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After London Attack, PM Calls For Internet Regulation To Fight Terrorists (cnn.com)
CNN reports that "At least seven people were killed in a short but violent assault that unfolded late Saturday night in the heart of the capital, the third such attack to hit Britain this year." An anonymous reader quotes their follow-up report:
Prime Minister Theresa May has called for closer regulation of the internet following a deadly terror attack in London... May said on Sunday that a new approach to tackling extremism is required, including changes that would deny terrorists and extremist sympathizers digital tools used to communicate and plan attacks. "We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed," May said. "Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide. We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning."
Since the dawn of time, people have confused 'stopping speech' with solving the problem. It doesn't. Despite the lying panic, communication does NOT 'radicalize' people. Instead it lets other people find out about the radicalization. While it is true that a small number of lunatics that were considering minor criminal actions upgrade to larger actions, free speech does not create problems, it REVEALS them.
Stopping free speech delays the problem at best, rather than solving them. Eventually the pent up issues burst forth into violence.
Better to have a constant small stream that is deal able rather than a flash flood.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
There's a disturbing dead zone between the watch lists and the events. You might ask yourself why it seems that all of these terrorists were on watch lists, but nothing was done about them and they committed the heinous act they were anticipated to. What was the point of the watch list then?
The government is in a position where they can't arrest you before you do something unless they have hard evidence of the plan. I have a feeling they're going to use these events as a means to push for public acceptance of "pre-crime" arrests that have flimsy standards of evidence. Only the naive will think this will be limited just to suspected terrorists. Remember the black-bag disappearances in the movie "V for Vendetta"? Yeah.. that's the future you're looking at.
The terrorists and the political leaders who are most vociferous about "fighting terrorism" need each other. It's almost like they're fighting for the same side.
One thing for sure: nothing that any of these leaders have proposed or implemented - mother of all bombs, travel bans, heightened security theater, arming the populace, internment, keeping people from bringing nail clippers on airplanes, foreign wars, building walls - is going to do anything to reduce terrorism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Interesting people can move messengers around the world and wait for a week for a message to be delivered in person.
Faith groups working in closed communities don't need to bother with an internet that is been watched. They have their leaders, teachings and have a large protective community around them.
This is not groups in the 1980's getting funds from banks, making phone calls and moving funds around using computers, emails and fax machines.
This is not the Soviet Union where the GCHQ can surround the Soviet Union and listen in on Soviet officials making daily phone calls.
The UK needs to fund MI5 overtime and get its expert surveillance teams out into UK cities.
Fund the army, MI5 and let them do their work in every UK city. Watch groups, who they meet, who they talk to, who they listen to.
Map the networks of people.
Keep all results away from any groups or people in the UK gov who talk to the media.
Learn for Ireland in the 1980's. Trust only the GCHQ, MI5, the elite UK mil units and any version of Special Branch that is as secure and dedicated as the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch was. That will ensure no information gets to groups/workers/contractors who will sell/talk/give UK policy information to the UK press/media/their company.
Learn from the 1920-70's issues when the UK had to hire a lot of experts on trust. Just as Communists filled the UK clandestine services for decades expect interesting groups to try and fill the ranks of the UK security services with needed new staff. Only hire on merit and after deep vetting of all new UK staff.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Terrorism: The use of unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
Go find an old copy of Black's Law Dictionary from the 1700s. The original definition of terrorism *was* a government creating fear or harm for political reasons.
There's no place like
I'm hoping for a hung Parliament or at least the Tories getting no better than a reduced majority and consequently needing to rely on more support from Parliament as a whole to get anything controversial done.
If that means Theresa May goes then that's a plus. I don't think she's a good PM, and it appears that many of the government policies that I disagree with originated in her office.
If it means that there is less headline-friendly political meddling in negotiating Brexit and the diplomats can quietly get on with it in the background and reach a reasonable agreement with their diplomatic counterparts, then as far as I'm concerned that is probably also a good thing. The last thing any of us need, on either side of the Channel, is a Brexit negotiation conducted through media soundbites by vulnerable Tory ministers from one side and wounded EU politicians like Jean-Claude Juncker from the other.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I am also hoping for a hung parliament, neither of the 2 large parties are suitable for governing on their own - too much dogma and party first, country second.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
If you look at the 7/7 bombers, or the Manchester bomber, they were heavily invested in British culture and most of our values.
I'm calling bullshit on this. The Manchester bomber - Salman Abedi - is the one with which I'm familiar. He was from a traditional, "super religious" family, according to his neighbours. Even leaving aside the matter of which religion it was, being devoutly religious is already antithetical to mainstream British culture - and the fact that the family kept up a traditional Libyan lifestyle after immigrating suggests that they didn't really take on British culture, except for a few of the more superficial ones, like football and console games.
Unfortunately, the aspect of modern British culture that he did take on was social-justice activism: he lodged a complaint about Islamophobia on the part of a teacher who expressed disapproval of suicide bombings. There seems to be a worrying, and increasing, alliance between radical social-justice activists and Islamist terrorists.
Sources: A, B.
the majority of murderers and terrorists in the west are... Westerners. [...] Look at that Ander Breivik guy. Killed nearly 100 people
Anders Breivik's shooting spree in Oslo was, in fact, the third-largest attack in Western Europe since 2001 (source). Of the top ten attacks in this era by death toll, seven have been ideologically motivated by Islam, one (Anders) was extremist right-wing, and the other two were unaffiliated or unclear.
So the majority of terrorists in Europe come from the 10%-or-so of the population that are Muslim. And within that, the evidence suggests (see Salman Abedi), the terrorists come from the small subset who are devoutly religious, never really integrate into their host communities, and react negatively to any criticism of Islam, or even of violence done in the name of Islam.
People get similarly upset when its suggested guys like Osama Bin Laden were made in America.
The US government via the CIA thought it was hilarious to dump Egypt's criminals (which they radicalized via torture) on Afghanistan to essentially troll the Russians.
Her main problem is that she seems to have limited grasp of her brief, and is very exposed when she is asked unprompted questions. For example when a nurse told her that she has been on the same salary as a National Health Service Nurse as she earned in 2009, she looked the nurse in the eye and declared that there is no 'Magic Money Tree'
She has coped with her poor people skills by refusing to turn up for election debates, instead using the tame UK media, papers like the Daily Mail, and the BBC to promote her. However her lack of ability has become so obvious that what looked like a massive majority (which is the reason why she called a early election) is evaporating and it looks like the UK will enter Brexit negotiations with a hung Parliament)
To add to her problems She has refused to liaise with the Scottish Parliament to the result that they have asked for a referendum on Scottish Independence to co-inside with the end of the Brexit negotiations.
Theresa May may go down in UK history as the most incompetent Prime Minister in our long history.
The electorate rallies around the Conservative Party [..] but at least *some* chance at getting a non-catastrophic outcome from the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
Really? I wouldn't even credit them with that. May has said repeatedly that "no deal is better than a bad deal" and made quite clear she's prepared to walk with nothing more than WTO terms. This is presented as a negotiating tactic, but in truth it's obvious arrogance from someone who- along with her hard-Brexiteering colleagues and other Little Englanders- thinks that Britain still has the power, influence and position it had in the days of Empire; something that was already mostly in the past when it joined the EU in the early 1970s.
Someone who thinks that they *will* be able to demand what they want, and even if they don't will get away with it anyway thanks to their "special relationship" with the United States and supposed connections with the Commonwealth, i.e. the former empire. As this article says:-
A senior Indian official has been reported as saying, "We cannot separate free movement of people from the free flow of goods and services." Sound familiar? It's much the same as every European bureaucrat pointing out that Britain can't cherrypick its terms for accessing the single market. [..] The post-imperial delusion of "old friendships" is going to shatter in the coming months, revealing a relationship of coercion that no longer holds.
And the salient part:-
Britain is a bully going to a school reunion, only to find his victims now have better jobs and better lives than him.
Regarding your second option:-
Enough of the electorate decides to vote for other parties that we end up with a hung parliament and [etc] Never mind being careful what you wish for; the lesson here is that you need to be *really* careful what you vote for, because however this pans out it's going to be on the UK electorate just as much as it is on the politicians they voted for.
...you might begin to understand why (as a Scot in favour of independence) I'm not even considering entertaining the possibility of playing along with the UK electoral and political system that- from my point of view- is fundamentally broken, does not- and cannot- reflect the difference in political opinion between Scotland and England (and Wales) that has been growing since the Thatcher years but is now at breaking point.
We currently have 56 of 59(!) seats held by the SNP, yet are ultimately governed by the Conservative party that has just 1 seat in Scotland, but won due to voters in England and Wales.
We voted 62 to 38% to remain within the EU, yet are being dragged out because voters in England and Wales wanted to leave, as part of a campaign that started as a sop to the Tory party's Euro-sceptic right wing- primarily in South-East England- and consistently revolved around them, using the future of the UK as nothing more than a political football for their internal squabbles.
To add insult to injury, Scotland's position within the EU post-independence had been a central plank of the scaremongering "Better Together" campaign during the independence referendum. I'm surprised that the likes of Alistair Darling still have the cheek to show their faces when we saw how that turned out.
So- England and Wales heading in a hard right UKIP-like direction (UKIP themselves are only in decline because the Tories have mostly taken up that position for themselves and become- as you say "UKIP lite") while Scotland is completely different.
Do I want to remain tied to an elephant that clearly doesn't want to go the same way I do? No.
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