How You Cannot Fight the New Terrorists

The New Terrorists have as far as we can determine become members of all religions, sects, cults, etc. No help there. We cannot reliably use appearance. Can you backtrack from financial events and terrorism events, communication traffic and anomalies? A definite maybe. Methodology?

The New Terrorists are extremely computer savvy. Perhaps more so than employees of NSA, CIA etc. They grew up with the World Wide Web, cell phones, etc. They program for fun and profit. No help there. They think computers and networks are baby stuff, the mere components of dreams and schemes.

Said an American journalist John Schrab.

The New Terrorists are extremely savvy about money and finances. As are most 20, 30 and 40 somethings. Oldsters tend to look at things a bit differently based on their life experiences. Not so the under 50 crowd. If an entire population is skilled at something, how to determine the "bad guys and gals"?

The New Terrorists are transnational. They are like corporations used to be. Financial markets depend on globalisation and 24/7. Impossible to differentiate as far as we can tell. "Everybody's doin' it".

He further argued that modern terrorism is all about the good weapons. By knowing unscheduled "events" one can place "bets" in markets worldwide and never arouse suspicion. Trading in everything, stocks, bonds and commodities as well as the underground economy, is now 24/7. If we know what will occur, fortunes can be made.

This is not because of some kind of second sight but rather the old phenomenon of insider trading which has been around forever. We suppose if a terrorism analyst was particularly brilliant, he or she could coordinate SEC-type trading analysis with terrorism analysis and come up with some interesting nexuses (nexi?).

The genius of the new terrorists is their very banality. They are not wild-eyed fanatics. They use wild-eyed fanatics as dupes, stooges and patsies. They do not fight governments, they actively cooperate with portions of all governments.

They do not fight organized crime or narco-traffickers, they share selected information with them and use this to make even more weapons. The new terrorists are, in effect, invisible because everyone everywhere is devoted to stuffing their pockets with loot as fast as they can.

How can you possibly fight this? It is very difficult, as a new terror organizations found out. If the fighters are magnificent warriors along the noble savage model, they were also a walking anachronism. How can you tell them apart from innocent wealth seekers? They are both usually amoral so that is of no help.

The new terrorist and those who fight terrorists around the world have the same objective: hunt and destroy them. The new terrorist then can subtly play the game to use those who love to shoot guns and kill people to manipulate unscheduled events and thus markets.

(Kamala Sarup is an editor of peacejournalism.com)

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