Britain: Three Terrorist Attacks in Three Months – Five Attacks Foiled And More Predicted

By Graham Vanbergen: This is election week in Britain. The campaign for politics and democracy in general is going badly. This is the second time political campaigning has been halted due to terrorism in just ten days. Questions will be have to be asked following the latest London terrorist attacks that so far has killed seven innocent civilians and injured nearly fifty, 21 critically, about the decision by Theresa May’s government to reduce the threat warning from the highest category of critical after the Manchester bombing that killed 22 just two weeks ago.

 

It is clear that there has been another failure by the intelligence services by removing troops from the streets of the capital and their assessment of the threat.

 

This, in the knowledge that just last February the new Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Max Hill, the government’s new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation were predicting an ISIS led terror campaign to match that of the IRA’s campaign that killed thousands.

 

Theresa May condemned Islamist extremism and called the ideology a “perversion of Islam”. She said there was “a new trend in the threat we face” with terrorism breeding terrorism. “It is time to say enough is enough,” she added. This is not a new trend and ‘enough is enough’ is what you say to naughty children, not ideological Kamikazi psychotics with death on their mind. Theresa May’s only real response will be the further theft of what fragments of our privacy remains and more soundbites that this is somehow the fault of Facebook and YouTube.

 

This is the fourteenth terrorist event in two years in Europe, the seventh major incident, the second in just two weeks in Britain and the third since March 22nd when a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. The authorities seem to be losing control. In total, well over 340 have now been killed and nearly 1,400 seriously injured in Europe due to terrorism.

 

Geopolitical Futures explains in some part why these attacks are occurring right now: “Ramadan, which began on May 26, is Islam’s holiest month of the year, a time to do good deeds, fast and pray. But jihadists have coopted this holiday for nefarious ends, using it as an excuse to intensify their attacks, claiming that they are committing the ultimate sacrifice for their faith. This is why Ramadan, in addition to its religious importance, is also geopolitical.”

“For the past several years, since the insurgency in Afghanistan intensified, there have been regular appeals for a cease-fire during Ramadan to allow people to fast and pray in peace. The Taliban have always rejected such calls, arguing that their jihad is a religious obligation and an act of worship. And in fact, they aim to increase attacks during this month. But it’s not just the Taliban; all jihadist groups subscribe to this view.”

 

ISIS or Islamic State is both a political entity and ideological movement. It claims to be a state and indeed tries to mimic one, in that in its self-perceived territory of Iraq and Syria it provides critical services socially such as overseeing education, ensuring food security, providing clean water and electricity, it collects taxes and maintains its version of law and order.

 

Its ideological tendencies are driven by radical and extreme religious fundamentalism. It advocates a new threat, that of worldwide Jihad. Its target is focused on the West but is just as hostile towards other nation states with Muslim populations such as China, Russia and other parts of Asia. Its skill has been to communicate, resource and train individuals to carry out such attacks that are far afield with the goal of generating new recruits.

 

The purpose of these attacks is to drag Western countries further into Middle-Eastern wars that the West started in the first place by creating political and tribal conflict. Bizarrely, Western politicians will have you believe that this is the reason why we should send troops back into these battle zones and at the same time destroy civil liberties at home …. in the name of security.

 

A vicious cycle of never-ending war that leads to death, destruction and hatred that the politicians created continues. Blair, Cameron and May are all the same. Bush and Obama are as well, and no doubt Trump. They all only know one thing – war will solve everything in their distorted neo-con world view, when all it really does is feed the hatred and a cycle of violence.

 

The truth is that attacking a largely defenceless region like the Middle-East was seen by the military and political establishment as somehow showing geopolitical strength on the one hand whilst diverting everyone from their economic failures. But what it really left behind was a new set of dangerous illusions in the West. The victory in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya appeared on the surface to be precise and decisive. Mainstream and broadcast media was so carefully managed that the general public, particularly in Britain and America were deceived and misled. The price paid was largely unseen – one million civilians dead. Then a movement of peoples on a truly biblical scale came about. They only had one way to go for safety and it was another consequence that somehow the politicians and their so-called intelligence services did not anticipate. There are now more people in the world displaced by war and conflict that at any time during that last catastrophic event in human history, the second world war.

 

Islamic State is losing ground back in its home territory. So what it does is to fight outside of it to increase recruitment. Terrorism has typically been used by organisations who lack the power to fully or even partially reach their political goals in more conventional ways. The IRA’s campaign was the same. In the end, the IRA killed over 3,000 civilians to reach their political aims. Islamic State is no exception and thinks the same strategy will work.

 

The big problem with Islamic State is that its warriors are dispersed all over the Western world. They are spread more recently through the refugee crisis and are now plotting and planning, largely undetected in the very places they will attack – soft Western targets. We simply can’t defend ourselves in the face of such evil.

 

As soon as Theresa May announced the snap election – terror attacks were being planned. This much is known. In an article entitled – “ISIS Are Coming: It’s Election Season” the prediction is actually made that Britain will be terrorised by Islamic State. In another article “Cameron’s legacy – Horrific Libyan Suffering Under ISIS Rule” we see exactly what happens with Western meddling in Arab affairs. Why did we not expect a response to the horrific environment we created?

 

Felicity Arbuthnot wrote an article “Iraq – Fallujah’s Residents Starving, Murdered, Besieged by US Backed Government Forces and ISIS. Here, life after our indiscriminate carpet bombing in the region became even worse with the arrival of the new kids on the head chopping block – ISIS. Why did we not expect a response.

 

Theresa May has just confirmed that between the March Westminster Bridge and Saturdays killings, five advanced and credible plots were disrupted – proof that a major terror campaign is now underway in Britain. Will election turnout fall as a result? In some ways Islamic State are already winning the war by causing mass state surveillance systems to emerge and the destruction of privacy to become the norm whilst police are given unprecedented powers.

 

To highlight the issue of increasing terrorism across the world, in the years August 1996 to August 2001 (the five years prior to 9/11) there were 128 incidents of terrorism worldwide. In just the last 12 weeks alone, there have been 254 incidents of terrorism worldwide. The numbers of fatalities per event are much lower now but that is because those with a grievance are now acting alone or in small groups amid a more prevalent terror surveillance system. Still, terrorists managed to kill 1912 people in the last 12 weeks compared to 3050 in the five years on the run-up to 9/11. And the escalation curve is increasing, literally by the day.

 

More from Geopolitical Futures: “This is what IS wants. It wants the world to see global events through its eyes, as a battle of civilisations between Islam and its enemies. It wants to draw the world further into a conflict in which IS believes it has one key advantage: stamina. IS benefits from the inevitable negative effects of war; it helps IS attract new recruits and frees up territory in which IS can find sanctuary. This creates a catch-22 for enemies of the Islamic State. Countries like the U.S. and U.K. can’t ignore the threat IS poses as a radicalised Sunni Arab entity in the heart of the Middle East, but they also must face the reality that intervening in the region strengthens the ideological component of the Islamic State.”

 

And that’s my point entirely – intervening in the region strengthens ISIS. So we should do what common sense and logic tells us to do. Stop intervening. And stop voting for people like the Theresa May’s, David Cameron’s and Tony Blair’s of this world – because the ideology they follow caused all this chaos in the first place. They walk away from the carnage and are not there to take the blame or keep us safe. They have teams of highly trained personal armed body guards and bullet-proof cars with professional drivers – the rest of us are left to defend ourselves and pick up the pieces.

 

 

 

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