Terrorism

Dynamiters have their uses. Terrorism does too. Kill one; frighten a million sounds like a cost effective political move to me. It did to the IRA too. If they had not waged war they would have been ignored.

The main use of terror is to influence those who did not get attacked - but might next time. Politicians also like atrocities because they are an excuse for oppression. Protecting our safety is more important than a few, allegedly temporary restrictions on our liberty. That is the excuse they use and they get away with it.

A few operations are carried out by experts and work well. The 9/11 Job with some 3,000 kills is the obvious example. The official claim made very soon after was it was set up a man with a silly hat living in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan. The fact that his family were friends of the Bush family was ignored.

A lot of potential operations involve amateurs and third rate amateurs at that. Each time the spies, who are making a living out of making arrests catch another twerp who did not get past day dreams and chatting with a few like minded friends publicity is generated and exploited.

An honest man explains just how third rate some of the alleged threats to Western Civilization are and the answer is non-existent to just barely. See Terrorists in the Real World. Bruce Schneier gives sources and that is always a good sign. His view of things is solidly based and checkable.

Then Dan Gardner gives us a first rate examination of fear and danger; the two are not the same. The fact that we come from thousands of generations of survivors mean that we fear things for various reasons that do not always make sense when we live in a civilized world. See Risk : The Science and Politics of Fear for more and better details.

Terrorist Outfits gives us more groups, mainly of the left and an assessment of their significance.

 

Aum Shinrikyo
Was Japanese, rich, determined to destroy and surprisingly ineffective.

 

IRA
The Irish Republican Army was determined, had an agenda and were effective, being perhaps the best guerilla outfit of modern times. They used conventional weapons like guns and explosives.

 

Mossad
Is a criminal organization running out of control. One example is the murder of their new boss on the grounds that they didn't like him. See Victor Ostrovsky's books By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda on the point.

 

Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot
QUOTE
The recently publicized terrorist plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, like so many of the terrorist plots over the past few years, is a study in alarmism and incompetence: on the part of the terrorists, our government and the press.

Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots -- and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse -- is wrong............

But read wh

at Russell Defreitas, the lead terrorist, had to say: "Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow.... They love JFK -- he's like the man. If you hit that, the whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."

If these are the terrorists we're fighting, we've got a pretty incompetent enemy.

You couldn't tell that from the press reports, though. "The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable," U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable." Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) added, "It had the potential to be another 9/11.".
UNQUOTE
Mauskopf translates as Mouse Head. Perhaps that says enough about the intellectual calibre of these twerps. Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear has something worthwhile to tell us about the whole thing.

 

Terrorist Outfits
These are largely left wing outfits, the nastier sort with an assessment of their significance.

 

Errors & omissions, broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.
 
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Updated on 06/08/2011 23:00