h a l f b a k e r yThis ain't rocket surgery.
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The goal of terrorism is to cause fear in people, and also to get
the
people they attack to cause their own problems (e.g. TSA). So,
just
don't let them succeed in that. Treat them the same as any other
criminals, don't give them extra media coverage, don't make
new
laws, etc. Terrorists
can't accomplish anything without the
unwitting complicity of those they're attacking.
Venezuela's president...labeling Bush and Cheney as “terrorists"...
http://rt.com/news/...-imposes-visas-usa/
[Toto Anders, Mar 02 2015]
9-11 attributed to the Mossad
https://wikispooks..../9-11/Israel_did_it
Seems Islamists are happy to use this explanation [pashute, Mar 04 2015]
Unless they are asked off record
https://www.youtube...v=kg6UvjBSqck&t=26m
What do you think of Sheik Ossama? - Sheik Ossama? May he rest in peace. He was the best person on earth. - uh huh. [pashute, Mar 04 2015]
[link]
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I've often wondered what would happen if terrorist
events were simply not reported at all. |
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Or, report them wrongly - attribute ISIS attacks to
some other terrorist outfit, and vice versa. |
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Or or, deliberately mis-identify terrorists and give
them silly names. |
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"And tonight's closing story... the terrorist responsible
for the Albaquerque bombing has been identified as
Scrofus Felchstinker [photo], long-term member of
the
Paedophile Liberation Army. In a video recorded
shortly before the explosion, which slightly damaged
two cars, Felchstinker stated that his attack was a
protest against the shoddy treatment he had received
at Albaquerque's leading incontinence clinic. And
now the weather..." |
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3) McDonald's. A study by the Borne Institute found
that one of the most cost-effective ways to stop
terrorism was to install one McDonald's in each 10
square miles. Admittedly, the McDonald's has to be
heavily subsidised, but still. |
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There ya go, [Bigs]! I knew we could do better than
(2) once we got started. |
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We could also consider (5) Paying people not to
suicide bomb. Just give out $10 in cash money to any
terrorist who, on arriving at the cashier, can provide
credible evidence that they haven't suicide-bombed
in the last 24 hours. |
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Or (6) provide the 72 virgins right here and right now.
Species and gender negotiable. |
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//those worthy of 72 virgins... are 60 cubits high// |
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Wait. What? You mean that if you suicide-bomb, you
end up 90ft tall? Is this a consequence of the
explosion? |
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Nope. The cubit was chiefly a unit of length.
However, there is also a volumetric cubit, and a
weight cubit. |
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That's a little like saying the way to stop murderers is to just stop dying when they kill you. |
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The trouble with this idea is that, in an open society, no-one could carry it out. Censoring the media is frowned upon, and the media love terror - and, while the media are reporting it, there's pressure on politicians to be seen to do something. The breakthrough idea would be a means of breaking the community of interest between the terrorist and the journalist. I don't know how to do that, but without it this fails. |
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I agree that it's a good idea to get rid of the notion of
terrorism, but for completely different reasons. It seems to
have become one of those scare words which are used to
paralyse thought in order to get people to accept things
they shouldn't or distract them from other problems. I don't
think we're on the same page with that. |
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Also, [MB], you did the "[+]" thing but I seemed to be the
first person to bun this. |
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Who is a terrorist? By whose definitions? I'm sure that neither Bush nor Cheney (see link) wouldn't mind to be attended by 72 virgins. Together with their murderous history, makes that them terrorists? At what point would one cease to report their actions to the public? For the worse or the better? |
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I would like to draw the attention of those yearnimg to
reach paradise to the fact that we already have Milk and
Honey here. Aisle 3 near the cereals I believe. Perhaps a
small subsidy program? |
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//neither Bush nor Cheney (see link) wouldn't mind
to be attended by 72 virgins.// |
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I'm not unsure if you meant what you think you
meant. |
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//neither Bush nor Cheney (see link) wouldn't mind
to be attended by 72 virgins. Together with their
murderous history, makes that them terrorists?// |
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I'm guessing you called in sick the day they taught
grammar in grammar school. |
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I think that politicians and Presidents in particular
should call them out as little as possible. I thought
this same thing back during 911. Mentioning them
gives them standing. The same goes for serial
murderers, school shooters, etc. |
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In other news, the International Berkeley Society has formally petitioned the White House to ban the official recognition of the existence of existence. Proponents of the movement argue that the quickest way to resolve a political problem is to ignore that ever happened. Furthermore, by refusing to acknowledge that matter itself exists outside of the mind of the voter, such a problem (or any other problem) should never arise in the future. |
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The petition is already gaining traction with incumbent politicians. As stated by Chesterfield B. McGillicutty, representative of the 15-and-halfth congressional district of Rhode Island, "If a budget deficit doesn't exist, then it's not my fault!" |
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In Tom Cancy's _Patriot_Games_, that was more or less the British
response to an attack on some royals. The bad guys were tried as
criminals for murder, gun use and destruction of property, but never
referred to as terrorists or as politically motivated. |
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After 9/11, which was obviously terrorism, I thought the identity of
the perpetrators was being suppressed as per this idea. |
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// I'm guessing you called in sick the day they taught grammar in grammar school // |
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Where I went to grammar school they did not teach English grammar. |
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Did they teach logic? The assertion that terrorism is
somehow justified or at least understandable because
it's all subjective doesn't go a long way towards
explaining the
mass slaughter of Muslims who are the main victims
of the terrorist's war on civilization. |
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Terrorism, just in my view, is violent action for a political
end which is not overtly sanctioned by any internationally
recognised government. That means that false-flag
operations can be terrorist and that if there are
governments which are not internationally recognised,
any aggressive military action they pursue would be
terrorist. However, this is not an evaluative definition,
just a description. I don't consider it to be a meaningful
concept. It's like coming up with a word which refers to
both elastic bands and limestone, but nothing else. That
might turn out to be useful but I didn't make it up to be
useful except as a definition of the arbitrariness of the
concept of terrorism. I don't think it makes much
difference to someone if they have a bomb dropped on
them by the Luftwaffe or if someone hijacks a light
aircraft and drops a bomb on them. |
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Well, probably a good idea to define terrorism. I
think we can all agree that it's a method of warfare. |
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To me it's the deliberate targeting of civilians to add
a psychological element to the battle. Making videos
of people being burned alive or beheaded, that sort
of thing. |
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Of course it's pretty easy to point out that a nice,
justified, morally correct United Nations sanctioned
bomb ripping your body apart can cause plenty of
terror as well, so you can pretty quickly get lost in
semantics here. |
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At the very least the media could substitute the words "muslim extremist" with: "some bearded dickwad". |
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Or notice that most of the people involved are from one country, and
it isn't the one that everybody is assuming. |
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[Doc] has it right, although it does get misused in
reference
to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. |
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Someone who engages in asymmetric warfare, but
chooses military or government targets is not a terrorist.
Whether they are a freedom fighter, an insurgent or a
rebel is a matter of perspective. They may cause civilian
casualties, but that is not the intent. If they act with
reckless disregard to civilian casualties, they may be war
criminals (as might state actors who show similar
disregard), but they are still not terrorists. |
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Someone who engages in asymmetric warfare and
deliberately engages civilian targets, especially with the
intent to cause fear or intimidation, is a terrorist. |
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I know this would never go over, but I can't help but wonder if religion itself is something which, since it can not be understood by the mind of a child, should not be introduced into their lives while they are minors.
No more alter-boy temptations for the clergy, no more suicide bombers certain that they are takin one for the Big-Guy, no more indoctrinated extremists.
In short, no more brain-washing of children until they are old enough to think for themselves. Then there'd only be the minion-less crazies to deal with. |
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[MechE], nicely put. It's defined by who the victims are, not who the aggressors are. |
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ME & NS. Yup. Or to put more of a fine point on it, if
the victims are specifically targeted non military
personnel. |
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Of course somebody might bring up Dresden, but the
argument could be made that Dresden housed
workers for the German war industry. |
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That being said, I don't think anybody on the side of
the Allies would have sanctioned rounding up a bunch
of kids in lederhosen and shooting them. Pretty safe
bet anybody doing that would have been put in front
of a firing squad. I hope at least. |
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Operation Abigail Rachel / Glencoe / Tokyo
it's not like there isn't ample precedent for deliberate the slaughter of civilians as part of a military campaign. |
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But note that the Abigail Rachel raid was reprisal for
the terror raid on Coventry, a civilian target.
Hiroshima was a military industrial town and home to
a major military base, yadda yadda yadda. Still,
yes, we've targeted innocent civilians in the past. We
don't do that now though. |
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Just to further stir the pot regarding WW2. It can be
argued
that anything we could have done to end that war as
quickly as possible was of great long term benefit to
all parties involved, including the people of the Axis
powers. Can you imagine if we fought WW2 the way
we're fighting this war now? It could be argued that if
we hadn't lost it
outright, it would now be in its 75th year with
casualties in the hundreds of millions. And don't
think
the Axis powers winning would have been all that
great for them either. We'd be going on 4 generations
of
German and Japanese youth dying fighting
insurgencies on
a daily basis in the far flung provinces of the empire
all over the world. (Good luck "pacifying" Texas.)
There's also the distinct possibility that
Germany and Japan's next step would be to go to war
with
each other to settle this whole "Who's the real master
race?" debate. |
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Put is this way. If you could go back in time, would
you change anything we did in WW2 that might have
some chance of changing the outcome? |
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//. Can you imagine if we fought WW2 the way we're fighting this war now?//
This is another version of the thought experiment known as "How Much Better Would The World Be If Someone Could Go Back In Time to 1965 & Shoot Geoff Hurst?" |
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So if you had a time machine, would you go back and
"correct" all our mistakes? I'm not smart enough to
mess with history myself, maybe you are. |
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Not just a cocktail party discussion abstract here.
We're
engaged in a war and thought needs to be given
about how to fight it, including analysis of what we
did right and wrong in past conflicts. Some planning
is required to figure out how we can kill people and
break thinks while keeping our petticoats nice,
starched and clean, but at some point winning might
be nice as well. |
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//So if you had a time machine, would you go back and "correct" all our mistakes?//
My annotation did not even begin to imply this. |
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I dunno. If I could go back in time and prevent Andrew
Wakefield from publishing, I would be strongly tempted to
do so. |
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//My annotation did not even begin to imply this.// |
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LOL. Dang, just trying to
start a friendly conversation. |
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I'm guessing you don't get invited to a lot of parties
eh cal? |
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// I'm not smart enough to mess with history myself, maybe you are. |
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How does one determine this? I might be. I'd go the route of working back through seemingly unrelated minute events, finding a butterfly effect trigger. With careful planning maybe I could prevent WWII from happening by interfering with a delivery at a beer hall. |
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Well, if Hitler and his crew were removed from the
picture by having the beer delivery denied or being
pushed off a balcony, Germany would still be in a
pretty nasty, angry state post WW1. Gotta wonder if
Hitler would have just been replaced by Schmidt or
Müller. |
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// I'm guessing you don't get invited to a lot of parties eh cal?//
You are not the first level this accusation at me. As it happens, you are correct in your guess: I don't get invited to a lot of parties, though I am fairly sure that the reason that I don't get invited to a lot of parties is not the fact that I sometimes turn off the professional charm when interacting with people on the halfbakery. In fact, I would go so far as to bet my actual real life bollocks that no-one has ever elected not to invite me to a party based upon anything I have ever said on the halfbakery. Here are likelier reasons that I don't get invited to a lot of parties:
1. I am past the age of going to parties;
2. I don't really like parties all that much, and the people who might invite me know this;
3. I am usually at work when parties happen;
4. I am horribly disfigured and people find my appearance rebarbative;
5. Outside of working hours, I prefer to be naked and / or covered in olive oil and this makes some people uncomfortable;
6. I have difficulty speaking, as part of my disfigurement is that my birth tongue has been replaced by the tongue of a musk ox and people find it difficult to understand the sounds that I make in place of civilised speech;
7. I live at 70°55'N 8°42'W, where there is not much nightlife;
8. I died in 1987; and
9. My manners are such that when those rare people who can cope with my appearance, my oil-slick nudity, my speech defect and my being a well-rotten corpse do speak to me, I am incapable of politesse when they either ignore or fail to understand the clear meaning of the words I have spoken, attempt to put words into my mouth, or resort to putatively joshing insult as a way of cajoling me into having with them what they regard as either a conversation or, more stultifying still, a debate. |
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Well cal, if I were to invite any stranger I met online
to a party, it would be you. You're certainly
interesting. |
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Since I quit drinking several years ago, parties aren't
as much fun any more anyway but the wife likes
them so, oh well. I get to be the designated driver.
The life saving nerd if you will. |
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Yeah, the correct time to fix WWII is probably sometime in
the Napoleonic wars. |
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//You're certainly interesting.//
Now *that* is a compliment! Thank you. |
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//I don't think anybody on the side of the Allies would have sanctioned [...] // |
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{glances sharply towards [8th of 7]} |
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// I'm not smart enough to mess with history myself// |
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Actually, we all mess with history, every time we vote (or choose not to vote), and sometimes when we do other things (such as spend money, or save it, or invent things, or offend people) - and we don't know which things. |
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The difference between messing with future history and past history, apart from the fact that the latter is impossible, is that, for the past, we have a clearer view of the dizzying responsibilities involved. We interfere with future history in happy ignorance. It's a bit like walking a very narrow path with a terrifying ravine on one side, and another terrifying ravine on the other side, except the first ravine is fenced, while the second (unfenced) ravine is hidden by a thick fog bank, so that's OK. |
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This is such a scary thought that it's no surprise some people prefer to believe its all down to conspiracies happening somewhere else, and therefore nothing to do with them. |
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