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When an organized group of people uses force to take your belongings, leveraging tactics of fear for political ends, isn't that firmly within the definition of
by aegiso 13y ago
When an organized group of people uses force to take your belongings, leveraging tactics of fear for political ends, isn't that firmly within the definition of terrorism?
I don't know the facts here so I'm not implying anything in this specific case, but I like to remember that the terminology we use drastically shapes our thinking.
- baddox 13y agoNo, because government. The problem of political authority: http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/1.htm http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/1.htm
- ekianjo 13y agoNo, because here, it's the good guys doing it (wink).
- temuze 13y agoNo, taking belongings has nothing to do with terrorism. Terrorism is about using terror as coercion and presumably, they're searching his stuff because they want to find something, not because they want the attention.
- lawnchair_larry 13y agoTerrorism is about using terror as coercion I'm not seeing where that contradicts his experience.
- ihsw 13y agoTerrorism is politically motivated, there is no evidence of that.
- mischanix 13y agoYeah, I don't see at all how security theater is politically motivated, you're right.
- ihsw 13y agoWell, I'm not really going to get into the underlying rationale behind security theatre, but I would imagine that such actions would need to meet a certain threshold of how blatantly political they are.
- lowkeykiwi 13y agoIt contradicts it because there is no terror involved. They heavy handedly stole his stuff. No one was terrorised.
- a3n 13y agoYeah, we call out governments for abusing the terror excuse, but we seem prone to applying the term inappropriately ourselves. Maybe we should be using the term "oppression."
- ihsw 13y agoSimply and narrowly put, that may be terrorism, but to call this terrorism would be speculation -- it's not politically-charged attention-whoring in the strictest sense. Another staple of terrorism is random violence, and we're not quite there yet.
- rangibaby 13y agoIs an armed raid on someone's house not random violence?
- ihsw 13y agoAn armed raid on a specific person's house house isn't random, however raiding any house in a particular neighbourhood would fulfil such a definition.
- rangibaby 13y agoIt's not random from the perspective of the police, but from the perspective of a citizen it might as well be.
- grecy 13y agoLike what happened in Boston after the bombings? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWsbBhzxYw8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWsbBhzxYw8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Gb6i5DF9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Gb6i5DF9k
- aptwebapps 13y agoIf you just want to make a rhetorical point, sure. If you want different things to have different names so that we can have intelligent discussions about them, no.
- reginaldjcooper 13y agoRight on. I literally believe the United States government is doing more harm to the United States than the terrorists are, but they are not themselves terrorists by any stretch of the imagination.
- drharris 13y ago> by any stretch of the imagination You do realize they do stuff like this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24557333 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24557333), right? No stretch of the imagination? I'd also say fomenting a culture of fear is a terrorist activity (and by definition, their end goal). Right now the US government are experts at creating such culture.
- alan_cx 13y agoTell that to government first. Its government lies... sorry, PR that started this re-defining lark, not us people. We have to discuss these things in their terms now, unfortunately.
- aptwebapps 13y agoI don't see why we do.
- amerika_blog 13y ago"When an organized group of people uses force to take your belongings, leveraging tactics of fear for political ends, isn't that firmly within the definition of terrorism?" No, that's democracy. And the dumbest ideas always win, because the broadest section of the population can understand them.
- utunga 13y agoSecretary-General Kofi Annan actually tried to define terrorism at the end of his tenure... He suggested : "Any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." That would make the bombing of Dresden and Nagasaki (and any other bombing under the 'strategic bombing' doctrine where the objective was to drain the people's will to fight) to be terrorism, though. It would make some of what the ANC did terrorism. This, however, would not be terrorism. I think Kofi Annan was bang on the money. About time we had a workable definition of the word (beyond just 'whatever the other guy does'). However he didn't get very far with it at the UN level.
- malandrew 13y ago"LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" Robert S. McNamara, in the documentary series The Fog of War. [0] http://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html http://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html
- tehwalrus 13y agoInternational law is a joke when only people who lose wars are prosecuted. (I have a lot to say on this point, but I'll leave it at that and point you to this[1]) [1] a series of three blog posts, old now and in need of rewriting: http://politicomaniac.net/2011/02/the-failure-of-the-state/ http://politicomaniac.net/2011/02/the-failure-of-the-state/ http://politicomaniac.net/2011/02/lie-back-and-think-of-england/ http://politicomaniac.net/2011/02/lie-back-and-think-of-engl... http://politicomaniac.net/2011/02/fluffy-federalism/ http://politicomaniac.net/2011/02/fluffy-federalism/
- EliRivers 13y agoI note that the definition there means that some of what were arguably the most effective bombings conducted by the IRA weren't terrorism. Which is nice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing
- rayiner 13y agoTerrorism is largely defined not by technicalities, but by what people find to be outside the accepted rules. Customs, while oppressive and invasive, has always been that way, since time immemorial. Thus, its not considered to be outside the rules.