Terrorism is not about terror
gwern.net
gwern.net
Classifying both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda as terrorist groups means that you have spread the definition for any group that may have bombed civilians at some time or another. I would claim that Hezbollah is much more than terrorist group. Their success or failure does not depend on terrorism.
Second bias might be exclusion of successful terrorism that is later legitimized. For example, are IZL and Stern Gang included? I would say that they were highly successful. How about Stalin and early communists in Russia? If terrorists have enough support and are successful early, terrorism turns into ethnic cleansing and/or revolution and it is taken out from the list.
Third problem is that terrorism seems by definition be the underdog because official or state terrorism is excluded. Many dictators use terrors successfully as tactics (kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians or relatives of their opponents) but this does not fit under terrorism. Taiwans White Terror or Augusto Pinochet used terror as tactics but it's not classified as that.
While the definition may be nebulous, clearly the U.S. supported terrorism in Cuba and Nicaragua on massive scales that matches concretely what is called terrorism generally. E.g. death squads murdering and raping civilians, bombing airplanes hospitals and embassies, mining commercial harbors. Hard to believe if you're a patriot but you owe it to yourself to read up on the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso...
Also, the U.S. Phoenix Program in Vietnam explicitly was terrorism in the eyes of its own perpetrators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program
Arguably the drone assassination program going on right now in the Middle East is also a form of terrorism. Just imagine how you'd feel if China was flying drones over the U.S., killing people at their pleasure, without trial, sometimes wiping out hospitals and weddings and bystanders in the process. Even if you believed that China was trying to eliminate violent elements of a neo-Nazi insurrection which for some reason a collapsed U.S. government was powerless to stop.. how would you feel when you hear those Chinese death planes buzzing overhead? Might you be a bystander? Might you be targeted? Living with that generates resentment and resentment drives people to extremism (in this scenario, you'd probably be more likely to join an anti-China militant group, such as the hypothetical dominant hard-right one). Which ultimately supports the conclusion of the paper: that terrorism is counter-productive.
That is, unless the goal is actually not to stop terrorism, but to drive people to extremism.... something to think about.
(If you think that's far-fetched, would it be so difficult to believe that in this scenario China's motive was not really to stop neo-Nazism, but rather to justify increased intervention in the U.S. to prevent a strong competitive government from emerging? Just look at Israel for an example of this playbook on a smaller scale: provoking and driving Palestinians to extremism to further justify their oppression and taking more land. Just one example among many, but it's one the U.S. directly supports.)
To answer your question, Pinochet, Taiwan government in 70's, Stalin, would all be terrorists, according to the original definition of terrorism, as in "intimidation by governments". Somewhere along the way propaganda completely reversed the meaning of the word to "intimidation of governments by non-government actors". Either way, the word "terrorism" used in propaganda everywhere, it is a loaded word used carefully with craft to manipulate the people's perception of nefarious activities performed by governments from all around the world, the biggest of which is the U.S. government.
Terrorism, the word itself, is the weapon.
Terrorism are certain activities performed by one's enemies, when one wishes to use the word terrorism to intimidate the populace to allow the government to implement draconian policies.
1. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/07/terrorism
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso...
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Allen_Davis_incident
5. http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/05/us-bombs-doctors-without...
6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-b...
7. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...
U.S. claims to only supply weapons to "moderate" rebels, and U.S. describes Al-Qaeda as "moderate".
It's a bit more nuanced than that. For the first 100 or so years "terrorism" was self proclaimed policy by revolutionaries of all sorts, for example the first French Republic or a number of Russian 19th century anarchist factions. The term did not originate as propaganda or a political slur, it was proud banner of the activists at the time. Perhaps only by 1920s the extreme political left felt compelled to distance from the term, and the term was subsequently extended to any government or non-government intimidation activity.
"The state department regards attacks against "noncombatant* targets" as terrorism. But follow the asterisk to the small print and you find that "noncombatants" includes both civilians and military personnel who are unarmed or off duty at the time. Several examples are given, such as the 1986 disco bombing in Berlin, which killed two servicemen.
The most lethal bombing in the Middle East last year was the suicide attack on USS Cole in Aden harbour which killed 17 American sailors and injured 39 more.
As the ship was armed and its crew on duty at the time, why is this classified as terrorism? Look again at the small print, which adds: "We also consider as acts of terrorism attacks on military installations or on armed military personnel when a state of military hostilities does not exist at the site, such as bombings against US bases." "
Perfect. Thanks.
My favorite quote about how the internet impacts terrorism:
"If we see terrorism as more of a tribal or gang activity than political activism or warfare, then online connections become especially important to our analysis, otherwise we will be fooled by so-called lone wolves. Earlier ‘lone wolves’ like bombers Timothy McVeigh or Eric Robert Rudolph turn out on closer inspection to have ties, social & otherwise, to like-minded people; McVeigh lived with several other extremists and was taught his bomb-making skills by the Nichols, who also built the final bomb with him, while Rudolph remained on the run for several years in a community that wrote songs and sold t-shirts to praise him and was ultimately caught clean-shaven & wearing new sneakers. Lone wolves who genuinely had no contact with their confreres, such as Ted Kaczynski, are vanishingly rare exceptions among the dozens of thousands of terrorist attacks in the 20th century, and as rare exceptions, otherwise implausible explanations like mental disease account for them without trouble."
Terrorism is as much about media as it is about anything else and by giving these suckers as much airtime as they get the media are more than just a little bit complicit in providing them with a platform for their idiocy.
That said, I can certainly attest to the word being commonly used in a host of other languages besides English, including Slavic ones. Perhaps it is the case that it is not frequent in Spanish-speaking societies.
[0] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
Otoh you have freedom of the press but there are little restrictions on the press to print anything (obvious exclusions include libel) under the premise that people have a right to know certain things even if that right to know ends up creating more danger. Which is what you mean by "giving these suckers as much airtime". The truth is, why do I need to know that a school in another state in the US had a shooting? Does the information value of that outweigh the obvious effect of having copycat crimes and more damage? To me, it doesn't. And I don't think the issue is really not allowing information like that to be put out. I think the issue is simply playing so long and so hard that it creates the impact that you are referring to. And creates "more suckers".
Practically all of the major political battles ongoing today in America are to clarify the proper scope and function of government. Healthcare, taxation, voting rights, abortion, religious liberty, on and on and on. It has been going on since the Revolutionary War, and will never reach consensus.
Here's another opinion - The constitution is a starting point, not a recipe book.
You could perhaps argue that they shouldn't have been illegal, constitutionally. But, IIRC, they were, and so new change was required to start the war on drugs. It was just "we're going to get serious about stopping this stuff".
Frankly, I was mostly attempting to engage with mason240's rather strict legal philosophy in a way that would cause most strict constructionists some discomfort.
You can't really understand many constitutional debates without understanding this core formulation of the U.S. Constitution.
Attempts to interpret the whitelist in such a way that it effectively becomes "allow anything" is a good way of understanding the criticisms of expansive federal programs.
Similar attempts to minimize the blacklist portion is a good way of understanding the criticism of expansive police and military programs (i.e. war on drugs, war on terrorism, etc.)
My use of "without dispute" is in regard to that overall logical structure and I do believe that the structure is quite clear and does not lend itself to 'quite different interpretations'.
Of course the appropriate interpretation of particular enumerated powers is often debated as well as what the "federal government should do", but that is not what I was referring to with "without dispute".
What usually happens is the candidate talks about reducing the military budget, only to increase it once in office. Obama would be a great example. He was opposed to the multiple wars the US was fighting, then once he got into office, he increased spending on various defense projects:
In Obama’s first year as president, his defense secretary, Robert Gates, ratcheted up spending on the F-35 as a compromise for halting production on the F-22, a larger, more expensive stealth aircraft. But the F-35 has turned out to be nearly as costly and considerably more troubled.
His budget for 2016 looks to increase the military budget:
Intriguingly, while the Pentagon’s “overview” briefing notes that it’s requesting a 4 percent increase in the total defense budget and a 21 percent reduction in the OCO accounts, it doesn’t express the base-budget increase in percentage terms, so let me do the math for you: It translates to an increase of 7.7 percent.
This is enormous.
source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...
The military industrial complex works great when there is an enemy to fight that requires the production of military equipment. examples of this enemy, in the past, were the Axis powers and the USSR during WWII and the cold war. It doesn't work so well when there is no enemy to fight.
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, there was an "enemy vacuum": who would be the next enemy that the US could use to drive the military industrial complex? Russia wasn't worth fighting indirectly any more because they were too weak, and there really wasn't a competitor that was strong enough or threatening enough for the US to parade around as the enemy.
enter terrorism: it provides a target that fulfills a number of very crucial aspects:
1) non state actors: the US can go to war with terrorists without going to war against the officially recognized government. This is key to global security because conducting war within a nation's borders no longer constitutes an assault on that nation. This prevents WWI type wars that start as a series of cascading mutual protection treaties or similar.
2) difficult to define the enemy: who are terrorists? whoever the ruling party deems terrorists. everyone else is a freedom fighter. This makes it convenient to come up with a new enemy group of terrorists when the current batch has been "defeated" or the american public becomes war weary.
3)easy for the government to drum up support for new military action by creating and appealing to a sense of fear within the populace and a desire for "safety".
4) oil: the majority of terrorist groups that are in the focus of the american public's attention are primarily located within countries that have large oil interests. Other terrorist groups located in other areas, such as the philippines or south america, are largely ignored.
5) percieved threat of terrorists: it is easy to believe that terrorists are a significant threat to US citizens precisely because of their ability to strike on american soil. This greatly adds to their value as a enemy for the military industrial compelex because the general us population sees the threat as legitimate. (a converse example of this would be if the new enemy would have been, say, brazil: they're not really a threat to the US because they wouldn't really be able to directly threaten the american mainland.)
there are other reasons, i'm sure.
the government pays the soldiers/airmen/marines/sailors a wage for their services. Those service members and their families then use that money to purchase other services. This helps bolster the overall american economy.
the government pays contractors to provide all the food/water/clothing/bullets/office equipment/communication equipment/whatever needed to conduct war. This creates jobs, which helps the american economy.
the government contracts flights from airlines to transport troops to and from warzones. this creates more jobs and helps bolster the airline industry.
the government purchased those bombs from a manufacturer using tax dollars: also could be phrased as the government creating jobs in the bomb manufacturing industry. Those people working in the bomb manufacturing industry then go and spend their wages on other things, like food, clothing, apps, computers, etc. That is useful to the nation.
another benefit: intimidating other countries. Don't go to war with america, we'll bomb the shit out of you and you will die. to use a common phrase, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." this is beneficial to the nation.
another benefit: the military gains experience in war, which will be a large benefit if the US ends up going to war against a real country. veteran armies historically have a large advantage against rookie armies.
another benefit: the threat of force (or protection against other forces) can be used to enter into treaties with other states that are not directly involved. Look at NATO: literally a treaty between nations in order to gain protection from America against the Soviets. NATO has provided a large benefit to the nation. Pax Americana is a real thing.
another benefit: technological development. DARPA is a government program that is designed to fund new technologies. Its overall goal is to keep the US military at the technological forefront, but its side effects are greatly beneficial to the populace at large: GPS (a single example among many) is a direct result of DARPA. this provides a huge benefit to the american (and the world's) people.
so yes, you are right that the purchase of that single bomb at whatever cost probably wasn't worth it. but the overall system of purchasing and using bombs and the logistics of delivering those bombs to a warzone and the entire network of individuals that are needed to invent, manufacture, deliver, load, use, and whatever else is needed, is what really benefits the american people.
Military and military industry for economic benefits. Just pay them to build highways, bridges or whatever, they will still spend the wages on food, houses and cars. And you can keep the highways and bridges.
Attacking the USA? Geographically almost impossible, no need to intimidate someone.
Veteran army, well maybe, but given all the technological and financial superiority of the US forces compared to their past war opponents the track record doesn't really reflect that as far as I can tell.
Pax Americana, I think is a thing of the past. It may be a bit to early to conclude that humanity left it aggressive youth behind but I think it is pretty unlikely that we will see something like a third world war or even larger international wars, it just isn't worth it.
And finally you can also spend the same amount of money for research without military technology advances as driving force.
> the government pays contractors to provide all the food/water/clothing/bullets/office equipment/communication equipment/whatever needed to conduct war. This creates jobs, which helps the american economy.
> the government contracts flights from airlines to transport troops to and from warzones. this creates more jobs and helps bolster the airline industry.
Couldn't we just instead cut a check to all those people who would have been involved? That would free up their time to go do something productive, and they'd still have the cash in hand to stimulate the economy or whatever. Wouldn't we be even better off? Even in the worse case, where they take the money and do nothing, it would be a wash.
Also both of you and OP mention "dessert countries" but afaik we have no real plans to bomb or invade Switzerland.
Notice Hillary's answer this morning to a question about her ties to the military industrial complex (Spoiler--there wasn't one):
http://www.today.com/video/hillary-clinton-on-war-diplomacy-...
Not to invalidate your comments, but is that adjusted for inflation? Because not increasing the spending to match inflation is effectively the same as decreasing the amount of [adjusted-for-inflation money] spent.
Argh. I always forget which of nominal and real dollars are adjusted for inflation.
Good point about needing to adjust for inflation. I did not consider that. I still believe that Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex was prescient.
Politicians have adopted a "Under my watch: zero tolerance for any risk at any cost! ANY. COST." approach because no one wants to be held responsible for anything slipping through at all. It's not about saving a few hundred lives (vs tens of thousands/year in car crashes). It's about denying responsibility by spending other people's money. It's a redux of "No one ever got fired for buying I.B.M.". This way, when something bad does happen, they can point to the massive over-spending they already did and say "Don't blame me. I did far, far more than was reasonable. What more do you want from me?"
You 5 points are valid, but IMHO they are the grease that gets the rest of the machine to cooperate. I think a 5-why's approach would lead back to the politician's fear of reactionary voters.
Humans also tend to react much more strongly to the malicious actions of others than to the arbitrariness of nature (including human error, as humans are part of nature). Even compared to your ordinary murder, terrorism takes it to the next level, since it indicates that there are others who share the ideology or membership in the terrorist group who intend to cause harm to your society, and they're still out there.
In short, it's not all about "risk". It's about justice. There's little irrational about the desire to live in a just world, and the willingness to pay for it.
While the Soviet Union is no longer, Russia continues strong.
The group may have overt goals that are not about the group's own survival, but groups that do not devote significant effort to their continued existence—whether deliberately or inadvertently—simply can't compete and die out.
The Shakers[1] are a good example of this. They religion requires celibacy which means the only way the group survives is through adoption and conversion of new members. That makes it very hard for them to compete with other faiths, and the religion is almost totally gone today.
What I find fascinating is that in many groups, survival forces directly oppose the group's own overt goals. The classic example is the NAACP. It's goal is the elimination of racism, but if we ever pull that off, there's no need to have an NAACP anymore either.
From this angle terrorist organizations make a lot more sense. Random terrorist attacks are highly visible and increase the public profile of the group. They make the group appear relatively strong compared to other competing extremist groups.
Being inflexible and dogmatic makes them less effective, but satisfies members who join the group specifically because of its extreme views.
Anohter very relevant example are the organizations that are supposed to protect people from terrorists. What happens to them when terrorists stop terrorizing?
But for the individual psychologist, it's still better for his patients to do OK so they will tell other potential patients that he is a good psychologist.
The members of terrorist and anti-terrorist organizations don't really get that sort of feedback.
* The patient moves on, spreads positive word of mouth advertising, and frees up time for newer patients that might have a higher demand for the therapist (a new patient is much more likely to have weekly or biweekly sessions than a stable patient that would only need monthly sessions). * The patient stops having an acute problem in their life, but still wants to retain the therapeutic relationship that helped them out of it to address new challenges that arrive in their life. Someone might start going to a therapist because of a major depressive episode, but after that problem is contained, move on to other aspects of their life they find troubling, like social anxiety, or executive functioning, or relationships... * The patient has treated all major and minor deficiencies, but still wishes to use the therapeutic relationship to produce deeper self-fulfilment in their life. A therapist might help someone manage the stress of starting a company, or help explore options for personal growth, or otherwise help their clients achieve self-actualization.
You must have a very narrow and biased view of therapy and psychology to make such a statement. Do you really think there is no value in having someone reflect your feelings and thoughts back to you in an analytical way so that you can identify antipatterns and work on solutions?
Beyond that, humans aren't tools that, once fixed, are performing at capacity until broken again. Humans have limitless capacity for personal growth, limited only by our distractions by other more menial needs. Do you think that it is impossible to help other people personally grow, or that it is impossible to grow at all?
In the past, this might have been the role of the pastor or priest or rabbi or yogi or life coach, but religion is rapidly backsliding away from relevance, and psychologists have the power of science behind them, so they will only get more effective while the other groups are increasingly exposed for the charlatans they are.
(I think your problem might originate by associating psychodynamic practitioners with psychology. Freudianism and its descendents are not part of psychology, since they are ascientific. They're not even debunked like say, phrenology, because they aren't falsifiable. So they're more comparable to the religious or spiritual figures I named above.)
These days, with the internet, it's not only easy/affordable to reach the local constituents, but also to reach foreign audiences.
ISIS is the first modern terrorist group, in this sense. Much of its propaganda is designed specifically to intimidate westerners watching from home.
Modern terrorism capitalizes on the free PR that the recipient group provides. Mainstream TV networks have giving ISIS tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity.
Terrorist groups are "big tent" groups, much like western political parties. Donors may think they are donating for food and infrastructure, but some of that money may go to fund bombings, etc.
The goal of war is to break the will of the enemy. Terrorism is a useful tactic, which is why it is used by the West via drone strikes and fear campaigns.
If you have a small budget, terrorism is a far cheaper way to attempt to break the will of the enemy than conventional warfare, and its successes and failures play out over a longer period of time.
The US, while it doesn't have a small budget, has very little tolerance for aspects of war that appear to the public as messy or gruesome, which is why we choose drone strikes and other low-budget ways to attempt to break the will of our enemies.
Terrorism is not guerrilla warfare, as the article claims, but propaganda warfare. The symbolic strike is everything. The more fear created by strikes, the more effective they are.
ISIS is an insurgency movement which attempts to take and hold territory. It uses terror as a weapon, as preliminary intimidation against groups it wants to conquer outright, or exterminate.
That sort of thing goes back to at least the Mongols.
If you look at Colombia, the Colombian establishment, and US government, have never respected the will of the average Colombian, or Colombia's sovereignty for that matter. Obama's guards going off to sleep with prostitutes (and stiff them at that) is a great symbol for the US/Colombian relationship.
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán looked like he was going to become president of Colombia in 1948, so he was murdered by someone supporting the Colombian establishment. This led over time to a series of events (and US intervention) which caused FARC to arise. In 1984, FARC desired to stop its armed campaign, which had wide support among southern Colombian peasants, and enter politics. This was not something desired by Colombia's establishment or Reagan, and thousands of left-wingers were murdered in Colombia, including all left wing presidential candidates. In 1987, FARC picked up the armed struggle. The Colombian elite and US response to leftists in Colombia entering politics is to murder them. Just like when leftists in Chile were murdered like Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The Chilean establishment and US answer even elected government's like Allende's with violence and murder.
The mujahideen is another example. Sylvester Stallone dedicated Rambo III to the mujahideen in a movie glorifying them as freedom fighters, as did the US political establishment and almost all of the pundits, outside of maybe The Nation. Now Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Taliban are supposed to be awful people, whereas the Taliban used to make friendly visits to the White House. It's complete hypocrisy.
A guy who infiltrates into an enemy army base in order to kill soldiers from a foreign country cannot be terrorist.
And a country that drops a bomb from a drone into a wedding party because someone suspects that there may be some enemies among the guests, is obviously practicing terrorism.
"the preponderance of evidence is that people participate in terrorist organizations for the social solidarity, not for their political return."
Reminds me a bit of an article from earlier this year [0] which argues that young men who leave Europe to join ISIS do so largely out of a desire to belong to something important.
[0]: http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-appeal-of-isis-isnt-so-f...
>There is a commonly-believed “strategic model” of terrorism which we could describe as follows: terrorists are people who are ideologically motivated to pursue specific unvarying political goals; to do so, they join together in long-lasting organizations and after the failure of ordinary political tactics, rationally decide to efficiently & competently engage in violent attacks on (usually) civilian targets to get as much attention as possible and publicity for their movement, and inspire fear & terror in the civilian population, which will pressure its leaders to solve the problem one way or another, providing support for the terrorists’ favored laws and/or their negotiations with involved governments, which then often succeed in gaining many of the original goals, and the organization dissolves.
{{who}}? Come on. Not even a single source on this.
It's easy to burn your enemies if they're straw men.
The observation that terrorism is somewhat socially driven is interesting but should be backed by a deeper frame of reference, and one that the authors of those papers surely understood: the larger goals of an organization like Al Qaeda don’t align at all with traditional political demands. The long term strategy involves attacking the US to draw them into open war with a muslim country, spreading the conflict to neighboring regions, mobilizing local resistance to the invaders (as in Afghanistan) and drawing the west into a war of attrition. In this sense they’ve been startlingly successful, and a focus on social capital and “branding”, as opposed to concrete demands of existing governments, is actually quite strategic. Whatever commonality this has with the IRA, the FARC, or even Hezbollah and Hamas is superficial at best.
Think about IRA. Most of their bombings and assassinations were designed to make the UK install a police state in Northern Ireland, with the intention that the population will become increasingly hostile to the UK in reaction.
Terrorism targeted at american troops in Iraq was following pretty much the same pattern, like Indian terrorism before the independance or the french resistance during ww2.
ISIS is the same thing. They are desperate to grab attention by destroying historic sites and staging horrific executions. I believe their true goal is to provoke a western coalition against them so they can recruit fighters in the muslim world arguing it is a crusade.
That being said, I believe that individual terrorists have historically little real political agenda. Even in wealthy democracies there will always be a bunch of violent thugs who want to kill, blow things up. The ideology is more of a pretext and they might have gone for a criminal career anyway. I don't think there are many differences between the assassins of the Baader Meinhof gang, the home grown al quaeda terrorists, IRA terrorists, or the ZAD militants throwing acid on policemen to protest against the construction of an airport in France.
Fundamentally terrorism is just another category in common crime. Neither new or particularly worse today, and not by any mean the most problematic form of crime by body count. The current hysteria about terrorism not only isn't achieving anything, but in some cases it is actually falling into the terrorists trap. We should react to terrorism like we do to rape, gang violence, drug related crime, etc. Not ignore the problem, be tough enough but not make the problem bigger than it is.
Following that definition, these acts can be considered terrorism:
- Pub brawl
- Running someone over with a car
- Punching someone who is attacking you
- Police hitting protestors
The religions would call these "others" "the unbelievers," of course. Even though everybody in the world doesn't believe in most of the gods of the world. The "terrorists" is used as something like "the evil others."
A case study: The start of the WWII (in Europe) with Germany attacking Poland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland
"The invasion was referred to by Germany as the 1939 Defensive War since Hitler proclaimed that Poland had attacked Germany and that "Germans in Poland are persecuted with a bloody terror and are driven from their homes. The series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier.""
It's always "them."
Even as internationally "agreed":
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/terrorism-defined
"Although the longest, the United Nations' definition is arguably the broadest and mostly serves to individualize the act, which, like the State Department, disregards nations as possible agents of terrorism. At the time the declaration was registered in April 2002, 132 of the 180 parties had signed the resolution. What is most interesting about the United Nations Declaration made by the General Assembly, is not necessarily the definition itself, but the 'declarations', 'reservations', 'understandings', and subsequent 'objections' made by the parties (See Appendix). Take notice how Yemen did not sign the declaration on the basis that, as a nation, it did not want to relay the impression that it was recognizing Israel's existence. Many of the countries signed the declaration, but not before declaring that it did not apply to them because they were unbound for one reason or another."
"United States signed with the following reservation: "(a) pursuant to Article 24 (2) of the Convention, the United States of America declares that it does not consider itself bound by Article 24 (1) of the Convention; and
(b) the United States of America reserves the right specifically to agree in a particular case to follow the arbitration procedure set forth in Article 24 (1) of the Convention or any other procedure for arbitration."
Understandings:
"(1) EXCLUSION OF LEGITIMATE ACTIVITIES AGAINST LAWFUL TARGETS. The United States of America understands that nothing in the Convention precludes any State Party to the Convention from conducting any legitimate activity against any lawful target in accordance with the law of armed conflict.
(2) MEANING OF THE TERM 'ARMED CONFLICT'. The United States of America understands that the term 'armed conflict' in Article 2 (1) (b) of the Convention does not include internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence, and other acts of a similar nature."
With regard to the declaration made by the Jordan upon ratification:
"The Government of the United States of America, after careful review, considers the statement made by Jordan relating to paragraph 1 (b) of Article 2 of the Convention (the Declaration) to be a reservation that seeks to limit the scope of the offense set forth in the Convention on a unilateral basis. The Declaration is contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention, namely, the suppression of the financing of terrorist acts, irrespective of where they take place or who carries them out.""
http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Religious-Violent-Economics-Te...
Highly recommend it.
I think The Westboro Baptist Church is a great example of a terrorist organization. Sure, they haven't blown up anyone with a pipe bomb like other extremist christian terror groups, but you can see in their bumbling intimidation tactics how they're just acting violently in hopes that they get what they want (in this case mainly violent speech and intimidation through picketing). If anything they're more focused on inflicting pain than successfully achieving their objective.
In this sense, terrorism is about terror.
"Every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction." (A cookie to anyone who knows where that is from.)
Sometimes one needs to pull one's backside out of academic citations and speak to people, at the moment Syrian people are pretty handy for informing one's own perspective on things. I am fortunate in that I know regular Syrian people that do professional jobs, raise kids, play football and have plenty of family back home.
Normal people that happen to have moved out before the rest from Syria don't have some crazy viewpoint, but you have to talk to them. They may not know the truth either but they can provide a point of reference not provided by the media or 'well meaning' articles written by people that either know nothing or have an axe to grind.
Well this is probably true for any organization, and for culture in general.
"After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor ran for president in the 1997 general election. He famously campaigned on the slogan "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him."[22] The elections were overseen by the United Nations' peacekeeping mission, United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia, along with a contingent from the Economic Community of West African States.[23] Taylor won the election in a landslide, garnering 75 percent of the vote. Although the election was widely reckoned as free and fair by international observers, Taylor had a huge advantage going into the election. He'd already taken over the former state radio station, which referred to him as "His Excellency." Additionally, there was widespread fear that Taylor would resume the war if he lost."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar#La_Catedral_pris...
"Escobar was allegedly responsible for the 1989 murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were all competing in the same election, as well as the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building bombing in Bogotá in 1989. "
...
"After declaring an end to a series of previous violent acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion, Escobar surrendered to Colombian authorities in 1991. He was confined in what became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral. Before Escobar gave himself up, the extradition of Colombian citizens had been prohibited by the newly approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. That was controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar or other drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent Assembly."
"History is written by the victors." [1] -- Napolean
[0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6145-he-who-controls-the-pas...
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/210910.Napol_on_Bona...
For what it's worth, the oldest Google Book search for 'history is written by the victors' is from the 1970 "Willard W. Waller on the Family, Education, and War", p148, in a section dated "previous unpublished." A search for 'history is written by the winners' finds this summary of the history of the quote, https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA90&dq=%2... and concludes there is no clear origin.
A great resource for these is the Quote Investigator, an anonymous researcher who has slowly been building up an impressive portfolio of all the well-known catchy quotes. Here's a great recent example: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/. He or she takes requests, so I asked him or her to put "history is written by the victors" on his or her todo list.
> What is Dr O’Toole’s background? Garson O’Toole has a doctorate from Yale University, and exploring quotations is one of his avocations.
(The Yale law librarian Fred R. Shapiro and editor of the Yale Book of Quotations further goes on to say the person is "PhD'86" from Yale http://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/3838 . However, if Shapiro is part of a Tlön-like conspiracy, then this would be exactly how to create a new Bourbaki.)
Also, if https://books.google.com/books?id=QZ0eAQAAMAAJ&q=history+is+... is correct about the date, The New Yorker, Volume 42, Part 4 (1966) leads with the line "Much of the world's history is written by history's winner".
There are two aspects to "oldest attribution"; one is to when the attribution was made, and the other is the era that the attributed person lived. They should not be confused.
If I say that Socrates said "a broken clock is right twice a day", then this is a recent attribution to someone who lived a long time ago. If others then follow my lead, then there will be a lot of modern citations to someone who lived thousands of years ago. That doesn't mean it would be correct.
This means one can't simply order the list of attributed people and pick the person who lived first. That might be a false attribution. For example, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1251690... describes some of the quotes falsely attributed to Lincoln, and http://shannonselin.com/2014/07/10-things-napoleon-never-sai... lists quotes attributed to Napoleon, but which he either did not say or did not originate.
One way to help identify misattributed quotes is to look in the historical record. Sometimes people 50 years ago quoted unknown person X as the source of a quote, where people now quote older and more famous person Y.
Because of the tendency to attach quotes to a more famous person, this would suggest - though surely not prove - that the attribution to Y is incorrect.
In the early 1970s you can see many people name diverse sources to the quote, including Haley, author of "Roots". As Napoleon's writing are well-known and studied, the lack of a citation during that to Napoleon is a strong indicator that he did not make the quote in any citeable fashion.
(Eg, the shannonselin.com link points out Napoleon may have said 'Not tonight, Josephine'; we just don't have citeable evidence for it.)
> Because of the tendency to attach quotes to a more famous person, this would suggest - though surely not prove - that the attribution to Y is incorrect.
dalke, you just agreed with my original point in citing those quotes after getting tangled in the weeds of citation & attribution. History or the historical record is often inaccurate; often (re)written by those who control such things at the time of (re)writing.
Though, I must say, your distrust of historical record doesn't seem to lead you to the next, and for me, more important question than accuracy of attribution & citation: Why?
Your original point is also simply untrue. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is perhaps the most famous case where those defeated - the Romans - are also the ones who wrote the history. They fully acknowledged that they were thoroughly defeated. We have no German account of their victory.
You seem to suggest a parallelism between my observation (that quotes are often re-attributed to a more famous name, even when there is no record of them having said it) and the meaning behind the aphorisms you repeated. I believe that is similar to Orwell's point, yes, though we do have other methods, including archaeology, to help establish the history. However, Orwell's point is more a deliberate decision, like the falsification of history practiced by the Soviet Union. Comparing that to lazy scholarship is rather trite, don't you think?
I don't understand your question "Why?". Why do people prefer to cite famous people instead of leaving it "anonymous" or "unknown"? I don't know. Why do you personally want to distort history? Again, I can't answer that question. Does it make you feel like you are more of a victor? Do I get to defeat you by changing your words?
My deliberately snippy remarks now are really rather trite compared to, say, moving Trotsky from Soviet photograph. I don't really think it makes sense to compare the two.