Tag Archives: terrorism

Murderers or Terrorists and the Real Tragedy

September 30, 2016 Mike

The United States is a wonderful, yet thoroughly paradoxical place. Take the general reactions to gun violence, murder and terrorism, during a two week period in mid-September 2016, for example.

Exhibit A: Ahmad Khan Rahami, a would-be murderer, planted several home-made pipe and pressure cooker bombs in New Jersey and New York on September 17. Result: no deaths, several minor injuries, local property damage. Our news media spun days worth of front page coverage, outrage, analysis, hearsay, opinion, soul-searching. Reason: the perpetrator had a beard, Muslim name and found to have espoused sympathies with radicals.

Exhibit B: Arcan Cetin shot four women and one man at a Macy’s store in Burlington, Washington on September 23. Result: 5 deaths. The rampage in a suburban mall barely made the national headlines, and didn’t last beyond the 24-hour news cycle. Reason: the perpetrator was clean-shaven, had personal problems and found to have no “terrorist” links or sympathies.

Exhibit C: Nathan DeSai, a 46-year-old Texas attorney, went on a shooting spree in Houston on September 26. Result: 9 wounded. This made a minor flutter in the news media and has since disappeared from national consciousness even though he was wearing an antique German uniform with Swastikas.

In 2013, over 16,000 people were murdered in the US, around 11,000 at the hands of someone armed with a gun. In 2015, 475 people were killed in 372 mass shootings. Many of these go completely unreported, aside from a paragraph or two at the local level.

And yet.

And yet, our media and a large number of US citizens fret and decry events at the hands of the “terrorist”, while barely blinking at the daily carnage caused by our domestic, homicidal neighbors. Who are the real terrorists and why have we come to accept so many daily murders — averaging over 40 — as so utterly banal and trivial? Is the politically motivated “international” assassin any more dangerous than the disturbed suburban version? They’re both driven by a distorted worldview and their place in it. Perhaps, they’re not that different after all.

But, more importantly, rather than focusing on a 55 ft wall to deter illusory armies of terrorists it might be more rational to tackle the causes that lead to tens of thousands of our own citizens killing their spouses, families, neighbors, school children, work colleagues, church-goers, drivers, runners and shoppers. We are desensitized to our home-grown “domestic terrorism”. That’s the real tragedy.

Idea Soup

Xenophobia: Terrorism of the Mind

November 19, 2015 Mike

I suspect xenophobia is a spectrum disorder. At one end of the spectrum we see the acts of fundamentalist terrorists following their apocalyptic (and isolationist) scripts to their barbaric conclusions. At the other end, we hear the segregationist rants of talking heads demanding litmus tests for migrants, refugees and victims of violence. And, it’s all the more distasteful when one of the talking heads controls vast swathes of the global media.

So, shame on you Rupert Murdoch for suggesting that the US allow entry only to proven Christian refugees. Clearly, tolerance, understanding and inclusiveness are not concepts that Mr.Murdoch understands — traits that he lacks in common with those that he accuses.

From the Guardian:

I see Rupert Murdoch has come up with a foolproof method to ensure that the United States is safe from terrorism.

In a tweet offering advice to the American president, he wrote:

“Obama facing enormous opposition in accepting refugees. Maybe make special exception for proven Christians”

Oh yes he did. Does the News Corp boss not realise that this is just the kind of response to terrorism that the terrorists seek to provoke?

Ostracising all Muslims by refusing them sanctuary on the grounds that that they are potential terrorists is likely to be counter-productive. And, incidentally, is it not unChristian?

I note that the editor of Newsnight, Ian Katz, tongue firmly in cheek, tweeted back to Murdoch:

“Interesting idea… will you come and talk about it on @BBCNewsnight”.

But he didn’t take up the offer. He obviously prefers to let his wisdom shine through in 140 characters.

I am also queasy about the Tuesday editorial in Murdoch’s favourite newspaper, the Sun, which called on British-based Muslims to prove their opposition to “the jihadis” by marching through London with placards saying “not in our name”.

Rightly, the paper points out that Isis “seeks to establish violent, oppressive fundamentalism as the only true faith and to divide Muslims from non-Muslims.”

But I wonder whether the Sun realises that its message is similar: the effect of treating Muslims, all Muslims, as some kind of homogenous entity (and as a thing apart) is more likely to foment divisions with non-Muslims and alienate Muslims still further.

Read the entire story here.

Bestial or Human?

November 17, 2015 Mike

Following the recent horrendous mass murders in Lebanon and Paris I heard several politicians and commentators describe the atrocities as “bestial“. So, if you’re somewhat of a pedant link me you’ll know that bestial means “of or like an animal“. This should make you scratch your head because the terror and bloodshed is nowhere close to bestial — it’s thoroughly human.

Only humans have learned to revel and excel in these types of destructive behaviors, and on such a scale. So, next time your hear someone label such an act as bestial please correct them, and hope that one day we’ll all learn to be more bestial.

And, on the subject of the recent atrocities, I couldn’t agree more with the following two articles: the murderers are certainly following a bankrupt ideology, but they’re far from mindless.

From the Guardian:

…

During Sunday night’s monologue he [John Oliver, Last Week Tonight show on HBO] took advantage of the US cable channel’s relaxed policy on swearing. “After the many necessary and appropriate moments of silence, I’d like to offer you a moment of premium cable profanity … it’s hardly been 48 hours but there are a few things we can say for certain.

“First, as of now, we know this attack was carried out by gigantic fucking arseholes … possibly working with other fucking arseholes, definitely working in service of an ideology of pure arseholery.

“Second, and this goes almost without saying, fuck these arseholes …

“And, third, it is important to remember, nothing about what these arseholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend.

Read the entire article here and anthropologist Scott Atran’s (University of Michigan) op-ed, here.

Idea Soup, tD

Vive La Republique

November 16, 2015 Mike

My thoughts are with the innocent victims, and their families and friends, of the horrific and cowardly events in Paris, France.

Image: The motto of the French Republic — Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death. courtesy of Hector Fleischmann, La guillotine en 1793, Paris: Librairie des Publications Modernes, 1908. Public Domain.

Idea Soup, tD

Truth and Eloquence

June 22, 2015 Mike

A few choice words from one of my heroes on the subject of the terrorist murders earlier this week in Charleston, SC.

[tube]LJl9iqnvkOE[/tube]

Video: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Idea Soup

Comparing Forgiveness and Fiction

June 21, 2015 Mike

Here’s a brief look at the very different reactions from two groups of people to the white terrorist murders in Charleston, South Carolina last week. The groups are: families of the innocent victims and some of our political leaders and news pundits.

According to a vociferous group mostly sounding off on Fox/Faux News, the murders were variously due to: the victims themselves, Christian persecution, drugs, lack of faith, lack of guns, gays and transgender individuals, accident, evil, and the wrath of God.

And thus, the murders were certainly not white terrorism against blacks and not catalyzed by guns.

Gasp! How much our so called leaders need to learn from those who have truly lost.

Families of Victims	Politicians and Pundits
“I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.” Nadine Collier, daughter of victim 70-year-old Ethel Lance.	“Any time there is an accident like this… the president is clear, he doesn’t like Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message.” Rick Perry, 2016 presidential hopeful.
Felecia Sanders , mother of Tywanza Sanders:”We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautifulest people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts … and I’ll never be the same. Tywanza Sanders was my son, but Tywanza was my hero. Tywanza was my hero. But as we said in Bible study, we enjoyed you but may God have mercy on you.”	“It sounds crass, but frankly the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is to have a good person with a weapon that is equal or superior to the one that he’s using.” Mike Huckabee, 2016 presidential hopeful.
Bethane Middleton-Brown, representing family of the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor:”DePayne Doctor was my sister. And I just thank you on the behalf of my family for not allowing hate to win. For me, I’m a work in progress and I acknowledge that I’m very angry. But one thing DePayne always joined in my family with is that she taught me we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate. We have to forgive. I pray God on your soul. And I also thank God I won’t be around when your judgment day comes with him.”	“We don’t know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be… You talk about the importance of prayer in this time and we’re now seeing assaults on our religious liberty we’ve never seen before. It’s a time for deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation.” Rick Santorum, 2016 presidential hopeful.
Anthony Thompson, representing family of Myra Thompson:”I forgive you, my family forgives you. We would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Repent. Confess. Give your life to the one who matters the most, Christ, so he can change your ways no matter what happens to you and you’ll be OK. Do that and you’ll be better off than you are right now.”	“It seems to me – again, without having all the details about this one – that these individuals have been medicated. And there may be a real issue in this country, from the standpoint of these drugs, and how they’re used.” Rick Perry, 2016 presidential hopeful.
Alana Simmons, granddaughter of Daniel Simmons:”Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof — everyone’s plea for your soul is proof they lived in love and their legacies will live in love, so hate won’t win. And I just want to thank the court for making sure that hate doesn’t win.”	“I’m deeply concerned that this gunman chose to go into a church. Because there does seem to be a rising hostility against Christians across this country because of our Biblical views. It’s something we have to be aware of, and not create an atmosphere in which people take out their violent intentions against Christians.” E.W. Jackson.
Daughter of Ethel Lance:”I forgive you. You took something really precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. It hurts me, it hurts a lot of people but God forgive you and I forgive you.”	“Had somebody in that church had a gun, they probably would have been able to stop him. If somebody was there, they would have had the opportunity to pull out their weapon and take him out.” Steve Doocy, Fox News.

Idea Soup, tD

Time to Blame the Victims, Again

June 20, 2015 Mike

Despite the tragic human cost of the latest gun violence in the United States and the need for families to mourn, grieve and seek solace, some will fuel the hatred. Some will show utter disregard of others’ pain and suffering. Some will display no empathy, no sympathy, no sensitivity, no compassion. Some will blame the victims. This is the other real tragedy.

So today — just two days after the horrific murder of nine people in Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church — let us consider Charles Cotton. Mr. Cotton is a devout board member of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Mr. Cotton blames Pastor and Senator Pinckney, one of the nine victims for the murders. You see, according to Mr. Cotton’s paranoid and myopic worldview, had Senator Pinckney not recently voted against local concealed gun carry legislation “eight of his church members…might be alive.” There we have it. This is the level of the weapons debate in America. Outrageous.

Mr. Cotton clearly loves his shiny metal weapons much more than he does his fellow man. I would assume that he also blames rape victims for their rapes, blacks for perpetrating white supremacist terrorism, and survivors of domestic violence for their abuse. But let’s certainly not blame the murderers and their convenient weapons of mass destruction. After all, black lives don’t matter — guns do!

Those of us who spare a human thought for the victims might actually characterize Senator Pinckney as a fallen hero. Those of us who are optimists about humanity’s future have to believe that the only way forward is through an open mind and open heart, and through non-violence. Paranoia comforted by weapons is a broken philosophy, fueled by darkness and despair.

Humor Versus Horror

March 15, 2015 Mike

[tube]wMP5VCVIekQ[/tube]

Faced with unspeakable horror many of usually turn away. Some courageous souls turn to humor to counter the vileness of others. So, it is heartwarming to see comedians and satirists taking up rhetorical arms in the backyards of murderers and terrorists. Fighting violence and terror with much of the same may show progress in the short-term, but ridiculing our enemies with humor and thoughtful dialogue is the only long-term way to fight evil in its many human forms. A profound thank you to these four brave Syrian refugees who, in the face of much personal danger, are able to laugh at their foes.

From the Guardian:

They don’t have much to laugh about. But four young Syrian refugees from Aleppo believe humour may be the only antidote to the horrors taking place back home.

Settled in a makeshift studio in the Turkish city of Gaziantep 40 miles from the Syrian border, the film-makers decided ridicule was an effective way of responding to Islamic State and its grisly record of extreme violence.

“The entire world seems to be terrified of Isis, so we want to laugh at them, expose their hypocrisy and show that their interpretation of Islam does not represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims,” says Maen Watfe, 27. “The media, especially the western media, obsessively reproduce Isis propaganda portraying them as strong and intimidating. We want to show their weaknesses.”

The films and videos on Watfe and his three friends’ website mock the Islamist extremists and depict them as naive simpletons, hypocritical zealots and brutal thugs. It’s a high-risk undertaking. They have had to move house and keep their addresses secret from even their best friends after receiving death threats.

But the video activists – Watfe, Youssef Helali, Mohammed Damlakhy and Aya Brown – will not be deterred.

Their film The Prince shows Isis leader and self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi drinking wine, listening to pop music and exchanging selfies with girls on his smartphone. A Moroccan jihadi arrives saying he came to Syria to “liberate Jerusalem”. The leader swaps the wine for milk and switches the music to Islamic chants praising martyrdom. Then he hands the Moroccan a suicide belt and sends him off against a unit of Free Syrian Army fighters. The grenades detonate, and Baghdadi reaches for his glass of wine and turns the pop music back on.

It is pieces like this that have brought hate mail and threats via social media.

“One of them said that they would finish us off like they finished off Charlie [Hebdo],” Brown, 26, recalls. She declined to give her real name out of fear for her family, who still live in Aleppo. “In the end we decided to move from our old apartment.”

The Turkish landlord told them Arabic-speaking men had repeatedly asked for their whereabouts after they left, and kept the studio under surveillance.

Follow the story here.

Video: Happy Valentine. Courtesy of Dayaaltaseh Productions.

Idea Soup, tD

Je Suis Muadh al-Kasasbeh

February 5, 2015 Mike

The abhorrent, brutish murder of Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh by callous, cowardly murderers must take some kind of hideous prize. As some commentators have mentioned already, this act is not a cruel, new invention by depraved psychopaths, it represents a move backwards towards humanity’s sad vicious past, but played out for our social video-age.

From the Guardian:

Images of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive by the militants of Islamic State (Isis) began to filter on to social media and mainstream news sites on Monday. As with beheadings and other brutal acts carried out by the group in the past, there were calls not to share the video or stills of it, out of respect for the dead pilot and his family and in order not to further publicise the terrorists’ message. But it seems the details were so gruesome that many couldn’t help but watch and share.

I refused to look (I never do: it feels too much like giving Isis the attention it craves). But that didn’t stop others trying to tell me in vivid detail what the video showed. Someone even said it was “Bond villain-like”. Isis, it seems, has created a whole new kind of murderous cinematic experience.

Some internet users clearly find the unrelenting goriness of it all captivating – stonings, decapitations, throwing people off tall buildings, sticking severed heads on spikes. Perhaps there’s a compulsion to see just how far Isis will go. But the very act of choosing to witness these things makes us, in some way, complicit.

Media organisations face a particular dilemma, as the atrociousness arguably makes the crimes even more newsworthy. But any decision to transmit these images takes us into difficult territory. When Fox News posts all of the footage with the warning “extremely graphic video” attached, one could be forgiven for thinking that a steadfast commitment to truth-telling isn’t the only factor at play. But these videos are designed to be a grotesque form of clickbait. Making them available to ever-wider audiences only helps the terrorists achieve their traffic targets.

For some, displaying the video is not only a journalistic virtue. Watching it is somehow necessary to drive the full horror of Isis home. Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror, wrote in the Daily Mail how he couldn’t help but give in to the impulse to click, but is “glad” he did so because he now knows “what these monsters are capable of”. I am not sure how their nature is news to him. Did the rape, enslavement and summary execution of thousands of people and the murder of hostages not give it away?

He even imagines it could help win the battle of ideas. “If any Muslim remains in any doubt as to whether this is the right time to stand up and cry ‘Not in my name or my religion!’, then I suggest they too watch the video.” Where is this Muslim world full of doubt as to whether Isis is an enemy?

Morgan suggests that the fact the latest victim is a Sunni Arab means some sort of Rubicon has been crossed. This betrays his view that there is widespread implicit support for Isis among Muslims because they oppose the west, and that this video will shake them out of their complacency. Morgan helpfully adds: “This is your war.”

Most Muslims recoil in horror at the thought of Isis, and don’t need a video to help them along. Isis is playing a game of braggadocio and provocation, dressing it up in the language of prisoner exchanges and execution, as though it really is the state it claims to be. Anyone who views and disseminates these videos is playing their assigned part in the killers’ script. The crime doesn’t end with the death of the victim: the video and the process of watching and reacting to it are extensions of the terrorist act.

Thousands have been killed, off camera, in equally brutal ways, but these films allow Isis to revel in the toe-curling revulsion they inevitably provoke. It wants to generate just the kind of reaction that Morgan felt: he claims he was seized by “such uncontrollable rage that no amount of reasonable argument will ever temper it”.

But such videos turn the internet into a grisly public square where we all gather and watch in horror, then disband, unwittingly participating in a macabre cycle of action and reaction.

Isis has certainly murdered foreign hostages, Yezidis and members of other ethnic and religious groups. But the overwhelming majority of those targeted have been Muslims. No one is in any doubt whose war this is, or that Isis is capable of the stuff of nightmares. Films of its crimes are superfluous and risk distracting us from the continual suffering of those who live under it. So why keep looking?

Read the entire article here.

Idea Soup

The Myth of Martyrdom

July 9, 2013 Mike

Unfortunately our world is still populated by a few people who will willingly shed the blood of others while destroying themselves. Understanding the personalities and motivations of these people may one day help eliminate this scourge. In the meantime, psychologists ponder whether they are psychologically normal, but politically crazed fanatics or deeply troubled?

Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor, asserts that suicide terrorists are merely unhappy, damaged individuals who want to die. In his book, The Myth of Martyrdom, Lankford rejects the popular view of suicide terrorists as calculating, radicalized individuals who will do anything for a cause.

From the New Scientist:

In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism experts in the US made a bold and counter-intuitive claim: the suicide terrorists were psychologically normal. When it came to their state of mind, they were not so different from US Special Forces agents. Just because they deliberately crashed planes into buildings, that didn’t make them suicidal – it simply meant they were willing to die for a cause they believed in.

This argument was stated over and over and became the orthodoxy. “We’d like to believe these are crazed fanatics,” said CIA terror expert Jerrold Post in 2006. “Not true… as individuals, this is normal behaviour.”

I disagree. Far from being psychologically normal, suicide terrorists are suicidal. They kill themselves to escape crises or unbearable pain. Until we recognise this, attempts to stop the attacks are doomed to fail.

When I began studying suicide terrorists, I had no agenda, just curiosity. My hunch was that the official version was true, but I kept an open mind.

Then I began watching martyrdom videos and reading case studies, letters and diary entries. What I discovered was a litany of fear, failure, guilt, shame and rage. In my book The Myth of Martyrdom, I present evidence that far from being normal, these self-destructive killers have often suffered from serious mental trauma and always demonstrate at least a few behaviours on the continuum of suicidality, such as suicide ideation, a suicide plan or previous suicide attempts.

Why did so many scholars come to the wrong conclusions? One key reason is that they believe what the bombers, their relatives and friends, and their terrorist recruiters say, especially when their accounts are consistent.

In 2007, for example, Ellen Townsend of the University of Nottingham, UK, published an influential article called Suicide Terrorists: Are they suicidal? Her answer was a resounding no (Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, vol 37, p 35).

How did she come to this conclusion? By reviewing five empirical reports: three that depended largely upon interviews with deceased suicide terrorists’ friends and family, and two based on interviews of non-suicide terrorists. She took what they said at face value.

I think this was a serious mistake. All of these people have strong incentives to lie.

Take the failed Palestinian suicide bomber Wafa al-Biss, who attempted to blow herself up at an Israeli checkpoint in 2005. Her own account and those of her parents and recruiters tell the same story: that she acted for political and religious reasons.

These accounts are highly suspect. Terrorist leaders have strategic reasons for insisting that attackers are not suicidal, but instead are carrying out glorious martyrdom operations. Traumatised parents want to believe that their children were motivated by heroic impulses. And suicidal people commonly deny that they are suicidal and are often able to hide their true feelings from the world.

This is especially true of fundamentalist Muslims. Suicide is explicitly condemned in Islam and guarantees an eternity in hell. Martyrs, on the other hand, can go to heaven.

Most telling of all, it later emerged that al-Biss had suffered from mental health problems most of her life and had made two previous suicide attempts.

Her case is far from unique. Consider Qari Sami, who blew himself up in a café in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2005. He walked in – and kept on walking, past crowded tables and into the bathroom at the back where he closed the door and detonated his belt. He killed himself and two others, but could easily have killed more. It later emerged that he was on antidepressants.

Read the entire article here.

Idea Soup

The World Wide Web of Terrorism

October 30, 2011 Mike

[div class=attrib]From Eurozine:[end-div]

There are clear signs that Internet-radicalization was behind the terrorism of Anders Behring Breivik. Though most research on this points to jihadism, it can teach us a lot about how Internet-radicalization of all kinds can be fought.

On 21 September 2010, Interpol released a press statement on their homepage warning against extremist websites. They pointed out that this is a global threat and that ever more terrorist groups use the Internet to radicalize young people.

“Terrorist recruiters exploit the web to their full advantage as they target young, middle class vulnerable individuals who are usually not on the radar of law enforcement”, said Secretary General Ronald K. Noble. He continued: “The threat is global; it is virtual; and it is on our doorsteps. It is a global threat that only international police networks can fully address.”

Noble pointed out that the Internet has made the radicalization process easier and the war on terror more difficult. Part of the reason, he claimed, is that much of what takes place is not really criminal.

…

Much research has been done on Internet radicalization over the last few years but the emphasis has been on Islamist terror. The phenomenon can be summarized thus: young boys and men of Muslim background have, via the Internet, been exposed to propaganda, films from war zones, horrifying images of war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya, and also extreme interpretations of Islam. They are, so to speak, caught in the web, and some have resorted to terrorism, or at least planned it. The BBC documentary Generation Jihad gives an interesting and frightening insight into the phenomenon.

Researchers Tim Stevens and Peter Neumann write in a report focused on Islamist Internet radicalization that Islamist groups are hardly unique in putting the Internet in the service of political extremism:
Although Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants represented the most significant terrorist threat to the United Kingdom at the time of writing, Islamist militants are not the only – or even the predominant – group of political extremists engaged in radicalization and recruitment on the internet. Visitor numbers are notoriously difficult to verify, but some of the most popular Islamist militant web forums (for example, Al Ekhlaas, Al Hesbah, or Al Boraq) are easily rivalled in popularity by white supremacist websites such as Stormfront.

Strikingly, Stormfront – an international Internet forum advocating “white nationalism” and dominated by neo-Nazis – is one of the websites visited by the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and a forum where he also left comments. In one place he writes about his hope that “the various fractured rightwing movements in Europe and the US reach a common consensus regarding the ‘Islamification of Europe/US’ can try and reach a consensus regarding the issue”. He continues: “After all, we all want the best for our people, and we owe it to them to try to create the most potent alliance which will have the strength to overthrow the governments which support multiculturalism.”

[div class=attrib]Read more of this article here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Image courtesy of Eurozine.[end-div]