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7/7 vs 9/11- LOCKED

  
  

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:24 / 15.07.05
From DI's link above-

made from ingredients available in high-street chemists

So not quite "miltary-grade", then?
 
 
sleazenation
10:18 / 15.07.05
Slim said…

I do think it's worth noting that some of the smaller insurgent outfits in Iraq are still attempting to join up with AQ, so it exists and still has quite a bit of pull with the extremists.

Well it certainly appears that there are groups of insurgents in Iraq keen to associate themselves with Al Quaeda brand. This is perhaps a more useful term of reference. As far as committing acts of terror against a region loosely defined as “the West”, Al Quaeda is the premium brand. Thanks to events of September 11th, more people in “the West” know the name Al Quaeda than they do other terrorist groups. If you want to make yourself look big and scary and well-hard in the terrorist stakes you do so my associating yourself with the Al Quaeda brand. However, and I think this is important, the attempts of the insurgents in Iraq, and 10000001 other people who have a lot of anger directed against region loosely defined as “The West” and the will to act on that anger, to claim association with Al Quaeda does not necessarily mean that a direct link exists with them.

That is to say, I don’t think the willingness of insurgents and others to flock to a banner and brand of Al Quaeda signifies that the group ‘exists’. Unless of course you accept that the ‘Al Quaeda’ that is constituted of insurgents in Iraq and all those other ‘hate-the-west-and-am-going-to-do-something-about-it’ people are not necessarily the same as the Al Quaeda that existed up until September 11th 2001.

To put it another way, it seems there is a plurality of Al Quaedas and it is important for the security services and counter-terrorism groups to grasp this (and, fortunately, it seems to be something they have grasped) if they are to effectively combat terrorism from groups associating themselves with the Al Quaeda Brand.

Of course, it could be argued that for the man on the street, and perhaps Decaying Insect is among them here, that the difference between these various Al Quaedas is insignificant in that they are all prepared, willing and able to carry out acts of terror against targets associated with “The West”. Which is all well and good for shorthand purposes, but you really need to have the complex longhand concepts in your head to use the shorthand with any degree of accuracy and without falling into lazy thinking and making quite sweeping assumptions...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:26 / 15.07.05
They have chemists in the Balkans, Stoatie.

So, back ontopic... How did people feel about the vigil? There seemed to me to be something, again, very English about it - people were not encourage to stay all night, playing the guitar and holding candles - in fact, the organisers very clearly drew a halt at 8:30 or so. The speakers were varied - dignitaries, celebs, public sector workers - and there was a very strong feeling of union involvment - the representative of the London Bus Drivers going so far as to address the assembled as "comrades". People weren't talking about revenge - or more precisely, they were saying that the revenge would be to celebrate our diversity as a city - pretty much the party line, admittedly, but I have to say I like it. It seems weird that at the same time we are hearing about attacks on mosques but also about disgust even among the BNP's constituency at their tactics...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:50 / 15.07.05
Back offtopic, but the boy has been PMing me in a rather frantic way, so it's still in my mind:

But is indiscriminate violence by a minority of fanatics more a feature of some religions than others?

I actually missed this the first time round. It just bounced off my mudguards. However, to answer the question:

Is America a religion?

If we go by the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, al-Qaeda have not actually achieved much this year, so it may not be completely obvious... it may even be jumping to conclusions somewhat.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:58 / 15.07.05
Haus- yes, but the "military-grade" thing was in direct response to having been "right all along", and an earlier assertion.

Whoah yes, topic, I've missed you. It's been a while. To my eternal shame, I missed the silence, having completely lost track of time yesterday morning, so my only experience of that (as with many things) was through the media.

the revenge would be to celebrate our diversity as a city - pretty much the party line, admittedly, but I have to say I like it

Yes. I like that too. I know "or the terrorists have won" is my default comedy line, and will still continue to be (well, if I stopped saying it... you know the rest), but quiet defiance seems to me a good response. Not having been in New York after 11/9, again my only actual experience of the response was through the media, but from what I've heard, it doesn't actually seem to have been that different in terms of the man on the Clapham omnibus (except in New York's case, I'm guessing his journey would have taken a lot longer). It's the respective government's respinses I worry more about...

I don't think (and I hope I'm right) this will add to Islamophobia in this country- I do, however, think it'll bring more pre-existing bigots (stealth bigots, anyone?) out of the woodwork. But, y'know, at least we can see 'em to squish 'em when they ditch the veneer of respectability. I could see trouble in Bradford, for example, where the tension's already there- but where I live, pretty much on the dividing line between the local Jewish community and the local Muslim community, I see little in the way of horrible madness, and I hope it stays that way.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:14 / 15.07.05
Is the right wing a religion, for that matter?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:38 / 15.07.05
Haus- yes, but the "military-grade" thing was in direct response to having been "right all along", and an earlier assertion.

(I got that, Stoatie - although one might expect an assertion that there is an al-Qaeda chemists operating on the high street of the Balkans... obviously.)
 
 
Ganesh
16:07 / 15.07.05
I know "or the terrorists have won" is my default comedy line

Mine too - as in "open another bottle of wine or the terrorists have won", etc. Observed the silence, but missed the vigil itself. Glad to hear it was sincere without being overly mawkish.
 
 
Francine I
17:17 / 15.07.05
"Citizen Frances: can you explain how, in the light of my remarks about islam I equivocated "my" terrorists with muslims in general and how the legitimate or otherwise grievences of people in the Middle East and Central Asia (not all of whom are moslem) constitute *any* justification for their actions."

This is getting silly and surprisingly contorted. I've read the thread, DI. Read my post. Your pattern is to attack Islam and Muslims in general in an offhand (glib) way and disappear slowly when challenged to display facts. That's what I was referring to when I mentioned you 'taking a swing' at 'disenfranchised and pissed off people' in 'Central Asia or the Middle East'. You in turn responded by equivocating these Muslims in general who I said you had a bad habit of lunging for, with terrorists in particular - fairly evidencing my complaint. You are apparently unable to discern the difference. No one was talking about justifying terrorism. Though I'm glad you pointed out that the inhabitants of aforementioned places are not entirely Muslim. That segues beautifully to a point I've been wanting to make - that the terrorism perpetrated by al Q'aeda and similar organizations can be as politically and socially motivated as it is religiously. If you think Palestinian suicide bombings are motivated by the Koran, you're not paying attention.

"By the way, I think I have responded to several questions and stated my position with complete clarity as you will discover when you re-read the thread."

For the fourth time? No, I don't expect we'll rub out another pearl, there. I've seen you dodge the core issues enough to know that re-reading you will serve as minor irritant and little more.

"Meanwhile try this for more emerging facts and then tell me if I haven't been right all along."

At this point, citing the al Q'aeda fellow who showed up two weeks prior the event and left just before the countdown is mistaking correlation for causation. How many al Q'aeda people do you think enter and leave the major Western nations in a given stretch of time? More than one or two. Leaping to conclusions - particularly those conclusions which you seem to feel indict those parties who are the focus of your xenophobia - is bad form either way.
 
 
Bill Posters
13:34 / 16.07.05
I'm getting rather confused about this thread atm... it seems to have two separate topics in it and I even wonder whether a moderator should try to split it into it's component bits? That is to say, cut and paste the latter bit of it into a new thread on Islam and Terrorism? But anyway, to continue on the "off topic" bit of it, i.e. Islam and what exactly it is, isn't, and what we may or may not be permitted to say about it, here is the website of a Muslim woman who has massive reservations about Islam (she wrote a book called The Trouble With Islam). Now, some might say she is a coconut and an essentialist, but seeing as her position is not so far from DI's, it's certainly not irrelevant in this particular context; on the UK tv show Newsnight a day or two after "7.7" she popped up to dismiss the type of view represented here by Haus, Citizen Frances, etc as overly PC and utterly unhelpful! (There's more I want to discuss about the actual "7.7" event but don't know how to do so without making this thread read like a Burroughsian cut-up, so that's all for now...)
 
 
Cherielabombe
16:12 / 16.07.05
Boy, sorry it's taken me so long to get to this thread, but my internet access is rather limited on school days.

Anyway I'd like to add my take on the "7/7" vs "9/11" portrayal in the UK and the US media. As some of you know, I'm an American but I've been living in the UK for over 3 years now. I was in the US on 9/11 and in central London when the attacks here took place. As I have satellite TV, and thanks to the blessed interwebnet, I've had pretty good access to coverage of this story in both the American and British media.

It was pretty funny, actually. The day of the bombing a friend of mine who was in one of the trains bombed at King's Cross/Russell Square spent the night at my flat. She was pretty freaked out (understandably) and, in addition to wanting much needed beers to calm her down a bit, she wanted to watch as much news about the bombing as possible. One of the highlights of the evening, and the thing that made us both laugh that night, was when we switched over to CNBC to watch the NBC Nightly News.

Compared to the UK coverage it was SOOOO over the top. "The PLACE! LONDON" "THE ATTACK: TERROR ON THE LONDON SUBWAYS AS COMMUTERS MAKE THEIR WAY TO WORK.." etc. etc. This was the voiceover as you looked at stunned citizens making their way out of the blast sights with a waving Union Jack superimposed behind it. They had a fantastic electronic 3-D map of London and as they named the blast sights, those spots would become elevated on the map.

My friend and I were laughing our asses off to this, and it reminds me of almost the opposite experience I had on 9/11, when my friends and I were sitting around stunned, as everyone was, looking at footage upon footage of the horrible events were that day, and at about 5:30 we switched over to BBC news. We all laughed then, too, mainly bec ause the US news was all pictures pictures pictures and on the BBC there were people actually discussing what had happened.

I was in the States recently and one of my friends, who is originally from France, told me he calls the US news "Scare Me TV." "Every story, they're trying to scare you.." If the story is about children on drugs the story will end with "..and are your children safe tonight?" I was there for 4th of July and I saw more than one story about "The Danger of Fireworks." It certainly seems to me that American news is much more sensationalist than British news, and so it doesn't surprise me at all that journalists for those American news organizations are trying to play up links to radical extremists. It's more sensationalist so that's what they'll go with.

It also doesn't surprise me that this story has resonated so much more with the American people than the bombing in Madrid did. I think most Americans here will agree that, gaggy as it, is we do feel a "special relationship" with the British. Maybe it's the common language, maybe it's the Revolution, I dunno. Somehow the British seem "slightly less foreign." To me, it just seems natural that this story would affect Americans more than bombings in other, "more foreign" parts.
 
 
Ganesh
16:37 / 16.07.05
As the thread-starter, could I ask that the off-topic "does Islam = violence" type posts be split off elsewhere, in a thread of their own? It's not really what I intended to talk about here.
 
 
Francine I
18:24 / 16.07.05
Sorry. Finished.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:11 / 17.07.05
Putting this up for a lock for reasons detailed in the Policy... but fear not, the discussion(s) shall continue...
 
  

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