CharlieHebdo

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  • Hmm, and all this from people who claim they don't want "lazy explanations" ? The world order seems like the Sims - the ZX Spectrum version, when one reads you : A implies B, period... :)

    Oh, and btw, with the Greek election results, should we then expect massive act of terrorism against them so that conservatives can be back there ?! In one year, two year, five years ? Or I-will-never-give-a-date-but-when-it-happens-I'll-say-I-predicted-it ?
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Wow, you're a really angry dude, worse than me...
  • MrcogginsMrcoggins Following in the footsteps of Quentin Quigley.
    Posts: 3,144
    Getafix wrote: »
    Churchill was a mere commoner. A prince of the House of Saud clearly takes precedence!

    Sir Winston Churchill if you don't mind @Getafix I wish we had more "Common" people like him.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
  • MrcogginsMrcoggins Following in the footsteps of Quentin Quigley.
    Posts: 3,144
    One Mans Terrorists is another Mans Freedom Fighter it would seem.
  • Posts: 4,603
    Getafix wrote: »

    Having just watched a re-run of W1A , I can believe this. It would be funny if it were not for the fact that I am assisting to fund it.
  • Posts: 11,425
    I'm not totally sure what this guy was saying but I was advocating calling them murderers rather than terrorists myself. Terrorist almost elevates their actions - gives them the status and publicity they want. If they were described as murderers (which is what they are) it makes it much harder for apologists to justify their actions. How do you justify murder? They murdered people because of some cartoons - the stark facts heighten the immorality and insanity of their actions.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 4,603
    The two words are not mutually exclusive. Terrorists seek to create terror within the public consciousness. I think these guys clearly fall within this remit. The guy in the grocers chose innocent shoppers. His girlfriend assisted him, etc etc, all terrorists in my book. Some committed murder, some did not. So some are murdering terrorists, some are not. BBC should be ashamed
  • Posts: 11,425
    patb wrote: »
    The two words are not mutually exclusive. Terrorists seek to create terror within the public consciousness. I think these guys clearly fall within this remit. The guy in the grocers chose innocent shoppers. His girlfriend assisted him, etc etc, all terrorists in my book. Some committed murder, some did not. So some are murdering terrorists, some are not. BBC should be ashamed

    I agree the term fits, particularly in this context. I just wonder if 'terrorist' becomes lazy shorthand for all sorts of stuff though, and gets the journalists and media off the hook of analysing what is going on and actually giving some real insight.

    There are 'terrorists' all over the world, but that description does not help our understanding of what they are or what their motivation is. Even amongst Islamic terrorists there are so many factions and sub-groups with different motivations and contexts.

  • Posts: 4,603
    In terms of understanding, comment and insight, I agree. But the BBC is banning the word at every level. For journos at the front line or on the 6 pm news, its not their job to interpret motivations etc, we just want the facts (un hindered by some ridiculous internal policy handed down from some middle manager) and the fact is that these guys are terrorists.
    I did not see any of this hand ringing when the IRA were at their peak. Nobody , including the IRA, objected to the word. It is an indication of how much uncertainty within our society we have that we cant even agree on what word to use to describe these guys.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Psycho killers will do.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 11,425
    Psycho killers will do.

    Well exactly. Wording is so important, I understand the debates that go on about how these people should be described.

    I do actually think a lot of the people who do this are probably just psychotic and they have found an outlet for their murderous tendencies that gives them some legitemacy.

    I read an interesting artlcie the other day about Islamic terrorists, immigration, the European fear of Islamic take over etc. It was written by a Muslim and it pointed out that the most murderous act of 'terrorism' in Europe this decade has not come from Islamists, but a right-wing anti-Islamic, anti-immigration nutter in Norway - Anders Behring Breivik .

    I am not saying there is not a major threat - obviously there is. But I wonder if we play into the extemists hands by exagerating it. In the US, generally speaking, you are much more likely to be killed deliberately or by accident by a fellow citizen with a gun than you are by 'terrorists'. In Europe, we obviously must not be complacent, but the fact is this attack was by 3 disillusioned individuals. To what extent should we let 3 lunatics dictate our response and attitude to an entire group who are loosely defined as 'Muslims'.

  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    And as heinous as that was, it happened once and was an anomaly.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 11,425
    And as heinous as that was, it happened once and was an anomaly.

    Not completely. There were right wing homophobic and anti-immigrant bomb attacks in London in 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copeland

    And until 911 the Oklahama bombing in the US was I think one of the worst, if not the worst terror attack there.

    I accept that the Islamist threat today is much greater though.

    But in the 1970s and 80s in the UK the main threat was the IRA. In Spain for years it has been ETA.

    I just don't think we should overreact and allow ourselves to marginalise all Muslims because of the acts of a few nutters.

    I hope that in 30 years from now the Islamist threat will have subsided and we'll be probably be facing the latest bunch of loons with a blood lust.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    Posts: 23,883
    At the end of the day, I think it doesn't matter what these people use as their calling cry. They can use Islam (which they are doing) or they can use something else (get out of our lands.....or stop messing with our oil......or whatever else they want).

    They are terrorists (in the sense that they are causing terror) and they are also murderers.

    However using the terrorist term opens the door to justifying all kinds of overreactions, snooping on innocents, clampdowns etc. because it subconsciously implies something more than it could be. The murderer classification does not (because then it is just a crime that must be investigated and solved).

    So it is the implication of using the word terrorist for our freedoms that gives me concern. The fact that the word can be 'hijacked' for other purposes, just like 'Islam' has been hijacked by others for nefarious purposes.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 7,507
    And as heinous as that was, it happened once and was an anomaly.

    Of that magnitude maybe, but massacres are not such an unusual scenario world wide. In addition to homophobic attacks there's been several school massacres in the US for instance. Once in a while people perform insane violent acts. And (importantly) Islam is not always involved...
  • Posts: 11,425
    bondjames wrote: »
    At the end of the day, I think it doesn't matter what these people use as their calling cry. They can use Islam (which they are doing) or they can use something else (get out of our lands.....or stop messing with our oil......or whatever else they want).

    They are terrorists (in the sense that they are causing terror) and they are also murderers.

    However using the terrorist term opens the door to justifying all kinds of overreactions, snooping on innocents, clampdowns etc. because it subconsciously implies something more than it could be. The murderer classification does not (because then it is just a crime that must be investigated and solved).

    So it is the implication of using the word terrorist for our freedoms that gives me concern. The fact that the word can be 'hijacked' for other purposes, just like 'Islam' has been hijacked by others for nefarious purposes.

    Well put. The bigger threat arguably is not from murdering nutters themsevles (although this is of course very serious) but from our own governments and to our own civil liberties. We have to walk that line between countering the extremists, while not allowing our governments to use 'terror' as an excuse for trampling on our own freedoms.
  • Posts: 15,106
    Getafix wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    The two words are not mutually exclusive. Terrorists seek to create terror within the public consciousness. I think these guys clearly fall within this remit. The guy in the grocers chose innocent shoppers. His girlfriend assisted him, etc etc, all terrorists in my book. Some committed murder, some did not. So some are murdering terrorists, some are not. BBC should be ashamed

    I agree the term fits, particularly in this context. I just wonder if 'terrorist' becomes lazy shorthand for all sorts of stuff though, and gets the journalists and media off the hook of analysing what is going on and actually giving some real insight.

    There are 'terrorists' all over the world, but that description does not help our understanding of what they are or what their motivation is. Even amongst Islamic terrorists there are so many factions and sub-groups with different motivations and contexts.

    In the Ch massacre, the term terrorist was, is entirely justified. Trying to forget this label is a cheap attempt to dilute the gravity of their crime and its core motivation: religious zeal of the Islamist kind. I think this is what the BBC is shying away from.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 11,425
    But defining someone as a terrorist doesn't tell you anything about their core motivation.

    There were Jewish Zionist 'terrorists' in the 1940s who attacked the British Army in Palestine because they thought the British stood in the way of the creation of their Jewish state. Just calling them 'terrorists' wouldn't have realed anything about their motivations.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

    Speaking of which, Netanyahu doesn't even consider the King David Hotel bombing (one of the most fatal bombings in the history of the Middle East) a terrorist attack at all. Funny that.
  • Posts: 15,106
    Getafix wrote: »
    But defining someone as a terrorist doesn't tell you anything about their core motivation.

    There were Jewish Zionist 'terrorists' in the 1940s who attacked the British Army in Palestine because they thought the British stood in the way of the creation of their Jewish state. Just calling them 'terrorists' wouldn't have realed anything about their motivations.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

    Speaking of which, Netanyahu doesn't even consider the King David Hotel bombing (one of the most fatal bombings in the history of the Middle East) a terrorist attack at all. Funny that.

    It tells a lot about their motivations, if the term is used properly. The terrorists who did the massacre in Paris did not want respect, did not fight for freedom, for justice, for money or whatever: they murderer to strike the fear of God into hearts and minds of citizens of a democratic society. Kill their freedom by striking terror. This is what the aim of a terrorist is: terror.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 11,425
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Getafix wrote: »
    But defining someone as a terrorist doesn't tell you anything about their core motivation.

    There were Jewish Zionist 'terrorists' in the 1940s who attacked the British Army in Palestine because they thought the British stood in the way of the creation of their Jewish state. Just calling them 'terrorists' wouldn't have realed anything about their motivations.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

    Speaking of which, Netanyahu doesn't even consider the King David Hotel bombing (one of the most fatal bombings in the history of the Middle East) a terrorist attack at all. Funny that.

    It tells a lot about their motivations, if the term is used properly. The terrorists who did the massacre in Paris did not want respect, did not fight for freedom, for justice, for money or whatever: they murderer to strike the fear of God into hearts and minds of citizens of a democratic society. Kill their freedom by striking terror. This is what the aim of a terrorist is: terror.

    By that definition the USA's 'shock and awe' offensive on Iraq was a terrorist act.

    The more I think about a lot of these issues the more I think they're not remotely as simple as some make out.

    In the 1950s and 60s and 70s we were told 'Communists' were the epitomy of evil. But many of those people who embraced Communism did so because they saw it as the best way of opposing colonialism and western imperialism. Mao said this quite explicitly.

    A lot of the Vietnamese who fought the Americans in Vietnam were not ideologically communist - they just wanted foreign powers out of their country. And I think the same is true to an extent today. Ideology is important, but I think of a lot of people have turned to Islamist extremism because they see at the only way to oppose western interference in the Middle East.
  • Posts: 15,106
    Getafix wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Getafix wrote: »
    But defining someone as a terrorist doesn't tell you anything about their core motivation.

    There were Jewish Zionist 'terrorists' in the 1940s who attacked the British Army in Palestine because they thought the British stood in the way of the creation of their Jewish state. Just calling them 'terrorists' wouldn't have realed anything about their motivations.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

    Speaking of which, Netanyahu doesn't even consider the King David Hotel bombing (one of the most fatal bombings in the history of the Middle East) a terrorist attack at all. Funny that.

    It tells a lot about their motivations, if the term is used properly. The terrorists who did the massacre in Paris did not want respect, did not fight for freedom, for justice, for money or whatever: they murderer to strike the fear of God into hearts and minds of citizens of a democratic society. Kill their freedom by striking terror. This is what the aim of a terrorist is: terror.

    By that definition the USA's 'shock and awe' offensive on Iraq was a terrorist act.

    Not that I am a big fan of the Bush administration or the Iraq war, but no. The Iraq war was a war. And, while I don't think it was a justified war, it was a war taken for a bad cause, motivated by greed and a Messianic sense of entitlement, it was still a war and against a nasty dictatorship. However morally wrong it was, it was not exactly the gratuitous murders of artists living in a free, democratic society whose sole crime was was to have been using their liberty to mock a man dead a few centuries ago.

    And equivocating the Iraq war to the CH terrorist attacks is utterly ridiculous.
  • Posts: 11,425
    I wasn't saying that. Just pointing out the term 'terrorist' is not actually very useful and that if we take your definition -
    This is what the aim of a terrorist is: terror.
    then the US attack on Baghdad at the start of the Iraq War was an act of terrorism. As that BBC journalist said, it's actually quite hard to define what terrorism is.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    Posts: 23,883
    For the people on the ground caught in the crossfire of 'shock and awe', who did nothing wrong but be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I'm pretty sure it seemed like terrorism, because I'm sure they were terrorized.
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 15,106
    Was striking fear the aim of the Iraq war? Not really. It might have been a mean, it was not an end. In Paris, terror (through violence) was a mean. More importantly, it was most definitely an end. If terrorism cannot be used to define the crimes in Paris, what can? You might as well say that terrorism happens only in 24. What the BBC does is cowardly and is intellectually dishonest.

    Beside, whether or not the Iraq war was terrorism is beside the point. The Charlie Hebdo massacre most definitely is.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited January 2015 Posts: 23,883
    That may be, but the result is the same in that innocents are terrorized by war, and by terrorism. War is no less justifiable in that respect. If anyone wants to argue otherwise on that front, I don't agree.
  • Posts: 4,603
    Just to get back on track:
  • edited January 2015 Posts: 11,425
    Hitchens comes across as an arrogant and rather conceited d*** in that exchange. He was a fundamentalist of a different stripe and I suspect , like Dawkins, not really as intelligent as he thought he was. I understand what he's saying, and it has an internal logic to it, but it does not take into account the subtleties of the real world - all the shades of grey that lie between his supposed self styled 'enlightenment' and the backward barbarism he projects onto all Muslims. His kind of extremism is potentially as dangerous as that of the Islamist nutters and it leads to the Iraq War and it's catastrophic fallout.

    The man was a clever but conceited and rather intellectually lazy alcoholic with an excessively high opinion of himself.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    "The more things change, the more they stay the same." - Snake Plissken
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