Another London terror attack

[Brian Peacock]

... If they keep their noses clean nobody will know they are there...

Looks like a dozen idiots acting on a whim. It's whack a mole whether in Europe or the UK. Don't know which ones are gonna go off next. The best thing is to round them all up. At least those with a identifiable risk factor...

Do you really think that a pogrom will do anything but cause more resentment and hatred, on both sides? And for those who 'keep their noses clean' and fly below the radar won't it just be putting a deadlock on an empty barn?

[cronus]

... If they keep their noses clean nobody will know they are there...

Looks like a dozen idiots acting on a whim. It's whack a mole whether in Europe or the UK. Don't know which ones are gonna go off next. The best thing is to round them all up. At least those with a identifiable risk factor...

Do you really think that a pogrom will do anything but cause more resentment and hatred, on both sides? And for those who 'keep their noses clean' and fly below the radar won't it just be putting a deadlock on an empty barn?

So long as the hatred and resentment is combined with a healthy dose of fear it should show a result, in reduced terror.

[Jason]

"Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time. But it cannot be defeated through military intervention alone. It will not be defeated through the maintenance of a permanent, defensive counter-terrorism operation, however skillful its leaders and practitioners. It will only be defeated when we turn people's minds away from this violence — and make them understand that our values — pluralistic, British values — are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.

Second, we cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet — and the big companies that provide internet-based services — provide. We need to work with allied, democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremism and terrorist planning. And we need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online.

Third, while we need to deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online, we must not forget about the safe spaces that continue to exist in the real world. Yes, that means taking military action to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But it also means taking action here at home. While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is, to be frank, far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.

So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out — across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations, but the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism — and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities but as one truly United Kingdom.

Fourth, we have a robust counter-terrorism strategy that has proved successful over many years. But as the nature of the threat we face becomes more complex, more fragmented, more hidden, especially online, the strategy needs to keep up. So in light of what we are learning about the changing threat, we need to review Britain's counter-terrorism strategy to make sure the police and security services have all the powers they need.

And if we need to increase the length of custodial sentences for terrorism-related offences, even apparently less serious offences, that is what we will do."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/london-bri ... -1.4145367

Police state ho!

[Hermit]

Looks like a dozen idiots acting on a whim. It's whack a mole whether in Europe or the UK. Don't know which ones are gonna go off next. The best thing is to round them all up. At least those with a identifiable risk factor...

Do you really think that a pogrom will do anything but cause more resentment and hatred, on both sides? And for those who 'keep their noses clean' and fly below the radar won't it just be putting a deadlock on an empty barn?

So long as the hatred and resentment is combined with a healthy dose of fear it should show a result, in reduced terror.

Yeah. Right. Suicidal terrorists are renowned for pulling their heads in for fear of getting them shot off.

[pErvinalia]

He's trolling you all. Stop feeding him.

[Alan B]

So long as the hatred and resentment is combined with a healthy dose of fear it should show a result, in reduced terror.

Bollocks!
These brainwashed idiots have no fear of dying since they are convinced that their death will be rewarded with everlasting life in paradise (with 72 virgins, of course).

Try to convince any devoutly religious nutjob that their 'Holy Book' is fake and see were you get.

[cronus]

We've got too much Islam in the UK. Intelligent action can change things. Look at the anti-smoking campaign?

[Brian Peacock]

We've got too much magical thinking in the UK. Critical thinking can change things, and a start would be to stop conflating religion with virtue and withdrawing public money for so-called faith schools.

[cronus]

We've got too much magical thinking in the UK. Critical thinking can change things, and a start would be to stop conflating religion with virtue and withdrawing public money for so-called faith schools.

I was thinking internment camps....maybe some sort of anti-brain wash camp is the answer also? in cases where the rot isn't too far advanced.

[Scot Dutchy]

You achieve much more with education but of course like everything else May has cut back on that too.

[JimC]

Having a good hard look at mosques and islamic schools that are on the fundamentalist side would be a good idea...

[Brian Peacock]

Anyone preaching Jihad has certainly got to be looked at, but I still think that eduction is the most powerful force here - and although that shouldn't just concern schools, a return to sound, secular principles in public education policy wouldn't go a miss.

Reading the statement Mrs May made today again--and it was very much her statement: a statement on behalf of herself, not the government--I'd totally agree that we have to address and deal with extreme ideologies, not just with the extremists who espouse them. The distinction is important, for as Mrs May says, it's the extremism of a Jihadist Islamic ideology "..that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam."

And yet, after the requisite dose of chest-thumping hyperbole, her proposed remedy is what? To beef up the military response to the threat and to imply that a crack down on the internet, and the service companies like Google and Facebook who she claims providing the "safe space it needs to breed", is needed because the threat is complex, and hidden, "especially online."

Sure those dead idiots will have undoubtedly used mobile phones, plugged into the wider-World with YouTube, Whasapp, Instagram, Google, and Facebook apps etc - but saying that the internet holds some responsibility here, and therefore must be dealt with in some way, is about as cogent and useful as saying that Department stores who sell underwear to suicide bombers also hold some of the responsibility for their vile, extreme behaviour.

Faith doesn't work like that. These people have demonstrated their commitment to their 'faith' along with just how little value they place on a human life, not least their own. Taking away their toys, and with that everybody else's, isn't going to change that.

She also proclaimed her desire to work with "democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremism and terrorist planning," and while this seems like a reasonable statement it belies a rather darker implication: that governments need to, and indeed should, start regulating ideas and associations, even vicarious ones.

That's easy to say, and it's the usual knee-jerk 'Look-how-strong-I-am' lazy solution, or bollocks, that politicians have been resorting to for 15 years or more, and look where that's got us. It's this kind of limited, linear thinking that's kept the substance of the issue out of the debate for years. You don't change anyone's point of view by banning or criminalising their ideas - you have to give people reasoned and reasonable alternatives, and in this area you don't do that by subscribing to or promoting a view that religiosity somehow imbues one with some kind of default virtue - as long as it's the 'correct' religion and expressed and adhered to in the 'correct' way.

The only way to counteract those enamoured of the doctrine of violence at the core of Islam, those who are convinced about the virtue of the horrors they're eager to commit and to see committed on their behalf, is by overt and conspicuous state-sponsored secularism.

Some will argue that at least Mrs May put a name to the terror today when she pointed out that the recent attacks in the UK and Europe were the work of people and groups "bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism." This isn't news of course; we all knew this anyway. Yes, the problem is planted in the ready loam of Islam, but its roots are sunk deeply into that fertilising shit called 'ideology', which is not something specifically religious, and you don't overcome that simply by applying an increasingly meaner, tougher, more dogmatic, intolerant, savage, toxic, and/or violent ideology as a weed killer.

As you can probably tell, this whole business has me pretty pissed off.

[cronus]

Demolish most all the mosques. Only state sanctioned mosques with a manifest progressive philisophy should be allowed. What else is necessary?

[JimC]

Demolish most all the mosques. Only state sanctioned mosques with a manifest progressive philisophy should be allowed. What else is necessary?

Impossible hyperbole, whereas something more realistic, like working with the mainstream islamic groups to convince them that it is very much in their interest to take a bit of a new broom to the handful of fundamentalist congregations might actually achieve something...

[JimC]

Brian Peacock wrote:

And yet, after the requisite dose of chest-thumping hyperbole, her proposed remedy is what? To beef up the military response to the threat and to imply that a crack down on the internet, and the service companies like Google and Facebook who she claims providing the "safe space it needs to breed", is needed because the threat is complex, and hidden, "especially online."

Sure those dead idiots will have undoubtedly used mobile phones, plugged into the wider-World with YouTube, Whasapp, Instagram, Google, and Facebook apps etc - but saying that the internet holds some responsibility here, and therefore must be dealt with in some way, is about as cogent and useful as saying that Department stores who sell underwear to suicide bombers also hold some of the responsibility for their vile, extreme behaviour.

Faith doesn't work like that. These people have demonstrated their commitment to their 'faith' along with just how little value they place on a human life, not least their own. Taking away their toys, and with that everybody else's, isn't going to change that.

I know it's politician's spin about the internet, but it seems unlikely that absolutely nothing can be done which will at least degrade the extent to which terrorists are firstly groomed by the fundamentalist puppet masters, and then communicate operational details. We don't need to indulge in the opposite hyperbole that any government action (or surveillance) on social media will result in 1984... "Taking away their toys" (in a careful, nuanced way) might not destroy their murderous delusions, but it might make it harder for them to effectively act on them.

I don't give a shit if some intelligence agency is granted powers to more intensively examine the communication flow between terrorists if it saves innocent lives...

And yes, this could be a slippery slope, but in balance, it might be the price we have to pay. Otherwise, given more and more murderous rampages, the pressure from the general public will rise and rise and rise, until concentration camp solutions are actually embraced...