Another major (presumably terrorist) incident. Now in Manchester.

[LC1979]

I do deny a link between foreign policy and this kid... To say there is a link is to somehow give legitimacy to a cause of terrorism.

No, it really isn't. To suggest that it is implies that you think people live in a vacuum and aren't influenced by a whole range of factors.

[Joe]

I believe terrorism is caused by a mix of indoctrination, a political agenda which terrorists latch onto for their own ends and encourage people into the ideal, often people of a different social economic standing and often in developing and less civilised countries which makes it easy to encourage, and very strongly the influence of highly religious Islam which is practised in countries in the region to extremes which are not tolerated by westerners and are often very contrary to our own laws. E.g. Sharia law
[...]
So when I hear people simplify it and say that it's our western fault for intervention in these countries to overthrow tyrants and despots which is taken for reasons in a democratic society, I really Dispair. Also this argument fails to realise that terrorism by islamists has happened for many many years, before Iraq and Afghanistan, and this gives credence to my argument this terrorism is politicised.

Would you accept that the cause, or at least a cause of IRA terrorism was British involvement in Ireland over several centuries?

[Macca]

Would you accept that the cause, or at least a cause of IRA terrorism was British involvement in Ireland over several centuries?

It was the excuse, not sure you could call it the cause. The freedom fighting was just a cover for more pedestrian gangster activity. Handy for recruiting gullible youths to the firm, though.

[Dynamics]

It was the excuse, not sure you could call it the cause. The freedom fighting was just a cover for more pedestrian gangster activity. Handy for recruiting gullible youths to the firm, though.

Absolutely because you can't ever excuse terrorism.

[Dynamics]

No, it really isn't. To suggest that it is implies that you think people live in a vacuum and aren't influenced by a whole range of factors.

So how would foreign policy cause him to bomb people given what I mentioned in previous posts. What do you propose for this point?

[montesquieu]

It was the excuse, not sure you could call it the cause. The freedom fighting was just a cover for more pedestrian gangster activity. Handy for recruiting gullible youths to the firm, though.

100% right ... I say that as a Catholic brought up in the west of Scotland in the 70s and seeing much of the crap at first hand - it was perfectly possible to see the social injustices a short stretch of water away (or actually, sometimes close to home), to watch on TV the B Specials beat unarmed people up, to watch the Bloody Sunday footage, to feel the fear as the flute bands made streets (Scottish streets) a drunken, sweary no-go area for a large minority of people, to broadly support the political aspirations of constitutional nationalists in the North, and at the same time to utterly reject violence in all its forms and feel empathy for anyone in any community caught up in it. All it takes is a smidgeon of moral sensibility - nearly all Catholics condemned the shootings and bombings and beatings, even as their own people were taken off the streets and murdered (by both sides). Most people know absolutely the difference between right and wrong.

For that reason, all the conspiracy theory bolllocks, all the blaming of outright murder on foreign policy, on 'alienation' and victim narratives, makes me sick. What about personal responsibility? What about the very real actions of evil people motivated by religious extremism? How about listening to the terrorists' own words:

https://capx.co/want-to-know-why-the...just-ask-them/

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/0...lamist-murder/

Not sure if the latter link 'Jeremy Corbyn politicising Islamist murder' is paywall or not (people should have access to three articles before it kicks in) but just in case, let me extract a snippet:

H
Corbyn called for honesty about the ‘connections’ between ‘wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home’. He didn’t deny that the terrorist who plants a bomb in Britain bears ultimate responsible for his murderous behaviour — this is not about ‘reduc[ing] the guilt of those who attack our children’, he said — but he did say that our foreign policy motivates them. It ‘fuels’ their terror. The ‘responsibility of government’ is to pursue a foreign policy that ‘reduces rather than increases’ terrorism. So Britain’s policies have increased terrorism. We’re at least partly to blame for what happened in Manchester. There’s another way of saying that: we brought this upon ourselves.

This is a kind of victim-blaming, to use Corbynista parlance. And victim-blaming always involves, by extension, a watering down of the perpetrator’s guilt, and sometimes even a normalisation of his motives. Corbyn is implicitly dragging Abedi’s barbarous actions into the moral universe of anger about war or frustration with foreign policy. He is taking this attack from the sphere of religious nihilism and placing it in the realm of normal or at least understandable politics. To those who say Abedi’s actions were senseless, people like Corbyn effectively say: ‘Actually they made sense. This was a kind of fury with foreign policy.’

This weird instinct to politicise Islamist murder, to locate it on the spectrum of what we all recognise as politics, doesn’t even make sense in its own terms. If terrorists are fuelled by an anger or despair over what our foreign policy has wrought, then why do they blow up girls at a pop concert rather than, say, the Ministry of Defence? (Which they shouldn’t do, by the way.) More to the point, why do they insist that their attacks will continue even if we were to stop intervening in their countries? Last year, Dabiq, the horrific glossy in-house journal of Isis, said: ‘[E]ven if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.’

There you have it, in blood-stained black and white: Isis murderers might well play the foreign-policy card, but the true reason they attack us is because we refuse to bow before their extreme religious writ. We now have the very strange situation where Corbyn is basically saying ‘If we change our foreign policy there will be fewer attacks’, and Isis is saying, ‘No there won’t be, because we’ll still loathe you for your nasty, heathen ways’. I’m sorry, but when it comes to the question of why Isis attacks us, I’m more inclined to believe Isis than Corbyn.

In the days since the Manchester attack I’ve encountered loads of people saying our foreign policy is to blame or that Blair is at the root of this current chaos. If only he hadn’t invaded Iraq. There is curiously prejudiced bent to this argument. The suggestion seems to be that Iraqis or Libyans or Syrians do not bear true responsibility for the movements they create or the policies they pursue. I agree that Blair’s invasion of Iraq was a colossal error and that it created a post-Saddam vacuum into which all sorts of forces could move and grow. But these forces, including Isis, are made up of sentient adults. They have free will. They are consciously choosing to be evil. To blame Blair, or Cameron or May, for what Isis does in Fallujah, never mind in Manchester, is to suggest these people lack moral capacity and autonomy. It is an ironically colonialist take on allegedly child-like foreigners; it’s tinged with racism.

Corbyn and others don’t only run the risk of elevating the likes of Abedi when they say his terror is a response to foreign policy — they also demean the very noble enterprise of opposing war overseas. They use the politics of fear to try to drum up concern about British foreign policy. They effectively say, ‘If we continue with these policies, there will be more terror in our towns and cities’. They prey on people’s insecurities rather than appealing to us with a principled argument against intervening in other states. Make your case, Corbyn — don’t rely on Abedi to make it for you.

Personal choices. Right and wrong. It's not rocket science. Stop being apologists for evil.

[Dynamics]

Hi Tom
I read your post fully and the first article in full and couldn't agree more. You are spot on and know your stuff. Corbyn does try and ride on prejudice and his weakness and political will to try and win at all costs, is shining through. He does also try and play on the ignorant, who don't have an opinion, haven't thought it through properly and aren't willing to educate themselves of all the facts which is an important consideration of our time and will to route out terrorism. It does after all come from a collective will - to stamp this out. Corbyn is maybe able to pray on his argument due to prejudice and ignorance.
What's clear is the people like Adam Deen, Douglas Murray and others in Quilliam tell it how it is and have been doing so since the Manchester bombing, and your comments about how fanatics don't care about what we propose or wish to do, that they wish to see through the agenda of their convictions, no matter what, is clearly very obvious. It's been obvious for a very long time.
Corbyn is an inept man who I hope by these comments is stamped out. I think he will be and with more pressure on him to leave, when the conservatives inevitably win, at least we may have the opportunity of some 'brains' for a sensible and intelligent discussion about terrorism from the opposition.
Bw Simon

[Marco]

It's been obvious for a very long time. Corbyn is an inept man who I hope by these comments is stamped out. I think he will be and with more pressure on him to leave, when the conservatives inevitably win, at least we may have the opportunity of some 'brains' for a sensible and intelligent discussion about terrorism from the opposition.
Bw Simon

Lol... Shows you how it's all about opinions! I completely disagree, not necessarily on the "inept" bit, as to an extent he may be.

However, for me, he's the best of the bad bunch with any chance of winning - and most importantly, aside from whatever faults he has, I believe that his heart's in the right place, and fundamentally a humanitarian - and as such someone who will always put the needs of the people/common man ahead of those of the establishment, which badly needs to happen in our country, as it's been the opposite for WAY too long...!!

And *that* is what we need more of (decent, caring human beings in politics), especially in the troubled times we now live in. Therefore, I'd take a little 'ineptitude' every time over arrogant warmongering greed, and further lining the pockets of fat cats. In that respect, I'd no sooner vote Tory, and for that May witch, in the forthcoming election, than the NF!!

Marco.

[Dynamics]

Lol... Shows you how it's all about opinions! I completely disagree, not on the "inept" bit. To an extent he may be.

However, for me, he's the best of the bad bunch with any chance of winning - and most importantly, aside from whatever faults he has, I believe that his heart's in the right place, and fundamentally a humanitarian - and as such someone who will always put the needs of the people/common man ahead of those of the establishment, which badly needs to happen in our country, as it's been the opposite for WAY too long...!!

And *that* is what we need more of (decent, caring human beings in politics), especially in the troubled times we now live in. Therefore, I'd take a little 'ineptitude' every time over arrogant warmongering greed, and further lining the pockets of fat cats. In that respect, I'd no sooner vote Tory, and for that May witch, in the forthcoming election, than the NF!!

Marco.

I think you may be right Marco but this is a different question to the terrorist issue. But I don't think corbyn will win and he probably has a snowball in hells chance of doing so. But I'm not making a political statement above but confining to the terrorist question. I've decided not to vote, as I don't believe in either. It will be the first time I've never voted.

[Marco]

Fair enough mate, and that's your decision, which I respect.

I usually vote Welsh Nationalist (if I still lived in Scotland I'd vote SNP), but for the first time in my life am considering voting Labour, purely for reasons expressed above, and because I have a pathological hatred for the establishment and all it stands for, so in that respect, want my vote to be put to its best use, even if ultimately it's a losing one. At the very least, it'll act as a small protest.

The thing is though, in terms of the terrorism angle, and it's been touched upon before on this thread, you can't deny (no matter how justified it is in a human and caring way), how the media (in particular the BBC news) has bombarded us with images of everything you could possibly imagine in relation to the recent attack and its aftermath, and I'm afraid it is pure unadulterated propaganda, purposefully designed to deflect attention away from the fact that the Tory election campaign, and the unconvincing interviews May has conducted on TV, in that respect, [especially BEFORE the bombing] has been as woefully inept as your claiming of the same of Corbyn.

Now of course that's not said to demean or undermine how deplorable the recent atrocity was, and it's only natural that we should be told about how it has affected people since, and will continue to do so forever, *but* only a blind man couldn't see that it's been carried out *to the extent that it has* purely and simply to facilitate the best interests of the elite [by deflecting attention away from the hapless Tory election campaign, which had resulted in them losing popularity before the Manchester bombing], to whom Tory policy will always pander to - and it is that type of blatant propaganda/psychological conditioning that boils my piss to a level you wouldn't believe!!

In that respect, although extremely unlikely (as the current Tory brainwash runs too deep), few will be celebrating more than me if they should lose this election. Not because I'm a Labour supporter, per se, but because a Labour win would be a major poke in the eye for the interests of the establishment - and so anything that 'GETS IT RIGHT UP THEM', and puts a spanner in their works, would put a HUGE grin on my fizz!

Marco.