> The powerfull will subvert anyting to keep themselves powerfull.
But that hardly answers my question.
Do you still maintain they are not terrorist?
Jim
Originally Posted by What Exit?
Do you still maintain that ELF & ALF are not terrorist?
Forget the semantics, do you still maintain these nuts are not terrorists?
> No Jim I never maintained that, mearly that they limit themselves with inexact words. Cannot forget the semantics. It is why I pitted. I was trying to get some rise on the subject.
That was the response? Are you serious?
No, you’re not. I’m done feeding you.
Well you succeeded in that.
I lump ELF & ALF in with the nut jobs that blowup Planned Parenthood and threaten Doctors & Nurses that work there. They are no better to me than any other person or group that uses violence to promote their small point of view.
Pete Seegar once said “Don’t be afraid to go to Jail for a good cause”. He was talking about protests however, not violence. This is the way to change the world. Any that use violence and threats are terrorists. I think that is fairly clear.
If I made threatening harassing calls to the workers that cranked out Hummers and the Execs that ordered their production, I would still be a terrorist. If I protest the manufacture of such wasteful vehicles and picket the plant I am an American Citizen standing up for what I believe in. This is a huge difference.
Jim
Quote:
Originally Posted by duffer
You won’t. Neither will you for the rest of us. Stop digging the hole.
> One big hole around here, and I a’int diggin’ it…
Seems we’re getting somewhere.
>** I am learning.**
So when is your dictionary coming out? We need to have access to the definitions of these words. Or does the definition change too fast for publication?
>**Gay-1890=happy, Gay-1990=homosexual- for instance.
So words remain fixed in time, set in stone because you cannot keep up? Where is the “we” stuff coming from? Are you royalty or do you have a mouse in your pocket?
Etymology of terrorism: Terrorism
Terrorism is not simply a modern phenomenon. Rather, the word, along with terrorist, first appears in English in 1795 in reference to the Jacobins of France. They ruled France in what was called the Reign of Terror from 1793-94. By 1798, the term was being applied generally to anyone who attempted to achieve political goals through violence and intimidation.
The word is thought to have been coined by the Jacobins themselves, but the French terrorisme is not recorded until 1798. If the Jacobins did coin it, they are the only ones to have used it self-referentially. The term has always had negative connotations since then.
Etymology of sabotage: Sabotage
It is suggested by some that this term for wanton destruction derives from striking workers throwing wooden shoes, or sabot, into machinery in order to destroy it. This belief was popularized when it was repeated in one of the Star Trek movies.
Sabotage does indeed derive from the French sabot and from striking workers, but not in the sense suggested. While sabot can mean a wooden shoe, it can also mean a metal shoe or clamp for holding a piece of metal in place (it can also mean a type of anti-tank ammunition, but that’s another story). The second sense is what sabotage is derived from.
Specifically, sabotage comes from the practice by striking French railway workers of cutting the sabot that held railroad tracks in place. The word appears in English in 1910 and early use specifically refers to the French railroad strikers.
From http://www.wordorigins.org/**
Your freshman English and Social Sciences professors should be punched in the tit.
>Savage!**
No, the bolded part is hyperbolic. In fact the OP should be bolded, IMO.
>Please explain
You can call it mashed potatoes if you like, but most people wouldn’t. I call it arson but not terrorism, for the reasons described above and in this post.
I wouldn’t be. I’d expect answers to include things such as:
-Palestinian suicide bombings;
-KKK lynchings;
-Abortion doctor shootings;
-Night club bombings;
-Attacks on US forces in Iraq [I’d dispute this one, but I’d expect it to turn up];
-Attacks on civilians in Iraq;
and so forth. I’d expect a variety of responses. I wouldn’t expect anyone to mention acts that don’t target human lives, because that’s not how folks tend to use the word, except in this exact discussion.
Yes, actually: once the IRA started taking steps to remove the danger to human life, they moved from being a terrorist organization to being a criminal organization. To forestall the next question, I think the ETA doesn’t qualify as a terrorist organization, from what I know about them.
Weirddave is likely to come along and claim that in my world you’re either a terrorist or you’re a hero. I make no allowances for anything in between.
Fortunately, Weirddave is wrong on this.
More lies. You can’t dispute the facts in post number 79, but you can mischaracterize it. When that’s the tactic you have to resort to, it’s a sign either that your argument is weak or that you are.
Weirddave, a question for you: is it correct to characterize all tree-spikers as active pedophiles?
Daniel
Daniel, I’m not the one who has the weak argument here. You might want to look around and see exactly who it is that agrees with you. As far as I can see, it’s just booklyn. Nice company you’re keeping. Here it is in a nutshell: anyone who uses violence in an attempt to intimidate other people, to force a course of action that most people don’t support on the population as a whole or to advance their agenda in the place of legitimate, legal means is a terrorist. I don’t care if they are destroying machinery or crashing planes, in the end it’s all the same act.
“Stupid” isn’t a real effective debating tool Daniel. I never said anything even remotely close to this, it’s a complete strawman. Unfortunately for your position, ALF and ELF are terrorist organizations. That doesn’t mean that Pee Wee torching his girlfriend’s house cuz she fucked another guy is a terrorist. It also doesn’t meant that ALF and ELF are “only” arsonists.
What facts am I disputing? Spiking trees for the purpose of destroying machinery, intimidating workers and forcing a company to abandon a legal logging operation is pure terrorism, even if nobody suffers so much as a hangnail. ALF and ELF have been classified as terrorist organizations by the FBI since well before 9/11 because of this simple fact.
If they are actively buggering an underage child I’d say it’s a fair characterization. Otherwise, probably not. Why?
brooklyn, in addition to your poor grammar, your coding is going to shit. Your posts are now niegh unreadable.
What about KKK cross burnings? Or the defacing of synagogues with racist graffitt. Or the arson of black churches that may or may not have happened a few years back. None of those target human lives (even the church burnings were done at night when nobody was expected to be in the churches), but they’re all terroristic activity, designed to intimidate the victims.
Does this statement constitute a defense of ALF?
Daniel
No, Daniel, it means that unlike you WeirdDave is actually capable of recognizing crimes for what they are.
You’re the one who is classing terrorist acts, and terrorist groups, as mere arsonists. They may well be guilty of arson (I think we can take that as a given), but the purpose of their arson is to intimidate and terrorize the targets into ceasing legitimate, legal business operations.
ALF and ELF have available to them peaceful legal channels through which they could lobby for change, but instead they use violence and fear to try to coerce their victims. They firebomb, spike trees, stalk, and do all but encourage their members to kill researchers (and sometimes innocents who happen to live in a home that used to be the residence of researchers).
They use terror as a means to their ends, and it’s only through sheer dumb luck that nobody has died because of it. That luck doesn’t change the fact that they are terrorists and have been known as and defined as such for over twenty years.
Terrorism isn’t a specific crime. It’s essentially a motivation for a crime. Shooting an abortion doctor is both terrorism and murder. Burning down an abortion clinic after hours, so nobody gets hurt, is both terrorism and arson. Painting a swastika on a synagogue is both terrorism and vandalism. If you walked up to people in the streets and asked for an example of terrorism, they’re going to tend to respond with examples of acts of murder because they’re more dramatic and memorable than acts that don’t. That doesn’t mean that most people wouldn’t consider lesser acts to also be terrorism.
I’m going to have to ask for some sort of a cite for this. The only people I’ve ever heard to insist on this limited definition of the term are yourself and booklyn, and booklyn ain’t exactly persuasive.
Do you have any evidence that anyone other than yourself (and, I suppose, IRA sympathizers) hold this view of the modern IRA? So far as I’m aware, they’re still considered a terrorist organization by most governments and police agencies, and by the public at large.
booklyn, your posts are completely unintelligible. At the very least, you need to learn how to do nested quotes. When you’re responding to another post, at the end of the part you’re responding to, type
[/quote]
, then your response to whatever you’ve quoted. When you’re ready to start quoting again, type
[quote]
. That will open a new quote box. This will make it clear what part of your posts is from you, and what parts are posts you’re responding to. Make sure to use Preview Post to make sure you’ve closed all your quote tags.
Give that a try and then we’ll see what we can do about content.
The problem with treating all the acts as terrorism is that then folks who see the world in chiaroscuro call for teh death penalty for terrorists, for the military to be involved in terroirsm. By your definition, as near as I can tell, a kid who puts a WAR bumpersticker on a stop sign might qualify as a terrorist (commission of a crime in order to influence public policy), and if the kid writes “Die yuppies die!” on a bathroom wall, she’s definitely a terrorist (influencing public opinion by attempting to scare people with a crime).
That’s ridiculous. Terrorism is one of the worst crimes in modern America, and using it to describe trivial crimes is terribly confusing to people who can’t see shades of gray. (Test for the home audience: have I called burning down an SUV a trivial crime? Answer: no! read on). The reason why we consider terrorism so appalling is because it is designed to result in the loss of innocent life, and that is an appalling design to us.
Other crimes comprise attempts to influence public policy through fear. If Bush were found criminally liable for his false claims about yellowcake, it would not be terrorism, despite being an attempt to influence public policy through fear. It wouldn’t pass the sniff test. That doesn’t mean I approve of such lies; it means that I don’t call them terrorism.
I am aware that the FBI consider ALF to be terrorists. I think this is a poor designation, because it confuses the feebleminded, who then end up lumping the burning of SUVs in with the crashing of planes into buildings. The two acts are not comparable; we should not, therefore, classify both of them as terrorism.
If you ask a hundred people to offer examples of politically-motivated crimes, I suspect you’ll find that burning SUVs gets mentioned once or twice, even though it’s not as dramatic an example of a politically-motivated crime as 9/11. Politically-motivated crimes is a better category for SUV arsonists.
catsix, as usual, is too stupid to bother with.
Daniel
But that doesn’t making it in and of itself incorrect. Is referring to stubbing my toe as “painful” incorrect simply because I would also refer to chemotherapy as “painful”?
Incorrect. Terrorism implies the loss of innocent life. A KKK cross-burning is terrorism because it implies “We can lynch you without repercussions if you dare cross us” to the family being attacked. Note the letter referenced in post #42 written to the scientist in which all the details of his life are catalogued.
Why are the two acts not comparable? They, in fact, are extremely comparable: in both cases, the instigators commited an act of destruction in order to cause devestation to their target. In both cases, the act carried the message to the target of “act the way I want you to or we will do this again, or maybe do worse.” In both cases, the message was designed to be conveyed not only to the direct victim of the crime, but to the community at large. The most serious difference is simply one of scale; but can I then say that the Armenian genocide is in no way comparable to the Holocaust because the Holocaust killed ten times as many?
Al Qaieda is willing to kill people for their cause; ALF is not willing to directly kill people for their cause, but is willing to intimate that one day they will and that maybe some of their members are too craaaaaazy to stop from taking drastic action.
I disagree that the two acts are comparable, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not both terrorism. There’s a big difference between the murders committed by the BTK killer and a drive-by shooting by a gang, but both are rightly classified as first-degree murder despite the differences.
Funny innit? You directly state to me that you will no longer continue this discussion if I “pull out your nasty insults”, and yet it is you who resorts to name calling. How about this: reply to the post and not the poster because Catsix is dead on. In fact, as has been pointed out, the only one besides you in this thread who doesn’t immediately reconize that ALF and ELF are terrorist organizations is booklyn. He’s just incoherent, and in your case, based upon your posting history, I don’t see any other explanation except that you refuse to recognize their terrorist acts simply because you are sympathetic with their cause. If the NRA started bombing the offices of Gun Control America and begain hastling Sara Brady I bet you’d be pretty quick to call them terrorists. As it is you’ve fatally weakened your position on any subject on these boards because you refuse to admit the basic truth about an organization simply becaue their mission statement coincides with your presonal beliefs, and this demonstrates that you completely lack the ability to be objective.
:rolleyes: Is this also the reason why I call for them to be prosecuted for arson?
Don’t quit your day job, psychic-boy.
Daniel
C’mon Daniel.
Burning down abortion clinics is terrorism. Why do you think anti-abortion terrorists burn down abortion clinics? For the same reason they shoot at and threaten abortion providers, to create a climate where people are afraid to provide abortions.
Same thing with burning down research labs and sending death threats to scientists.
Arson is a particularly heinous crime, because THERE IS NO WAY TO BURN DOWN A BUILDING SAFELY. Oh, the building was empty? Bullshit. How do you know the janitor wasn’t there, or someone forgot their coat, or some homeless guy isn’t sleeping in the basement? And of course, the firefighter’s lives are put at risk. And neighboring buildings…with people in them…are put at risk. Arson is such a serious crime because it shows depraved indifference to human life, you cannot commit arson without accepting a substantial risk that human beings will be killed or horribly maimed.
Yes, not all political crimes are terrorism. Spraypainting “Stop Animal Testing Now!” on a building? It’s a crime, it’s stupid, but it isn’t terrorism. Dousing the building with gasoline and risking the lives of an unknown number of people? Terrorism. Arson is different than spraypainting slogans, or smashing windows, or chaining yourself to the doorway. And so is sending death threats.
Anyone who sets a building on fire to make a political point is a terrorist. I don’t care if they’re abortion protestors, christian identity nutjobs, union busters, islamists, or environmentalists.
I’d like you to step back for a minute and consider WHY people consider arson, death threats, assault, and suchlike terrorism, even if no one has actually died or been maimed yet, while other criminal actions (tresspassing, vandalism, disturbing the peace, demonstrating without a permit) aren’t. You’ll see it isn’t just a matter of semantics.
No, under the definition of terrorism being used by most people in this thread, neither of those acts would be terrorism. The definition of terrorism, once again: “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.” Putting a sticker on a stop sign is not a threat of force. Bathroom grafitti is not a credible threat or attempt to influence society.
It’s not like you to use such an obvious strawman like that, Daniel.
Since when are we defining words to make it easier for the stupidest portion of the American public to keep up? Let’s try to fight against the lowest common denomintor, not pander to it.
Anyway, terrorism is not, by default, the worst crime in modern America. Some specific examples of terrorist activity happen to be among the worst crimes ever committed on US soil. Other specific examples are relatively trivial. (Relative to, say, blowing up New York City, anyway.)
Bush didn’t personally issue any threats. He was fear mongering, but he wasn’t trying to influence the public by making the public afraid of George W. Bush. The fact that a sizable portion of the public is none the less terrified of him is incidental to this discussion.
Sure, they’re comparable. They’re the same thing, differing only in degree and method of execution. Stealing a co-worker’s lunch out of the breakroom fridge and absconding to Mexico with the pension fund are both examples of theft, but they are vastly different in terms of degree and the amount of damage caused. Again, terrorism is a specific act, it’s a motivation for a wide array of illegal activities.
You need to get off the “ask a hundred people” hobby horse. It’s bullshit. If you asked a hundred people if the examples discussed in this thread would count as terrorism, you’d get an overwhelmingly positive response. As evidence for this position, I offer the dictionary definition of the word, which purportedly represents common usage, and the contents of this thread itself, where the consensus, from a wide variety of posters of all political persuasions, has been almost unanimous.
It’s always nice to find common ground in a contentious debate.