June/July 07 UK Terror Plot: A 5GW perspective

Hmm…perhaps the British Osteopath Society was behind it?

What’s funny, is if you did want to hit their health care system and leave no trail, finding some Muslim MD to convince to do as terror attack may have the effect you suggest.

The question is, would somebody want to incur the cost/risk to do 5GW against the Brit health system. I am not sure that such a cause would bring enough payback to a potential 5GWer.

Of course, is this is actually a “Global Political Islam” meme-based-network action, every little attack that is unique and un-expected might be worth it. Long-term, is the Brit health system is reduced, the Brits may have their the morale reduced, their faith in national governments reduced (hello Scottish nationalist), and their resiliency to future national health emergencies reduced.

Hmm…

Like purpleslog I’m also looking for the motive and the means. If the 5GW campaign was really against the British healthcare system, we’re looking at an actor with that motive, and the ability to influence foreign terrorists to use medical workers in an attack, despite the obvious better uses for them that you list.

Or, if that was the motive, more damage could easily have been done by having the medical workers intentionally cause harm to patients - best if it was not detectable immediately. The destruction of trust in foreign healthcare workers that this would have generated would have been exponentially greaterthan simple car bombs.

I think the key is to not mistake this tree for a whole forest. A 5GW campaign, as I see it, would involve many such operations. If this were an actual 5GW campaign perhaps the next phase would be the intentional sacrifice of another cell of foreign medical workers from Pakistan. A what point then are two Jordanian, or Indian doctors having lunch in a hospital cafeteria looked upon with suspicion? At what point is an Iraqi nurse handing out medicine as part of her rounds unable to do her job because her patients refuse to take the pilss for fear they are poison? It may not even be medical workers, maybe it is mass transit workers driving their buses into buildings, stock traders intentionally loosing money or resturant owners causing an epidemic of food poisoning. (The beauty of this is you wouldn’t even have to go to the time and effort of training them. Any one of these cells could be plotting to attack Buckingham Palace with a giant bottle-rocket and if and when they are discovered they could do immense damage just by their nationality and ideology. They are guilty by association with Al-Queda.)

The main point is this. Right now the UK is in a state of demographic transition. This year for the first time more British parents named their newborn sons Mohammed than Jack or James. Fostering outright xenophobia could be an exploitation of what is a potential critical vulnerability in the British system (not just the healthcare system).

If this attack is part of a Qaedist 4GW, as seems likely, then educated Muslims in Britain are at special risk of being terrorists.

If this attack is part of a 5gW, as you suggest, then educated Muslims in Britain are at special risk of being dupes.

Either way, this is an attack we should embrace to limit migration from the Arab World to the west.

Yes, dupes being the best kind of pawn for a 5GW organization. There are rule sets in place for dealing with terrorist attacks but what is the rule set for an attack on a social phobia?

Imagine, if you will, in that scenario I mentioned where another cell is intentionally exposed. What if that cell was intentionally exposed to a group of already xenophobic vigilantes? How would the headlines read the next day? How would the ‘Arab Street’ react? What would then be the next phase?

5GW is a deep, deep game. In many ways the target is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

This article was linked at The Momentum Project — which seems to be a Christian 5GW effort (first impression only, after scanning the page) — with this blurb:

Analysis of London attacks, Dreaming 5GW, 04 Jul 2007BRITAIN · This article has more to do with the 5th-generation-warfare aspects of the recent terror attacks. But, it highlights the cultural influx of unreached peoples into Europe… particularly in the medical profession. Here is an outreach point: not just to students, but also professionals (like doctors).

And so, the Project would seem to offer a 5GWish countermeasure, or at least a suggested preemption, that, if it could be done, might make Dan’s suggestion of a reduction of migration from the Arab world moot.

The Momentum Project gives this as a description of itself (follow the link to their old site; the new site has a broken link):

Our Mission

To help believers passionately, quickly,
and effectively obey the Great Commission
and reach the Unreached Peoples of our world.

We build six things in our readers:
Drive: passion to go to the least-reached
Energy: capacity to cross distances
Effort: to evangelize, disciple, transform;
Inspiration: motivating the unmotivated;
Power: discipline, accountability, focus;
Strength: to not sway from frontier mission.

In a way it does sound like a typical missionary prospectus, but given the sort of articles linked at the site — even, Arherring’s article — it would appear to be something a little different, or have a focus not out of synch with Barnett’s vision.

I suppose I should make this a post, but I’m leaving it as a comment here for now.

I’m reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s take on the Discordian Law of Fives — everything can be related to the number five if you try hard enough.

“As information about this plot comes out I think I see a 5GW or proto-5GW aspect to it… [much that leads up to the notion that the commonality of the health care profession among the attackers indicates the attacks were an indirect effort to sabotage the healthcare system] … That is the 5GW attack!”

Maybe, maybe not. Occam’s Razor would, I believe, tend to point us in the direction of noting that small groups of associates tend to form along professional lines and that when people get bad ideas that require the assistance of others, they tend to turn to their existing associates. The incompetence of the attackers could also be seen as supporting that view.

“Occam’s Razor would, I believe, tend to point us in the direction of noting that small groups of associates tend to form along professional lines and that when people get bad ideas that require the assistance of others, they tend to turn to their existing associates. The incompetence of the attackers could also be seen as supporting that view.”

Yes, and that is why the attack was most likely (by Occam’s logic) a badly planned and executed 4GW attack against a relatively well prepared British security system. Putting things in a 5GW context is a useful exercise and helps me envision how the campaign could be operationalized. I don’t really think that it was 5GW, but it certainly did have some interesting 5GW, or proto-5GW aspects.

Yes, anything can be related to almost anything else if you try hard enough. That is the nature of the narrative fallacy. Perhaps I should have started the post by stating that I was putting my 5GW-conspiracy theorist hat on.

“The 5GW attack was on the heathcare system of the UK.”

One of my first thoughts when reading this post, besides the thought given by Brad Spangler above, was the question, “Are you sure it wasn’t an attack on the University System?”

While an attack on the healthcare system seems like a possibility, my own bias against various entrenched university systems promoted the question. In the spirit of Dan’s redrawing of the Iron Triangle, I naturally ask myself:

• How the system of education can push through graduates who meet a bare minimum of standards within an insular field without bothering to ensure a more well-rounded education. (This ties in with The ZenPundit’s comment at a related tdaxp thread…)
• How this style of educating, whether within the UK and US only or in fact anywhere else, may produce graduates intended to be cogs in the machinery of “Our System” and only that, with only that as a real goal.
• How in fact such an educational system is geared to support the old Iron Triangle: e.g., a) by feeding workers to insular industries, b) by creating an elite with ties to both industry and legislative bodies, perhaps through creating cross-cultural and cross-national links, or in fact c) by sometimes creating legislators or would-be legislators out of an elite class.

I am not attempting to address certain financial inequalities in the university system, where rich or connected foreigners are welcomed quickly, nor even how the educational system may be an ultracalvinist mechanism (i.e., a breeding ground for liberals and leftists) which welcomes poorer foreigners in a type of outreach program, but merely how the old educational system is built to operate as a greasing mechanism for an old social system which is falling apart. The assembly-line type of specialization may be good at producing these one-sided professionals, but when utilized for a system that would be new and come to dominate over the old, may be self-defeating. We ask, “How could doctors do such things?”

The answer: “Doctors” as produced by the university system were intended to be cogs in the old system, falling into place, an insular place; but doctors are really more well-rounded than that, or have taken their “education” elsewhere as well as at the universities.

Whether these attacks were 5GW or 4GW attacks on the healthcare system or the university system is really beside the point, except insofar as each of these systems, as constructed, may be antiquated and activities by enemies to the US and UK will continue to show us where our old systems are failing. Naturally, however, a clever opponent might learn this fact well enough over time to actually use it for 5GW operations.

A note on Occam’s Razor: that idea is a crutch more than anything else today. It works wonderfully when address smaller systems, and particularly insular systems; but it will prove increasing inadequate for addressing the complexity of globalized society.