This Just In: Rolling UK News Thread

On one hand, there’s a danger that calling it terrorism might elevate it, politically and culturally, above other forms of violence. On the other, applying the term to two idiots with machetes who are unlikely to have a coherent agenda or be part of an organised plot actually serves to deglamourise and demystify the "terrorist threat". Most people arrested for terrorist offenses actually are idiots, misfits, fantasists or people suffering from severe mental health issues. They aren’t globally-networked criminal masterminds.

Most people arrested for terrorist offenses actually are idiots

They certainly seem to be in the UK

I don't think it's not terrorism because I'm worried about elevating it politically about other forms of violence. The perpetrators already did that when they cited explicit political motivations for the act. I don't think it's terrorism because it wasn't an act of random violence committed against civilians but one that intentionally targeted an English soldier and specifically left civilians unharmed. In my opinion, terrorism is specifically indiscriminate violence against a civilian population.

so barracks bombings and the like don't count?

Yeah, we have a long history of using the term "terrorism" to apply to the targeting of military personnel in the UK.

Particularly off-duty personnel.

Police a popular target in NI, does that count?

I don't think so - police are domestic law enforcement. Soldiers are military targets.

I get that it could be seen as a geographically displaced version of the attacks on UK soldiers in Afghanistan etc - is that what you're getting at? An act of war?

Yes.

This piece asks some of the same questions re the use of the word terrorism. It's a really difficult word to define without incriminating your own state.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-terrorism-blowback

xp

i think that's a push when the soldier is off-duty and the killers are unlikely to belong to an organization with strategic goals

and there's a problem with that in that it possibly ennobles them in certain quarters even more than calling them terrorists.

I'm not that worried about ennobling them. Anyone who approves of hacking UK soldiers a part w/ machetes in the public does not care what we call the act.

The US, the UK and its allies have repeatedly killed Muslim civilians over the past decade (and before that), but defenders of those governments insist that this cannot be "terrorism" because it is combatants, not civilians, who are the targets. Can it really be the case that when western nations continuously kill Muslim civilians, that's not "terrorism", but when Muslims kill western soldiers, that is terrorism?

Hate to say it but Glenn is right. This is not terrorism.

i'd argue that both cases are forms of terrorism. i don't see that the difference between war and terrorism is much more than semantic tho.

Was bin laden on or off duty

"(in fact, the US has re-defined "militant" to mean "any military-aged male in a strike zone")"

!!

Rushed journalism also produces The Guardian understands that both Adebolajo and the other suspect have featured in counter-terrorism investigations over the last eight years, the Guardian understands.

Though the article is also effective at painting the two suspects as the loose cannons you would expect, and has the refreshing sight of leader of the 'banned extremist group' they were hanging around saying "No, this was bang out of order" or words to that effect.

xpost more on that here

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&pagewanted=all

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.

Grr, that just reminds me of Tony Blair crowing about being tougher on Terror Suspects - motherfucker, you're a lawyer, you know what suspect means.

Communities Minister Baroness Warsi has just told Sky News: "I think it's a real moment for the country to come together and to unite."

... and vote Tory

not perfect but puts it better than i did

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-echo-chamber-mass-hysteria

If two edl members had butchered a muslim in a similar manner in order to make a political point, how different would guardian/ilx sentiment be?

a fascinating question

i know we'd hear a similar argument to the one caek is making from the right-wing. we shouldn't publicize this bc it'll inspire retributive attacks against our soldiers. (at least that's what i've heard in the US)

A fascinating answer.

Played each other to a standstill there eh

i think "publicize" is the wrong word for what i'm opposed to. "present divorced from context in a lurid manner (e.g. on rolling news), especially when that's obviously precisely what they hoped to achieve", might be more accurate.

litany of dumb "if x had killed y" questions today -

they're the worst, and everyone does them all the time

*shakes head at guardian reader bias* -_-

we shouldn't publicize this bc it'll inspire retributive attacks against our soldiers.

that might be what the "right wing" you're taking about think, but "bc it'll inspire retributive attacks against our soldiers" is not my objection at all in any way.

what is your objection? aesthetic grounds?

this is from the article you linked:

In taking mundane acts of violence and setting them on a global stage, we not only politicise them, we risk validating the furies that drive them.

I know what they're trying to say but "mundane" is an odd word to use there

just yr average quotidian machete beheading

yeah it does stick out.

still his point about news acting as a megaphone rather than a filter is spot on.

i think that's mundane in the "banality of evil" sense? hitler bingo.

i doubt the author is trying to evoke arendt. i think it's an argument that this violence is no different from any criminal violence and it is only media oxygen that makes it political.

It is this echo chamber of horror, set up by the media, public figures and government, that does much of terrorism's job for it. It converts mere crimes into significant acts. It turns criminals into heroes in the eyes of their admirers. It takes violence and graces it with the terms of a political debate. The danger is that this debate is one the terrorist might sometimes win.

a. all violence is political, b. the politics of this specific violence was inherent in the original act, not tacked on later, c. if you're afraid the 'terrorist' might win the ideological debate you probably write for the guardian

yeah, idk. Like I say I get it, and sympathise to an extent. I'm forever complaining about prurient newspaper coverage of violent events. But

Intoning a response to horror is one of the rituals of modern politics

it's also part of, um, responding to horror? ijdk

my objection is that rolling-news-level, context-free, "hey look at these assholes" coverage generates no light and lots of heat that poisons the debate that follows and impairs our ability as a society to respond well.

"terrorists win" means something else to me than "putting soldiers in harm's way".

a) sounds like nonsense. b) i agree with. it's the megaphone we glady usher them towards that's the problem though. c) i hold the guardian in almost total contempt.

Simon Jenkins' schtick is calling everything from flu jabs to wind farms symptomatic of mass hysteria. I guess the point about it being "mundane" isn't that it's media oxygen making it political, it's media oxygen investing it with a political significance it doesn't necessarily deserve.

the problem i am talking about here, i mean. i'm not saying we're the guilty ones here. xp to self

If two edl members had butchered a muslim in a similar manner in order to make a political point, how different would guardian/ilx sentiment be?

― my name is louis and i'm an acoleuthic (darraghmac), Thursday, May 23, 2013 11:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you think anyone on ilx is anything other than disgusted by the act of violence itself then maybe you should enroll in some remedial courses because you have a reading age of <5 years old, yeah?

and same for guardian readers etc?

Perfectly happy with my level of reading comprehension ta.

I'll scan thread later and see all those posts i must have missed first time round, my (no doubt flawed, as you say) recollection is 'how disgusting they're focusing on the aspects of this that don't suit my entrenched political views')

But that wasnt the question