A different slant on extremism?

[cee-dee]

I can't recall this being mentioned before but with all this religious extremism coming from radicalised "followers" of one particular cult, I wondered how they're being funded and by whom?

Who pays for the weapons and ammunition plus all the peripherals? Where are they made, how do they get to those extremists? Who has enough money to literally throw in to such conflicts?

There are really unpleasant conflictss in the Middle East and Africa and I wondered if it was being financed from where it all began, further East? Has anyone else had similar thoughts?

[cee-dee]

Further to all that, many years back I was present at an auction sale at one of our "Goverment arms factories" where many, many machines, tools and equipment were being sold off (at knock down prices!!) and guess where a lot of the things were going? Yep, "Out East".

One machine, then only  a few years old and hardly used cost £250,000 and was sold for £55,000.

I still have some tools I bought there.

[joamur_gosof]

Weopon manufacturing after the world war was and still is run by the big 3 USA UK and Russia,China is the mass production line of all three of these nations. All other back street gun shops like gaza for example are not funded and as such there has been no organized mobile armed army to assault Isreal because they havent the money or the trade of interest to buy off (whether equipment or actual arms )the worlds gun and munition manufactorers.

Korea was armed to the teeth by all 3 ,so was Africa so was middle east. All manufactoring of weapon outlets throughout the world are run and supervised by said same....others are not funded so therefore not running about machine gunning the air for tv.

I thought that was your question....who is supplying the munitions ? 

Mere ,apologies I was referring to thread on guns not your post ,sorry for misunderstanding.

[cee-dee]

The AK47 seems to be the weapon of choice for terrorism. If the "big 3" make all the guns, what have the other dozens of countries known to have made AK47s been doing then?

From what I've seen of conflicts, the extremists, fanatics, radicals, terrorists or lunatics (call them what you will) seem to spray bullets all over the place hoping one will hit someone or they murder people at short range in cold blood so one of the poorly made AK47s will do the job just as well as one of the superbly made Western guns. In fact, the AK47 will probably do a better job as it functions well even when badly made, dirty, neglected or worn.

Italy is a huge manufacturer of guns so are you now going to expand "the big 3" in to "the big 4"?

It's questioning the route the guns and ammo take to get in to the hands of terrorism and the route the funding takes that was the purpose of my OP.

[blackburn_stevie]

Read the news, Cee Dee.

After every American invasion, you can guarntee that of the  50,000 troops that were deployed in a foreign land (numbers are all guesswork.) only about 1,000 went home with all their kit. Something about it being too expensive to fly it all out of the area so it all just gets dumped. The last bit I recall was whn the Yanks left Afghanistan and left 800 Jeeps all packed up to the rafters with weaponry and armaments.

[evoman3957]

I swear it was in the news a while back, that when the Iraqi Army all ran away ( on mass ) when confronted by Islamic State Fighters; they left EVERYTHING behind, Tanks, Jeeps, Armoured Personell Carriers, Rocket Launchers, Guns, Ammo........the whole shooting match. ALL Weapons supplied to them by the West, to sort their Lives and their Country out ( supposedly )......Result....straight into the Hands of Terrorists.......can't get any quicker than that. &*@*"<?> Waste of Time, Space, Energy & Effort.............needless to say LIVES !!

[cee-dee]

As ever. what's being said gets diverted away from the previous comments made.

What provoked the issue of where the weapons were made was the comment about "the big 3".

The weapon of mass choice by terrorists seems to be the AK47. I don't think the USA (or the UK for that matter?) produced AK47s? OK, they may have made many types of automatic weapons but the AK47 suits terrorists because it's easy to maintain quite apart from the fact that the manufacturing tolerances are less critical and it will continue to work in harsher conditions than "better" weapons produced by "quality" manufacturers.

Yes, it's true that some weaponry was left in Afghanistan (and Iraq) by "The West" but did the "terrorists" want them (for long?) due to the more specialised maintainance and ammunition requirements?

What happened in Iraq was that the arms dumps were looted after the fall of Saddam and what was the weapon in most use there? An AK47?

Getting back to "the big 3", the Czechoslovakian arms industry was/is large and produced a wide variety of automatic weapons and Belgium produced the well-known Brownings. Apart from that, the current list of "arms manufacturers" is quite staggering.

[evoman3957]

As ever. what's being said gets diverted away from the previous comments made.

I don't know why you constantly say things like this ( above ^^^^^ ) when in post # 23 you said the following

It's questioning the route the guns and ammo take to get in to the hands of terrorism and the route the funding takes that was the purpose of my OP.

So my answer, as to how they got into the Hands of Terrorists, in post #25 didn't divert away from your very own post # 23 at all

[cee-dee]

I replied to #22. Since then things got a bit mixed but still insisting that "the big 3" was where the weapons came from which is what I replied to again.

Watching TV news reports, which weapon is most often seen in the hands of "terrorists"? = an AK47 of one sort or another which was the weapon used by the two Paris brothers. The other gunman used a Czech Škorpion.

[joamur_gosof]

I wasnt saying cd ,that all weopons and munitions are produced IN the 3 countries,I am saying they are RUN and supervised by the big 3 (well now 2 if you were to nit pick as UK is USA on that front) 

No weaopons made and then sold to (whoever for gold (ha) is where the fault lies here...funded arms manufacturing starts at tax payers coffers.

To get more factual then ..who exactly are you referring to as terrorists with guns pls ? Then we can get a factual where those terrorists (rebals) (freedom fighters) (nutjobs) got armed by following the trail

[cee-dee]

Where do you start? There's so many of them?

Where did the Syrian factions (and there's a few of them) get their weapons to start with, that is before the latest abandonment of weaponry in Iraq? Before that there was the conflict in the Lebanon.

Move over to Africa, Sudan, Mali, Nigeria to name a few.

[joamur_gosof]

Remember when syria was accused of using its weopons on its own people ?  well remember how that was proved wrong by russia counting the inventery of that country ? How does an inventory held by russia on syrias weopons work then ?

USA can do exact same for Italy ,belgium,sweeden and anyone else it supervises ,russia can do the same for its sphere...so I honestly thought you wondered how the 'well armed'' terrorists were funded and organized on a differant slant (not the ''mad rich arab buys guns from whoever and arms a mad people to cause a fuss slant'' but an alternate on how its all made possible.

I can get my hands on a couple of guns and a homemade bomb to go and blow up shoot a bank and shout allah before police shoot me..papers gonna say what ?

Hope I am not getting in the way here of a well balanced disscussion on this forum,I was just offering a different view point on funding and supplying arms around the world

[joamur_gosof]

sorry cd,didnt see the last one....ok lets take Nigera then and how their militant apposees got the means to cause the outrages....I think off top of my head ,Korea has something to do with their organization but will be back in a while after I do some research .

Yes I know I made a word up ...

[cee-dee]

It seems the Paris gunmen financed their spree themselves and bought their guns (for a lotta money) from a Belgian criminal supplier.

Other conflicts must be funded from "somewhere" due to the sheer quantity of weapons and it wouldn't be funded by anyone who wasn't a follower of the religion at the forefront of all the radical unrest.

The thing is, in a supposedly "settled" Western country, you don't really need to do much in the way of "terrorism" to cause, well, "terror" because the mere suspicion or threat is enough to cause a lot of expensive disruption which is what the "terrorists" intended as an early step along their intended path of destruction of the Western culture and a return to uncivilised oppression.

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

I think the word "terror" should be dropped.  It implies victimhood of the majority of the population.  Of course, the media love it.  As do governments, to an extent (given it distracts from other things going on). 

Refer to any perpetrators as just plain murderers and you alter the emphasis.  Don't bother mentioning any religious affiliation either.  It only gives their organisations power.  Don't give any screen time to the attackers.  Don't air their crowing videos.  Don't even name them.  Take away the publicity.  Take away their feeling that they are part of something bigger and stronger.  Isolate and anonymise them.   Remove the idea that whole populations can be terrorised by a few mad fanatics.  Divert resources (media and government) to other issues.

Why doesn't this happen?  Other agendas are at play. 

[cee-dee]

A very sensible post there but impossible to implement.

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

There's a teen on trial down here at the moment.  He went around stabbing women cos he felt like it, basically.  He admired serial killers and wanted to kill someone.  He wounded 4 quite seriously.

It's not headline news.  Why?  It was pretty "terrifying" for the women concerned and the wider society in which they lived whilst he was on the loose.  But as he had no religious motivation or affiliation, and there was no race or ethnicity card to play, the media aren't very interested.  

So, it is possible not to go OTT reporting these things, if the will were there.

[cee-dee]

Ah, now you're talking about sensationalsm? If the news isn't sensational enough or there's other more sensational news, some things don't get reported.

For instance, look at how the news was dominated about that cargo ship which was run ground to prevent it capsizing? Now, the "more interesting" news about the pumping out and righting is only getting a minor mention if at all.

Then again, the Air Asia plane, it was headline news for ages and now they've recovered the data recorders and found the fuselage, what's being reported now?

Sooooo, because yon laddie of whom you speak has no sensationalist background, the only mention will be on local news?

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

Indeed.  If the teen had said he committed his crimes for religious reasons, it would suddenly be a story of note, even though the end result (4 injured women) was the same.  His background would be dissected.  The fact he comes from a place where a number of young men have travelled to Syria to fight would be made much of, etc, etc.

Media power is enormous - a propoganda machine without parallel.  With that, should come responsibility, IMV.

[cee-dee]

The present news media in all its forms is heavily hooked on cheap sensationalism and it's really time someone took them in hand and gave them some re-educating on what constitutes news.

They need taking to task about many issues on which their reporting goes way beyond news and often becomes a promotional stunt for the person supposedly reporting the news. I don't think people are interested in the often biased opinion of the big-shot reporter? Watch most of them hammering on as if they're talking to a class of ten year olds and if you cut their hands off, they'd be speechless?

A real pain in the neck is the reporting of all things political. I'd like to grab hold of the reporters and say "Look pal, the news is...... what was just said............ not all that clap-trap you've just come out with." The reason for that is some politician comes out with fifteen seconds of something newsworthy but it's followed up with ten minutes of yakking by "our political editor" giving chapter and verse on every possible interpretation of what was said (in his opinion).

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

It's only gonna get worse from now till May, CD. 

I am waiting for the invention of a TV remote that automatically mutes when certain topics (selected by the individual user) come up.  At the moment I do this manually when any air-time is given to any religious spokesperson.  I could then extend that to the political, football, and so on, as desired.