Terrorism in the UK: Social media is now the biggest jihadi training camp of them all

Report on terrorism in the UK and how social media has been used for terrorist activity. The CIA are asking for the spouses of terrorists to dissuade them or to alert the authorities.

As an aside, a few questions.

Does anyone think ATS has a role in deterring terrorism?

Or, that it has been used as as a stealth agenda, such as attempting inciting hatred for Western governments and western culture?

www.telegraph.co.uk... hem-all.html

Terrorism in the UK: Social media is now the biggest jihadi training camp of them all

Unable to control online radicalism, police have little option but to plead with Muslim women to dissuade their menfolk from enlisting

If an Islamic terrorist is apprehended in Detroit or blows himself up in Stockholm, it doesn’t usually take long to trace their career progression back to Britain. The CIA despairingly refers to “Londonistan”, but the phrase doesn’t quite do justice to Britain’s ability to incubate terrorism all over the country. For various reasons – chiefly our being quicker to accept asylum-seekers than expel villains – Britain has ended up as a kind of finishing school for jihadis.

So it is no great surprise to learn that an estimated 400 Brits have so far been to Syria to join the rebels – after which, it is feared, they’ll return home radicalised by Islamist insurgents. It’s a fast-growing trend. Last year, the number of Syria-related arrests here was one every two weeks. So far this year, there has been one every two days. This explains the police’s unprecedented appeal to Muslim women, asking them to dissuade (or inform on) menfolk who enlist. It’s not clear how plausible such advice is, but there’s not much else the police feel able to do.

The war on terror, in Britain, has not been about border control or keeping an eye on foreign terror plots. Our terrorists tend to be home-grown, with one or two major attacks foiled every year. Only the 2005 London bombings were successful, but MI5 still has its eye on hundreds of suspects.

Over the years, police have come to work out how young men, with every opportunity in life, manage to walk down the road to radicalisation. Fighting terrorism involves a combination of policing, intelligence and psychology.

At the start, British jihadis could often be traced to foreign training camps. With 250,000 travelling to Pakistan each year, it was easy for a few to slink off undetected to al-Qaeda bases in the badlands. As the drone bombing campaign made it harder to operate such camps, they popped up in Africa – some of them dedicated to attacks on Britain. About 50 British nationals are understood to have attended the camps in Somalia, but it’s a hard place to reach. There are tales of would-be terrorists having their passports confiscated, so they can never leave. For the typical jetset jihadi, the African camps are a remote and risky option.

As you might expect, this form of cyber-jihad has been pioneered in Britain. During the Iraq war, a Londoner, Younes Tsouli, set up a website showing the best jihadi videos. He attracted the admiration of al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, who fed him material. He ran an online message board service, where prospective suicide bombers could be linked up with al-Qaeda. (“I’m ready to run off but I’m under 18,” asked one user. “Am I too young?” “They have no objection to age,” came the reply).

It doesn’t take a counter-terrorism manual to understand how young men can be brainwashed into joining a foreign war. Take Muriel Spark’s 1961 book, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It tells of a powerful, charismatic school teacher who has a picture of fascist troops on the wall and tries to mould the identities of her students. One of her protégées, Joyce Emily, is persuaded to “see sense” and fight with the fascists in Spain, where she dies. When one of the pupils is asked, in later life, whether her main influences had been political or religious, she replies: “There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.”

There are plenty of Islamists in their prime today, and it’s never been easier to hear them. One is Ahmad Musa Jibril, an American who does not directly endorse violence in Syria but acts as a cheerleader for the Westerners fighting there. Another is Musa Cerantonio, an Australian who converted from Catholicism and speaks in English, and is less guarded about his support for jihad. The days where you needed to attend a hardline mosque to hear radical imams – or somehow find a contraband video – are over. The digital skills that made Younes Tsouli stand out five years ago are now everywhere. And has taken the great game of counter-terrorism to another level.

I really don't think any agency or group has any *real* interest in trying to influence anything through ATS.
We just aren't anything near of a threat to anyone. Most of the things we debate here never even happened, or never will. Half of us are half crazy, and the others... well, let's not talk about the others...

So um... no. That's my answer. Also, what is the link between your question and the article ? Do you mean to say that you believe that ATS has been used as a recruitment tool by terrorist organisations ?

a reply to: Ismail

I posted the article because it is information that is good to know.

My opinion is that ATS isn't being used for jihadi recruitment.

However it is something of a concern when there are so many threads that are just mindless government bashing, twisting articles and reports into some anti government slant.

There does seem to be a lot of anti west sentiment around. I am aware that influencing the impressionable in counterproductive ways is a method of propaganda.

I do think sometimes the west hasn't acted particularly responsible or ethically though I do value 'western' culture and the freedom it brings.

There are a few war hawks here but Id say even they draw the line at cruxifiction and beheading,the anti-western sentiment is more frustration at the corruption,malfeasance and incompetence of our leaders than any manifest hatred I think most of us know the world would not be any better with China or Russia as the top dog and certainly do not want Planet Islam and sharia law.

Well as much as I do draw the line at beheadings, I don't think it's anti-western to point out that we (the west) have done more than our fair share of burying these people's heads in the sand, be it politically, economically or militarily and that the backlash that we are currently experiencing is nothing if not well deserved, but more to the point, totally unavoidable.

I view my position as a voice of dissent to be a serving western interests. Pointing out that our empire-building politics and imperialistic economy have only bred us more enemies, and our that our own indiscriminate killing of civilians far exceeds that of the people we are supposed to be fighting seems to me to be part of the solution to our problems. If we stop killing them and raping their ressources, all the while claiming to be the good guys, they probably won't try to kill us either.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

There is a great difference between faith driven xenophobic war, as fought by extremist Muslim groups against, well.. everyone else, and being prepared to question, and even despise the actions and individuals in ones own government.

I feel that it would be unwise in the extreme to suggest that merely having anti-government thought is a gateway to radicalisation! That could not be further from the case! Here on ATS, it is clearer than in many other places in the World Wide Web, that NO organisation which wishes to enforce an agenda on people who do not agree with it, ought to be allowed to continue to force their nonsense on people.

Whether that be the raging lunacy of ISIS, the mass surveillance tactics of the NSA in the US, and GCHQ in Britain, or the possibility of a European police force dictating EU law and policy to citizens of sovereign nations matters not one whit to me. The problem is the same. Huge numbers of people, being forced to accept an unacceptable situation, by a smaller number of people who have either lost the plot, or never bloody read the thing.

I am concerned about my fellow Britons though. It is my hope that as time wears on, as families new to this country become more used to its manner and traditions, as the generations pass and are renewed afresh, that there will be less incidents of young British males wandering off to fight these sorts of battles, on ANY side.

Being duped into doing someone's dirty work has no positive end result, and I hope that as time moves on, this becomes more readily apparent to the impressionable young fellows who are the target of recruiters.

a reply to: Ismail

I certainly believe the West, as well as the East, North, South and everywhere else should be behaving ethically.

It appears the West, mostly US led has acted in ways that were less than ethical however, it appears the Middle East often hasn't behaved ethically also and the situation there is and always has been very complex. There are so many tribes that are against each other so it isn't just meddling Western nations that they despise. Also the fact that the US, UK, EU, Russia, China etc have all traded in Middle East prior to the 'recent' situations, including in arms and allying themselves to certain groups. Now it has become known that certain Saudi backers have been financing ISIS etc., the situation of trading in the Middle East now and before, was and is probably more complex than the citizens of these nations have been advised.

Perhaps the West, Russia etc have been played by certain groups and situations in the Middle East as much having played and were only doing all they could for their own nations security.

There are many government policies that I don't agree to but when it comes to national security and defeating terrorism, the citizens should be on board.

Well this, coupled with facebooks social "experiment"...

Leaves me wondering if this isn't simply a concentrated effort to demonize social media and shut it down. Our governments have never been quiet about their concerns and wishes to have a tighter control and reign on the internet.

That was my immediate thought on these stories pertaining to social media, recently. Propaganda to further an agenda and get the public crying for it's removal. What better way to do?

~ Cirque

a reply to: CirqueDeTruth

Data mining,psychological profiling,personalized advertising- no its not going to be shut down

a reply to: TrueBrit

Exactly, it is important to know the difference.

There seems to be too much complacency though in acting against or even recognising the threat of terrorism, people thinking ''oh well Labour / Conservative are just all about abc anyhow, blah blah government hatred'' where they really should be thinking ''holy #### (excuse the pun) despite the gov being a bit awful, we have to be strong as a nation about this threat instead of being divided''.

There are more blinkered people in the UK than bears thinking about, content at watching Britains got talent, X-factor or whichever else numbs their mind to reality. Added to that, just about the only non mind numbing thoughts being just anti government and there it is, a nation of mindless idiots, oblivious to the threat underneath their noses.

The more people are aware and proactive the more the threat lessens and they can stop acting like blind minnows in a pool of sharks and start acting like pest control able to ensure they aren't being taken over by a cultural and religious rot.

There is a great difference between faith driven xenophobic war, as fought by extremist Muslim groups against, well.. everyone else, and being prepared to question, and even despise the actions and individuals in ones own government.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Your head of MI6 said that there are about 500 Britons with ISIS and there are not the resources to monitor them all if they come back,Australia has 150 there they've had there passports cancelled,their citizenship is cancelled and they face 25 years in prison if they return.Im glad my country realizes there's a war going on.

a reply to: khnum

Exactly.

That they said 300 was ''too many to deal with'' is an abomination and there should be people outside no.10 demanding action, we have an army don't we? Put it to use if the police force are too 'stretched' to do it.

The least they should be doing is revoking passports, citizenships and incarceration if they returned. They should also be combating the threat that is there already, those that didn't get to Syria or Iraq yet but are part of the terrorist network.

There is unemployment, do something constructive and get all the great minds that could use decent jobs and pay and put together a well trained task force, intelligence, properly trained men on the streets, professionals monitoring the net, thousands strong in every county and shire.

Make good use of the countries talents and give the UK a sense of pride again in taking part in constructive national security.

Does anyone think ATS has a role in deterring terrorism?

In the UK, not really, especially if you are talking about "Islamic terrorism", much of what we discuss has a conspiratorial slant. I mean a lot of people on ATS don't even believe that the terrorists even exist, because according to many "We [usually the USA] trained them and all those attacks are false flags". How can we possibly be deterring terrorism when a large group of our membership refuse to even recognise acts of terrorism as acts of terrorism.

So no i do not think that ATS would ever be used for Jiahdi recruitment, there are other places on the web for that.

However, I do believe that when it comes to acts of domestic, nationalist terrorism then ATS is doing the opposite of deterring it. In fact when it comes to the United States in particular i think amongst our membership we probably have the next Timothy McVeigh. A guy who is sitting in front of his PC getting more and more pissed of with his "despot government" every time he logs into ATS reading about the next "False flag" or how they are taking more of his "liberties" (guns come to mind) and he is getting more and more determined that perhaps striking out at this government may be the logical course of action. I really do believe it is only a matter of time before we read about how one of our own members over the pond has snapped, walked into a federal building and shot it up to "defend the constitution".

I do believe this will one day happen.

But I do not believe that any terrorists from the UK will become radicalised through ATS.

Although I do believe that there are many American members who will or perhaps even have became radicalised to commit acts which under American law would be classed as "terrorism" in the name of "defending their rights" or "removing a despot government".