terrorism

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free_and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?

The car bomb is the poor man__ air force.

What doesn__ belong to us, we have no right to call our own. One can__ win anything by force, ever. That is not what we, Kashmiris do. That is not what we, Indians do.

Never be absolutely certain that either those claiming to be the terrorists, ot those accused of committing an act of terrorism, were the perpetrators. The only absolute certainties are forever victims.

The route to his hotel had been committed to memory a long time ago. From the overflowing trashcan on the corner to the feral cats that frequented the dumpsters behind the nearby shawarma shop, Jamison knew every detail.

If we stopped calling it profiling and started calling it "proactive intelligence screening" or "high alert detecting", people would be saying "Well, it's about time".

What alternative is there to the media__ __s_ versus __hem_? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this __ighteous_ position of __urs_ all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the __irty_ distortions in __heir_ thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we__l remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.

Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue', and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak _ the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths" _ and the policeman lowered his voice _ "in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.

We find people of value,' she said, speaking like a teacher addressing a small child, 'and we determine what story they need to hear. It's the story that they're already telling themselves, don't you see? It's the nightmare they believe in. Once you understand that nightmare, you join them in it. Their fear becomes your fear. It's all a shared experience then. And once you have that, once they feel that is the truth, all the way down to their core, then your coping strategy becomes theirs. It's a natural progression. This is the power of a shared narrative. Of the echo chamber.

The thought that is billed at the price of fear and flattery is as inconsolable as that which is paid for at the price of gold. - On Fear and Thought.

I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high.

The similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored. Both groups are driven by a totalitarian vision. The followers of Karl Marx envisioned a world transformed into a workers_ paradise in which all other classes had been destroyed and only one party, the Communist Party, was in control. Today__ jihadists also have a universal vision. They look forward to a global caliphate in which all have submitted to the will of Allah and live as Muslims, the infidels and apostates having been slain. Both visions are exclusive, absolutist, and totalitarian. They are predicated on a __hem or us_ vision of how the world must be. There is no possibility for peaceful coexistence with the __ther'.

Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism.Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures.

Every morningI wake up with the newsof bloodshed.I feel my body,desperate to know whetherI__ still alive.

When the law fails to serve us, we must serve as the law.

Most of the barbaric and vicious acts of terror committed against innocent civilians around the world in the last thirty years have been done by Muslims. They have even carried out more bombings than the less-publicized Hindu Tamil Tiger separatists, who have committed more than two hundred suicide attacks in Sri Lanka. It is a fact that the nineteen terrorists who hijacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were Muslims who practiced the teachings of the Koran and sought mental fortitude in its verses as their planes crashed.

I think the biggest disservice to the American people was the denial by the networks to air video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, or the many other hostages that were beheaded in Iraq. We as a society need to see the type of enemy we are fighting. People have been so sheltered in this country that they have not paid attention to what has been going on for the last twenty-some years. And today, even after the attack of September 11, people still cannot fathom that this type of barbarity could happen here.

Oops! We thought he had a gun!_ So you shot me in the back three times __ause you thought I had a gun? I was gonna sue, but they said they was gonna kill me. I was 18 years old, I didn__ have nobody, I didn__ have all this. They kept pickin_ me up, kept lockin_ my ass up, beating me, until I dropped the lawsuit. When I dropped the lawsuit, that__ when everything stopped. That__ what the fuck happened to me. I was terrorized by some terrorists.