Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (67233)	12/31/2002 5:02:12 PM
From: skinowski	Respond to of 70976

Terorism: the psychology of the phenomenon is interesting… Purely “sociological” explanations, like “Israeli oppression” and such, I think, do not 'get' it at all. In order to murder at the cost of ones own life, a person generally would have to be in some sort of a quasi-religious trance. In order to kill and die like that a person must be unusually "amenable" to manipulation. One must be capable of of dehumanizing both oneself - and the targets. The little understood problem with terrorist "methods" is that YOUR MEANS DETERMINE YOUR ENDS. terrorism – from dictionary.reference.com \Ter"ror*ism\, n. [Cf. F. terrorisme.] The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation. --Jefferson. n : the systematic use of violence as a means to intimidate or coerce societies or governments. The following is from an article by Sir Adam Roberts: “…terror is often at its bloodiest when used by dictatorial governments against their own citizens.” bbc.co.uk From the same source: “A justification offered by the perpetrators of … many … terrorist actions in the Middle East was that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (which had begun in 1967) was an exercise of violence against which counter-violence was legitimate. The same was said in connection with the suicide bombings by which Palestinians attacked Israel in 2001-2. In some of the suicide bombings there was a new element which had not been evident in the Palestinian terrorism of 2 or 3 decades earlier: Islamic religious extremism.” “…adherents were willing to commit suicide if they could thereby inflict carnage and destruction on their adversaries, as they did on September 11. Since their aims were vague and apocalyptic, there was little scope for any kind of compromise or negotiation.” “…terrorism is based on a naïve belief that a few acts of violence, often against symbolic targets representing the power of the adversary, will transform the political landscape in a beneficial way. … terrorism has become increasingly involved in attacking innocent civilians - often with the purpose of demonstrating that the state is incapable of protecting its own people. …terrorists generally underestimate the strong revulsion of ordinary people to acts of political violence.” [The UN] “Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be used to justify them.”