Re: The Net and Terrorism

[John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com>]

At 03:44 PM 6/30/96 -0700, you wrote:

>in reality. it seems to me no nation-state has ever experimented with
>trying to take away the root causes of violence and discontent. 

But here in the U.S., we ARE trying to take them away via the educational
system.  About the only thing we can effectively do is to provide more
educational opportunities that denounce violence, racism, hate crimes, etc.
However, you cannot eliminate discontent without eliminating greed; which is
simply not possible.

Even so, there are a couple of problems with even attempting "to take away
the root causes", not the least of which is the Constitutionally protected
right to free speech.  I am allowed to teach my kid to hate anyone for any
reason.  I can blame this or that group for this set of troubles, and that
the best way to deal with this is not only to scare them away, but to kill
as many of them as possible.  It may be morally repugnant, but it is
protected speech.

The countries that sponsor terrorists have not been noted for their
successful educational systems.  And they certainly are not going to listen
to Western discussions on how best to solve their "problems".

Do you still not accept that we have a world that contains people who exist
in conditions that foster and breed terrorists?

If not, look at some more concrete examples.  Have you ever met an Islamic
fundamentalist?  How about a Christian fundamentalist?  There really is no
difference between them, other than the specific quotations that exit their
pre-programmed mouths.  When religion enteres the picture, no amount of
logic will convince the true believers that they are acting destructively.

Even moderately regligious Christians (the people to whom I have been most
exposed) have very strong beliefs that X is the word of God, and therefore
not subject to question.  When this is some destructive (yet not obvious as
such) statement, such as "Go forth and multiply", no amount of education or
logic will convince them that Zero Population Growth is a good thing.

I'm sure you can multiply this into all sorts of destructive behavior
preached locally, such as the Southern Baptist preachers who refuse to
denounce the maltreatment of blacks or the burning of black churches.  There
is no force of law that can alter this behavior.

My point here is that this behavior is explicitly protected by the Bill of
Rights.

So, do you not accept that we have the environment right here that can breed
violence and discontent?

For the most part, I see kids today being educated with much less "hatred"
than even my age group was brought up with (I'm 34).  We're moving in the
right direction by incorporating diversity in education, entertainment and
the workplace, but we can never hope to erase it all.  And if even one
person retains the seed of violence, they can employ the "warfare of the
weak" -- terrorism.

>or that they are worth the money. terrorists invariably have a 
>patricular pathological psychological profile that sees the world
>in terms of "martyrs vs. villians" with the villians in the government,
>and the villians taking away or abusing respectable citizens.

So your point here is one of *agreement* that human nature will produce
psychological profiles of people who commit acts of terror.

>the "problem" of terrorism will be solved when we take the view
>that insanity and violence is *not* 
>a natural aspect of human behavior (as TCM tends to suggest), 

Even in spite of your argument above?

Violence is here.  It's been present since recorded history.  We've gotten
pretty good at it, actually.  I think the record speaks pretty clearly that
violence continues to be a part of human behavior, despite any efforts made
to stop it.

>and that
>there are specific environmental conditions that breed it. like
>malaria, if you take away the swamplike breeding grounds, you will
>largely remove it. such a thing is a radical hypothesis, but one that
>nonetheless has never really been tested in practice.

As I said above, we can reduce some of the breeding grounds, but we can not
eradicate them all.  And if one were to conduct a study correlating racist
attitudes with education with numbers of acts of terror, we might find a
direct correlation.

The U.S. has a level of tolerance for diversity that I only recently came to
appreciate.  We hosted a foreign exchange student from Scotland (hardly
culture shock to him), but he surprised me when he commented on how
surprised he was that different groups of people were mixed together --
black kids hanging out with white kids, catholics and protestants being
friends, the sort of thing that I take for granted every day.

He expected the subtle racism of home.  And lets just say that Great
Britain's culture is probably closer to ours than any other country.

I am more than willing to agree with you that elimination of hatred and
prejudice will go farther than any law enforcement measures to reduce
terrorist acts.  However, my point, and I believe this is Tim's point, too,
is that it will *never* eliminate these acts, and that there must be other
ways of dealing with the problems that occur.

>>I'm not advocating such "terrorism," by the way, merely telling it like it is.
>ah yes, the standard amusing TCM disclaimer. hmmm, your signature suggests
>otherwise.

This personal attack was completely unwarranted.  Are you suggesting that
Tim is a sponsor of terrorist attacks, or that he approves of the repeatedly
demonstrated governmental penchant for violating our privacy whenever
convenient?  There was no point to making this statement, other than to
foster discontent.

>>(Remember, terrorism is just warfare carried on by other means, with
>>apolgies to Von Clausewitz.)
>disagree. the purpose of warfare has traditionally been to seize

I completely disagree with you here.  Terror has all the same purposes as
general-purpose warfare:  it's simply being carried out by a smaller group,
without the resources available to an entire government.

Look at the Irish Question:  they want independance from a government they
deem undesirable.  Look at the arabian terrorist bombings of Americans in
Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, etc.:  they want to drive the U.S. Army out.
Likewise, the bombing of the Murrah building in OK was a "military" target:
it housed the agencies that some small group percieved to be responsible for
the attack on Waco.  Even the church building burnings happening across the
southern U.S. appear to have a specific objective:  to frighten the victims;
and if the victims left the area, the terrorists would have accomplished
their objectives.

No hidden purposes here:  these are all military actions being carried out
by groups that are simply not in a position to negotiate.   It is "warfare
by the weak".

You may think that you hold every answer to terrorism in your hand, that
hugs and kisses before bedtime will make the evil monsters under the bed go
away.    The point of Tim's essay was that, yes, the net can be used by the
evil monsters, and yes, the evil monsters are here, and no, the evil
monsters are not going away any time soon.  Why did you feel it necessary to
try to slam his fairly well-researched and quite obvious conclusion?

John
--
J. Deters
>From Senator C. Burns' Pro-CODE bill, which I support and you can find at:
http://www.senate.gov/member/mt/burns/general/billtext.htm
"  (2) Miniaturization, disturbed computing, and reduced transmission
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