1
00:00:00,521 --> 00:00:05,356
We most certainly do talk to terrorists, no question about it.

2
00:00:05,356 --> 00:00:11,242
We are at war with a new form of terrorism.

3
00:00:11,242 --> 00:00:14,744
It's sort of the good old, traditional form of terrorism,

4
00:00:14,744 --> 00:00:18,206
but it's sort of been packaged for the 21st century.

5
00:00:18,206 --> 00:00:22,654
One of the big things about countering terrorism

6
00:00:22,654 --> 00:00:25,986
is, how do you perceive it?

7
00:00:25,986 --> 00:00:29,482
Because perception leads to your response to it.

8
00:00:29,482 --> 00:00:33,710
So if you have a traditional perception of terrorism,

9
00:00:33,710 --> 00:00:37,658
it would be that it's one of criminality, one of war.

10
00:00:37,658 --> 00:00:39,271
So how are you going to respond to it?

11
00:00:39,271 --> 00:00:42,905
Naturally, it would follow that you meet kind with kind.

12
00:00:42,905 --> 00:00:46,736
You fight it. If you have a more modernist approach,

13
00:00:46,736 --> 00:00:50,992
and your perception of terrorism is almost cause-and-effect,

14
00:00:50,992 --> 00:00:54,955
then naturally from that, the responses that come out of it

15
00:00:54,955 --> 00:00:58,603
are much more asymmetrical.

16
00:00:58,603 --> 00:01:02,710
We live in a modern, global world.

17
00:01:02,710 --> 00:01:06,192
Terrorists have actually adapted to it.

18
00:01:06,192 --> 00:01:09,941
It's something we have to, too, and that means the people

19
00:01:09,941 --> 00:01:13,081
who are working on counterterrorism responses

20
00:01:13,081 --> 00:01:15,905
have to start, in effect, putting on

21
00:01:15,905 --> 00:01:20,159
their Google-tinted glasses, or whatever.

22
00:01:20,159 --> 00:01:24,952
For my part, what I wanted us to do was just to look at

23
00:01:24,952 --> 00:01:28,456
terrorism as though it was a global brand,

24
00:01:28,456 --> 00:01:30,085
say, Coca-Cola.

25
00:01:30,085 --> 00:01:36,102
Both are fairly bad for your health. (Laughter)

26
00:01:36,102 --> 00:01:40,132
If you look at it as a brand in those ways,

27
00:01:40,132 --> 00:01:43,396
what you'll come to realize is, it's a pretty flawed product.

28
00:01:43,396 --> 00:01:46,489
As we've said, it's pretty bad for your health,

29
00:01:46,489 --> 00:01:48,495
it's bad for those who it affects,

30
00:01:48,495 --> 00:01:51,528
and it's not actually good if you're a suicide bomber either.

31
00:01:51,528 --> 00:01:55,144
It doesn't actually do what it says on the tin.

32
00:01:55,144 --> 00:02:00,136
You're not really going to get 72 virgins in heaven.

33
00:02:00,136 --> 00:02:02,606
It's not going to happen, I don't think.

34
00:02:02,606 --> 00:02:06,584
And you're not really going to, in the '80s, end capitalism

35
00:02:06,584 --> 00:02:09,505
by supporting one of these groups. It's a load of nonsense.

36
00:02:09,505 --> 00:02:12,783
But what you realize, it's got an Achilles' heel.

37
00:02:12,783 --> 00:02:15,536
The brand has an Achilles' heel.

38
00:02:15,536 --> 00:02:17,303
We've mentioned the health,

39
00:02:17,303 --> 00:02:20,983
but it needs consumers to buy into it.

40
00:02:20,983 --> 00:02:25,063
The consumers it needs are the terrorist constituency.

41
00:02:25,063 --> 00:02:27,764
They're the people who buy into the brand, support them,

42
00:02:27,764 --> 00:02:31,072
facilitate them, and they're the people

43
00:02:31,072 --> 00:02:33,587
we've got to reach out to.

44
00:02:33,587 --> 00:02:36,447
We've got to attack that brand in front of them.

45
00:02:36,447 --> 00:02:40,700
There's two essential ways of doing that, if we carry on this brand theme.

46
00:02:40,700 --> 00:02:43,978
One is reducing their market. What I mean is,

47
00:02:43,978 --> 00:02:48,754
it's their brand against our brand. We've got to compete.

48
00:02:48,754 --> 00:02:51,006
We've got to show we're a better product.

49
00:02:51,006 --> 00:02:54,163
If I'm trying to show we're a better product,

50
00:02:54,163 --> 00:02:59,094
I probably wouldn't do things like Guantanamo Bay.

51
00:02:59,094 --> 00:03:02,759
We've talked there about curtailing the underlying need

52
00:03:02,759 --> 00:03:06,407
for the product itself. You could be looking there at

53
00:03:06,407 --> 00:03:09,992
poverty, injustice, all those sorts of things

54
00:03:09,992 --> 00:03:11,521
which feed terrorism.

55
00:03:11,521 --> 00:03:15,253
The other thing to do is to knock the product,

56
00:03:15,253 --> 00:03:17,448
attack the brand myth, as we've said.

57
00:03:17,448 --> 00:03:20,807
You know, there's nothing heroic about killing a young kid.

58
00:03:20,807 --> 00:03:25,503
Perhaps we need to focus on that and get that message back across.

59
00:03:25,503 --> 00:03:28,597
We've got to reveal the dangers in the product.

60
00:03:28,597 --> 00:03:32,246
Our target audience, it's not just the producers of terrorism,

61
00:03:32,246 --> 00:03:33,447
as I've said, the terrorists.

62
00:03:33,447 --> 00:03:35,834
It's not just the marketeers of terrorism,

63
00:03:35,834 --> 00:03:40,641
which is those who finance, those who facilitate it,

64
00:03:40,641 --> 00:03:42,554
but it's the consumers of terrorism.

65
00:03:42,554 --> 00:03:45,788
We've got to get in to those homelands.

66
00:03:45,788 --> 00:03:49,257
That's where they recruit from. That's where they get their power and strength.

67
00:03:49,257 --> 00:03:51,609
That's where their consumers come from.

68
00:03:51,609 --> 00:03:55,521
And we have to get our messaging in there.

69
00:03:55,521 --> 00:03:59,370
So the essentials are, we've got to have interaction

70
00:03:59,370 --> 00:04:02,713
in those areas, with the terrorists, the facilitators, etc.

71
00:04:02,713 --> 00:04:05,848
We've got to engage, we've got to educate,

72
00:04:05,848 --> 00:04:08,651
and we've got to have dialogue.

73
00:04:08,651 --> 00:04:12,802
Now, staying on this brand thing for just a few more seconds,

74
00:04:12,802 --> 00:04:16,054
think about delivery mechanisms.

75
00:04:16,054 --> 00:04:17,687
How are we going to do these attacks?

76
00:04:17,687 --> 00:04:20,696
Well, reducing the market is really one for governments

77
00:04:20,696 --> 00:04:24,214
and civil society. We've got to show we're better.

78
00:04:24,214 --> 00:04:28,056
We've got to show our values.

79
00:04:28,056 --> 00:04:30,358
We've got to practice what we preach.

80
00:04:30,358 --> 00:04:32,571
But when it comes to knocking the brand,

81
00:04:32,571 --> 00:04:37,043
if the terrorists are Coca-Cola and we're Pepsi,

82
00:04:37,043 --> 00:04:41,057
I don't think, being Pepsi, anything we say about Coca-Cola,

83
00:04:41,057 --> 00:04:42,939
anyone's going to believe us.

84
00:04:42,939 --> 00:04:45,264
So we've got to find a different mechanism,

85
00:04:45,264 --> 00:04:47,656
and one of the best mechanisms I've ever come across

86
00:04:47,656 --> 00:04:50,313
is the victims of terrorism.

87
00:04:50,313 --> 00:04:53,226
They are somebody who can actually stand there and say,

88
00:04:53,226 --> 00:04:57,654
"This product's crap. I had it and I was sick for days.

89
00:04:57,654 --> 00:05:01,100
It burnt my hand, whatever." You believe them.

90
00:05:01,100 --> 00:05:03,743
You can see their scars. You trust them.

91
00:05:03,743 --> 00:05:09,008
But whether it's victims, whether it's governments,

92
00:05:09,008 --> 00:05:14,713
NGOs, or even the Queen yesterday, in Northern Ireland,

93
00:05:14,713 --> 00:05:18,815
we have to interact and engage with those different

94
00:05:18,815 --> 00:05:23,410
layers of terrorism, and, in effect,

95
00:05:23,410 --> 00:05:27,457
we do have to have a little dance with the devil.

96
00:05:27,457 --> 00:05:30,440
This is my favorite part of my speech.

97
00:05:30,440 --> 00:05:33,696
I wanted to blow you all up to try and make a point,

98
00:05:33,696 --> 00:05:37,418
but — (Laughter) —

99
00:05:37,418 --> 00:05:40,206
TED, for health and safety reasons, have told me

100
00:05:40,206 --> 00:05:41,712
I've got to do a countdown, so

101
00:05:41,712 --> 00:05:45,010
I feel like a bit of an Irish or Jewish terrorist,

102
00:05:45,010 --> 00:05:50,424
sort of a health and safety terrorist, and I — (Laughter) —

103
00:05:50,424 --> 00:05:53,733
I've got to count 3, 2, 1, and

104
00:05:53,733 --> 00:05:57,060
it's a bit alarming, so thinking of what my motto would be,

105
00:05:57,060 --> 00:05:59,818
and it would be, "Body parts, not heart attacks."

106
00:05:59,818 --> 00:06:05,309
So 3, 2, 1. (Explosion sound)

107
00:06:05,309 --> 00:06:10,256
Very good. (Laughter)

108
00:06:10,256 --> 00:06:18,065
Now, lady in 15J was a suicide bomber amongst us all.

109
00:06:18,065 --> 00:06:20,190
We're all victims of terrorism.

110
00:06:20,190 --> 00:06:25,091
There's 625 of us in this room. We're going to be scarred for life.

111
00:06:25,091 --> 00:06:29,166
There was a father and a son who sat in that seat over there.

112
00:06:29,166 --> 00:06:31,650
The son's dead. The father lives.

113
00:06:31,650 --> 00:06:37,571
The father will probably kick himself for years to come

114
00:06:37,571 --> 00:06:41,810
that he didn't take that seat instead of his kid.

115
00:06:41,810 --> 00:06:43,823
He's going to take to alcohol, and he's probably

116
00:06:43,823 --> 00:06:48,183
going to kill himself in three years. That's the stats.

117
00:06:48,183 --> 00:06:51,927
There's a very young, attractive lady over here,

118
00:06:51,927 --> 00:06:54,955
and she has something which I think's the worst form

119
00:06:54,955 --> 00:06:57,751
of psychological, physical injury I've ever seen

120
00:06:57,751 --> 00:07:01,447
out of a suicide bombing: It's human shrapnel.

121
00:07:01,447 --> 00:07:03,600
What it means is, when she sat in a restaurant

122
00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:06,605
in years to come, 10 years to come, 15 years to come,

123
00:07:06,605 --> 00:07:09,087
or she's on the beach, every so often she's going to start

124
00:07:09,087 --> 00:07:12,060
rubbing her skin, and out of there will come

125
00:07:12,060 --> 00:07:14,294
a piece of that shrapnel.

126
00:07:14,294 --> 00:07:19,526
And that is a hard thing for the head to take.

127
00:07:19,526 --> 00:07:22,454
There's a lady over there as well who lost her legs

128
00:07:22,454 --> 00:07:25,966
in this bombing.

129
00:07:25,966 --> 00:07:30,050
She's going to find out that she gets a pitiful amount

130
00:07:30,050 --> 00:07:34,157
of money off our government

131
00:07:34,157 --> 00:07:37,449
for looking after what's happened to her.

132
00:07:37,449 --> 00:07:39,589
She had a daughter who was going to go to one of the best

133
00:07:39,589 --> 00:07:42,290
universities. She's going to give up university

134
00:07:42,290 --> 00:07:46,019
to look after Mum.

135
00:07:46,019 --> 00:07:48,551
We're all here, and all of those who watch it

136
00:07:48,551 --> 00:07:51,190
are going to be traumatized by this event,

137
00:07:51,190 --> 00:07:54,338
but all of you here who are victims are going to learn

138
00:07:54,338 --> 00:07:55,920
some hard truths.

139
00:07:55,920 --> 00:08:00,641
That is, our society, we sympathize, but after a while,

140
00:08:00,641 --> 00:08:04,529
we start to ignore. We don't do enough as a society.

141
00:08:04,529 --> 00:08:08,106
We do not look after our victims, and we do not enable them,

142
00:08:08,106 --> 00:08:11,114
and what I'm going to try and show is that actually,

143
00:08:11,114 --> 00:08:13,898
victims are the best weapon we have

144
00:08:13,898 --> 00:08:17,074
against more terrorism.

145
00:08:17,074 --> 00:08:21,290
How would the government at the turn of the millennium

146
00:08:21,290 --> 00:08:23,515
approach today? Well, we all know.

147
00:08:23,515 --> 00:08:26,119
What they'd have done then is an invasion.

148
00:08:26,119 --> 00:08:29,297
If the suicide bomber was from Wales,

149
00:08:29,297 --> 00:08:31,642
good luck to Wales, I'd say.

150
00:08:31,642 --> 00:08:35,394
Knee-jerk legislation, emergency provision legislation --

151
00:08:35,394 --> 00:08:39,093
which hits at the very basis of our society, as we all know --

152
00:08:39,093 --> 00:08:42,266
it's a mistake.

153
00:08:42,266 --> 00:08:45,721
We're going to drive prejudice throughout Edinburgh,

154
00:08:45,721 --> 00:08:50,151
throughout the U.K., for Welsh people.

155
00:08:50,151 --> 00:08:55,796
Today's approach, governments have learned from their mistakes.

156
00:08:55,796 --> 00:08:58,034
They are looking at what I've started off on,

157
00:08:58,034 --> 00:09:01,588
on these more asymmetrical approaches to it,

158
00:09:01,588 --> 00:09:04,290
more modernist views, cause and effect.

159
00:09:04,290 --> 00:09:07,067
But mistakes of the past are inevitable.

160
00:09:07,067 --> 00:09:08,567
It's human nature.

161
00:09:08,567 --> 00:09:12,303
The fear and the pressure to do something on them

162
00:09:12,303 --> 00:09:14,583
is going to be immense. They are going to make mistakes.

163
00:09:14,583 --> 00:09:18,228
They're not just going to be smart.

164
00:09:18,228 --> 00:09:21,542
There was a famous Irish terrorist who once summed up

165
00:09:21,542 --> 00:09:24,597
the point very beautifully. He said,

166
00:09:24,597 --> 00:09:26,709
"The thing is, about the British government, is, is that it's got

167
00:09:26,709 --> 00:09:31,173
to be lucky all the time, and we only have to be lucky once."

168
00:09:31,173 --> 00:09:34,413
So what we need to do is we have to effect it.

169
00:09:34,413 --> 00:09:37,169
We've got to start thinking about being more proactive.

170
00:09:37,169 --> 00:09:41,857
We need to build an arsenal of noncombative weapons

171
00:09:41,857 --> 00:09:43,478
in this war on terrorism.

172
00:09:43,478 --> 00:09:51,926
But of course, it's ideas -- is not something that governments do very well.

173
00:09:51,926 --> 00:09:56,105
I want to go back just to before the bang, to this idea of

174
00:09:56,105 --> 00:10:00,299
brand, and I was talking about Coke and Pepsi, etc.

175
00:10:00,299 --> 00:10:04,210
We see it as terrorism versus democracy in that brand war.

176
00:10:04,210 --> 00:10:06,231
They'll see it as freedom fighters and truth

177
00:10:06,231 --> 00:10:13,454
against injustice, imperialism, etc.

178
00:10:13,454 --> 00:10:17,445
We do have to see this as a deadly battlefield.

179
00:10:17,445 --> 00:10:20,619
It's not just [our] flesh and blood they want.

180
00:10:20,619 --> 00:10:23,492
They actually want our cultural souls, and that's why

181
00:10:23,492 --> 00:10:27,503
the brand analogy is a very interesting way of looking at this.

182
00:10:27,503 --> 00:10:32,083
If we look at al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was essentially

183
00:10:32,083 --> 00:10:36,623
a product on a shelf in a souk somewhere

184
00:10:36,623 --> 00:10:38,762
which not many people had heard of.

185
00:10:38,762 --> 00:10:42,926
9/11 launched it. It was its big marketing day,

186
00:10:42,926 --> 00:10:47,795
and it was packaged for the 21st century. They knew what they were doing.

187
00:10:47,795 --> 00:10:51,723
They were effectively [doing] something in this brand image

188
00:10:51,723 --> 00:10:54,907
of creating a brand which can be franchised around

189
00:10:54,907 --> 00:11:00,567
the world, where there's poverty, ignorance and injustice.

190
00:11:00,567 --> 00:11:04,630
We, as I've said, have got to hit that market,

191
00:11:04,630 --> 00:11:08,089
but we've got to use our heads rather than our might.

192
00:11:08,089 --> 00:11:11,863
If we perceive it in this way as a brand, or other ways of thinking at it like this,

193
00:11:11,863 --> 00:11:16,302
we will not resolve or counter terrorism.

194
00:11:16,302 --> 00:11:19,662
What I'd like to do is just briefly go through a few examples

195
00:11:19,662 --> 00:11:25,093
from my work on areas where we try and approach these things differently.

196
00:11:25,093 --> 00:11:28,782
The first one has been dubbed "lawfare,"

197
00:11:28,782 --> 00:11:31,224
for want of a better word.

198
00:11:31,224 --> 00:11:35,424
When we originally looked at bringing civil actions against terrorists,

199
00:11:35,424 --> 00:11:37,790
everyone thought we were a bit mad and mavericks

200
00:11:37,790 --> 00:11:41,554
and crackpots. Now it's got a title. Everyone's doing it.

201
00:11:41,554 --> 00:11:43,167
There's a bomb, people start suing.

202
00:11:43,167 --> 00:11:46,858
But one of the first early cases on this was the Omagh Bombing.

203
00:11:46,858 --> 00:11:50,597
A civil action was brought from 1998.

204
00:11:50,597 --> 00:11:54,005
In Omagh, bomb went off, Real IRA,

205
00:11:54,005 --> 00:11:56,220
middle of a peace process.

206
00:11:56,220 --> 00:12:00,363
That meant that the culprits couldn't really be prosecuted

207
00:12:00,363 --> 00:12:03,611
for lots of reasons, mostly to do with the peace process

208
00:12:03,611 --> 00:12:05,828
and what was going on, the greater good.

209
00:12:05,828 --> 00:12:08,323
It also meant, then, if you can imagine this,

210
00:12:08,323 --> 00:12:10,626
that the people who bombed your children

211
00:12:10,626 --> 00:12:15,983
and your husbands were walking around the supermarket

212
00:12:15,983 --> 00:12:17,667
that you lived in.

213
00:12:17,667 --> 00:12:21,429
Some of those victims said enough is enough.

214
00:12:21,429 --> 00:12:24,863
We brought a private action, and thank God, 10 years later,

215
00:12:24,863 --> 00:12:27,458
we actually won it. There is a slight appeal on

216
00:12:27,458 --> 00:12:29,273
at the moment so I have to be a bit careful,

217
00:12:29,273 --> 00:12:31,375
but I'm fairly confident.

218
00:12:31,390 --> 00:12:33,009
Why was it effective?

219
00:12:33,009 --> 00:12:35,646
It was effective not just because justice was seen to be done

220
00:12:35,646 --> 00:12:37,385
where there was a huge void.

221
00:12:37,385 --> 00:12:42,011
It was because the Real IRA and other terrorist groups,

222
00:12:42,011 --> 00:12:44,090
their whole strength is from the fact that they are

223
00:12:44,090 --> 00:12:48,836
an underdog. When we put the victims as the underdog

224
00:12:48,836 --> 00:12:51,976
and flipped it, they didn't know what to do.

225
00:12:51,976 --> 00:12:56,227
They were embarrassed. Their recruitment went down.

226
00:12:56,227 --> 00:13:00,515
The bombs actually stopped -- fact -- because of this action.

227
00:13:00,515 --> 00:13:04,220
We became, or those victims became, more importantly,

228
00:13:04,220 --> 00:13:08,196
a ghost that haunted the terrorist organization.

229
00:13:08,196 --> 00:13:10,995
There's other examples. We have a case called Almog

230
00:13:10,995 --> 00:13:15,187
which is to do with a bank that was,

231
00:13:15,187 --> 00:13:18,193
allegedly, from our point of view,

232
00:13:18,193 --> 00:13:22,108
giving rewards to suicide bombers.

233
00:13:22,108 --> 00:13:25,116
Just by bringing the very action,

234
00:13:25,116 --> 00:13:27,627
that bank has stopped doing it, and indeed,

235
00:13:27,627 --> 00:13:30,031
the powers that be around the world, which for real politic

236
00:13:30,031 --> 00:13:33,374
reasons before, couldn't actually deal with this issue,

237
00:13:33,374 --> 00:13:34,904
because there was lots of competing interests,

238
00:13:34,904 --> 00:13:37,888
have actually closed down those loopholes in the banking system.

239
00:13:37,888 --> 00:13:40,603
There's another case called the McDonald case,

240
00:13:40,603 --> 00:13:44,925
where some victims of Semtex, of the Provisional IRA bombings,

241
00:13:44,925 --> 00:13:51,544
which were supplied by Gaddafi, sued,

242
00:13:51,544 --> 00:13:56,481
and that action has led to amazing things for new Libya.

243
00:13:56,481 --> 00:13:59,434
New Libya has been compassionate towards those victims,

244
00:13:59,434 --> 00:14:03,066
and started taking it -- so it started a whole new dialogue there.

245
00:14:03,066 --> 00:14:07,349
But the problem is, we need more and more support

246
00:14:07,349 --> 00:14:10,151
for these ideas and cases.

247
00:14:10,151 --> 00:14:14,577
Civil affairs and civil society initiatives.

248
00:14:14,577 --> 00:14:17,104
A good one is in Somalia. There's a war on piracy.

249
00:14:17,104 --> 00:14:18,910
If anyone thinks you can have a war on piracy

250
00:14:18,910 --> 00:14:21,536
like a war on terrorism and beat it, you're wrong.

251
00:14:21,536 --> 00:14:24,523
What we're trying to do there is turn pirates to fisherman.

252
00:14:24,523 --> 00:14:26,747
They used to be fisherman, of course,

253
00:14:26,747 --> 00:14:29,943
but we stole their fish and dumped a load of toxic waste

254
00:14:29,943 --> 00:14:33,238
in their water, so what we're trying to do is create

255
00:14:33,238 --> 00:14:35,724
security and employment by bringing a coastguard

256
00:14:35,724 --> 00:14:39,061
along with the fisheries industry, and I can guarantee you,

257
00:14:39,061 --> 00:14:41,925
as that builds, al Shabaab and such likes will not have

258
00:14:41,925 --> 00:14:45,749
the poverty and injustice any longer to prey on those people.

259
00:14:45,749 --> 00:14:49,624
These initiatives cost less than a missile,

260
00:14:49,624 --> 00:14:52,591
and certainly less than any soldier's life,

261
00:14:52,591 --> 00:14:55,446
but more importantly, it takes the war to their homelands,

262
00:14:55,446 --> 00:14:57,744
and not onto our shore,

263
00:14:57,744 --> 00:14:59,188
and we're looking at the causes.

264
00:14:59,188 --> 00:15:02,637
The last one I wanted to talk about was dialogue.

265
00:15:02,637 --> 00:15:05,443
The advantages of dialogue are obvious.

266
00:15:05,443 --> 00:15:09,745
It self-educates both sides, enables a better understanding,

267
00:15:09,745 --> 00:15:11,967
reveals the strengths and weaknesses,

268
00:15:11,967 --> 00:15:14,568
and yes, like some of the speakers before,

269
00:15:14,568 --> 00:15:18,457
the shared vulnerability does lead to trust, and

270
00:15:18,457 --> 00:15:21,362
it does then become, that process, part of normalization.

271
00:15:21,362 --> 00:15:26,035
But it's not an easy road. After the bomb,

272
00:15:26,035 --> 00:15:29,164
the victims are not into this.

273
00:15:29,164 --> 00:15:31,058
There's practical problems.

274
00:15:31,058 --> 00:15:33,954
It's politically risky for the protagonists

275
00:15:33,954 --> 00:15:36,689
and for the interlocutors. On one occasion

276
00:15:36,689 --> 00:15:39,130
I was doing it, every time I did a point that they didn't like,

277
00:15:39,130 --> 00:15:40,991
they actually threw stones at me,

278
00:15:40,991 --> 00:15:42,978
and when I did a point they liked,

279
00:15:42,978 --> 00:15:47,573
they starting shooting in the air, equally not great. (Laughter)

280
00:15:47,573 --> 00:15:50,775
Whatever the point, it gets to the heart of the problem,

281
00:15:50,775 --> 00:15:52,891
you're doing it, you're talking to them.

282
00:15:52,891 --> 00:15:56,634
Now, I just want to end with saying, if we follow reason,

283
00:15:56,634 --> 00:16:01,996
we realize that I think we'd all say that we want to

284
00:16:01,996 --> 00:16:04,678
have a perception of terrorism which is not just a pure

285
00:16:04,678 --> 00:16:08,427
military perception of it.

286
00:16:08,446 --> 00:16:10,903
We need to foster more

287
00:16:10,903 --> 00:16:13,688
modern and asymmetrical responses to it.

288
00:16:13,688 --> 00:16:16,243
This isn't about being soft on terrorism.

289
00:16:16,243 --> 00:16:19,963
It's about fighting them on contemporary battlefields.

290
00:16:19,963 --> 00:16:22,914
We must foster innovation, as I've said.

291
00:16:22,914 --> 00:16:26,786
Governments are receptive. It won't come from those dusty corridors.

292
00:16:26,786 --> 00:16:28,999
The private sector has a role.

293
00:16:28,999 --> 00:16:31,572
The role we could do right now is going away

294
00:16:31,572 --> 00:16:35,297
and looking at how we can support victims around the world

295
00:16:35,297 --> 00:16:36,769
to bring initiatives.

296
00:16:36,769 --> 00:16:39,572
If I was to leave you with some big questions here which

297
00:16:39,572 --> 00:16:43,047
may change one's perception to it, and who knows what

298
00:16:43,047 --> 00:16:45,426
thoughts and responses will come out of it,

299
00:16:45,426 --> 00:16:49,381
but did myself and my terrorist group actually need

300
00:16:49,381 --> 00:16:52,617
to blow you up to make our point?

301
00:16:52,617 --> 00:16:56,999
We have to ask ourselves these questions, however unpalatable.

302
00:16:56,999 --> 00:17:00,133
Have we been ignoring an injustice or a humanitarian

303
00:17:00,133 --> 00:17:02,898
struggle somewhere in the world?

304
00:17:02,898 --> 00:17:05,548
What if, actually, engagement on poverty and injustice

305
00:17:05,548 --> 00:17:07,963
is exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do?

306
00:17:07,963 --> 00:17:11,068
What if the bombs are just simply wake-up calls for us?

307
00:17:11,068 --> 00:17:14,267
What happens if that bomb went off

308
00:17:14,267 --> 00:17:17,574
because we didn't have any thoughts and things in place

309
00:17:17,574 --> 00:17:22,253
to allow dialogue to deal with these things and interaction?

310
00:17:22,253 --> 00:17:25,420
What is definitely uncontroversial

311
00:17:25,420 --> 00:17:27,227
is that, as I've said, we've got to stop being reactive,

312
00:17:27,227 --> 00:17:30,844
and more proactive, and I just want to leave you

313
00:17:30,844 --> 00:17:34,252
with one idea, which is that

314
00:17:34,252 --> 00:17:37,412
it's a provocative question for you to think about,

315
00:17:37,412 --> 00:17:41,533
and the answer will require sympathy with the devil.

316
00:17:41,533 --> 00:17:44,250
It's a question that's been tackled by many great thinkers

317
00:17:44,250 --> 00:17:49,167
and writers: What if society actually needs crisis to change?

318
00:17:49,167 --> 00:17:53,470
What if society actually needs terrorism

319
00:17:53,470 --> 00:17:55,013
to change and adapt for the better?

320
00:17:55,013 --> 00:17:59,564
It's those Bulgakov themes, it's that picture of Jesus

321
00:17:59,564 --> 00:18:02,768
and the Devil hand in hand in Gethsemane

322
00:18:02,768 --> 00:18:05,048
walking into the moonlight.

323
00:18:05,048 --> 00:18:07,896
What it would mean is that humans,

324
00:18:07,896 --> 00:18:10,552
in order to survive in development,

325
00:18:10,552 --> 00:18:12,627
quite Darwinian spirit here,

326
00:18:12,627 --> 00:18:16,957
inherently must dance with the devil.

327
00:18:16,957 --> 00:18:21,216
A lot of people say that communism was defeated

328
00:18:21,216 --> 00:18:25,210
by the Rolling Stones. It's a good theory.

329
00:18:25,210 --> 00:18:28,046
Maybe the Rolling Stones has a place in this.

330
00:18:28,046 --> 00:18:30,633
Thank you.

331
00:18:30,633 --> 00:18:39,503
(Music) (Applause)

332
00:18:39,503 --> 00:18:42,081
Bruno Giussani: Thank you. (Applause)