Snowden: Brussels Attack and Boston Bombing Could Have Been Stopped.

As Snowden noted during the University of Arizona panel discussion, which also included Professor Noam Chomsky and journalist Glenn Greenwald, these reports surfaced almost immediately after the attacks claiming Belgian and other intelligence forces had been notified of the potential danger this individual posed.

“In all the talk of Brussels, there’s a story that just recently broke, which I’m not sure has gotten the same play as the others, which is that the attack was preventable; and it was preventable through traditional means, not mass surveillance. An allied intelligence service — in this case, in Turkey — warned Belgium that this individual was a criminal, that they were involved in terrorist activities, and this individual turned out to be one of the suicide bombers.” 

“In the United States, we have the same thing, in the Boston Marathon bombings. We were explicitly warned by foreign intelligence services that one of the brothers [who] was involved in the bombings would be engaged in that kind of activity,”

“The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that [the Brussels] attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.”

“I think it’s really important to note a couple of things about Brussels. Number one is, the Brussels attack is now the fourth straight attack, after Boston, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and then the Paris attacks, where siblings, brothers, were at the heart of the planning. And just like in those three previous attacks that I just referenced, the attacks were carried out by people who live in the same communities, who live very close to one another, and who almost certainly met in person in order to plan them. And yet, the exploitive mindset of Western politicians is to say, every time there’s a successful attack carried out, it means we need to wage war on encryption, we need greater surveillance, we need more police in these communities. But the reality is … none of that will actually help detect the attack.”

"[For] 15 years [the United States] has been declaring itself at war and bombing multiple countries and then acts surprised when people want to come and attack us back."

“And so I think, more than saying we need more intelligence and more surveillance and wage war on encryption and more bombing campaigns, we need to be asking whether there are things that we can be doing that reduce the incentive for people to kill us … and especially the support infrastructure that they get because of the anti-American and anti-European sentiment that gets generated when we engage in all of this violence in the world.” ~ Ed Snowden. 

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Jake Bilardi. Why would a gifted student from Craigieburn join ISIS?

Neighbours and friends described Jake Bilardi as, “shy and confused”. He was living with two older brothers and a sister after his mother died in 2012. One of Jake's classmates said, “He was ­really smart but seemed to get even quieter after his mum died."  

So why would a gifted Atheist teenager from the Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn convert to Islam, join ISIS and become a suicide bomber?

If you ask Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, it's the use of social media by ISIS to radicalize impressionable young people that is the problem. I don't think that it's that simple. So if joining ISIS is seen as the solution for young people all over the world then what is the real problem? I mean you would have to be mad, a lunatic or in a pretty desperate situation to join ISIS.

In an article written by Kenan Malik in The Guardian titled "A search for identity draws jihadis to the horrors of ISIS", it discusses why middle class, English speaking background and non practising Muslim people are joining ISIS.

It can't be what is written in the Koran that is the lure, after all there has be a high population of Muslims  in western countries for many years now and this is a relatively recent problem. An examination of the purchases by some young recruits from England before they travelled to Syria discovered they purchased books like "Islam for Dummies" and "The Koran for Dummies". In other words, they had little or no understanding of Islam before travelling to Syria. So if Islam is not the problem, what is?

Malik's article discusses alienation, isolation, apathy and disconnection from society. It's not politics or religion but the search for belonging, the search for respect, something that we can all identify with, that convince young people to travel to Syria. Some of the entries in Jake Bilardi's blog, as quoted in The Guardian say, that he felt that his home, "wasn't really his home". "It has gotten to the point where it feels like I am on a movie set."  Going by these quotes coupled with the loss of his mother, it would seem that a perfect storm was created where by the sense of belonging to a group like ISIS was desirable. 

We all know that killing people is wrong but we can't solve the problem of young people joining ISIS by condemning individuals or blaming social media. We need to deal with the context in which it occurs. If you treat people like outsiders they will feel like outsiders and they will seek belonging elsewhere. Many young people around the world feel disengaged from society and seek to join groups such as ISIS where they can feel like they belong, they have a purpose. 

What Malik's article tells me is that our society is broken, it isn't working, the system isn't working, it's totally corrupt. If the insanity of ISIS can appeal to a certain section of the population we have a huge cultural problem. As a society we need to create a better alternative to ISIS and fix the problems that make joining ISIS the only solution. Until we do, the problem of young people joining ISIS will continue to escalate.