What if someone lauched an attack that resulted in no casualties, but deliberately and perhaps permanently shut down the New York Stock Exchange? I don’t think anyone would have much trouble calling it terrorism.
Dr. J
Bloodlessly shutting down the Stock Exchange by, say, destroying its computers with an EMP device would be an act of sabotage, not terrorism. There is a difference.
Sure he has been harmed. Say the environmental group adopts Ms. Hill’s method, and is able to delay construction (and therefore opening) of the golf course for two months. Mr. Developer can never get those two months back. He has (1) lost 2 months of greens fees and (2) will have to pay at least 2 months more in interest payments on the loans he took out to finance construction. It is fair to say that these losses would be greater than the cost of the hypothetical bulldozer.
Mr. Developer therefore has suffered more harm than if the environmental group had engaged in an act of terrorism by blowing up said bulldozer.
Terrorism or not?
Sua
- Why would there be a requirement that the to-be-ousted government make the first move? Is there a “first come, first serve” standards to governments (whichever was established first gets to decide the terms of the conflict)?
- What exactly is the standard for something being a new governemnt? If the 19 hijackers had gotten together and signed a “declararation of independence” from the US, would that have made it not terrorism?
- Most importantly, why does the nature of an act depend on whether it was done by a government? If Afghanistan had a law that was broken and had destroyed the WTC in response, would that not have been terrorism?
I also don’t understand why people are referring to this as “civil disobedience”. It certainly was disobedience, but it wasn’t very civil, was it? To me, civil disobedience means refusing to go along with the government’s intimidation, not creating your own intimidation.
Also, how would a monopoly allow a company to sell tea at a lower price?
To cite the master, the whole uproar was about the principle of taxation without representation, not about the price of tea. (Well, there was also the little hitch that giving the tea monopoly to the East India company cut colonial merchants out of the tea trade.)
Cecil on colonial taxes and the Tea Act:
Well, Mr. Developer could surely get the cops to come remove the trespassers as soon as he wants to.
The people who owned the tree Julia lived in for a year or two (whatever it was) surely could have done the same thing - she was trespassing illegally. From my understanding, they simply said “oh, you’re gonna stay up there, eh? Fine, have at it!” and proceeded to cut down all the other trees on their property.
We have laws to prevent whiney little protesters from actually causing the type of damage you speak of.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by The Ryan *
1. Why would there be a requirement that the to-be-ousted government make the first move? Is there a “first come, first serve” standards to governments (whichever was established first gets to decide the terms of the conflict)?
Well, it’s surely not terrorism on the part of the government when you break a law and the government responds. I’m only talking about “revolutionaries” here; this is not to be applied to terrorists. I was simply explaining how not all revolutionaries are terrorists.
**
You mean they sign the DOI and then go kill 5,000 people? No, that would still be terrorism. If the state of texas and everyone living in it declared independence from the union (hey, didn’t we do that once before?) … and then a bunch of union soldier come down to force us into not seceding, it would be non-terrorism for the Texans to fight back against the American troops.
This is going off on a tangent here, albeit an interesting one. Let me just point out that the Boston Tea Party took place 2.5 years before the Declaration of Independence.
**
I’m not sure what you mean in your example.
Anyway, killing or threatening to kill innocent civilians to advance a cause is ALWAYS terrorism. That’s the clearest case of it. No debate there. If anyone - single individual (McVeigh), group (al queda), or government (Afghanistan) partakes in such action, it is undoubtedly terrorism.
Destroying or causing harm to property to advance a cause is a “lesser form” of terrorism, but I think it is still terrorism (and the dictionary, for what it’s worth, tends to agree).
**
I would surely agree with that. When I think of civil disobedience, I think of Gandhi or Rosa Parks. Not a bunch of guys sneaking onto a boat disguised as Indians (err… native americans) in order to destroy lots of perfectly good tea (i.e. property that was not theirs to destroy).
Creating your own intimidation through destruction of property or harm to people (or threatened destruction/harm) is terrorism… in my opinion, of course.
Note: for the sake of discussion, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I really don’t know if the BTP was terrorism or not. The more I think about it, however, the harder it is for me to distinguish it as a non-terrorist act. Obviously some terrorism (9/11) is worse than others.
I had an earlier laugh where someone with a BA in History was cited as an authority on this topic. I have a BA in History and I even had to write a paper on this topic under the guidance of one of the foremost experts on this area, Joyce Appleby of UCLA. And I got something like a B minus on it. It was not a shining moment in my academic career (but I did well otherwise.)
The BTP was lumped in with other activities prior to the Revolution under the category of “mob activities”. While there in no doubt that the BTP was a planned activity, it certainly helped the perpetrators that there were a lot of them (I believe there were well over 100) and it was unlikely that the judicial authorities of the time were going to try to convict anyone of any crime for this act, especially since many of the leading members of Boston society were participants.
Prior to the BTP, there had been many different types of protests against British policies in the colonies. The Stamp Act was resisted with violence and agents who tried to enforce the law with stopped by force. There was also an organized opposition to it throughout the colonies that took the form of a small convention. The successor to the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts were also met with stringent opposition. And when all but the duty on tea was repealed, the hardcore antitaxers decided that they needed to take definitive steps and the BTP was the result.
One goal of terrorists is to make people believe that their government can’t protect them. I don’t know if that was the goal of the participants in the BTP. A significant number of people in the Colonies didn’t want the British to be the government anymore.
Does anyone have any clear academic take on how many? I have rather gathered the impression that early on very few “Colonists” really desired a political seperation from the Mother Country. I’m not disagreeing, just curious as to what info you have. My impression of the time is that even as the Revolution was in full swing, it did not enjoy as much popular support as we would like to think.
Know of any texts that deal in particular with “Tory/Rebel” relationships in the Revolution?
::standing on cliff and shaking fist in general direction of schools oop north::
Damn you Steve Wright! Damn you to Bognor!
kabbes, Steve, what can you tell me about the British reaction to the recent state funerals of Kevin Barry and the others? (For the unaware: Barry and nine other IRA men were executed by the British during the war of independence. They were reinterred earlier this month with state honours.) I saw what the Daily Mail and the Sun had to say about it, but I missed any response by the rational British press.
Reflecting on the War for Independence, Madison estimated that the country was evenly divided among 1/3 wanting independence, 1/3 wanting to remain with Britain, and 1/3 wanting everyone to quick marching troops through the crops. As recently as 1774, Benjamin Franklin was opposed to the independence movement. He argued strongly on both sides of the Atlantic that life would be better for everyone if Britain allowed local control of local issues. When his proposals to Parliament were rebuffed, he returned to the colonies persuaded that independence was the only solution.
Most of the taxes that had been imposed had been established to recoup the British expenditures of the war that ended in 1763–in which a lot of the expense had been to protect the colonists from French and Indian attacks. In that war there were few North American British who saw themselves as “American.” The Brits saw the demands for tax relief as a sign of a particularly ungrateful bunch of colonists.
ruadh - unbelievably, I’ve not read a Guardian this week, nor have I seen any decent news coverage on the TV. 5-live seem to have inexplicably not actually commented on it in the mornings so I can’t help you!
That’s what you get for moving home. Behind on current events.
Steve? L_C? casdave?
pan
Kalt, this is hypothetical (besides which, there are also laws against destroying property). You can’t change a hypothetical.
But fine, I will present yet another hypothetical. The environmental organization obtains an injunction to stop Mr. Developer from destroying the wetlands and building the golf course. The injunction is knowingly based on false evidence.
It takes Mr. Developer’s lawyers six months to investigate and prove to the judge that the evidence was false. That six-month delay costs Mr. Developer a large amount of money - about the cost of a dozen bulldozers.
Terrorism or not?
Sua
Thiss seems to contradict your later statement that
If I break a law and the governmnt responds by threatening to kill my family, is that or is that not terrorism?
Terrorism? Nah. The Boston Tea Party was an act of vandalism, plain and simple. Terrorism is a concerted effort to spread terror. The BTP was the work of a group of drunk rowdies, many of whom probably woke up the next morning wondering why they were wearing war paint and had tea in their underwear and boots. Their intent wasn’t to terrorize, but rather to vandalize.
IANSOK ( I am not Steve or Kabbes)
The sane British press just covered it as a piece of interesting foreign news. The 1916 period IRA isn’t resonant over here. Films like Michael Collins are enjoyed as histories, much the same as Gandhi (the film). The don’t speak to us as a people.
It may be that some of the scottish press had a different take as this stuff is still very poweful up there.
On The BTP; is it continuing American civil disobedience that not one of you, not a single one of you, can make a decent cup of tea to this day? [:)]
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I haven’t seen many papers either this week. I did see the BBC coverage of the funeral, of which the centre-piece was the speech by Bertie Taoiseach (I always thinks he looks life a man you could have a drink with). Typical BBC thing, IIRC, and largely reflecting what Bertie had to say.
This is their online stuff:
Something a little more contentious.
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There are many reasons why. Changes in the National Curriculum, different examining boards and suchlike. For me my History classes seem to revolve continually around crop rotation techniques and the plague/fire era. Oh - and Henry VIII. He’s always popular.
What it comes down to is that some students get taught it, but it is not something that we all get as standard. There is far too much British history to cover so, understandably, some schools like to concentrate on things that actually happened within the British Isles. It just isn’t seen as important enough.
To that extent - and speakign from my personal education - some students don’t get taught much at all about the British Empire. Once you’ve covered all the different monarchs and the Britain they existed in and then the two world wars you are getting quite old …
There are many reasons why. Changes in the National Curriculum, different examining boards and suchlike. For me my History classes seem to revolve continually around crop rotation techniques and the plague/fire era. Oh - and Henry VIII. He’s always popular.
What it comes down to is that some students get taught it, but it is not something that we all get as standard. There is far too much British history to cover so, understandably, some schools like to concentrate on things that actually happened within the British Isles. It just isn’t seen as important enough.
To that extent - and speakign from my personal education - some students don’t get taught much at all about the British Empire. Once you’ve covered all the different monarchs and the Britain they existed in and then the two world wars you are getting quite old …