Re: terror linked to freedom instead of poverty?

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 10 Nov 2004 - 01:24:26 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: ""news""

    Fox Infotainment would be a better name. Or at the very least Fox 'News' with one of those 'resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental' qualifiers. Good sport though to get some CV exercise :)

    I thought terrorism was primarily a response to (perceived) oppression? If we need to live under martial law in, say, wartime then deprivation and suppression of the individual are accepted; if we are even a little bit oppressed without reason though, we try to kick off...

    Ref N. Ireland -- free elections, reasonable standard of living (in absolute terms). Ref the recent 'terrorism' (small scale) by 'oppressed' fathers in the UK, and then there's pro- and anti-hunters, environmentalists and animal rightsers. All lower key, but all terrorism
    (some including bombs).

    Ref mujahidin war fans at a loose end after guerilla warfare against the Russians, looking for causes to champion so they don't have to resocialise and get dull jobs (proxy terrorism, like the animal rights people, that's really scary).

    Ref a bunch of Neoconservatives who fear and feel oppressed by the variety and complexity of the world and seek to squash any threat whether real, perceived or even manufactured/encouraged (to help keep the knives sharp till the 'real' bad guys materialise, or perhaps just to ram through a load of social policy changes and keep the economy ticking). Terrorism (foreign and domestic simultaneously) when you really have the toys to play with -- now that's something else.

    Cheers, Chris.

    Scott Chase wrote:
    > I heard about this study on FoxNews (cough, cough)
    > which made me a little skeptical since they may
    > cherry-pick what they report or have chosen this
    > because of its implications for what the "American
    > people" will feel about the US bring freedom to other
    > nations militarily, thus eliminating the source of
    > terror related ideation. After reading a good portion
    > of David Brock's new media related book _The Republian
    > Noise Machine_ I don't know what to believe anymore. I
    > only watch FoxNews to analyze it and to really get
    > myself ticked off.
    >
    > Anyway Keith might want to see how this study (see
    > link below) on the relation between terror and freedom
    > affects his ideas, since someone is saying that
    > poverty isn't important as a factor in terrorism, but
    > a nation's level of political freedom (whatever that
    > means). Would this discount looming privation as a
    > consideration in generating terror related ideation?
    >
    > I don't know how well this person's research is
    > supported, but it has been hitting the news, so its
    > umm...newsworthy anyway.
    >
    > This post courtesy of the yellow kid ;-)
    >
    > See:
    >
    > http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05-terror.html
    >
    >
    >
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    -- 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
      HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ===============================================================
    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    


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