Egyptian suspect nabbed in Cario there's talk of him having taught at Leeds Uni.
who is responsible for the London attacks?
- Thread starter mears
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Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
If true, Cole's accusation that the White House deliberately blew a UK/Pakistan double-agent in AQ in order to score political points during last year's Democratic convention is entierly consistent with the lethal idiocy they've displayed since Sept 11th.oi2002 said:
If as Cole says, the SIS/ISI were trying to use this guy to penetrate AQ networks in the UK, before he was noisily arrested at the insistance of the White House so that they could look good on Fix News, then it adds weight to the already very strong case that at least some of the blood that was spilled last week is on their hands.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
v dumb point indeed. the entity which we refer to as Al-qaeda is amorphous, takes many points, and can be perceived as simply 'a set of assumptions and doctrines shared to the same extent by many people'Johnny Canuck2 said:
elbows
Well-Known Member
Bernie Gunther said:
I think it would be main thing to make that case strong. For sure there are other reasons why people might think the US bears partial responsibility for the attacks, but they are more general such as invading Iraq, points that can be argued depending on point of view.
Now if the USA have blown an undercover operation relating to the cell responsible for the 7/7 attacks, then its going to cause a lot of people to get very annoyed. The crucial factor, other than whether its true, is whether the mass media decide to carry the story and keep repeating it & doing talking head pieces on it.
Does this relate at all to what the French Interior minister said earlier in the week? If the arrests he was referring to were the same as the US-ordered onces which blew the intelligence operation, does tyhis mean the French could be trying to bring the issue out into the open because Britain wont as its unlikely to want to have a public row with the US/strain the special relationship?
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
So if there are multiple causes here, what are they? What factors account for the actions of the known bombers and anyone else who might have helped?
I think a potentially useful model for understanding them is a cult recruitment process. What I mean by a cult is an organisation which recruits and influences using a family of methods found in all cults, rather than a message.
It will certainly have a message, because one of the characteristics of cult recruits is idealism, but the key characteristic is a process involving isolation in a cult environment, peer-pressure, demands for purity, confessions, attacks on the sense of self, loaded language, though-stopping spiritual practices such as fasting, chanting and instilling doctrinal cliches, in effect propaganda, which weakens the critical immune system. This instills an "us vs them" world-view which justifies the 'dispensing of existence' for outsiders and heretics.
A potential cult recruit is generally: young, educated, intelligent, idealistic and was probably alienated and/or depressed at the time of recruitment.
That is the profile for people that the method will work on. We are never going to stop young people from getting alienated and/or depressed, but it does seem important to address those causes of alienation and/or depression that would by their nature (racist attacks, palestine, bush's presidency etc) directly and strongly predispose British youth toward a jihadi organisation's way of thinking in particular, rather than just joining the SWP or something.
It sounds like the bombers may have made contact with terrorist mentors in a madrassa in Pakistan. Some descriptions in the media of certain madrassas make them sound very much like cult centres, with many of the obvious characteristics of the cult recruitment and thought reform. If this aspect of the bombers history isn't a propaganda phantom, it seems likely that this was the point where some ordinary yorkshire lads turned into fanatical bombers.
Whether they were indeed mentored, by whom and to what extent is still fairly unclear. From everything I've understood so far, the operation was technically feasible for self-starters. It seems more likely though, that there was indeed a mentoring individual or organisation, certainly if the cult model is an appropriate one. You don't become a cultist if you are self-taught, it needs thought-reform methods to be applied by experienced practicioners.
So what is the cult and what are its causes? The jihadis originate in an islamic context, but they also originate from the very beginnings of their organisations in resistance to the various unpleasant effects of western imperialism in the middle east and more recently grievances about violation of holy places by infidels, and lately the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and so on.
Al Queda is almost entirely the creation of the neo-cons in their Reaganite incarnation, and the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence apparats, using materials from earlier Islamic sects or cults.
I think a potentially useful model for understanding them is a cult recruitment process. What I mean by a cult is an organisation which recruits and influences using a family of methods found in all cults, rather than a message.
It will certainly have a message, because one of the characteristics of cult recruits is idealism, but the key characteristic is a process involving isolation in a cult environment, peer-pressure, demands for purity, confessions, attacks on the sense of self, loaded language, though-stopping spiritual practices such as fasting, chanting and instilling doctrinal cliches, in effect propaganda, which weakens the critical immune system. This instills an "us vs them" world-view which justifies the 'dispensing of existence' for outsiders and heretics.
A potential cult recruit is generally: young, educated, intelligent, idealistic and was probably alienated and/or depressed at the time of recruitment.
That is the profile for people that the method will work on. We are never going to stop young people from getting alienated and/or depressed, but it does seem important to address those causes of alienation and/or depression that would by their nature (racist attacks, palestine, bush's presidency etc) directly and strongly predispose British youth toward a jihadi organisation's way of thinking in particular, rather than just joining the SWP or something.
It sounds like the bombers may have made contact with terrorist mentors in a madrassa in Pakistan. Some descriptions in the media of certain madrassas make them sound very much like cult centres, with many of the obvious characteristics of the cult recruitment and thought reform. If this aspect of the bombers history isn't a propaganda phantom, it seems likely that this was the point where some ordinary yorkshire lads turned into fanatical bombers.
Whether they were indeed mentored, by whom and to what extent is still fairly unclear. From everything I've understood so far, the operation was technically feasible for self-starters. It seems more likely though, that there was indeed a mentoring individual or organisation, certainly if the cult model is an appropriate one. You don't become a cultist if you are self-taught, it needs thought-reform methods to be applied by experienced practicioners.
So what is the cult and what are its causes? The jihadis originate in an islamic context, but they also originate from the very beginnings of their organisations in resistance to the various unpleasant effects of western imperialism in the middle east and more recently grievances about violation of holy places by infidels, and lately the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and so on.
Al Queda is almost entirely the creation of the neo-cons in their Reaganite incarnation, and the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence apparats, using materials from earlier Islamic sects or cults.
One thing you'd have to consider is the Yanks run a very jittery counter-terror operation; I have the impression its infected by the anally-fixated managerialism of American buisness, run on metrics, quarterly targets with a heavy emphasis on blame avoidence. They scoop suspects up hoping this will 'disrupt operations'. Given the devastation 9-11 caused and the level of blaming and finger pointing that's gone on this is perhaps understandable.
The European agencies are more experienced with domestic terrorism, less accountable to politicians and coming from the Police State tradition general like longer periods of covert surveilance. The British perhaps take this too an extreme. It's moot whether the steady nerves that work so well against the very professional PIRA will prove to be a virtue against amatuerish fast forming Jihadi groups.
There is bound to be a lot of disagreement given the difference of approach.
The European agencies are more experienced with domestic terrorism, less accountable to politicians and coming from the Police State tradition general like longer periods of covert surveilance. The British perhaps take this too an extreme. It's moot whether the steady nerves that work so well against the very professional PIRA will prove to be a virtue against amatuerish fast forming Jihadi groups.
There is bound to be a lot of disagreement given the difference of approach.
elbows
Well-Known Member
OK the BBC did cover the original story, back in August 2004, of the leak of the name of the computer expert, along with brief mention of it causing premature arrest of suspects in the UK:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3548678.stm
Ive become upset.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3548678.stm
Ive become upset.
The buisness of creating the DIY HE used in the bombings (TATP AKA Mother Of Satan) is itself far more challenging than the relatively simple act of constructing a crowd killing bomb with commercial explosive. Demolition is an art explosive carnage is not. TATP is very volatile and tends to kill technically unaware people while they are making it. Obtaining commercial explosive in the UK requires some criminal contacts and would suggest a traditional terrorist network.Bernie Gunther said:
However it's not beyond the wit of the a post-graduate chemical student make TATP in reasonable safety. I think what we have here is a very low level of 'mentoring' and almost no operational direction. I see no necessity for command or control from Waristan.
The cultic element is real; Sageman does draw this parallel but given the internet it perhaps does not require a local guru figure.
We have her a creature not of atavistic ignorance but of technical knowledge and modern communications. I do fear on 7/7 we've seen the future.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
oi2002 said:
Has "al-Qaeda " become little more than a "cultural meme" with its own legs ?
The "shock horror international conspiracy" theory is looking less likely by the day .....
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
There's been tons of research done on cults, here are some basic principles which seem reliable.oi2002 said:
It's probably pretty clear from the above that at some point you need to isolate the potential cultist with other cultists in a closed environment. Free Republic and similar sites demonstrate just how bent peoples brains can get with a lot of strong propaganda and an online echo-chamber for it to resonate in, but I think you'd have to reinforce a jihadi board or IRC channel pretty strongly in the real world for it to stick.Lifton said:
It might be a very good tool to pick up some promising, educated, new additions to your base, but actual terrorists would probably need much stronger conditioning and much fewer opportunites to back-slide into normality. Cultists have a strong tendency to 'snap out of it' unless closely supervised by other cultists and kept as disconnected as possible from normal society. If you want people in a state to do something as horrific as suicide bombings, my guess is that they need pretty strong reinforcement within a fairly closed circle.
This is the nasty bit, the bit that makes these guys a lot more dangerous than the Peoples Temple, Manson Family or even Aum Shinko, who were all bumbling amateurs when it came to terror.oi2002 said:
The particular cult we're dealing with seems to have started out as an anti-imperialist fundamentalist movement in Egypt and elsewhere, but in the 80's at the express direction of the neo-cons, with the initial covert operations an offshoot of Iran-Contra, the US supported these violent intolerant cultist nutcases, armed them with modern technology and trained them in political and unconventional warfare. Thatcher's UK was I understand, also closely involved, providing SAS training and mercenaries as in-country instructors.
The long war against the Soviets probably produced some pretty effective guerrilla fighters, but since losing their safe zone in Afghanistan, I imagine that the cult methods were applied and used in a much more distrubuted and perhaps more chaotic way. Of course, the jihadis almost have free zones in Iraq by now, so maybe they will be able to set up training camps again there.
Another characteristic of cults is their tendency to splinter and replicate themselves using thought-reform, while evolving to meet changed conditions. With modern mass media, jihadi doctrine is easy to obtain and any reasonably smart person who has been subjected to cult recruitment techniques usually ends up pretty good at recruiting and forming new cult members themselves.
Under the pressure of the war on terror, just as the IRA adapted from mass-movement guerrilla warfare to urban terrorism when they realised the extent to which the security services were able to penetrate a mass movenment, it may be that we're seeing offshoots and self-starters popping up as urban terrorist cells, based on replicating the doctrines and operational techniques.
That's what you might call an evolutionarily stable strategy for such a movement under a heavy security crack-down
elbows said:
Ah. And the statement - either by a US or by a Pakistani agency, I'm getting lost - about the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan formed part of Bush's disruption of the Democrat Convention by heightening the US security alert level.
Which led the following day to 13 very strange and very hurried arrests in the UK. Not that they were hurried at all:
Richard Norton-Taylor said:
Er, yes. Now I remember, at the time, hearing the gritted teeth through which those statements were issued...
This isn't a conspiracy, it's monumental self-interested stupidity. Waiting for the name Karl Rove to come up in the story...
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I'm starting to see suicide bombing (never mind the trigger) as basically a suicide cult with many involuntary participants - like when people take their families' lives as well as their own .....
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
laptop said:
or the mansons , or waco and we have a doctor in the UK who killed hundreds of patients ....
gentlegreen said:
A parallel, I think, though I'm not old enough to have followed it in great detail...
gentlegreen said:
Er... the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
(Don't mention Waco or we'll be overrun with you-know-who)gentlegreen said:
I don't think Shipman qualifies as a cult...
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
laptop said:A parallel, I think, though I'm not old enough to have followed it in great detail...
Er... the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
I don't think Shipman qualifies as a cult...
but in a strange way it leaves you feeling similarly helpless and phased ...
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
OK manson was a drug-crazed psycho ...
no one believes for a moment these guys were ...
and Bin Laden isn't - he's a civil engineer ....
and a PhD Chemist from Leeds Uni made the explosive alledgedly
the boys at Columbine at least felt resentment with those they killed ...
I doubt these bombers HATED the people they killed and I think everyone knows that ....
no one believes for a moment these guys were ...
and Bin Laden isn't - he's a civil engineer ....
and a PhD Chemist from Leeds Uni made the explosive alledgedly
the boys at Columbine at least felt resentment with those they killed ...
I doubt these bombers HATED the people they killed and I think everyone knows that ....
Think of the Jihadis as shut-ins with politics close to aspirant skinheads but with engineering degrees and a twisted version of Islam then you'll be getting close.
These are vile reactionaries with a vision of the future no sane Leftie could share. I point his out mainly because empathy in fighting an enemy is very useful. Sympathy isn't.
These are vile reactionaries with a vision of the future no sane Leftie could share. I point his out mainly because empathy in fighting an enemy is very useful. Sympathy isn't.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
oi2002 said:
sorry I didn't mean to imply sympathy - it's actually not an emotion I experience much in my own life - there doesn't seem any point to it ....
But All this charging after the forest and ignoring the trees makes us think we can stop it with identity cards and tonnes of munitions dropped from B52s ..
In Baghdad the suicides are sort of inevevitable because of the huge amount of explosive lying around, these guys had to make their own ....
just some disjointed late night thoughts ....
That's very different from searching out the maximum number of innocent civilians to kill with the explosives available, and disruption to cause. I've no doubt they hated the people they killed - and saying that everyone knows they didn't needs more justification than that - not so much as individuals but as representatives of what they hate. That's a very warped form of collective punishment.gentlegreen said:
Look, i just think that if our elected governments stopped brutalising people, then maybe people would stop brutalising people.
Stop providing the precedent, stop providing the model. Those british people killed on the tube were most likely killed coz thousands of others in other lands have been killed by the british leaders.
People can argue about causes and the like till they're blue in the face, but to ignore the role of blair and his criminal gang in these london bombs is to ignore the solution.
Someone let off the bomb, someone made the bomb, but ultimately blair is responsible for the london attacks. Let that be printed and explored in the media, and answers will come rapidly that may help us avoid any repeats.
Stop providing the precedent, stop providing the model. Those british people killed on the tube were most likely killed coz thousands of others in other lands have been killed by the british leaders.
People can argue about causes and the like till they're blue in the face, but to ignore the role of blair and his criminal gang in these london bombs is to ignore the solution.
Someone let off the bomb, someone made the bomb, but ultimately blair is responsible for the london attacks. Let that be printed and explored in the media, and answers will come rapidly that may help us avoid any repeats.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
slaar said:
Sorry, it was very late, and in no way would I understate the sheer horror of what happened ... something so hideously pointless .... not being personally involved, but feeling numb and needing to understand ...
.... I was drawing a parallel with those who kill their own children when taking their own lives ... at Jonestown for instance, the death toll was 914 - 276 of them children ...
It remains to be seen if the horror is continued by mass reprisals against the bombers' families and the wider muslim / asian community ... I know there appears to have been at least one racially motivated murder so far, but things are remarkably quiet at the moment ...
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at the end of the day that depends how you define accountability. I was always told as a kid that two wrongs dont make a right. Now whatever grievance extrem islamists may have for things that have occurred elsewhere in the world., there can never really be any shared responsibility for what happened outside thoe who prepretated this terrorist act. I honestly suspect that these people would find some reason to act in this way whatever was happening in the world - they can hardly be said to be peace loving individuals.
gunner
gunner
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