Monday, October 08, 2007

And on Channel 4 tonight... (revisited for the umpteenth time)


Per the
Radio Times website…

The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
Highlight

Monday 08 October
8:00pm - 9:00pm
Channel 4

The shocking delusion and warped ideology of suicide bombers are brought into sharp focus by former CIA agent Robert Baer in the third instalment of his exemplary series. He talks to two failed suicide bombers in Afghanistan (though we're not told why their plan didn't succeed). Little more than boys, these 17-year-olds are naive enough to believe that God would detonate their explosive vests, rather than the more prosaic explanation of a remotely operated device. The pair were even promised that virgins would wait at the bomb site to lead them to paradise. Baer visits Israel, where the government built a $1.5 billion wall aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers, and offers his own ideas about how self-radicalising young people can be turned away from this murderous path.


And on BBC1 last week...

Panorama: ‘How I Became a Muslim Extremist’
(aka ‘Idiot joins legal organisation, does nothing, then leaves legal organisation’)


It's great to see the major television networks doing their warm up acts for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week later on in the month

It's just as well everything is so quiet in the Middle East at the moment, otherwise paranoid cynics might start thinking people are being softened up for something

...again

And, as I’ve said a few times before, I think it’s absolutely brilliant how these shows frequently turn to the Israelis for advice on how to deal with terrorism. They’ve only been at if for about 60 years and starting to show some real progress now that they’ve hit upon a winning formula of building enormous great fucking walls all over the place, blanketing the country with checkpoints, demolishing entire neighbourhoods and engaging in perpetual low level conflict with their neighbours




Yup, we’ve got a lot to learn from those guys and the sooner we start taking a leaf or two out of their book the better


though it is a bit of a shame how these TV shows don’t actually explain that suicide bombing started as a tactic to use against militarily superior foes, rather than as an ideology

And nor do these programs get round to explaining why it is that we’re supposed to think that suicide bombs are somehow scarier or more dangerous than other kinds of bombs...

  • Do suicide bombs somehow hurt more than, say, IRA bombs (the threat of which we somehow managed to live with without being encouraged by our establishment to shit our pants on a daily basis) because the guys carrying them blow up with them?

    (I've actually heard a couple of senior Metropolitan Police officers explain that the difference between IRA and Islamic terror attacks is that the Islamic terror attacks are planned to cause maximum loss of life in a way that IRA bombs weren't. That would be non-lethal IRA bombs like the one that went off in Omagh...


    ...come to think of it, we're still not sure who was really behind the Omagh bomb so maybe those coppers have a point)
  • Are suicide bombs more horrific than 2,500lbs of laser guided, high fragmentation unpleasantness dropped from a plane piloted by someone who doesn't kill himself in the process?
  • Would ‘suicide’ bombs still hurt more if the guys carrying them did not know they were carrying them?

Or, more to the point…

  • Why do supposedly responsible and thoughtful television companies make documentaries that claim to explain suicide bombing but restrict themselves to spouting agenda-laden bollocks instead

That’s a rhetorical question btw

.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw Robert Baer on the Doha Debates vs. George Galloway. Typical brainwashed USan. And I rather feel, as someone who has spent many long hours reading about Zion, that its main reason for the wall was to trap the Palestinians and capture more of their land. In fact anyone of a free-from-Zionism mind (rare) who researches the nasty fake state, will see they've been deviously stealing land and brutalizing the Palestinians for ages.

It is typical of the nation that gave a virgin birth to the fake state of Israel, that they would direct their main propaganda voice - the BBC, to continue to ensure its longevity using the programs you mentioned.

I made a report some time ago (but bit hazy about this now) some researcher at the University of Chicago(?) that found at suicide bombing ISN'T directed by ideology but desperation and the desire for revenge - not that scum like Robert Baer or the BBC would ever talk about suicide bombers in any other way than to dress it up as Islamic fundamentalism.

Suicide bombs are stupid. But I'm sitting on a cushy chair not being brutalized like the Palestinians, but 'remote' is the way to go baby! Just look at the glorious Iraqi Resistance and their fantastic IED's.

But I think they are scared of suicide bombs as they a government has a pretty good chance of destroying other forms of attack but suicide bombs. Well...

I have been lied to so much by my government (stakeknife etc) and they have killed so many, that I have no choice but to believe it is THEY who are behind the Omagh bomb. To me, that stance is a lot more logical than the official story.

Anonymous said...

If they made a documentary about the pyscology behind the pathological mass murdering politicians in Washington and London for balance it might be ok.

I'd have thought there was one simple point about suicide bombers that you'll never hear in programmes like this. If they had as much money as America they'd be fighting back with jets and tanks and bombers and so forth, not by killing themselves.

As Peter Ustinov said:

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich"

Stef said...

Suicide bombs are stupid.

It's worth remembering that it's not just Islamo-nutcases who think that suicide or suicidal attacks are OK, even praiseworthy, provided the person committing it has no choice

I could rattle off a list of US films from Independence Day to The Alamo which propagandise the act of killing your enemy whilst taking yourself with them.

It's also worth remembering that the IDF used to (still does?) swear in new recruits at Masada where, legend has it, a group of zealots slaughtered their families and then themselves rather than submitting to Roman occupation

Stef said...

If they had as much money as America they'd be fighting back with jets and tanks and bombers and so forth, not by killing themselves.

well quite

but that doesn't explain 7/7, the perpetrators of which faced no such opposition

London and 7/7 are different to the Middle East, Afghanistan or Sri Lanka

We're either looking at a different ideology and reasoning process behind the London attacks ...or they weren't suicide attacks at all

The documentaries supposedly investigating domestic terrorism don't address these kind of questions and prefer instead to tow the 'they're all irrational nutters and London is just like Tel Aviv' line

Stef said...

I made a report some time ago (but bit hazy about this now) some researcher at the University of Chicago(?) that found at suicide bombing ISN'T directed by ideology but desperation and the desire for revenge

= Robert Pape - 'Dying to Win'

and it comes as no surprise that Pape's key conclusion that there is...

"little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions... . Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland"

...doesn't get much airtime in the mainstream media

Anonymous said...

It's hard to believe the 7/7 bombers were intending to commit suicide, knowing what we do about them and (some) of their actions that day. Weren't even the mainstream press suggesting this before 21/7 happeend and they all forgot about it?

Good point about Hollywood films. I've lost count of the amount of times a character, facing insurmountable odds, will sacrifice themselves to take out the bad guys.

Tut, it's one rule for the Yanks, another for the rest of isn't it eh?

ziz said...

Short Term Memory Loss is advancing so fast that I initially thought that the Baer involved in this masterpiece of the documentary art was Behr, the Newsweek correspondent who wrote the wonderful tale of the Vietnam liberation of the socialist masses from the deep perspective of a US monoglot "Anybody here been raped who speaks Eglish?" But it isn't.

Now where was I ?

The barrier (please note it is NOT a wall) is purely to keep out Arabs cockroaches who want to get back the olive trees that the Zionists stole from their historical lands.

The term suicide carries with it the Christian view that Paradise only exists on this side of the grave ...there are of course many , many people who think it is on the other side - try a Jehovah's Witness Funeral for some evidence.

Of course if you live in Gaza it is not difficult to believe that there are better places on the other side.

Anonymous said...

I would like to elaborate:

They are stupid when used against civillians

They are stupid because they lessen your ranks

They can be effective in taking out military personnel

They are an effective way to hit an otherwise unreachable enemy

To some, they are justifyable (ask those who explode them)

They are being spun to associate them almost exclusively 'Islamic'

Of course Stef approaches the matter in the way it should be approached, i.e. from totally the opposite way to which our CFI LFI LDFI recruits do by taking time to understand the whole circumstances in which they are used (or said to be used!)

I agree it is less sensible to adopt the 'they did it' stance given the bizzare events(?) or otherwise of that day. I'm still wondering where all that acetone came from!

Merkin said...

'The Internet is the University of Terrorism' said the programme.
Time for more control, obviously.

Anonymous said...

Ahh is there anything that can't be clamped down on because of terrorism?

Houses. We cvan no longer have houses because terrorists live in houses. Or shoes. No shoes for us, terrorists do terrorism wearing shoes.

ziz said...

What I want to know is where the Palestinians gettheir Hydrogen peroxide from ... I haven't noticed many blonde Palestinians - of either sex.

Or is it possibly they use, like most suicide bombers (who I always understood found their roots amongst the Tamils of S India and Sri lanka) use the pentiful supplies of mil spec HE, Semtex etc., that the Irish bombers seemed to get their hands on without ruining their frying pans.

I wish someone would explain to me why when you heat a 5% solution of Hydrogen peroxide you end up with a super strength solution.

To drive off the water you need to heat to (probably slightly above ) 100 Deg C. By which time all the Hydrogen Peroxide will have evaporated and as the mad professor explained make your eyes water a bit.

I loved the bit when he banged the chappatti flour bag and said this was your explosive mixture.

That's the last time I shop at the Asian Supermarket - sounds far too dangerous.

Stef said...

@shutter

That would be the chapati flour that is 'as explosive as dynamite'

which I suppose answers the question 'Given the copious supply of purpose made lethal weapons on our streets why do home-grown jihadists arm themselves with old lucozade bottles and barbecue equipment?'

un-fucking-believable...

Anonymous said...

The programme was a load of propaganda tosh, by the ex-CIA man.

Note the excessive editing of the scene where he interviewed the 2 Afghan kids who were described as 'failed suicide bombers'.

Stef said...

Note the excessive editing of the scene where he interviewed the 2 Afghan kids who were described as 'failed suicide bombers'.

there was something else going on in that edited interview which is maybe part of the genesis of a new meme intended to supplement the suicide bomber 'myth'

Agent Baer made a couple of references to the fact that those two guys 'suicide' bombs were probably connected to a wireless detonator operated by someone else

A little pre-emptive work to counter the stories trickling out of the Middle East that some 'suicide bombers' don't know they are carrying explosives?

Anonymous said...

ur issues are reality and i respect you so much because of what you've written, funnly enough i crossed ur page by an accident i think its been a great accident to date. dnt think im some jumped up pussy hole put your commecial about your issues and its the only way people will listen. a i truly beleive that theres more you can do to interest a wider auidence but i think the points you have put across are a issue which is blinded by the government but what can you do but get on with?

Stef said...

well quite

and thanks...