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War on Terrorism (Politics)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Joe Biden has announced US forces have killed the leader of ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, also known as Hajji Abdullah.

By journalists this leader is also known as Abu Saleh Al-Juzrawi and Amir Mohammed and Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi....wait, also known as as Abdullah Qurdash Amir Mohamed Saied Abdulrahman, although to be fair some people are not entirely sure as Abdullah Qardash might be someone else instead, who might have died around 2017.

Anyway, there is a grainy photo of him which, a while back, was shown to an IS prisoner by the BBC.... https://voi.id/en/bernas/34462/about-haji-abdullah-the-new-leader-of-isis-post-death-abu-bakar-al-baghdadi

IS Prisoner wrote:
"Yes, that's right, this is Abdullah Qurdash or any other name Amir Mohamed Saied Abdulrahman," said Salem, an ISIS prisoner who was arrested by Iraqi intelligence.


So we can be sure we got the right fella.

"But he looks different in this photo, has a thick beard",

Damn it's not clear as I hoped.

Ok, but he was probably a wrong un, else why would he have blown himself and his family up? So that is one less bad guy and a much needed Foreign Policy triumph for Joe. You wouldn't want to mess with Joe, he will take out the guy down the road that looks a bit like you, and what terrorist would want that?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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One interesting sidelight was that most of the coverage seemed to be about civilian casualties rather than the target himself. Everybody is now so nervous about this (apart from the Israelis who follow a strict 'the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian' policy) that avoiding them is top of the planning desiderata. It was harsh though of Newsnight to count the terrorist's family in the American civilian collateral damage list when Abu Ibrahim blew them up with him.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I am regularly disgusted by American actions but actually stealing Afghanistan's foreign currency reserves is a new low. I was fairly cross at them freezing the assets but at least that was within the normal purview of aggressive diplomacy., however cruel it was. Not to mention being spectacularly stoopid.

Only three countries have ever united Afghanistan's people against them: the Brits in the nineteenth century, the Russians in the twentieth and now John Dillingers Incorporated in the twenty-first.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It is reasonable for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to feel annoyed at the government for not negotiating her earlier release. It is equally reasonable for government ministers not to want to do this to protect others from arrest or capture.

My own feeling is that had she been spying or passing information to our security services, then surely we should certainly have paid up earlier to get her back. If not, then it seems to Wiley not a good thing to do?
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Mick Harper
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It is reasonable for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to feel annoyed at the government for not negotiating her earlier release.

Agreed.
It is equally reasonable for government ministers not to want to do this to protect others from arrest or capture.

Not agreed. Refusing to negotiate with hostage-takers is a sensible tactic (to discourage them). Agreeing to negotiate with hostage-takers is also a sensible tactic (to get the hostages back). But Iran is a special case.

For a start, it is never clear who the hostage-takers are. Revolutionary guards or the government. Secondly, nothing discourages them. As they are prepared to accept the obloquy of hostage-taking, and as they know it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, there is no point factoring in their future behaviour. One just judges each case on an individual what's-best-for-us basis. Paying out x amount to get back y hostages.

Nazanin was correct: they should have acknowledged the debt would have to paid one day so why not straightaway.

My own feeling is that had she been spying or passing information to our security services, then surely we should certainly have paid up earlier to get her back.

Spy-swaps are quite normal (including swapping a spy for what amounts to a hostage) but no-one, as far as I know, has ever paid for the release of a spy. It would mean, just for starters, acknowledging spies, something no spy agency (or government) ever does.

If not, then it seems to Wiley not a good thing to do?

I do disagree with this. Repaying the money was so necessary on so many levels that getting hostages released is as good a reason as any. In many ways the British government behaved worse than the Iranians, taking into account the respective standards expected.

PS I thought she was a dazzling performer. The marriage will not last. cf John McCarthy and Jill Morrell.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Nazanin was correct: they should have acknowledged the debt would have to paid one day so why not straightaway.

There may have been a degree of American influence on the Foreign Office's shilly-shallying stance presumably so as not to undermine US sanctions on Iran though it seems America's influence is waning, in the Middle East at least.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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It is clear that Iranian oil has to get back to full stream as pronto as possible if the price is going to come down any time soon. If only the Yanks operated a proper foreign policy, i.e. based on self-interest, rather than one based on pique and spite, they would have done a nuclear deal with Iran either as soon as Biden got in, or anyway as soon as trouble with Russia was in the offing. It will be done this summer.

Yes, of course the British foreign office midgets scrambled to get their bit undone -- paying for the tanks -- at US bidding. After thirty years of not paying it, agreeing to pay it now cannot be a coincidence. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was, as it were, collateral undamage.
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Grant



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The US foreign policy is based on self-interest. The problem is that it’s based on Israel’s self-interest
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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But not necessarily in Jewish self-interest. I keep pointing out to the Jewish Lobby (I've got the address if you need it) that if you carry on skewing the foreign policy of X in favour of Israel, sooner or later the (non-Jewish) population of X is going to twig and call in the Cossacks (I haven't got their number but it's in the phone book).
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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BBC Newsnight has collaborated with Buzzfeed News to investigate serious flaws in the IT system that allows police forces across the country to share information [on terrorism] Kirsty Walk, Newsnight

A number of interesting points here. At the lowest level, it is not so long ago that this would be a BBC investigation, not the BBC riding Buzzfeed coat-tails. But then our major meeja has given up on investigative journalism across the board. No money in it. The second point is that IT systems always go wrong and this should have been built into arrangements for information sharing. That's 101.

But toppermost is why it took Buzzfeed to uncover the flaws anyway. Where is MI5? Where is the Police National whatever it's called? Where is the government? But this will always be the way while 'security' takes precedence over everything. They will always be secure in their incompetence forever.

If only these halfwits would get it into their tiny pointy-heads that terrorists don't have a counter-intelligence capability, they would dismantle their traditional apparatuses (except for traditional operations) and just stick it on the teletype or whatever is normal in crime-busting.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Are We Losing the War on Terror? (Dispatches, Channel 4)

This caught my eye -- it's on tonight -- because for some time I've been thinking, "The one good thing that came out of Covid was the end of terrorism." Apparently Dispatches knows different.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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No, they didn't. It was all about the authorities not picking up the lone nutters before they caused trouble. Good grief, we'd all be in trouble if they started doing that.
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Mick Harper
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A fascinating situation is brewing in Myanmar. The Burmese dissidents are forming rebel armies to take on the military junta but will have no chance unless they make common cause with the dissident minorities that have been fighting the military for decades. Not for independence, you understand, just for a bit of peace and quiet to do their own thing.

On the other hand, as we discovered with Aung San Sui Kyi and the Rohingya, Burmese people of all stripes despise these embattled minorities. A rapprochement would mean salvation for both sides and a peaceful Burma after forty years of civil strife requiring a permanent military government. But that would require people in the plains not despising people in the hills so not possible, I'm afraid.

Not at this time or at any time in the foreseeable future. A great shame but traditions must be observed.
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Mick Harper
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Scenario One A arranges a meeting with B. A comes to the meeting armed with a knife, B is unarmed. A stabs B to death with the knife.
Scenario Two As above but A is a member of the state security services and B is a terrorist.

The chief state propaganda organ spent three hours ‘explaining’ that B instigated a quarrel with A, grabbed A's knife, launched a murderous attack on A but A was able to grab back the knife and B was fatally but accidentally stabbed in the melee. Though without pointing out nobody could possibly believe such a train of events.

The Reckoning (BBC Radio 4X) The Life and Death of Christopher Marlowe. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017cds
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Mick Harper
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Alex Davies, founder of banned fascist group National Action (NA) has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years. "You are the biggest Nazi of the lot," says judge.

Well, your honour, if there are a lot of them, they are not likely to be terrorists, are they. Certainly the Nazis weren't. If they are a political movement, the state has no business banning them in the first place but, if in their wisdom, the thought police have decided they are to be 'a proscribed organisation' then I think we might first explore community service, fines, suspended sentences, that sort of thing.

But if you really think 'sending a signal' requires an immediate custodial, what about six months? Wouldn't that do it? Oh go on then a year. Tell you what, make it two on account of you feeling dyspeptic this morning. No? Not three ... four... Oh all right, if you insist, eight and a half. I love that 'half', it's so finely... judged.

My God, I wouldn't want to draw you if I was an actual criminal.
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