Letters to the Editor
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Mister Buck getting close to the Godwin Limit
So burning a cross in someone's yard is just vandalism - while destroying someone's work is not directed at them - it's just a pile of papers?
Neither is terrorism, which is what we're talking about. Or are you, also, resorting to trolling?
And if you don't like my definition of violence, kindly address your objections to the Anglo-American tradition of law, not me.
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Kryptik
It shouldn't be prosecuted all. It's a ticket at best and it should be settled in civil courts. It's practically a free speech issue.
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Is Briana Waters A Terrorist
Waters should do the full thirty years and be made to pay full restitution. Waters is a domestic terrorist and a danger to the community. She could share a cell with the Gerlach woman who is doing nine years for her part in the Vail, CO blaze.
These people must learn that they can't take the law into their own hands. The US is a country of laws and those who break them should pay the penalty.
ElF should and will be eradicated.
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What is terrorism and the implications of modern american corporate-influenced government.
Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought (Schmid, 1988).
Though the above definition carries the title of the "academic consensus definition," it, according to wikipedia's footnoted entry, is but one of many definitions used. Regardless, most all definitions specifically identify loss of human life as essential to its core meaning. His short version definition is simply "peacetime equivalent of a war crime."
ELF and ALF, and including the former Weather Underground, have made popular a new form of radical and violent anti-government protest that specifically has within it's core concepts NO loss of human life. It is clear our government-appointed and elected representatives, post 9/11, have broadened the definition of acts of terrorism to include specifically what ELF, ALF and the former Weather Underground have and probably will continue to do, and that is primarily the destruction of property.
Unfortunately, the various comments on this article show that American citizens have no problem supporting our government's efforts to define terrorism in support of it's own agenda against what the rest of the world very clearly sees as real acts of terrorism--that is, acts against innocent persons. It is this complicity that allows are elected and appointed government representatives to push their own agenda against world opinion. Yet, at the same time, maybe it's necessary since the ELF and ALF have redefined the rules of engagement against government corruption.
What is clear is that successful prosecutions are seen as a means in an end to justify acting against what authorities see as a "wrong." There are countless such acts that continue at the expense of the imprisoned. A relevant sidebar to this is how criminal prosecution carries a separate award system that the entire law enforcement system supports... and such an antagonist and counter-intuitive system is at the heart of what the government sees as a successful campaign against "wrong-doers."
It is important, most fundamentally important, to know if Waters is actually guilty. It is equally important to our future as a society to ask whether our current legal system is actually counter productive and destructive to citizens while being constructive to state interests. Lastly, it's important to note we are entering an era that requires us to seriously question convention as a continuing means to pursue our current system of "civilized" existence.
Personally, I feel things need to change. Convention is too costly a tool of control. One need only look at American acts to build empire and the wrongs NOT redressed to see clearly the cost of convention, all done in the name of LAW.
rm
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re: Neither is terrorism, which is what we're talking about. Or are you, also, resorting to trolling?
When I resort to trolling, you'll know...
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Constitution, si... Fanaticism, no...
I don't get it. Just because the bomb was jerryrigged instead of sophisticated absolves her of participating in a dangerous act? Or... the act wasn't dangerous enough? (Unless, of course, someone got poached while innocently going about his business in the building - or a firefighter lost his or her life.) Or... is it the fact that her accomplices got cold feet and ratted her out? (Moral: Never trust pampered white kids, no matter how committed they think they are.)
No: She should not be locked up in one of our offshore torture pestholes - but neither should Padilla or any of the other real and imagined enemies we snatched from the four corners of the globe.
We need to go back to the rule of law... and we need to pick our Constitutional poster kids more carefully. Look at her eyes. It's spooky: Her sanctimony and absolute certainty of the righteousness of her extremism scream out of the photo. This woman is capable of ANYTHING.
No: Let's not prop up fanatics, regardless of the trendiness of their zeal, the popularity of their cause. It's not like they need any encouragement.
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Terrorism isn't always bad.
Sometimes you have to smash the machine, a little bit. Sometimes you have to fight back, it's your duty. What we in the US call "Terrorism" is little more than irritation. If we had real terrorism, real direct action, you'd see a real change. Ok so McVeigh was tad over the top and his politics were a jumbled mess, but the method is entirely sound. In Palestine, Iraq etc. "Terrorism" is used to entirely legitimate ends. It's just another tool of politics.
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Seven word summary of this Salon article
"She is beautiful, therefore she is innocent."
I cannot stand by or support such patent unfairness.
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rufusrm44 on what is terrorism
Thanks for the citation. Unfortunately the essential concepts in the (excellent) definition you posted have clearly been lost in the mud of mainstream discourse.
... most all definitions specifically identify loss of human life as essential to its core meaning.
This is a tricky point. When the IRA set up mortars on the tarmac at Heathrow and fired them off at the concourses full of civilians, was it any less of an act of terrorism because it turned out they were firing blanks?
It was orchestrated to achieve all of the same goals in the same way — including the aspect of indirection that must be fundamental to any sane definition of terrorism. But nobody died, or was even in any actual danger of injury.
The reason that I make that point is that I think it's dangerous to start equating physical harm with terrorism.