Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.
O Heavenly Children, the stories you have concocted in God's name have angered Him; for he would never instigate war between brothers, or encourage tribes to harbor resentment towards one another. He prefers the man who loves over the one who hates. And the man who spreads kindness, peace and knowledge, over the one who spreads lies, fear and terror — and misuses His name.
There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad...To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone.
Why does a young Muslim, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up in a bus full of innocent passengers? In our countries, religion is the sole source of education, and this is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources—I am referring to scientific sources—to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist, and killed his humanity; it was not [the terrorist] who distorted the religious teachings, and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim. When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse 'They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off,' regardless of this verse's interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed, or its time, you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist.
Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called "Rushdie," and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd.
It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or 'objectify' them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like 'Stalinism,' say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself.
Osama, baah!" Bashir roared."Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy's strength. In America's case, that's not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. That only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.
[I]t takes so little effort and money to get rid of malaria, to bring in clean water, to give people a chance at an education. When you don't have hope, that's when people start to do weird, horrible, violent things. That's at the bottom of it. It's just a question of prioritizing. The funds are t
If the surprise outcome of the recent UK referendum - on whether to leave or remain in the European Union - teaches us anything, it is that supposedly worthy displays of democracy in action can actually do more harm than good. Witness a nation now more divided; an intergenerational schism in the making; both a governing and opposition party torn to shreds from the inside; infinitely more complex issues raised than satisfactory solutions provided. It begs the question 'Was it really all worth it' ?
There is nothing sane, merciful, heroic, devout, redemptive, wise, holy, loving, peaceful, joyous, righteous, gracious, remotely spiritual, or worthy of praise where mass murder is concerned. We have been in this world long enough to know that by now and to understand that nonviolent conflict resolution informed by mutual compassion is the far better option.
Democracy doesn't mean spreading terror.
The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times.
Fear, that’s the great motivator though. Fear keeps it all in check. Fear of one’s neighbor. Fear of those who don’t look like you. Fear of those who live in some barren desert halfway across the globe,” Sean continued. “Domestic terrorism, just as much as fear of those abroad has helped people accept more intrusion into their everyday lives. To accept less freedom as freedom itself.
We shouldn't live in a world where we live in constant terror. We need less dying and more living. We need less destroying and more building. We need less hate and more love.
Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all.
We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century.
And you know what happens when a bomb goes off? The truth about people comes out. Men leave their children and run away. Shopkeepers push aside wives and try to save their cash. People come and loot the shops. A blast reveals the truth about places. Don't forget what you're doing is noble.
Insurgence and all forms of evil in a society doesn't describes her as a failure, but vividly shows a lack of love for one another.
Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldn’t analyze at first and didn't fully grasp (partly because I was far from my family in Washington, who had a very grueling day) until the day itself was nearly over. I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration. Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.
Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political.
During an hour-long conversation mid-flight, he laid out his theory of the war. First, Jones said, the United States could not lose the war or be seen as losing the war.'If we're not successful here,' Jones said, 'you'll have a staging base for global terrorism all over the world. People will say the terrorists won. And you'll see expressions of these kinds of things in Africa, South America, you name it. Any developing country is going to say, this is the way we beat [the United States], and we're going to have a bigger problem.' A setback or loss for the United States would be 'a tremendous boost for jihadist extremists, fundamentalists all over the world' and provide 'a global infusion of morale and energy, and these people don't need much.'Jones went on, using the kind of rhetoric that Obama had shied away from, 'It's certainly a clash of civilizations. It's a clash of religions. It's a clash of almost concepts of how to live.' The conflict is that deep, he said. 'So I think if you don't succeed in Afghanistan, you will be fighting in more places.'Second, if we don't succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.'Third, 'I say, be careful you don't over-Americanize the war. I know that we're going to do a large part of it,' but it was essential to get active, increased participation by the other 41 nations, get their buy-in and make them feel they have ownership in the outcome.Fourth, he said that there had been way too much emphasis on the military, almost an overmilitarization of the war. The key to leaving a somewhat stable Afghanistan in a reasonable time frame was improving governance and the rule of law, in order to reduce corruption. There also needed to be economic development and more participation by the Afghan security forces.It sounded like a good case, but I wondered if everyone on the American side had the same understanding of our goals. What was meant by victory? For that matter, what constituted not losing? And when might that happen? Could there be a deadline?
A single strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism... I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage.
Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace.
When private bands of fanatics commit atrocities we call them "terrorists," which they are, and have no trouble dismissing their reasons. But when governments do the same, and on a much larger scale, the word "terrorism" is not used, and we consider it a sign of our democracy that the acts become subject to debate. If the word "terrorism" has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I never thought that it would look like this. The October of 2009 was a difficult period, and not just because of the bad weather. Attacks intensified against military units and every patrol was highly dangerous. A lot of time has passed since the first time I was fired on in the open. Suddenly, bullets fly right over my head… fraction of a second separates me from tensing my muscles and starting to shoot from a gun turret placed on top our Humvee. I know that I was lucky as hell, but as you know, normally none of us need to talk about it." (excerpt of the book Wild Heads of War)
It's our goddamed city! It's our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as we're free. Once we're not free, the terrorists win! Take it back! You're young enough and stupid enough not to know that you can't possibly win, so you're the only ones who can lead us to victory! Take it back!
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disres
The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims.United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list -- yes, even the short skirts and the dancing -- are worth dying for?The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.
The anti-life of [Jerry Falwell] proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.
In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope.
All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.
Rather than street crime, I argue that a better analogy is to voting. Having a high opportunity cost of time—resulting, say, from a high-paying job and a good education—should discourage people from voting, yet it is precisely those with a high opportunity cost of time who tend to vote. Why? Because they care about influencing the outcome and consider themselves sufficiently well informed to want to express their opinions. Terrorists also care about influencing political outcomes. Instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, to understand what makes a terrorist we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose their extremist vision by violent means? Most terrorists are not so desperately poor that they have nothing to live for. Instead they are people who care so deeply and fervently about a cause that they are willing to die for it.
But since the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, terrorists have killed many times that number of people in Pakistan. Tens of thousands have died here in terror and counterterror violence, slain by bombs, bullets, cannons, and drones. America's 9/11 has given way to Pakistan's 24/7/365. The battlefield has been displaced. And in Pakistan it is much more bloody.
Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka.
I was enraged by these heinous acts of barbarism - enraged that people who called themselves Muslims could launch an unprovoked attack on Christians or foreigners, enraged that through their vile acts these terrorists were perverting our faith, which tells us that Christians are among the "people of the Book", that we should show discernment when fighting for the cause of God and not fight those who have not harmed us, that murder and suicide are grievous sins.
The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200.Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians.
There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers and instructions on some books, and want others to do the same. But, to explain God after merely reading the scriptures is like explaining the city of New York after seeing it only in a map.
Something, which the police called a bomb, had exploded in his shed. Investigations were begun, and the efforts of the authorities were soon to be categorized by the appropriate officals as "feverish", for bombs began to go off all over the place. The police collected fragments of the exploded bombs, and the press, anxious to help the police in their work, published impressive pictures of the fragments as well as a drawing of a reconstructed bomb together with a very detailed description of how it had been made.The police had done a really first-rate job. Even my brother and myself, both of us extremely untalented men in technical matters, could easily grasp how the bomb makers had gone to work. A large quantity of ordinary black gunpowder, such as is the be found in the cartridges sold for shoutguns, was encased in plasticine; in it was embedded an explosive cap, of the type used in hand grenades during the war, at the end of a thin wire; the other end of the wire was joined to the battery of a pocket flashlight -- obtainable at any village store -- and thence to the alarm mechanism of an ordinary alarm clock. The whole contratation was packed into a soapbox. Of course my brother did his duty as a journalist.He published the police report, together with the illustrations, on page one. It was not my brother's doing that this issue of the paper had a most spectacular success and that for weeks men were still buying it; no. the credit for that must go to the police; they had done their bit to ensure that the peasantry of Schleswig-Holstein would have a healthy occupation during the long winter evenings. Instead of just sitting and indulging in stupid thoughts, or doing crossword puzzles, or assembling to hear inflamatory speeches, the peasantery was henceforth quetly and busily engaged in procuring soapboxes and alarm clock and flashlight batteries. And then the bombs really began to go of.... Nobody ever asked me what I was actually doing in Schleswig=Holstein, save perhaps Dr. Hirschfeldt, a high official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, who had recently taken to frequenting Salinger's salon. Occasionally, and casually, he would glance at ne with his green eyes an honour me with a question, such as: "And what are the peasants up to in the north?" To which I would usually only reply: "Thank you for your interest. According to the statistics, the standard of living is going up -- in particular, there has been in increased demand for alarm clocks.
Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.
Terrorism has no nationality or religion.I stand with all countries affected by these inhumane acts.Because of this; I am not France, I am not Belgium, nor am I Syria. I am what is left of humanity.I am compassion, I am kindness, I am love. I am the strength that those in fear rely on. I am the fight against terror.
Something which is very much common in our society and our world at these days is that everyone worried and busy about stopping terrorism, let me to tell you that, Yes there is an easy way to stop Terrorism and that is by stop supporting terrorism, as we know everyone of us is responsible for our own future, we can make our future brighter or darker, we can make sure that we will have a peaceful future or a future full of problems and war, so we need to stop supporting terrorism and stop participating in it, cause we need to accept the fact that most of us from one way or another way supporting and participating terrorism so please stop supporting terrorism, Let's be positive and have hope for a better future and most important we need to refuse pick up guns and go war, remember we need to stay human cause i believe human Should not kill human. Let's refuse to pick up guns, go war and kill our fellow human beings.
Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.
You know I won’t take a chance with your lives…” Ethan replied. “You’re the future of the Fortner family.” He smiled and took her hand in his. “Like I said, don’t worry…before you know it you’ll have Jeff back and you can tell him he’s going to be a father!
Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail -- even if their attacks succeed.
If the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the observation that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.
All this simply shows us that communalism and terrorism are nothing but opposite sides of the same coin. They keep feeding on each other in a vicious cycle, resulting in a society full of violence, hatred, sorrow and intolerance. Every communal act is used as a justification for mindless acts of terrorism . Similarly , each act of terrorism is used as a justification for such horrible atrocities like genocide and ethnic cleansing. And, it is always the innocent who get killed. This is the sad truth.
The blind faith in some half-assed conspiracy theories lines up with the logic of having to believe in something with no questions asked. It gives us peace and comfort. As simple as I was, I found that resorting to this absolute nonsense was the root of all our problems. It was a road of willingly-learned helplessness, for no action could make a difference, thereby no action was needed.
I’ve been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I’ve been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world.
For I’m neither a submitter nor a hating retaliator, I acknowledge the boundaries of my existence; yet, I still care. I care regardless of the way they choose to reduce me to the brand that is the birthmark of the accident of my conception. I care less about what that brand signifies in terms of my character, potential, and intentions. For the harmed I care. For the real victims. It’s the most basic of my mandatory civil duties. Only in caring, am I a citizen of the world.
As a citizen of the world, it’s my instinct to keep the fallen and the suffering in my thoughts. The human brain fascinates me; its limitless bounds of empathy. You see, in my mind there is logic to it: do no harm, prevent harm, help, support, care for the harmed, face the harmer. My stupid idealist conscience considers sympathy, not pity, at its worst, the most basic and the least negotiable civil duty. Of course as a citizen of the world, I should strive to do more. That said, I am only a man and so I often do the least.
As a citizen of the world, it’s my instinct to keep the fallen and the suffering in my thoughts... You see, in my mind there is logic to it: do no harm, prevent harm, help, support, care for the harmed, face the harmer. My stupid idealist conscience considers sympathy, not pity, at its worst, the most basic and the least negotiable civil duty. Of course as a citizen of the world, I should strive to do more. That said, I am only a man and so I often do the least.
In light of my distanced telescopic exposure to the mayhem, I refused to plagiarise others’ personal tragedies as my own. There is an authorship in misery that costs more than empathy. Often I’d found myself dumbstruck in failed attempts to simulate that particular unfamiliar dolour. After all, no one takes pleasure in being possessed by a wailing father collecting the decapitated head of his innocent six year old. Even on the hinge of a willing attempt at full empathy with those cursed with such catastrophes, one had to have a superhuman emotional powers. I could not, in any way, claim the ability to relate to those who have been forced to swallow the never-ending bitter and poisonous pills of our inherited misfortune. Yet that excruciating pain in my chest seemed to elicit a state of agony in me, even from far behind the telescope. It could have been my tribal gene amplified by the ripple effect of the falling, moving in me what was left of my humanity.
In the mantra of shared hatred and placing the blame on Israel, our cowardice to face the barbarity of our heads of states was replaced with a divine purpose. Contemplating the manifestation of the eradication of hatred I often concluded, the entirety of the Middle East’s theocracies and dictatorships would be replaced by total anarchy. We would be left with nothing, as our brotherhood of hatred was the only bond known to us. Enculturated in the malarkey of that demagoguery, forces beyond our control and comprehension seem to deceive us into a less harmful and satisfactory logic as opposed to placing some blame on ourselves and thus, having to act to reverse that state of affairs.
I have to stress that my duties towards victims of all sorts, be it helping, taking their side, or caring, ends the moment their status becomes a bargaining chip. The moment the victim becomes a righteous sufferer. For in my short time on this planet, history and on-going affairs are full of those competing in victimhood.
Unfortunately, you are far more likely to be harmed or die prematurely as a direct result of modern society than you are from any form of terrorism.
If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter.
Killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the chopping off of thieves’ hands, the slicing off of clitorises and labia majora, the use of gang rape as punishment, and manifold other savageries committed in the name of one faith or another — attests to religion’s longstanding propensity to induce barbarity, or at the very least to give it free rein. The Bible and the Quran have served to justify these atrocities and more, with women and gay people suffering disproportionately. There is a reason the Middle Ages in Europe were long referred to as the Dark Ages; the millennium of theocratic rule that ended only with the Renaissance (that is, with Europe’s turn away from God toward humankind) was a violent time.Morality arises out of our innate desire for safety, stability and order, without which no society can function; basic moral precepts (that murder and theft are wrong, for example) antedated religion. Those who abstain from crime solely because they fear divine wrath, and not because they recognize the difference between right and wrong, are not to be lauded, much less trusted. Just which practices are moral at a given time must be a matter of rational debate. The 'master-slave' ethos – obligatory obeisance to a deity — pervading the revealed religions is inimical to such debate. We need to chart our moral course as equals, or there can be no justice.
When modern values and modern people are under attack in a country, we can be sure of a dark future in that country!
The real debate about both the horrific inequality in the world and about the terrorism and frightening instability in the world requires analysis of the differences in upset-adaption or alienation-from-soul between individuals, races, genders, generations, countries, civilisations and cultures, but until the human condition could be explained and the upset state of the human condition compassionately understood and thus defended that debate could not take place.
It seems that Russia today—dominated by, and accustomed to, autocracy and empire, and lacking strong civic institutions especially after the shattering of its society by the Bolshevik Terror—is destined to be ruled by self-promoting cliques for some time yet.
On either side of a potentially violent conflict, an opportunity exists to exercise compassion and diminish fear based on recognition of each other's humanity. Without such recognition, fear fueled by uninformed assumptions, cultural prejudice, desperation to meet basic human needs, or the panicked uncertainty of the moment explodes into violence.
instead of mourning, instead of a moment of silence or a hateful, islamophobic message, how about today we make the world a little brighter?be kinder. be a little gentler, with yourself and others. take more pictures. tell more jokes. be a better human.today is a lot more than a tragedy. today is a birthday. a day of suicide awareness. a wedding. a birth. a new job. today is a kiss and someone on a tarred over warehouse roof whispering about the day the earth stood still and the day it began spinning again.be kind. just be kind. it's time we took this day back for the wild ones, for the fiery eyes, for the happy and the brave and the new. no more mourning. let it just be a sunday.
Death wins nothing here,gnawing wings that amputate––then spread, lift up, fly.
I said, “Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you don’t wish to speak with. However, it’s apparently more useful in Europe, where no one enjoys speaking to the French.
The night skyline was stunning. I could see the Monas and Istiqlal Mosque bathed in brilliant white lights and a dozen other places of cultural and historical significance. It’s an amazing, beautiful world we live in … despite Uncle Google’s abysmal view of American schools, the security checkpoints and vehicle inspections that seem to be everywhere, and the need to be vigilant because of the things we do to each other.
Rich Indians typically tried to work around a dysfunctional government. Private security was hired, city water was filtered, private school tuitions were paid. Such choices had evolved over the years into a principle: The best government is the one that gets out of the way. The attacks on the Taj and the Oberoi, in which executives and socialites died, had served as a blunt correction. The wealthy now saw that their security could not be requisitioned privately. They were dependent on the same public safety system that ill served the poor.
But she was so happy in her gilded cage, wasn’t she? She ate well, slept well, enjoyed herself She lacked nothing. And then, look, a bunch of mental cases turn her away from her happiness and send her to -- how did you put it? -- to ‘blow herself away’?. The good doctor lives next door to a war but he doesn’t want to hear a word about it. And he thinks his wife shouldn’t worry about it, either. … We’re at war. Some people take up arms; others twiddle their thumbs. And still others make a killing in the name of the Cause. That’s life. … Your wife chose her side. The happiness you offered her smelled of decay. It repulsed her, you get it? She didn’t want your happiness. She couldn’t work on her suntan while her people were bent under the Zionist yoke. Do I have to draw you a picture to make you understand, or do you refuse to look reality in the face?
Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and artistic consideration during the Renaissance.
Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type. When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will condemn - at least in words. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.
Why is it deemed justifiable and appropriate for cops/policeofficers to kill other cops (friendly–fire) and citizens?Why do cops kill?Are they not taught to maim or slow down someone runningor reaching for a weapon?If not, why not?Why do cops kill first and ask questions last?Why are police officers being military trained?What can we as citizens, taxpayers, and voters do to stop thesekillings and beatings of unarmed people?Why do we let this continue?How many more must die or get beat up before we realizesomething is wrong and needs to be changed?Will you, a friend, or a family member have to be killed or beatenby a cop before we realize that things have to change?Who's here to protect us from the cops when they decide to useexcessive force, shoot multiple shells, and/or murder us?
Privilege is when your voice is the norm but still you claim to be unheard.
Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts. And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings.
Extremism stifles true progression in all fields of human advancement; it is a detriment to everything but war, tribalism and the personal power of Nietzschean entities, striving only for the narcissistic vindication of their ego and will. The enlightened mind knows that all is challengeable, ergo questions all and thus, learns and grows; progression. The weak and narrow mind makes its beliefs sacrosanct; fearful of challenge, their creed becomes unalterable, defended with violence. Political extremists, much like religious zealots, are the latter. They destroy what they cannot convert. They annihilate those they cannot control, or force to conform. They have found no peace in life, no love, and so promote war and division, as emotional cripples – inflicting their own pain and misery and malignant stupidity on the world. Their language binds people together, but only by stirring the darkest excesses of the soul; language of hate, and intolerance, fear and conspiracy, and the need for vengeance. In war-scarred Europe, these cripples direct mass-psychology, and would make the world in their own likeness; mutilated by violence and tribalism and hate.
The trick here is arbitrary word assignment: that is, any violence engaged in by ourselves or our friends is ipso facto retaliation and counter-terrorism; whatever the enemy does is terrorism, irrespective of facts.’10 We might say, then, that the golden rule of state violence is: terrorism is what they do, and counter-terrorism is what we do. As Orwell himself observed in his essay, ‘Notes on Nationalism’: ‘Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by “our” side.
Humanity should be our Religion and every Human should be our God, This world should be our Temple and doing good to fellow Humans should be our Prayer.Quran Bible and Bhagwad Geeta all have this message if not just read but also understood properly.Share it, even if one misguided person reads and understands it and gets back to humanity you will for sure be blessed!
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Even when Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; even when the menace of dynastic conflicts had receded in to the coloured past; even when kingship had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional forms; the principle of hereditary Monarchy continued to furnish the State with certain specific and inimitable advantages.Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The King personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. Consecrated as he is to the service of his peoples, he possesses a religious sanction and is regarded as someone set apart from ordinary mortals. In an epoch of change, he remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. A legitimate Monarch moreover has no need to justify his existence, since he is there by natural right. He is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure.The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his personal prejudices or affections, he is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State.
Not surprisingly, the all-powerful evocation of terrorism is reserved only for those acts that threaten the government-sponsored status quo, but not that perpetrated by the state or corporations against the population. So, for example, the ugly history of white people lynching, bombing, and killing Blacks in the United States is not understood, taught, or remembered as a part of the homeland’s history of terrorism.
It seemed to me then - and to be honest, sir, seems to me still - that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away. Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only of the rest of humanity, but also in your own.
You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimate it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide... And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers.
That's the problem with this whole country. Fucking vast prosperity. No one has any real problems anymore. Ninety percent of the damn politicians in this town either think there's no war on terror, or if we'd just be nice to these zealots they'll leave us alone. Well, that ain't going to fucking happen. The Huns are circling, and we're sitting around arguing about gay rights and prayer and guns and global warming and all kinds of bullshit. These idiots will eventually wake up to the threat, but by then it might be too late. (Stan Hurley)
Go to the internet and go to the FBI website and go to their international list of top ten terrorists. You will see Bin Laden there, bring his name up and his picture. Amazingly, all the charges: the embassy of '98 and this other stuff is all listed. But, ironically nothing on 9/11. NOTHING! Now when the FBI was pressed as to why 9/11 wasn't included, their response was "We don't have enough evidence." Now, people, if you're like me that is extremely disturbing; we've fought two wars, we've changed our entire foreign policy and we've had the PATRIOT act put on us, all, supposedly, because of Osama Bin Laden!
Now, with regard to the people who have done things we call "terrorism," I'm confident they have been expressing their pain in many different ways for thirty years or more. Instead of our empathically receiving it when they expressed it in much gentler ways -- they were trying to tell us how hurt they felt that some of their most sacred needs were not being respected by the way we were trying to meet our economic and military needs -- they got progressively more agitated. Finally, they got so agitated that it took horrible form.
As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.
President Barack Obama and many liberal-minded commentators have been hesitant to call this Islamist ideology by its proper name. They seem to fear that both Muslim communities and the religiously intolerant will hear the word “Islam” and simply assume that all Muslims are being held responsible for the excesses of the jihadist few.I call this the Voldemort effect, after the villain in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Many well-meaning people in Ms. Rowling’s fictional world are so petrified of Voldemort’s evil that they do two things: They refuse to call Voldemort by name, instead referring to “He Who Must Not Be Named,” and they deny that he exists in the first place. Such dread only increases public hysteria, thus magnifying the appeal of Voldemort’s power.The same hysteria about Islamism is unfolding before our eyes. But no strategy intended to defeat Islamism can succeed if Islamism itself and its violent expression in jihadism are not first named, isolated and understood. From: Maajid Nawaz's article titled, 'How to Beat Islamic State', December 11th, 2015.
In our towns and cities they will continue to be born, in our communities they will go on to be nurtured & radicalised & from within our neighbourhoods they will terrorise & murder our citizens including women & children in their attempt to destroy the very fabric & order of our civilised society. They are influenced by our ignorance, our lack of knowledge is their power, martyrdom in the name of their God and prophet is their aspiration & so it is critical that we waste no time & learn more about them & this ideology they follow before we can even begin to eradicate this chilling & growing endemic Islamic faith based terrorism’.
People have been fighting and dying over religion for thousands of years. I could understand that fear. It creeps up on you a bit more when you’re alone in a foreign land. You certainly worry about it more when you walk the same streets as violent people that harbor a clear hatred of your beliefs and values. The reality is some Muslims in the world would kill me for being Christian, just as some Christians in the world would kill Maya, Gita, Farid and Ridwan for being Muslim. Nowadays news outlets and social media have reified that fear. It keeps some people focused and aware. It paralyzes others. It blinds some of us. That’s what happened to me. It’s why I felt the whole world shake. Twice.
The Islamic State’s ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life’s hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: No question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else.
It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State 'a problem with Islam.' The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. And yet simply denouncing the Islamic State as un-Islamic can be counterproductive, especially if those who hear the message have read the holy texts and seen the endorsement of many of the caliphate’s practices written plainly within them.
Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest."Their skepticism is comprehensible. In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics—notably the late Edward Said—who pointed out that calling Muslims 'ancient' was usually just another way to denigrate them. Look instead, these scholars urged, to the conditions in which these ideologies arose—the bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil."Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons.
The Islamic faith and ideology is at another pivotal moment in its history. Having survived for a thousand years or more after the Western Crusades it has been hauled back into the fire by some of its frustrated followers. Followers who have literally re interpreted or re translated the many open verses and chapters of the holy Qu’ran. These followers of the extreme Islamic beliefs are hankering to take our social order back and return it to the time of the prophet (mpbuh). The very turbulent dark and bloody days of religion and cults when ideologies were spread by the sword.
Now how does all this relate to Islamic jihad? Islam sees violence as a means of propagating the Muslim faith. Islam divides the world into two camps: the dar al-Islam (House of Submission) and the dar al-harb (House of War). The former are those lands which have been brought into submission to Islam; the latter are those nations which have not yet been brought into submission. This is how Islam actually views the world!By contrast, the conquest of Canaan represented God’s just judgement upon those peoples. The purpose was not at all to get them to convert to Judaism! War was not being used as an instrument of propagating the Jewish faith. Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior.The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God. If the Muslim thinks that our moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, then I agree with him. But Muslims and Christians differ radically over God’s nature. Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind.
We are following with great concern the preparations of the crusaders to launch war on the former capital of Muslims...and to install a puppet government...Fight these despots. I remind you that victory comes only from God.The fighting should be in the name of God only, not in the name of national ideologies nor to seek victory for the ignorant governments that rule all Arab states, including
Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: 'But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)'; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders....All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in 'Al- Mughni,' Imam al-Kisa'i in 'Al-Bada'i,' al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: 'As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life.'On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.'...We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson....Almighty Allah also says: 'O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things.'Almighty Allah also says: 'So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in f
Take terrorism, one example among the methods used in that struggle. We know that leftist tradition condemns terrorism and political assassination. When the colonized uses them, the leftist colonizer becomes unbearably embarrassed. He makes an effort to separate them from the colonized's voluntary action; to make an epiphenomenon out of his struggle. They are spontaneous outbursts of masses too long oppressed, or better yet, acts by unstable, untrustworthy elements which the leader of the movement has difficulty in controlling. Even in Europe, very few people admitted that the oppression of the colonized was so great, the disproportion of forces so overwhelming, that they had reached the point, whether morally correct or not, of using violent means voluntarily. The leftist colonizer tried in vain to explain actions which seemed incomprehensible, shocking and politically absurd. For example, the death of children and persons outside of the struggle, or even of colonized persons who, without being basically opposed, disapproved of some small aspect of the undertaking. At first he was so disconcerted that the best he could do was to deny such actions; for they would fit nowhere in his view of the problem. That it could be the cruelty of oppression which explained the blind fury of the reaction hardly seemed to be an argument to him; he can't approve acts of the colonized which he condemns in the colonizers because these are exactly why he condemns colonization.Then, after having suspected the information to be false, he says, as a last resort, that such deeds are errors, that is, they should not belong to the essence of the movement. He bravely asserts that the leaders certainly disapprove of them. A newspaper-man who always supported the cause of the colonized, weary of waiting for censure which was not forthcoming, finally called on certain leaders to take a public stand against the outrages, Of course, received no reply; he did not have the additional naïveté to insist.
Perhaps worse still is what liberal societies might do to themselves in the face of this new and different threat [of terrorism]. They begin, by small but dangerous increments, to cease to be as liberal as they once were. They begin to restrict their own hard-won rights and freedoms as a protection against the crminial minority who attempt (and as we thus see, by forcing liberty to commit suidcide, succed in doing) to terrorise society.
The policies the US government is following are dangerous for its citizens. It's true that you can bomb or buy out anybody that you want to, but you can't control the rage that's building in the world. You just can't. And that rage will express itself in some way or the other. Condemning violence when a section of your economy is based on selling weapons and making bombs and piling up chemical and biological weapons? When the soul of your culture worships violence? On what grounds are you going to condemn terrorism, unless you change your attitude toward violence?
Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act of blind faith settled over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, I watched people across the country scrambling to that same irrational altar for their answers. In the fierce storm of emotion that rolled across this country, one realization rose to the surface of my mind with blinding clarity: certainly this mechanism of unassailable blind faith is one of the greatest risks mankind faces today.
The Declaration of Independence says that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’Raised within the Judeo-Christian value system, we are taught from childhood ‘Do not judge others lest you be judged,’ ‘Do unto others what you want others to do unto you,’ and ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’ We in America have taken this a little further and have become deaf to evil, blind to evil, and incapable of speaking out against evil because as long as it does not affect us, it is none of our business. The Declaration of Independence says that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ We the people are entitled to equal rights under the law and should have the same opportunity to pursue our dreams, whatever those dreams may be; but it is not said anywhere that we as people are created equal in the material or societal and cultural sense by our creator. Societies and cultures are not created and do not develop equally. This harsh judgment may make you wince. It is not politically correct to say that our Western societies are better than the Muslim Arab societies, but we are, we have been, and we always will be, not because of our wealth but because of the way we think and live, and the values we hold dear and pass on to our future generations. It infuriates me to hear self-loathing Americans, who have never experienced life in an oppressive culture or under an oppressive leadership such as is found in the Middle East, badmouth and put down our culture, government, and country in general. They find all sorts of things wrong with America and think it is insulting to non-Americans to acknowledge that our Western culture is in any way better than others. They are so concerned about hurting ‘feelings,’ and nobody wants to be accused of being a holier-than-thou type. They should get out and see the world and how Arab Muslim leaders are really messing up other people’s lives and getting away with it. Just as it’s time to hold people accountable for their actions, it’s time to hold societies and cultures accountable for theirs also. It is by not judging others that you end up with evil people like bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and suicide bombers driven by the ideology that you are worthless infidels who should be killed as Allah ordered
When you don’t stop evil in its tracks when you first recognize it, you will end up with a monster force that will spread its tentacles and affect the lives of millions. Because we did not want to judge evildoers such as the Palestinians bombing innocent Israelis, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein gassing his own people, we have helped create the monsters we are dealing with today. Don’t be afraid to stand up and lift your head and be proud of what America and Western culture stand for. America did not pull itself out of the grip of tyranny and feudalism for nothing. America as a Western culture and as a nation is a tribute to men and women and God’s creation at its best.
America is a place of opportunity. It’s people-friendly! Very much so, compared to the Muslim countries in the world. People looking for better lives flock to America because we as a society do not mutilate young girls' genitals, do not cut off people’s hands for stealing. We do not stone people to death for committing adultery. We do not rape women and men for speaking up against our government. We do not forbid people to go to school and to learn because of their gender. We assume people are innocent until proven guilty. We give people the freedom to criticize our government and even burn our flag as an expression of speech. This is but a partial list of why America is superior in culture and values to many other countries in the world. This type of culture also thrives in Israel, the only Western-style nation in the Middle East, one that Arabs despise, feel threatened by, and vow to destroy.
It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget.
What quantities evil - the amount of blood spilled the body count, the intentional destruction of innocent masses? Regardless of how evil is defined, there will always be those in power to discriminately judge it and their corrupt policing forces that enforce it.
Drama!" said Mr. Hitchens.Robin Shrugged. "That's what terrorism is, basically--pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together.""Absolute power," mused Mrs. Pollifax. "Like monstrous children thumbing their noses at adults who live by codes and laws and scru
It is a neglected but essential fact that we cannot appreciate the relationship between religion and violence unless we grasp the nature and meaning of the two partners in this relationship. Yet our understandings both of religion and of violence are inadequate. Further, we usually consider too few offspring of their troubled marriage: when we think of “religious violence,” we tend to think only of holy war and (especially since September 11) religious terrorism. However, those are not the only types of religious violence.
The men and women who continue to hold Lynn's mind hostage against her will believe the future will be tilled with terrorism, death, destruction and a challenge to the survival of America. They believe Lynn and the other lab rats must still respond to their programming for they are the second line of defence against enemies from within and without and the first line of offence in a catastrophe which would require the recreation of America's constitutional government. They are still intent on preparing Lynn for the day when she will he necessary for battle. One summer day, all these dark realisations came flooding upon Lynn and she knew if she was ever to free herself, she needed to get immediate help.
In al-Qaeda we see a terrorist grouping with, in many ways, a medieval ideology, employing today's technology to great advantage. It works in a thoroughly modern way, virtual, amorphous, franchised and unbounded by geography. It has recruited people from all over the world. It understands the power of images, both in its campaign of terror and in its recruitment and proselytising material. It skillfully exploits the instant communications and social networking of the IT age.
Why sacrifice some for the benefit of others? It’s generally the best and the bravest who choose to lay down their lives for the sake of those who hide in their holes. So why favor the sacrifice of the righteous in order to permit the less righteous to survive them? Don’t you think that’s a way of weakening the human species? What’s going to be left of it in a few generations if it’s always the best who are called upon to exit the scene so that the cowards, the counterfeits, the charlatans, and the pricks can continue to proliferate like rats?
The sun appeared between the twin spires of the cathedral as its light reflected off the crescent and star that rose out of the dome on top of the mosque. It was beautiful, and surreal. In one instant, the bells rang out from the cathedral and if I closed my eyes then I could easily imagine that I was back home in Europe, but in the next, the call to morning prayer sounded from the mosque, and it was a stark reminder of how far away I actually was from my true home.
The first ring glowed in the distance, lit up by consumerism that was brought to Jakarta courtesy of western cultures and Christian nations, and it influenced impoverished Muslims in the third ring, who wore Manchester United tee shirts with 'Rooney' on the back, twisting further the attitudes and perceptions of those who were bent already toward radicalism.
Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.
The door suddenly opened. A leggy young brunette took two steps into the office and stopped short. Her brown eyes widened, she hastily excused herself and turned to leave. Pérez’s jaw dropped as he looked up at her high heels and ankles. He crawled out from under the desk and turned questioningly to his partner. Thorne didn't hesitate. He took one swift stride from behind, clamped a hand tightly over her mouth, and pulled her back into the room, disregarding her wildly flailing legs and frantic attempts to claw his hands away. He shut the door with a backward thrust of his foot. "What do we do now?" Pérez whined. "Observe." Thorne spoke calmly, as would a professor demonstrating a familiar operation to a beginner. Using both hands, he briskly snapped her neck. She stopped struggling.
Look at me, Nasim. Faith is not always easy. Sometimes, doing the right thing hurts. While revenging your brother's death might fill a temporary void, it would only contribute to the cycle of violence that took your brother's life in the first place. More than likely, you would hurt someone who knew nothing of you brother's death. You would hurt someone who had contributed nothing to your pain, and then what? How are they to react? Where do they turn for justice? More violence?
Eyes closed, she let her pain float away with the prayers, higher and higher, around the mosque's minarets, and up to the sky. She thought about the old Arabic saying that a woman has only two exits. One exit leads from my father's house to my husband's. The other leads from my husband's house to my grave. I'm not ready for the second exit yet.
Havens turned again.Someone else passed between the trucks. That someone walked with less purpose than the other workers near the stalls. To Havens this meant a surveillance asset was on him and it probably was not an assassination attempt. It eased him back into relative comfort for just a moment or two more.
My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.
The Valley WeepsWeep softly o mother,the walls have ears you know...The streets are awash o mother!I cannot go searching for him any more.The streets are awash o motherwith blood and tears, pellets and screams.that silently remain locked in the air,while they lock us souless inside.The guns are out o mother,while our boys go armed with stones,I cannot go looking for him o mother,I have no courage to face what i will find.They fill the air o mother,The fragrance of plastic flowersI will place them beside your graveif i ever do survive,flowers that have no soul.and would never fade with time,The sun shines glorious o motherThe water sparkles so fineThe buds are closed in terrorand birds have gone silent with fearThere is poison in our heaven o motherI dread for what more is in store.They came for him o mother,yesterday as you slept inside,He went marching o motherwith all the others beside.I never told you o mother,I do not know if he would ever return.The streets are awash o mother!I cannot go searching for him any more.Weep softly o mother,the walls have ears you know...If your old blind eyes can see,You will want to see again no more.Our men have lost their spiritOur women have lost their smile,Our children have lost their laughter,The valley has lost its shine,Weep softly O motherFor, we still have our pride.17/07/2016
The revolutionary Terror, which is attacked for its revolutionary tribunal, its law of suspects and its guillotine, was a process welded to a regime of popular sovereignty in which the object was to conquer tyranny or die for liberty. This Terror was willed by those who, having won sovereign power by dint of insurrection, refused to let this be destroyed by counter-revolutionary enemies
And then, on September 11, the world fractured.It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day and the days that would follow--the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.
Ask them, then. ...Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them, when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it.
This book appears at a time when public discussion of the common atrocities of sexual and domestic life has been made possible by the women’s movement, and when public discussion of the common atrocities of political life has been made possible by the movement for human rights. I expect the book to be controversial—first, because it is written from a feminist perspective; second, because it challenges established diagnostic concepts; but third and perhaps most importantly, because it speaks about horrible things, things that no one really wants to hear about.
A country where there is no security of life is certainly not a country but just a slaughter house!
I'd never really believed in terrorists before--I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me--starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia--that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
Pakistan is an Islamic country and the victim of an Easter terrorist attack. Groups like Isis or in this case the Taliban are not about religion. No more than the KKK is about Christianity. These groups are about hate! I did post on the Pakistani attack because it is really important to point out that brown and black people in the middle east and Africa are being killed. Terrorism isn't about Islam. It is about hate. SO let's fight this hate. Let's stand united with our Islamic brothers and sisters who are being slaughtered. Step back from judging a religion you are not exposed to. Understand that we need to work together. ALL faiths. That's how we defeat this
Evan stares at me.I try to hug him. He takes a step back. I pause, my heart in my throat. I’ve got to reach out to him, let myself be vulnerable. I find the courage, but he backs up again.“You can’t go to Iraq anymore.”“I know.”He looks up at Deanna, then back to me. “Did you fight bad guys? You told me you weren’t.” His voice is suspicious, full of accusation. He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him for that.“No, Evan. I didn’t fight bad guys.”I can’t bring myself to tell him the complete truth. I want so desperately to go back into this fight. I miss it every day. I always felt I could change the world with a rifle in my hands and our flag on my shoulder.“Did you get shot?” he looks me over, apparently searching for bullet wounds.I grin a little. “No, Bud, I didn’t get shot.”“People get shot in Iraq.”“Yes, they do.” It strikes me then that Evan for the first time has a grasp on the dangers that are faced over there. He’s six now, and the world is coming into focus for him.“People get shot, Daddy. They die. Bad guys kill them.”I think of Edward Iwan and Sean Sims.“Yeah, I know they do, Evan.
There's a reason that murderous hatred has to be taught- and not just taught, but forcibly implanted. It's not a naturally-occurring phenomenon. It is a lie. It is a lie told over and over again- often to people who have no resources and who are denied alternative views of the world. It's a lie my father believed, and one he hoped to pass on to me.
I think it's a response to terrorism. From the time we're little girls, we're taught to fear the bad man who might get us. We're terrified of being raped, abused, even killed by the bad man, but the problem is, you can't tell the good ones from the bad ones, so you have to wary of them all. We're told not to go out by ourselves late at night, not to dress a certain way, not to talk to male strangers, not to lead men on. We take self-defense classes, keep our doors locked, carry pepper spray and rape whistles. The fear of men is ingrained in us from girlhood. Isn't that a form of terrorism?
Terror doesn't change people from gay to straight. It just hurts innocent people.
Son, let me tell you a little something about the environment… you can try to fix it up all you want, but it’s a waste of time. Sooner or later we’ll all be doomed… slaughtered by terrorists, baked in the heat of the sun, nuked until our shadows glow… greed is good. We don’t exist to help other people, we exist to grow the hell up, have kids, get old and die, while consuming all we can. Nothing comes after. There’s no wrath, no day of reckoning… we just go. POOF! We have no reason to aspire to change the world, son. We’ll thrive by feeding off of whatever’s available. How else do you think we ended up rich? You don’t get ahead by being nice, Thomas.
I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn't want to hear from me anymore. I've done things that He can never forgive. I've done them consciously. I've made decisions I must live with for years to come. I am not a victim. In each instance, I heard my conscience call for restraint, I told it to shut the fuck up and let me handle my business. All the sins I've committed, I've done with one objective: to keep my men alive.
U.S. News Organizations observe the anniversary of September 11 with investigations about the nation’s continuing vulnerability to terrorism. First, the New York Daily News reports that two of its reporters carried box cutters, razor knives, and pepper spray on fourteen commercial flights without getting caught. Then ABC News reports that it smuggled fifteen pounds of uranium into New York City. Then Fox News reports that it flew Osama bin Laden to Washington, D.C., and videotaped him touring the White House.
... mother seemed happy because the school yard where Rafik would spend his recesses was surrounded by a high stone wall. She'd recently started talking about 'safety' in a way that made Liyana jumpy. Liyana never thought about safety unless someone else brought it up. She didn't WANT to think about it either. SHE WANTED TO LIVE IN AN UNLOCKED WORLD
For the first time in a decade I felt a voice rising from deep inside my soul. It cried out ‘what will you be today?’ and I heard ‘relentless’ booming from the rafters inside an old gym as Sami and a group of young men chased dreams and trophies while their fathers went to war.
I’m sure the driver was a great guy and all he wanted was to drive me to my hotel—but he was a complete stranger to me and the truth is that being vigilant isn’t a part-time job, it’s not about being nice to people, it’s about reality. I made a terrible mistake once, believing the monsters that want to hurt us are easily labeled and identified, rather than walking and hiding amongst us. That’s my reality.
It’d be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It’s really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we’ve already lost.
The last two days I’ve been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It’s late and dark, but I’m so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here.
All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us—and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth—no one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger.
This is my worst fear. It’s not keeping my students safe from terrorists, it’s knowing what to do when the Chaplain comes to take Johnny out of class because not letting the terrorists win means sometimes the good guys are going to die. And those good guys have kids, and they’re sitting in my classroom.
Teaching isn’t rocket science. It’s about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don’t need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what’s best for them.
I needed to talk to my dad. My dad who had been to war, who had seen its horrors, who suffered from its nightmares, my dad who was a good man, the best man I’d ever known, who, along with my uncle, I wanted to honor by teaching military kids—my dad, the only one who I would believe if he would just tell me I could be good, too, that I could do right by my students, because for sure they were going to suffer. It’s just cause and effect. We’re at war. The military fights wars. I teach military kids. I’d never served, but now I could make a difference. I just needed my dad to tell me what to do, to tell me I was good enough to get it done.
I’m in my classroom and I’m looking at this girl, but all I can see is my dad on the ground, in front of The Wall, telling the truth, finally—his knees drawn and his chest heaving—and when people pass by they look the other way, except for this one lady who stops to give my dad a hug. She gets down on her knees to reach him, and now she’s crying with a stranger, and without asking I know it’s because she’s lost something, too, and I wonder if in comforting my dad she thinks she can find it again. Probably not. It doesn’t work that way.
The men and women who made up DoDDS Korea during the time I was there were an eclectic group to say the least, but as a group we were among the most talented, diverse, intelligent, fun, crazy, thoughtful, caring, and dedicated people in the world. We did important work, and we did it well. Better than that, we did it exceptionally well. We were experts in our fields, and we made each other better still because we depended on each other in ways that people who’ve never lived overseas could ever imagine.
Honestly, I had no idea how to respond. My senior year of college I’d taken a seminar titled Public Education: Situations and Strategies. I thought about emailing my professor, maybe suggest some new topics and help him get current. Maybe he’d invite me back as a guest lecturer. He’d probably expect some strategies along with the situations though, so I guess that wouldn’t work, but whatever.
I felt a hand on my back, movement behind me, my guys making room, someone squeezing into our circle, and then one last hand joined the pile: my Korean aide. I guess it made sense. We were her real family. The closest thing she’d ever had to a real family, at least. All year she said maybe five words a day. 'Now kick some ass,' she said.
I asked my dad once if his high school teachers began treating kids differently during Vietnam, when they knew some of their students would be drafted and sent to war. I was curious because for sure we’d started treating our military kids differently after 9/11. He just shrugged and changed the subject, like he always did. And that was okay with me. He’d go back and change a lot of things if he could; and like everyone else, I’d give anything to go back to the day before 9/11—but all we can do is move forward.
Always Sami. I was tethered to her somehow. To that scared little girl I’d found on the staircase nearly a year earlier; to the past, when teaching was simpler and I could care about everyday problems, when being relentless meant running two extra laps, not waiting for an MP to search the undercarriage of a bus for bombs before letting students approach it.
It was too late to pray, though. The sky was clear. The helicopters were gone. Too late for so many things. My fists hit the floor. My head hit the floor. My heart broke, hardened, and I lost my faith. That’s when the killing thoughts came. When it felt right to punish everyone who let this happen. I could start with Angel’s dad—but where would it stop?
On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I’m all for that, except my kids won’t ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won’t go downstairs on their shift—so I’ve got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16—but hell yes, I’m all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I’m on board with that, except I’ve got these kids who stay home now, because they’re scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn’t enough, so there’s a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case.
In my life I’ve been very lucky to travel around the world and see students and teachers in nearly two dozen countries—but the most awe-inspiring experience I’ve ever had was two years after 9/11 when I had the chance to attend a conference in Manhattan and personally meet many of the heroic teachers who persevered under conditions that in our worst nightmares we could never have imagined. In my opinion there’s not been nearly enough written about those teachers, and I hope that changes soon.
Korea is often called the “Land of the Morning Calm.” It’s a country where you notice the filth and the smog on your first trip and you can’t imagine why you ever thought it was a good idea to visit. Then you meet the people and you walk among their culture and you get a sense there is something deeper beneath the surface, and before you know it, the smog doesn’t matter and the filth is gone—and in its place there is incredible beauty. The sun rises first over Japan, and as Korea is waiting for the earth to spin, for streaks of light to brighten its eastern sky, in that quiet moment there is a calmness that makes Korea the most beautiful country in the world.
The only thing worse than his arrogance was his incompetence. He was a bully, behaving like an ass. I saw Angel though, not him. The memorial was right there, just outside the window. It’s in the flowers, and it makes me angry. Angel liked to sit on the couch, watch TV, eat chips. She hated outside. Maybe I should have been a bully and an ass to Angel’s parents. Maybe Angel and Grace would still be alive if I’d behaved like this piece of shit teacher.
Ahead in the distance we could see the main gate, but there was a sea of cars, none moving, people standing, milling around, waiting nervously, perhaps fearfully, as heavily armed MPs and military working dogs searched every square inch of every vehicle, searched every bag on every person, all the while keeping a vigilant eye on the long alley we were stuck in, and on the hundreds of rooftops that overlooked that alley, wary but aware that there were people out there who would gladly hurt us again if given the chance.
In Korea I’d been so afraid that Sami would lose her dad. She did, but she didn’t get a flag. He went to Doha, then to Baghdad, then to Kabul, then to someplace else, and then to a different someplace else, on and on. He’d come home, leave again, come home, leave again, until one day he came home a different person altogether. Sami lost Angel, lost her family, and then she lost herself.
DPRK translates to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—and if the words Democratic and Republic sound like a good thing, well, it’s oxymoronic because the Korea we’re talking about here is the communist one in the North, and when I said the pastor’s father was their guest, what I really meant is he was shot down, captured, tortured, and held prisoner by a depraved enemy in what today can only be described as a failed state.
A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient. Terror as we know it today strikes without any preliminary provocation, its victims are innocent even from the point of view of the persecutor. This was the case in Nazi Germany when full terror was directed against Jews, i.e., against people with certain common characteristics which were independent of their specific behavior. In Soviet Russia the situation is more confused, but the facts, unfortunately, are only too obvious. On the one hand, the Bolshevik system, unlike the Nazis, never admitted theoretically that it could practice terror against innocent people, and though in view of certain practices this may look like hypocrisy, it makes quite a difference. Russian practice, on the other hand, is even more "advanced" than the German in one respect: arbitrariness of terror is not even limited by racial differentiation, while the old class categories have long since been discarded, so that anybody in Russia may suddenly become a victim of the police terror. We are not concerned here with the ultimate consequence of rule by terror—namely, that nobody, not even the executors, can ever be free of fear; in our context we are dealing merely with the arbitrariness by which victims are chosen, and for this it is decisive that they are objectively innocent, that they are chosen regardless of what they may or may not have done.
If there is any solace to be found in the carnage of September 11th, may I find it in understanding that the potential to do great good can handily rival the tendency to carry out great evil. And out of that understanding may I commit in my own life to make certain that in such a critical rivalry I will ensure that towers will never fall because of me, but people will be raised up due to me.
There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.
The idea that a dysfunctional thought could take root in a vacuum, the individual anonymous and wraithlike, unknowable because, especially at first, he or she had no interaction with other people. Because more and more in the modern Internet era you came across isolated instances of a mind virus or worm: brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did.
Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of the United Nations, the unreliability of Europe, the perfidy of the Third World and the need for nuclear defense policy? Question: Which Mediterranean government is Ronald Reagan trying, with the help of George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, to replace with a government led by a party which professes socialism and which contains extreme leftists?If you answered 'the government of Israel' to both of the above, you know more about political and international irony than the President does.
The President is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the President on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.
Far to our left I could see a commercial airliner on final approach to Soekarno-Hatta. Far to our right I could see the outline of tall city buildings. The imagery was hard to ignore. In the midst was an impoverished world filled with dangerous radicals. Some believed it was God’s will to crash airplanes into buildings. Some recruited children to self-detonate on buses and in coffee shops. It must be incredibly difficult to hold fast to hope when you live in such a world. It’s also hard to keep faith with humanity when religious ideology is used as an impetus for war. But I also believe that for every war there is a hero … and for me, Jakarta will always be Indira’s city.
Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.
Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism.Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures.
Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue', and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak — the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths" — and the policeman lowered his voice — "in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.
I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high.
One of the most often asked questions posed after America was attacked on 9/11 was, ‘What has the United States done to arouse so much Muslim hatred?’ The question, however, is on the same moral level as asking what German and other European Jews did to cause the Holocaust, or what blacks did to arouse the hatred among the American whites who lynched them.
Save for the fit of bizarre laughter at the end, the man seems so calm, sensible, rational. Duffy wishes he met more like him. A bit paranoid about this terrorism business, but frankly, he might be right. You never know who is around the bend to blow you up, destroy your symbols, set your embassy on fire, shit on your toilet seat, or send anthrax swimming into the subway air and into everyone's lungs.
Muslim religious leaders — from Al-Azhar in Cairo to local imams throughout the world - need to say exactly what Pope Francis said to the Catholic members of the Mafia: ‘Any Muslim who commits an act of terror — that is, deliberately murders civilians of any nationality or religion — goes to hell.
Most of the barbaric and vicious acts of terror committed against innocent civilians around the world in the last thirty years have been done by Muslims. They have even carried out more bombings than the less-publicized Hindu Tamil Tiger separatists, who have committed more than two hundred suicide attacks in Sri Lanka. It is a fact that the nineteen terrorists who hijacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were Muslims who practiced the teachings of the Koran and sought mental fortitude in its verses as their planes crashed.
As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless.
As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless. The vast majority of Germans were not members of the Gestapo, nor were the vast majority of Russians members of the Communist Party, let alone the KGB. Not only is international terror overwhelmingly Muslim, but there are virtually no terrorists committing terror in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion.
Terrorism was like heroin – once a lonely, desperate soul was hooked on it, he or she became a fanatic – radicalized they call it – ready to die for a paradise in heaven that didn’t exist by helping to rain down a hell on earth for all who didn’t believe in it.
America has always prided itself on its multiculturalism and its multireligious communities, just as Lebanon prided itself on its multicultural, open-minded, and multireligious society. Today America’s lack of sufficient immigration and border control, like Lebanon’s, is allowing terrorists and other hostile individuals to come into our country at will. People who want to hurt us are mixed in with other Muslims who have no intention of becoming a part of our nation but are actually working to make America a part of their radical Islamic agenda. Muslims have become a sensitive issue in our American society, with demands and expectations, and a group to watch out for and be careful with. There are barely 6 million Muslims in America today out of a total U.S. population of 300 million, yet their presence has been seen and felt throughout every state in America. Stories of Islamic terrorist cells, Islamic charities linked to funding terrorism, Islamic mosques, and Muslims demanding more rights and acknowledgment are beginning to dominate the news. Islamic communities are harboring terrorist cells within. Their mosques are teaching hate against infidels both Christian and Jewish.
Just as people asked ‘Why do they hate us?’ after 9/11, one evening I asked my father, ‘Why did they do this to us?’ He took a long breath and paused, deeply concerned about what he was about to say. ‘The Muslims bombed us because we are Christians. They want us dead because they hate us’ This hate was not because we had armies in the Middle East or because we supported Israel or for any of the reasons people easily turn to today. It was because we were Christians, infidels. As a child, I was just too young to understand all the political implications, but I understood one thing: people wanted to kill me simply because I was a Christian.
I think the biggest disservice to the American people was the denial by the networks to air video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, or the many other hostages that were beheaded in Iraq. We as a society need to see the type of enemy we are fighting. People have been so sheltered in this country that they have not paid attention to what has been going on for the last twenty-some years. And today, even after the attack of September 11, people still cannot fathom that this type of barbarity could happen here.
Throughout history there have been populations that have lived in desperation, and none of them have resorted to the intentional targeting and murder of children as an officially practiced and widely praised mode of achieving political ends. When extremist elements of otherwise legitimate liberation movements such as the Republican Sinn Fein have committed such atrocities, their actions have been unconditionally condemned by the civilized world, and their political objectives have been discredited by their vile crimes. This is not so with the Palestinians. Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now that place is in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. Now that behavior is legitimized as ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli ‘occupation’ by, among others, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Commission, and the European Union. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hamas in 1987, the campaign to destroy Israel has taken on an ugly, fanatic religious tone. Holy obligation reinforces (and is replacing) Palestinian nationalism as the motivation for committing terrorist murder. As we have seen the secular, ‘moderate’ factions of the Palestinian nationalist movement (such as Abbas’s Fatah Party) will shrink into insignificance, and is replaced by terrorist Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas receives financial and material support from the same sources as al Qaeda, and from al Qaeda directly. Islamic Jihad receives financial and material support from Iran, directly and through Hezbollah. These are the same international criminal entities that wage religion-based terror war against the United States. They do it for the same reason and by the same means: to make Islam supreme in the world, by the sword or the suicide bomb.
The august international organizations charged with preserving peace and human dignity in the world—the UN, the EU, among others—would have preferred that terrorist atrocities be limited to Israel. However, once the intentional mass murder of innocent civilians was legitimized against Israel, it was legitimized everywhere, constrained by nothing more than the strongly held beliefs of those who would become the mass murderers. Because the Palestinians were encouraged by most of the world to believe that the murder of innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic to advance the Palestinian nationalist cause, the Islamists believe that they may commit mass murder anywhere in the world to advance their holy cause. As a result, we suffer from a plague of Islamic terrorism, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan, from Nairobi to New York, authored and perfected by the Palestinians. Israel and the United States are not separate targets of Islamic terrorism. The whole world is its target. Israel and the United States share the bull’s-eye.
Psychologically speaking (I’ll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses.
What alternative is there to the media’s “Us” versus “Them”? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this “righteous” position of “ours” all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the “dirty” distortions in “their” thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we’ll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.
There is, therefore, a temptation to return to an explanation which automatically discharges the victim of responsibility: it seems quite adequate to a reality in which nothing strikes us more forcefully than the utter innocence of the individual caught in the horror machine and his utter inability to change his fate. Terror, however, is only in the last instance of its development a mere form of government. In order to establish a totalitarian regime, terror must be presented as an instrument for carrying out a specific ideology; and that ideology must have won the adherence of many, and even a majority, before terror can be stabilized. The point for the historian is that the Jews, before becoming the main victims of modern terror, were the center of Nazi ideology. And an ideology which has to persuade and mobilize people cannot choose its victim arbitrarily.
We find people of value,' she said, speaking like a teacher addressing a small child, 'and we determine what story they need to hear. It's the story that they're already telling themselves, don't you see? It's the nightmare they believe in. Once you understand that nightmare, you join them in it. Their fear becomes your fear. It's all a shared experience then. And once you have that, once they feel that is the truth, all the way down to their core, then your coping strategy becomes theirs. It's a natural progression. This is the power of a shared narrative. Of the echo chamber.
In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word "Russian" I always differentiate it from the word "Soviet"—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves.You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom....There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.
The reality of his predicament hit him hard. There’s no way out of this now, save arrest or death. Professor Ratib had made it sound so academic, but it wasn't. Regardless of whether we're attacking human- or infrastructure-related targets, it's terrorism. If Husam thinks that I’m a risk, I’m dead.
The racial terrorism of lynchings in many ways created the modern death penalty. America's embrace of speedy executions was, in part, an attempt to redirect the violent energies of lynching while ensuring white southerners that Black men would still pay the ultimate price.
How long will we stand in silence while half of our nation is chained by ancient, outdated laws? How long will we close our eyes to a tribal mentality that subjugates women in the most base and dehumanizing ways? How long will we hide in the shadows while the ruling elites bask in the rays of wealth and privilege?
You can tell Allah that when he judges you. Explain how you helped them build their obscene wealth. Explain how you helped them dole out scraps to the general population in order to keep it in check. Explain how you looked the other way while your employers raped the holy land for their own benefit and enjoyment. And why did you look the other way? So you could keep your modest civil servant post. Take the money,” Siraj insisted as he pushed it across the table. “You've done more to earn it than I have.
We do not guess outcomes nor consider if consequences are right, wrong or ethical. We execute our orders. We do not question them. We are soldiers and we are at war against all terrorists…foreign and domestic. ~Seasoned Loyal Solider – United States Armed Forces~
We do not guess outcomes or consider if consequences are right wrong or ethical. We execute our orders…not question them. We are soldiers and we are at war against all terrorists…foreign and domestic. ~Seasoned Loyal Solider – United States Armed Forces~
We do not guess outcomes or consider if consequences are right wrong or ethical. We execute our orders…not question them. We are soldiers and we are at war against all terrorists…foreign and domestic. ~Seasoned Loyal Soldier – United States Armed Forces~
It is vital to acknowledge the new reality before taking any steps to change the existing policies. The world is not the same anymore. Tackling religion-based terrorism is perhaps one, if not the most serious threat the world face in the 21st century. Unfortunately, more terror attacks like the ones in San Bernardino, Brussels and Paris are expected to occur. While those attacks were a reminder of the challenges that lay ahead, they exposed the need to have an improved early warning system that may ultimately save civilian lives. Such a system should take into account the shortcomings of the current warning frameworks and evaluate the usefulness of warnings generated by improved models that would cover a broad range of attacks, larger geographic areas within the country in question and a wide range of potential attack scenarios. The system is likely to facilitate well informed decisions on the assessment of information gathered from different sources. In this vein, finding a balance between protecting human rights and ensuring national security is key.
Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
Counterinsurgency rests on the assumption that the enemy has significant support in the communities from which it recruits. The aim of counterinsurgency strategy is to deny the enemy any propaganda victories that can further fuel its recruitment. Insurgents must be isolated from their targeted host communities. This requires a combination of psychological, physical and economic warfare, all with the aim of undermining the insurgents’ ideological, operational and financial capabilities.From: Maajid Nawaz's article titled, 'How to Beat Islamic State', December 11th, 2015
DB: There's a lot of talk about terrorism. In fact, it's become almost an obsession for the media in the United States. But it's a very narrow definition of terrorism.AR: Yes. It completely ignores the economic terrorism unleashed by neoliberalism, which devastates the lives of millions of people, depriving them of water, food, electricity. Denying them medicine. Denying them education. Terrorism is the logical extension of this business of the free market. Terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war - people who believe that it isn't only the state that can wage war, but private parties as well.If you look at the logic underlying an act of terrorism and the logic underlying a retaliatory war against terrorism, they are the same. Both terrorists and governments make ordinary people pay for the actions of their governments. Osama bin Laden is making people pay for the actions of the US state, whether it's in Saudi Arabia, Palestine, or Afghanistan. The US government is making the people of Iraq pay for the actions of Saddam Hussein. The people of Afghanistan pay for the crimes of the Taliban. The logic is the same.Osama bin Laden and George Bush are both terrorists. They are both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people's lives. Bush, with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al Qaeda.
And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.
In effect, terrorists now have the power to ignite war. They almost have their finger on the nuclear button. They almost have the status of heads of state. And that has enhanced the effectiveness and romance of terrorism.The US government's response to September 11 has actually privileged terrorism. It has given it a huge impetus, and made it look like terrorism is the only effective way to be heard. Over the years, every kind of nonviolent resistance movement has been crushed, ignored, kicked aside. But if you're a terrorist, you have a great chance of being negotiated with, of being on TV, of getting all the attention you couldn't have dreamt of earlier.
Either it falls on your head like a roof tile or it attaches itself to your insides like a tapeworm. Afterward, you no longer see the world in the same way. You’ve got only one thing on your mind: the thing that has taken you over, body and soul. You want to lift it so you can see what’s under it. And from that point on, you can never turn back. Besides, you’re no longer giving the orders. You think you’re in control, doing what you want to do, but it’s not true. You’re nothing but the instrument of your own frustrations. For you, life and death come down to the same thing, Somewhere, you must have renounced everything that could have given you a chance of returning to earth, to the real world. You’re an extraterrestrial. You live in a kind of limbo, stalking houris and unicorns. As for this world, you don’t even want to hear about it anymore. You’re just waiting for the right moment to cross the threshold. The only way to get back what you’ve lost or to fix what you’ve screwed up -- in other words, the only way to make something of your life -- is to end it with a flourish. … The way you see it, the day of your funeral procession will be the day when you’re exalted in other people’s eyes.
Generalization is the biggest challenge that must be dealt with if we are to create spaces for constructive dialogue where muslims feel they are welcomed. This is equally true with regards to Westerners! Not all Westerners are against muslims, and not all terrorist attacks in the West are linked to Islamic jihadists.
We obviously don’t live in a perfect world. If we did, then my dad would never have volunteered for Vietnam so he could use the GI Bill to pay for college, Uncle Google would have more important things to do than searching for eight hundred million reasons why our schools suck, and I wouldn’t be at an education leadership conference in Jakarta because there’d be no need for it … right?
...he had read von Lambert's book on terrorism, there were two pages devoted to the Arab resistance movement, von Lambert refused to call them terrorists, which didn't preclude, and he had emphasized this, that nonterrorists were also capable of atrocities, Auschwitz, for instance, was not the work of terrorists but of state employees...
He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know.
I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government — communist, capitalist, democratic, dictatorial — but the degree of government. That absence of government is what we are watching these days, from Libya to Iraq to Syria.(“Why they still hate us, 13 years later,” Washington Post, 09/05/2014)
One of the biggest obstacles on the path of peace, or even peaceful coexistence, between Israelis and Palestinians was placed by the international community and media when it redefined Hamas as an "organization." One result is that outsiders try to reach a solution based on the assumption that Hamas has structure and leaders. It does not. It has no "political wing" or "militant wing." Hamas is a loosely-knit band of terrorists. Its leaders are whoever has weapons, plans, and influence. Hamas is thuggish and cowardly. Those who fly the green flag are not military combatants. Nor do they represent, or care a whit, for the Palestinian people, as evidenced by their strategy of hiding in and fighting from schools, clinics, hospitals, and people's homes. After what passed for an election some Hamas terrorists were further redefined as politicians and diplomats, though they were neither politic nor diplomatic, evidenced by the fact that many "govern" from Israeli prisons. Prior to the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Hamas had been emasculated and nearly eradicated by Yassir Arafat, who rounded up, disarmed, and imprisoned the terrorist "leaders," leaving its remaining members to return to their homes. Arafat ensured that members of Hamas had no place to hide among the Palestinian people. And that is the only way the terrorist cancer in Gaza will be excised today. In the absence of Arafat, the task falls by default to Israel, which would do better to enable the citizens of Gaza to purge themselves of Hamas and reward them for doing so than try to get rid of the bad apples by blowing up the barrel, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.
A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie’s concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly using India to pressure Pakistan.
There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur-porn chanteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capitalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothing more on its mind than servitude to Mammon and celebrity at any cost, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.
You revolutionists' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, 'are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your action, too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be conclusive. (...) 'You are not a bit better than the forces arrayed against you -- than the police, for instance. The other day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. He looked at me very steadily. But I did not look at him. Why should I give him more than a glance ? He was thinking of many things -- of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his salary, of newspapers -- of a hundred things. But I was thinking of my perfect detonator only. He meant nothing to me. He was as insignificant as -- I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him with -- except Karl Yundt perhaps. Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolutions, legality -- counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical. He plays his little game -- so do you propagandists.
What we have here is a war—the war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen—the ghost of Hamlet’s father—was seen—in the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can’t contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It’s what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack—I mourned—but not in a personal way—it was a cosmic mourning—something that I could not specify because I didn’t know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger—estranged in myself and confused—I saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks—what a theater of the unexpected—my mother would have cried—there were only black curtains, black drapes—showing the mourning of the stores—no mannequins, just veils—black veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later—none of them had blond hair. I don’t know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond—targets of terrorists. Even they didn’t want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him—dye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.
The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, armored cars and donkeys in the streets, Bedouins and bankers. The Turks and Haredim, the showy Greek and Russian processions -- everyone seemed to be in costume, reenacting the miraculous past.
Oops! We thought he had a gun!’ So you shot me in the back three times ’cause you thought I had a gun? I was gonna sue, but they said they was gonna kill me. I was 18 years old, I didn’t have nobody, I didn’t have all this. They kept pickin’ me up, kept lockin’ my ass up, beating me, until I dropped the lawsuit. When I dropped the lawsuit, that’s when everything stopped. That’s what the fuck happened to me. I was terrorized by some terrorists.
The Obama administration has a strange theory. Terrorism is a response of uneducated human beings who have been disenfranchised politically and economically. If we can solve the ‘root grievances’ of the poor and oppressed around the world, there will be no more terrorists, and Americans will be safe. This view is of course absurd. If poverty, lack of education, and political disenfranchisement were the causes of terrorism, then much of India and most of China would be populated by terrorists. But they are not. And this is because terrorism is the violent expression of ideology, not objective conditions—what has famously been called ‘propaganda of the deed.’ The terrorist’s ideology may be secular and political—communist or fascist, for example—or it may be religious—Christian, Islamic, or even Hindu.
You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy Since the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice—under both Republican and Democratic presidents—have distorted our analysis of the enemy, preventing us from drawing an effective plan to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Obama administration, blinded by its own preconceived ideas of why terrorism occurs, is influenced by malevolent actors who have an interest in censoring any talk of the religious aspects of the enemy’s ideology. At the highest level of the U.S. government, terrorism is deemed to be the result of poverty, unemployment, and lack of political enfranchisement. This fallacy must be jettisoned. We are not at war with Islam. The people most immanently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They are on the most important front of this war, and they understand just how much religion truly matters. We do a great disservice to those brave Muslims when we try to convince the world that the threat will disappear if enough people have good jobs and sound educations.
The similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored. Both groups are driven by a totalitarian vision. The followers of Karl Marx envisioned a world transformed into a workers’ paradise in which all other classes had been destroyed and only one party, the Communist Party, was in control. Today’s jihadists also have a universal vision. They look forward to a global caliphate in which all have submitted to the will of Allah and live as Muslims, the infidels and apostates having been slain. Both visions are exclusive, absolutist, and totalitarian. They are predicated on a ‘them or us’ vision of how the world must be. There is no possibility for peaceful coexistence with the ‘other'.
Every American should own a Koran. There are no excuses. Every day you can switch on the television or the radio or open a newspaper and hear or read pronouncements about what Islam is and“what the Koran says. Most of it is wrong—very wrong. You owe it to yourself, your family, and all the Americans killed on 9/11 and since to know the truth. Do not take anyone’s word for it. Find out for yourself by reading the actual Koran. One of the most reliable and recognized versions is the The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Once you have a Koran and start to read it, take care to note the enormous differences between the half reportedly communicated to Mohammed in the beginning in Mecca, when he was weak and without followers, and the latter half, allegedly written after he returned from Medina with thousands of followers, the leader of a mighty military force. It is the post-Medina chapters of the Koran that are naturally favored by groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are not in fact perverting religious texts but skillfully applying those alleged revelations that best support their cause.
Our Constitution’s separation of church and state never meant that religion could have nothing to do with the governing of our nation. The Founders simply intended that the United States would not have an established state religion and that no one could be sanctioned by the state for being of the wrong faith. Separation of church and state does not mean, as many people inside government believe today, that religion can never be discussed when investigating a threat or interrogating a suspect. And it definitely does not mean that a subject under surveillance as a threat to American lives cannot be recorded or otherwise monitored when he steps into a mosque. If someone is suspected of being a terrorist, it matters not whether he steps into a mosque, a church, or a temple; he is still a threat and should be treated as such.
We routinely and rightly condemn the terrorism that kills civilians in the name of God but we cannot claim the high moral ground if we dismiss the suffering and death of the many thousands of civilians who die in our wars as ‘collateral damage’. Ancient religious mythologies helped people to face up to the dilemma of state violence, but our current nationalist ideologies seem by contrast to promote a retreat into denial or hardening of our hearts. Nothing shows this more clearly than a remark of Madeleine Albright when she was still Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations. Later she retracted it, but among people around the world it has never been forgotten. In 1996, in CBS’s 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl asked her whether the cost of international sanctions against Iraq was justified: 'We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima … Is the price worth it?’ 'I think this is a very hard choice,’ Albright replied 'but the price, we think the price is worth it.
GATA must be willing to bind where terrorist organisations loose and loose where terrorist organisations bind. Anywhere there is an internal conflict, especially if there is a terrorist organisation which stands to benefit from the escalation of such conflict; GATA must come around to encourage a sustainable resolution.
This level of operational and organisational perfection for a body that has a scourge as unpredictable as terrorism to deal with is nearly utopian, but it is what GATA must strive to reach, a pursuit that must be written in its DNA.
Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata. "People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people," he said. "It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people – we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.
A more fundamental questions suggests itself, however. How did the most powerful military in history come to devote its elite forces and advanced technology to the hunt for a man like Qari Munib, a midlevel Taliban figure in a remote corner of the planet, half a world away from the White House and ground zero in Manhattan, more than eleven years after the September 11 attacks?
Yes, they have all done some good work that has left our world a safer place today. But we need a more direct strategy that can endure for as long as the threat persists without hurting the sovereignty of nations and human rights of the same people it seeks to protect.
Yes, it is totally acceptable that for any given country to become assured of its safety, it has to get out of its way to make the world safer generally. But getting out of its way does not necessarily have to mean getting into another country’s backyard. Rather, it should mean getting into a more sensible and a more effective coalition with other countries for same purpose in a manner that ensures both mutual safety and mutual dignity –both coming in adequate measures, the achieving of one not necessitating the foregoing of the other.
Fundamentally, terrorist conflicts are about breaking the will of the enemy. To do this, one does not need to kill all of the enemy’s personnel or destroy all of its resources. One simply has to destroy the idea that ultimate victory is possible. Victory or defeat then, boils down to a question of psychology.
A snipit from my PR people:“A British author has revealed how he risked his life to infiltrate the Taliban while researching his new book on religious terrorism. Cal Sawar came face-to-face with Al-Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan while posing as a terrorist sympathiser. “The author, from Falkirk, Scotland, daringly managed to infiltrate the terrorist group — responsible for the deaths of countless Muslims and non-Muslims — by offering to help bankroll terrorist attacks on the UK.
They [terrorists] can’t claim that their suicide bombings are martyrdom operations and that they become the heroes of the Muslim Ummah [global brotherhood]. No, they become heroes of hellfire, and they are leading towards hellfire.
The term terrorism is widely misused. It is utilized in its generic sense as a form of shorthand by governments and the media and is applied to a variety of acts and occurrences that approximate terrorism in form but not in substance or, worse yet, that have no real resemblance to terrorism at all. Terrorism, if nothing else, is violence, or threats of violence, but it is not mindless violence, as some observers have charged. Usually, when employed in a political context, it represents a calculated series of actions designed to intimidate and sow fear through-out a target population in an effort to produce a pervasive atmosphere of insecurity, a widespread condition of anxiety. A terrorist campaign that causes a significant threshold of fear among the target population may achieve its aims. In some instances, terrorism is potentially a more effective, especially from a cost-benefit perspective, strategy that conventional or guerrilla warfare, however, the goal of terrorism is not to destroy the opposing side but instead to break its will and force it to capitulate.
By the end of 2004, U.S. operations in Iraq had been rough enough to antagonize the Sunni population without imposing the draconian methods armies habitually employ to control a population.In the spring of 2006, the coalition was losing on the two major fronts that accounted for most of the fighting. In Anbar to the west, al Qaeda controlled the population; in Baghdad to the east, Shiite death squads were driving our the sunnis, while al Qaeda's suicide bombings continued.Yet, the conditions had already been set for a turnaround without precedent in combating an insurgency. In less that three years, two giant institutions steeped in 200 years of traditions-the Army and Marines-adopted new doctrines and turned around a losing war. This was equivalent to GE and Ford starting afresh in new business lines and turning a profit in three years.A lack of soldiers is frequently cited as the basic flaw after the invasion. This is mistaken. There were 140,000 soldiers, plus 100,000 contractors in support roles, in Iraq in 2003. Adding troops would not have accomplished much because the two-headed command...lacked a plan, a counterinsurgency doctrine, and proper training. With the Pentagon's agreement, Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi police were ineffective. More American troops operating alone under a doctrine of attack and destroy would have exacerbated the rebellion.
The [Israelis] believed - they were possessed of an absolute certainty and conviction - that 'terrorists' were in Chatila. How could I explain to them that the terrorists had left, that the terrorists had worn Israeli uniforms, that the terrorists had been sent into Chatila by Israeli officers, that the victims of the terrorists were not Israelis but Palestinians and Lebanese?
The West has to take a critical look at itself and examine the apparent double standards at work that allow it to attack Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction but not North Korea, whose leader shared Saddam Hussein's megalomaniacal qualities; that permit it to rail against Iran about nuclear weapons but be silent about Israel's arsenal; that allow it to only selectively demand enforcement of UN resolutions. The West has to own up to the mistakes it has made: such as with Abu Ghraib and the torture in Afghan prisons; in the errant attacks on civilians; in its disregard for the basic precept of a civilized legal system, which maintains that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.
Many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope for the future. From the young boys I met in the demobilization camps in Sierra Leone to the suicide bombers of Palestine and Chechnya, to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore them. We have to take concrete steps to remove the causes of their rage, or we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences.