Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

Tag: Terrorism (Page 9 of 15)

Outmanoeuverings

9 January 2009 / / 17 Comments

I’ve been silent on the Gaza issue.  Not because I haven’t been following developments, but because I do not have anything new or interesting to say.  I’ve just re-read my take on the 2006 Israel-Lebanon crisis, and my view on the current catastrophe is very similar – the military response lacks imagination.  If you’re faced with a situation where bombing civilians seems to be the only course of action left open to you, then you’ve already been outmanoeuvered, you have already lost, and the only thing you are playing for is your own soul, your own humanity.  Those who persecute these strikes simply lack an understanding of the mess they’re in.  Either that, or they are waging war for cynical, electoral reasons.
Watching the UN impotently go through their motions, its clear that the tired, tried and tested route through these kinds of crises are futile.  Anything from ‘outside the box’ would be welcome at this juncture.  It is the unexpected gestures that regain the initiative, and provide a solution, a new momentum.
This suggestion from Jeffrey Goldberg caught my eye:

Why not erect a massive tent hospital in Sderot, staff it with Israeli army doctors, and treat the Palestinian wounded there?

A PR stunt, to be sure, but at least its humane.

Inconvenience as a Security Blanket

1 December 2008 / / 0 Comments

Security expert Bruce Schneier on social networking technology:

We never realized how much our security could be attributed to distance and inconvenience — how difficult it is to recruit, organize, coordinate, and communicate without formal organizations. That inadvertent measure of security is now gone. Bad guys, from hacker groups to terrorist groups, will use the same ad hoc organizational technologies that the rest of us do. And while there has been some success in closing down individual Web pages, discussion groups, and blogs, these are just stopgap measures.

This reminds me of a post by DE at Minority Report, discussing ideas of privacy and anonymity (I’ve quoted it before):

Human detective work moves at human pace. The same bloke that linked the two pieces of data could have done a similar task by asking the station manager or a nosy newsagent. If someone is trying to track me down, then someone must think I really am worth the effort.
Its when computers talk to other computers that liberty disappears. Because a computer can correlate countless bits of data and create new records that would take many humans exponentially longer to do. And that gap, or grace period, is actually where anonymity lies, or did.

So technology makes it easier for crimminals and terrorists to target us, but also, one assumes, for the police to trace them.  But it also allows the State to erode our privacy.  Meanwhile, as chronicled many-a-time on this blog, ordinary citizens can use technology to pressure governments to be more open, to expose their lies, and counter official narratives.  The two types of security we desire – protection from crimminal elements, and protection from state intrusion – are often in tension.  It is interesting that new technologies don’t shift the balance one-way or another, but end up assisting all actors: Crimminals, The State, The Citizen.
The question is, does the technology ratchet up the tension, making violations and conflict more frequent?  Or does it pre-empt and head-off many of the flash-points, before they become a problem?

Coverage 2.0

29 November 2008 / / 1 Comment

News gatherers and citizen journalists in Mumbai, 28th November 2008. Photo by Vinu

News gatherers and citizen journalists in Mumbai, 28th November 2008. Photo by Vinu


The way in which 24 hour news channels have changed the way we learn about, and witness, global events has been well documented and discussed. We saw the twin towers fall, live on TV.  I think its astonishing that the image of one of these young terrorists could be pasted across my copy of the Metro, whilst he was still at large in India.
The latest terror induced crisis, in Mumbai, takes our participation in these events a stage further. These attacks, made with assault-rifles over several locations, was in many ways more confusing than Al-Qaeda’s grand gesture of 9/11. It says something about how technology has developed, that this story was relayed as much by connected individuals – the mass of citizen journalists – as by major news networks. Via Peter Bradwell at Demos, I’ve found a Twitter feed giving information on the attacks. In a mirror of the Election Twitter, which captured the global exhilaration of the Obama victory, this Mumbai twitter conveys something of the confusion caused by these attacks.  As well as learning about the events, and witnessing them, it has come to the stage where we are experiencing them too.  The epicentre of the attacks are in India, but we experience the reaction everywhere.
Meanwhile, high quality images are available via Flickr (including Vinu’s excellent shots, which I’ve used to illustrate this and the previous post).  In this case the static, but high-resolution photos beats low resolution YouTube.  Either way, social media sites have been promising to empower the citizen journalist, and to cut out the middle-man of the mainstream media.  And of course, they also make it harder for government’s to force a certain narrative onto us.  In 2008, with the Obama campaign and the Mumbai attacks, I would say that social media has come of age.

Sowing Division, Reaping Unity

27 November 2008 / / 1 Comment

Mumbaikars kept back from the scene of devastation, Colaba. Photo by Vinu.

Mumbaikars kept back from the scene of devastation, Colaba. Photo by Vinu.


Whoever these terrorists in Mumbai turn out to be, its clear that they are trying to sow division and hatred in a country of many cultures.  The fear is that Hindu will now turn against Muslim, and India will now turn against Pakistan.  This is certainly what the cynics expect.
I am hopeful, however.  Back in 2006, after the Malegon bombings, I was struck by the defiant attitude of the locals who refused to divide themselves along religious lines, as the terrorists (in that case, militant Hindus attacking Muslims) intended.
There is a lot of cynicism about the over-use of the word ‘Hope’, and about the potential of digital technologies to help create a genuinely new politics.  I think this atrocity, terrible though it is, presents an opprtunity to put these optimistic sentiments to practical purpose.  What is needed is a grass-roots response to the current crisis, similar to the We Are Not Afraid phenomenon, which wrestles the narrative away from a divisive blame-game.  Its a way in which advocates of peace, those who recognise our common humanity, can win another PR victory against these vicious ideologues.

Bin Laden Doesn't Matter

9 October 2008 / / 2 Comments

As Obama consolidates his lead in the polls, there a plenty of analyses as to why he is seems to have got the better of Senator McCain. The meme that the Right would have us believe is that McCain has been hamstrung by the economy, and that under normal circumstances he would have been in with a chance.
I tend to a different view, which is that Americans have seen through the obfuscation of the Repbulican Party of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and they recognise McCain as being a continuation of that. Throughout, Obama has chosen calmer tactics than his opponents. When they attack, his “shrug it off” attitude has succeeded with the voters.
As I have said before, his ground game, that is, the growing network of supporters campaigning for him on a local level, provide a sort of chainmail. The tight network, connected via new technologies, can rebutt, or at least soften the impact, of any given attack. I predict that the coming smears – Add the Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko to William Ayers – will fail to penetrate in the way that Republican attackers hope. It is too late for an old scandal or impropriety to change people’s minds.
Looking at the polls, and crucially, looking at how they move in the Democrats favour after an apparently negative news cycle, I think even the dreaded endorsement of Osama Bin Laden, half-expected in the next couple of weeks, will fail to provide the swing McCain needs. If the grainy tape of the old bearded psychopath makes a comeback, watch as the media repeat the clichés that it is a “game changer”. Then watch as the polls prove the pundits wrong.
I’m sure there will be some who stick to the prevalent “don’t over-estimate the stupidity of Americans” view, but I honestly think we’re past the point where that is a credible dismissal. The USA never enthusiatically endorsed the madness of King George Bush. Now the polls show them enthusiatically rejecting him and his shadows, McCain and Palin.

Update

Over at the excellent FiveThirtyEight, Rany Jazayerli predicts Bin Laden’s October surprise. His chilling prediction:

With McCain lagging in the polls, bin Laden might even try a Hail Mary – with Sarah Palin on the ballot, I’d imagine that he’ll throw in some misogynistic comments about how a woman’s place is inside the home and that a nation led by a woman is sure to be cursed by God.

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