorism, and then proceed to act; combating the said terrorism in many ways, all the while legislating against the liberties,freedoms, and privacy of their own constituents.
In line with promotion of Martial Spirit in UK, we have seen almost comical spin on the events, included the Red Devil whose mistake nearly cost his mate’s life, but was worshiped by the oligarch owned media as the hero who saved his mate’s life! Evidently heroes can not do wrong, or appear to bumble around, and fail. This is the kind of bullshit Goebbels was good at and later on Soviets got the hang of.
As already mentioned, the repatriation of the bodies from Tunisia and their military reception, televised around the clock, have much to do with the need for promotion of the Martial Spirit and less to do with any concern for the dead, or their families.
The current waves of xenophobia that is all too often portraying the foreigners at the gate, as the packages showing the port of Calais, with disheveled and hairy swarthy men as marauders in search of truck to hitch a lift to UK (just how much gratuity would buy a whole boatload of these destitute bunch to act out the attack is not entertained**)! The sum total of the hatred that has been sanctioned officially and drip fed by the oligarch owned media to the unsuspecting and already susceptible to bigotry viewers and readers, is manifest in the number of attacks on the Muslims, and the treatment of any foreigner in UK! (as an aside a friend of mine was buying a car from the classifieds, and all had gone well until he had spoken to the owner, whom subsequent to hearing his foreign accent, had declared the car sold within a matter of five minutes after their conversation)
The banksters and their appointed/selected vassals have been for too long playing the card of the Muslim booga booga, in fact it is now a decade and a half since the start of the targeting all things Muslim. The current climate of hatred and obscene demonstrations of xenophobia, are impacting the foreign extraction individual and compelling these to begin to form ghettos to cluster around their own kind for a respite from the onslaught of the hatred, bile and aggression, delivered around the clock 24/7. In turn this ghettoizing is misconstructed as the determination of the minorities to disregard our beloved values and these swine need to the made to respect our way of life or disappear and go back to whence they came from. Fact that when some of these people unable to cope with the barrage of hatred and aggression decide to get out. At this juncture these are portrayed as the followers of “ISIS” who are going out to Syria and elsewhere to engage in terrorist activities.
Fact that there exist smuggling gangs for smuggling people out of the UK is never entertained or even hinted at, after all for such a luvely host as the current UK, why should anyone consider bailing out and getting out of the Dodge?
** The more astute and kin observers would have noticed one of the packages to show a queue at a charity food van, with the voice over waxing lyrical about the marauders at the gate, and then the man on the telly turning to a truck driver sitting in the studio and asking him; “how can we stop this? What affect does it have on your business?”
The above is a classic from “drop the dead donkey” dodgy reporter; Damian Day style of news reportage.
Craig,
I don’t want to determine the power structures in Syria or Iraq, or rehearse the idiocies that led us to where we are now. but I doubt if the people of those territories would support the murderers there.
And I just can’t agree that a Capiphate (as promulgated by ISIS) can ever be characterised as “a legitimate desire”. If we go down that path, other historical crimes also become “legitimate”.
We shall have to agree to disagree about this, as friends must sometimes.
Over and out.
Never said a truer words, although the reason for it is more like the easy meal ticket for zionistan will come to an end and zionistan will find itself under scrutiny for all the evils it has perpetrated.
The current was on Muslims is not not our war but the zionist supremacists’ contracted out war!
Of course it’s a conspiracy theory about Gladio. It’s just that there’s no reason to believe a priori that conspiracy theories have to be false. It is well established that the one about Gladio is true.
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Foreign-Ministry-denies-reports-of-Uruguay-investigating-Israeli-embassy-worker-408030
I’m fairly convinced that those named for the 7/7 attacks were involved in it either as its originators or ‘ dupes ‘ of others .
With the above recent case exposed in Uruguay we should however always employ a healthy scepticism to ‘ terrorism attacks ‘ . ‘ False flags ‘ are alive and well everywhere it seems .
Node
It showed the deluded fiction of their being any other possible outcome for Muslim countries. Arab Spring (remember that?), Libya, Syria, they all show the same thing. That is why I was against the Iraq War from the outset. That Iraq would lurch from violent secular dictatorship to violent religious fanaticism was entirely predictable.
Blair was interviewed recently, some wireless organ of the Beeb played his ardent clip late last night or early this morning, and he restated that he still does not believe that his Iraq War was responsible for 7/7
good news for some here: Obama is actually decreasing the size of the military that is the cumulative equal of the next 7 largest militaries in the world by spending, allegedly, allegedly. http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-biggest-and-most-disruptive-layoffs-in-america-are-coming-from-the-military/ar-AAcEJwd
One minor problem from US military layoffs is that for some reason, the US Navy are having their large numbers of laid-off seamen re-trained into cyberwarriors, so it’s not quite the end of war yet, as we well know here
Of course it’s a conspiracy theory about Gladio. It’s just that there’s no reason to believe a priori that conspiracy theories have to be false. It is well established that the one about Gladio is true.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was of course another fact. Conspiracies stop becoming “theories” after they have become provable facts.
Daniel & others, because some conspiracies have been true, it does not follow that any old nonsense peddled by the loonies on this blog automatically becomes true, so stop trying.
No, the fact that a theory is well established does not mean that it ceases to be a theory. The Theory of Evolution, for example, is generally called exactly that.
If you look for definitions of “theory” on line, most of them support my statement. Here, for example, is the first definition of “theory” on the Free Dictionary: “A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.”
More killing of brown skinned people by other brown skinned people this time, acting for the interests of others.
Yemen Real news
19 hrs ·
.
#Saudi jets bomb a second public market place this time in #Amran north of the country killing 35 people and injuring tens. A total of 100 people have been killed today in coalition bombings in various parts of #Yemen.
Yemen Real news
20 hrs ·
.
#Lahj victims rise to 45 dead and 50 injured after coalition jets bombed a busy livestock market.
Interesting article on US role in Yemen conflict.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/06/civilian-deaths-yemen-will-ignored/
Today’s Civilian Victims in Yemen Will be Ignored Because U.S. and its Allies Are Responsible
Disappearing America’s victims is how the national self-perception as perpetual victim of terrorism but never its perpetrator is sustained.
https://www.facebook.com/yemen.crisis?fref=ts
Anon 1,
Please highlight where I’ve justified the conflation of conspiracy theories with conspiracies that have turned out to be facts. There’s a good chap.
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and General Theory of Relativity, quantum theory, helicentric theory, etc. etc.
Anon1: Until your 14:22 post, I thought you were actually serious in your various postulations! Now, of course, it’s clear that your “anon1” character is actually a rather good parody of a particularly buffoonish neo-con.
Sorry, heliocentric.
Lysias,
A differentiation must be made in regards to theory as understood within the scientific context and theory as understood in other contexts.
“Fact can mean to a scientist a repeatable observation that all can agree on; it can mean something that is so well established that nobody in a community disagrees with it; it can also refer to the truth or falsity of a proposition. To the public, theory can mean an opinion or conjecture (“it’s only a theory”), but in THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD IT HAS A MUCH STRONGER CONNOTATION OF “WELL-SUBSTANTIATED EXPLANATION”. With this number of choices, people often end up talking past each other, and meanings become the subject of linguistic analysis.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_fact_and_theory
NuLiebour stooge interviews NuLiebour war criminal.
7/7 bombings: Tessa Jowell interviews Tony Blair 10 years after attacks
Former Prime Minister says the Iraq war did not incite the 7/7 attacks http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11722908/77-bombings-Tessa-Jowell-interviews-Tony-Blair-10-years-after-attacks.html
Pure chutzpah. She was the one who said she loved him enough to jump under a bus for him, or some such rubbish.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/watch-leading-labour-candidate-for-london-mayor-lies-over-love-for-tony-blair-10329736.html
PS They have an acquaintance in common. She via her husband’s legal relationship with Berlusconi and Blair with his close friendship with the same.
“It is inappropriate militarism”
My wife and I call it “war bollocks”. Our media and social structures now reference the military at every opportunity, from the 7/7 commemoration you mention, to the prominence of military uniforms at Wimbledon, to Dad’s Army never being off the BBC. The whole point is to normalise the military in our day-to-day lives.
@Clark
The US and UK military action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria is illegal under international law. The following seems like a propaganda web site to me, but it does clearly and concisely explain the legal issues…
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/25/6834641/do-the-us-air-strikes-bombing-in-syria-violate-international-law
There was a debate of sorts in the UN last September, when the USA began air strikes against ISIS…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2014/sep/24/battle-against-isis-cameron-says-britain-cannot-opt-out-live-updates
Thanks Glenn.
It’s true though. Iraqis blame Iraqis. They do not tend to blame the Americans or British for the state of their country today. The trouble with the likes of you and Craig is you are postulating how Iraqis ought to think in order to fit your own (anti-Western) perception (which is also a very Western-centric one). You are fighting out a debate that doesn’t exist in Iraq. So we have the spectacle of the Westerner castigating the West for the destruction of Iraq, while the actual victim of the destruction doesn’t actually see it like that. And you totally ignore him. It’s almost a weird form of imperialism from an anti-imperialist. I’ve made this point many times before about colonialism – that the arguments in the West concerning the deleterious effects of colonialism are virtually non-existent in the countries that were actually subject to colonial rule!
The thinking of the average Iraqi is miles apart from that of the Western leftist. Now that I find very funny. They’re the ones who know, after all, Glenn, not you.
The Israeli PR machine at work.
Combating Anti-Israel Boycotts
The Underused Strategies
‘Although boycotters forced an Israeli cosmetics firm to close its shop in London’s West End, for instance, the value of mutual trade between Israel and the UK has doubled over the last four years. The retiring British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, published a farewell letter in the Israel press, listing the vast expansion of commercial and scientific relations during his five years in “the country he loves.”
Sajid Javid, the British Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, recently denounced boycotts of Israel and insisted: “My department will be working hard to boost Anglo-Israeli trade and investment, and I as Business Secretary will do anything I can to support and promote it.” Stating that he had “long admired” Israel, he added that “the values that make Israel such a success are values that matter a great deal to me. I share Israel’s love for freedom and democracy. I admire its tenacious determination when the odds are stacked against it.”‘
July 7th 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6102/anti-israel-boycotts
Out of interest, see the board and supporters of Gatestone.
Bolton, Dershowitz, Finkelstein, Cox, Kemp amongst others
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/about/
Gould’s farewell letter. Sick bucket time. No mention of Fox or Werritty!
‘Thank you and goodbye
Op-ed: Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel bids farewell to the country he loves, knowing that nowhere will be quite the same.
Matthew Gould
06.24.15
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4672202,00.html
OTT Matthew.
Mary
Re Sajid Javid: I recall that you labelled him a “traitor” to his people for saying that he would rather live in Israel than any Middle Eastern country. A good example of what I was discussing with Glenn just now. How the “brown person”, as you term it, ought to think.
Where are ISIS getting their support.
Doesn’t the West usually attack such supply lines in the first instance.
The West could have stopped Pol Pot’s Kmer Rouge as well. But they didn’t.
They trained them, funded them and fed them. The KImer Rouge then grew from a rabble of 2000 to around 200,000, with the Killing Fields that followed.
Terrorism is quite simply an instrument of policy. A proxy instrument.
We’ve seen that so often now that you’d think by now people had a clue, but no, seems most are living in some sort of Groundhog Day. No context. No History. No past. No future. Only an eternal present.
Has Turkey been supporting ISIS.
Has Jordan been supporting ISIS.
Has Qatar been supporting ISIS.
Has Israel been supporting ISIS.
Yes, is the answer.
So, why doesn’t the UK and US use their influence over these partners and tell them to stop it.
Why keep pretending that it’s some unfathomable monstrosity, and the best way to deal with it is to turn the US and UK into police states.
Unless that’s the policy.
Mary
Are you serious about this and boycotting Israeli drugs at your hospital, or does your BDS extend to picking up a product at Waitrose, reading the words “Product of Israel”, and putting it back on the shelf with a little grimace and a shudder?
“You are fighting out a debate that doesn’t exist in Iraq.”
Will you kindly substantiate that? Thanks in advance.
anon1, what is the evidence to support your theory with regards to what the Iraqi people are thinking? Nine years of crippling sanctions, followed by the catastrophic use of DU tipped missiles (particularly on Fallujah) could indicate your Iraqi friends might be the ones that vacated the country thirty years ago.
Anyone seeking an antidote to the wall-to-wall boilerplate narrative on 7/7 being pumped out by the mainstream media should check out the great work done over the past ten years by the J7 Truth Campaign.
http://j7truth.blogspot.co.uk
No alternative narratives offered, just a tireless and sensibly conducted quest for the truth. The official narrative simply doesn’t add up.
“anon1, what is the evidence to support your theory with regards to what the Iraqi people are thinking?”
I’ll answer that for you. He has none.
Forgot Saudi Arabia.
They’re supporting ISIS as well.
Just tell them all to stop it. If that’s what the US and UK really want of course.
Job done.
Another thing.
Why give so much media publicity to ISIS atrocities.
Day in day out, British media en masse present these ghouls as they themselves wish to be seen.
Call me old-fashioned, but usually when there’s an enemy you’re fighting you downplay their abilities and propaganda. You undermine them.
The reverse has been the response of British and US media. They’re touted as the greatest threat to Western civilisation since Gengis Khan.
Curious, at least.