30 August 06 - 15:19Root causes of political insanities
Sometimes I wonder if politicians ever stop to reflect on certain things. Whether they truly realize root causes.
What is the main cause of the problem facing secular governments today?
The rise of anti-secularization
For a number of reasons, the pendulum has been swinging away from secularization and towards various ideologies which oppose
this process. These forces do not always work in tandem or even have members that are friendly or acknowledge the existence
of others pushing in the same direction, but all have tenets which are in opposition to the increasing secularization that has
been occuring over the last few decades. Some have risen about as a direct reaction (such as the rise of political Christian
fundamentalism in the US to changes in the 60s) and some have been powerful for a long time, but is now getting more politicized
and in some cases, exported (many Middle Eastern, African, and Pacific island countries). This central theme underlies
so much of today's political discourse, policy shifts, and attitudes. It's rarely overtly stated, however. On top of that, many
modern politicians talk about spreading "democracy this" and "democracy that" when they really mean "Secularism and the respect
for human rights". Do they think that is too politically loaded? Come on. I talked more about that
here.
Not all of those who are attempting to benefit or are benefitting from these movements are actually anti-secular. In the US administration,
some of those who are power hungry seem quite secular (some members of PNAC and friends), but in the interests of gaining power,
ride the wave of anti-secularization, ideas about spreading democracy, and belligerence . Others (like China) are trying to hold on to it,
but don't necessarily have an ideological problem with secularization, just an aversion to anything which weakens their power.
The subordination of human rights and civil liberties
In all the above cases, the victims tend to be human rights and civil liberties. Whether it's countries under Sharia law, the rise of Protestant
Theocracy in the US, or the continued grip on power of the Chinese government, the results tend to be the same. Freedoms of speech,
the press, protection against unlawful search and seizures, and right to fair trials all are pushed by the wayside. Torture becomes
a standard interrogation tool. Dissent is called unpatriotic, and in some cases is punished outright.
In the case of Christian and Islamic theocracies, Women's rights, LGBT rights, sexual and relationship freedoms all get rolled back to Dark Age levels.
The idea of "Women's rights" being separate in this day and age - the idea that they have to be considered "different" at all - is morally repugnant.
Homosexuals kicked out of the military? Imprisoned? Executed? People executed for having sex without being married (some of us don't even
believe in marriage at all!)? Birth control considered anathema?
So what unspoken thing underlies all this? What core idea of enlightenment and modernity is violated? What concept that isn't mentioned
by politicians, even though it's the yardstick with which we can determine whether something is a fundamental human right?
Informed consent, and the willingness to ignore it, or outright oppose it. That's our unspoken enemy. The thing that hasn't sunk in
or is considered unacceptable outright to those who violate these rights is the absolutely central idea that informed consent
is what underpins the majority of modern, secular, enlightened, human rights and civil liberties respecting systems of governance
and justice. So much political discourse is so heavily layered that, in these matters, it's removed from the actual problem in a
practical sense. It's not addressed directly. In all the careful maneuvering involved in diplomacy, these ideas are avoided. Something
so absolutely critical to this modern world isn't spoken of. Would Dominique de Villepin ever sit down with Iran's Ahmadinejad and
Pakistan's Musharraf and have a conversation like this:
Villepin: "You guys have to stop imprisoning and executing homosexuals. It's a violation of human rights."
Ahmadinejad: "Well, it's an old custom and Sharia law says..."
Villepin: "Look, I don't give a damn about that. The central idea of informed consent protects sexual relations between adults. They both consent. It's their bodies. They can do what they please."
Musharraf: "That does not reflect Islamic values."
Villepin: "I don't give a DAMN. The values dictated by informed consent and human rights trump any of your other values. Start making changes NOW."
Not even close. Ever been told in a conversation about this that "it's not as bad as you think"? It's worse.
What a sad fucking world.
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30 August 06 - 03:20
'Sharon Zukin refers to a somewhat contradictory "Artistic Mode of Production" wherein patrician capital seeks to revalorize (that is,
gentrify) urban space through the recruitment and retention of artists; that is, by subtle and overt means of encouraging artists to occupy, say, former industrial facilities (1989, 176). This has been taken by some cities as advice. In UK cities like Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Liverpool, the actions of regional development agencies, in tandem with private speculators, have attempted to artificially stimulate the process of gentrification. Property developers have also noticed that taking a building they eventually wish to re-develop and
offering it cheaply to artists for a few years can impart a 'hip' feel to the surrounding area.'
What a dirty business.
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27 August 06 - 14:25Brain worms and brain amoebas
They do exist.
Two parasites with disease-causing capabilities are the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium, and the amoeba Naegleria fowleri. In addition to their medical importance, these two organisms illustrate the many ways that brain parasites are able to affect their hosts through their methods of invasion and survival.
Full story.
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25 August 06 - 22:49NYC movie theaters
Ones I enjoy quite frequently.
Cinema Village
Angelika
Film Forum
Village East
Landmark
IFC
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25 August 06 - 13:39Zee Oh Em Gee BBQ
I quit WoW a while ago. Here's why.
Guild management system and tools
- Guild alliances not possible, forcing often unwanted mergers
- No automated way of ranking player skill, making recruiting take longer
than it should
- No distributed security system for guild leadership. Too much
actual power given to guild masters (/gdisband, for example).
Loot system
- System forces predation on lower-tier guilds to gear up for
higher ones
- System forces guilds to drop down a tier (or more) to gear new people
up if they lose others, leading to burnout
- Player attrition kills guilds too easily.
- Crafted gear very valuable. Extremely painful when someone walks away
with some that the guild has supplied materials for.
Grouping
- Too many horrible players
Simply gaining experience shouldn't be enough to level up.
Tests should be in place to prove that you can succeed in group content.
Example: every level you do a 5 man dungeon with 4 AI characters
in your group. A battery of tests in this dungeon are given to you.
- No way to publicly rate or penalize players who leave early,
wipe the group, etc.
Rerolling and transfers
- Very little support for "serious" rerollers. Requirement to get to 60,
get resistance gear, best blue gear, and have no way to show a Blizzard
supported resume (one that proves what raids you've completed, bosses
you've beaten, etc.)
- Servers frequently lose players to attrition, and many lower population
ones simply have no high-end guilds at the level of content you're
interested in. Your choices then are a reroll, with the associated
problems, or a paid transfer, which is only allowed every 6 months -
which is much longer than the amount of time a server or group of servers
can lose all of its advanced guilds. Transfers should be allowed every
week if you're willing to pay.
Playerbase
- Homophobia, misogyny, immaturity, and disrespectfulness run
absolutely rampant. In the case of reportable offenses, there are
so many that it's impractial to report them all.
Additionally, many things can not covered by the ToS (like immaturity).
Age or maturity-restricted servers with associated tests,
live phone calls from support team to verify your age, and much
harsher penalties for transgressions (instant, full-account bans, for
example) would be very welcome.
Economy
- Buying gold not policed. Buying gold from
ANY type of account, compromised
or not, should result in permaban. It cheapens the game experience
for non gold buyers. Blizzard views sellers as more important, but
they do not create the demand - buyers do. All gold should have an ID
to trace its source, indicate how it was obtained, etc. to show if
it was done by a "pro gold farmer", bot, or the like. Empirical evidence
has shown that gold buying at the high-end of the game is a
very common occurence. Lack of respect for the gold and timesinks
put in by Blizzard feed this. Either police the buying, or change the
sinks.
- Farming for materials used for raids (flask materials, for instance)
takes a terrible amount of time, and is often perceived as necessary,
making avoiding it very difficult or impossible.
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24 August 06 - 22:58Rave-olutionary
Philips, the company that makes everything from stereos to steam irons has found a way to build LEDs into fibres without compromising their softness. Weave the fibres into a fabric and the result is a soft, washable material that can light up with the logo of your choice at the flick of a switch.
Full story.
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20 August 06 - 20:43Hezbollah/Iran link evidence mounts
Night Vision equipment found in Hezbollah bunkers.
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20 August 06 - 02:22The Free Energy Challenge
From
Tech News Daily: Steorn, an Irish technology development company, has issued a challenge to the global scientific community to test Steorn's free energy technology and publish the findings.
Steorn's technology is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy. The technology can be applied to virtually all devices requiring energy, from cellular phones to cars.
Steorn has placed an advertisement in The Economist this week to attract the attention of the world's leading scientists working in the field of experimental physics. From all the scientists who accept Steorn's challenge, twelve will be invited to take part in a rigorous testing exercise to prove that Steorn's technology creates free energy. The results will be published worldwide.
If only more scientific and technology companies would do this. "Go ahead, try to prove our tech doesn't work, skeptics". The world would truly be a better place.
Of course, in this case, it's likely to be proven false in about 10 seconds.
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19 August 06 - 03:44Go back to your cafes, everyone!
'On the living-in-denial scale, [we] secular humanists who still dismiss or ignore the Evangelical Christian takeover of America are little more than Baghdad Bobs: "Go back to your cafes, everyone! The Evangelicals don't really matter! America is a land of rational, enlightened citizens, not insane cultists!"'.
I'd like to add "We are winning!" to these
Baghdad Bobisms.
"Truth is, we secular humanists, nihilists and the like no longer have a real claim to America. We're foreigners in a nation of cross-chuckers. We may live in the best parts-within 10 miles of the ocean coasts and a few enclaves in the interior-but the same could be said for expatriates living in any Third World country. Like expatriates in the Third World, our good lifestyles are purchased at the expense of the credulous natives, who are easy to exploit, a little slow and easily diverted by their crazy superstitions. But in the end we are guests in their country. America is theirs, and we'd better get used to it."
As a hardcore secularist, I'd like to say
Be very afraid - it's the Evangelical Christian takeover of America (Repost, which is more relevant than ever).
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19 August 06 - 03:25Sudan conflict explained
The mainstream media often presents a laughably oversimplified and often totally wrong version of the source of the continued conflict in Sudan.
Get a
better explanation.
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17 August 06 - 13:59Terrorist Surveillance Program declared unconstitutional
Story here
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17 August 06 - 02:31The power of decentralization of warfare
Security policies and tactics need to quickly adapt to a decentralized threat, in an increasingly dangerous, mobile world. "It's everywhere" has now been taken to a whole new level.
'Overall, Hezbollah's decentralized, flexible network of small units exhibited the essential aspects of a warfighting style that some military thinkers have predicted would predominate in 21st-century warfare, and which has been described as netwar or fourth-generation warfare. It's a style of warfare that armies of nation-states, with their massive levels of force, are ill-equipped to fight.'
I previously spoke about
Memetic recruiting, which
is a form of non-interactive, decentralized recruitment. Then of course there's explicit mobilization of allied or subordinate militant forces across the world, many of which
have no interaction with each other (isolated cells). In Lebanon, we've see Hezbollah's very decentralized guerilla tactics, which allowed them to seriously stymie the Israeli army.
Now we have the related
democratization of missile technology. We have decentralized communication systems,
computer networks and systems (the Internet itself, for one), and computer applications (like P2P). What do these things have in common? They're
tough to take out. This is the new reality of warfare, and modern security apparatuses appear ill-equipped to handle it.
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17 August 06 - 01:35Middle East Nightmare
This could get ugly. Real ugly.
The remarkable incompetence of Bush planners has created a catastrophe in Iraq, for their own interests as well. They are even facing the possibility of the ultimate nightmare: a loose Shi'a alliance (including Shi'ite-dominated Iraq, Iran, and the Shi'ite regions of Saudi Arabia), controlling the world's major energy supplies, and independent of Washington or even worse, establishing closer links with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council. The results could be truly apocalyptic. And even in tiny Lebanon, the leading Lebanese academic scholar of Hezbollah, and a harsh critic of the organization, describes the current conflict in "apocalyptic terms," warning that possibly "All hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer" (Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Washington Post, 23 July).
Oh yeah, and
it's bigger than the Neo-cons.
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17 August 06 - 00:56The hubbub about "spreading Democracy"
The US, EU, and UN's push should be for: human rights enforcement, secularism, education, Democracy.
In that order.
There's lots of talk by US and European politicians about how it's important to "spread Democracy" and "support Democratic regimes". Sometimes, I think they even believe it. What we
should
be trying to spread is enforcement of
human rights,
secularism, and
education . Democracy is quaternary.
As we've seen in the Palestinan territories, Democracy does
not always mean we're going
to get a secular, human rights respecting, or peaceful government. In fact, the people may want the opposite. Remember how that Socrates guy died? Democracy is a great thing in the hands
of the enlightened, but it can lead to that very nasty thing called
Tyranny of the Majority. What would happen if
Egypt was a Democracy? We'd have another radical Islamic theocracy stomping human rights even more than the current authoritarian regime. Once you have human rights enforcement,
secularism, education, and a decent respect for your fellow citizens, then you can introduce Democracy. Turkey's Edrogan once said "Democracy is like a street car; you ride it as far as you need, and then you get off," an approach he has aptly enacted as prime minister. He has purged liberals from the banking board and replaced every member of this technocratic institution with specialists in and practitioners of Islamist finance, many of whom spent their careers in Saudi Arabia. Erdoğan is replacing 4,000 out of 9,000 judges with Islamist-leaning individuals. He has refused to uphold Supreme Court decisions until he can change the judiciary. After failing to win the endorsement of the higher education council for his Islamist program, he founded fifteen new universities with fifteen new rectors to win their fifteen new votes. [from
meforum].
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16 August 06 - 23:49China's rise worries West
It sure does.
Story.
In Africa the impact is particularly stark. Garth Shelton of South Africa's Wits University welcomes the attention, saying there is a lot of optimism about the renewed Chinese interest in his continent.
"
If we deal with the United States or West European governments they would bring a list of 33 items requiring restructuring of your democracy, your human rights issues," he said. "China would arrive and say we accept you as you are. And
that's a refreshing change." A refreshing change to not have to be bothered with pesky "human rights issues". Isn't that nice? It's such a drag! I continue to dream of the day that
the
UNHRC gets some teeth. Some nice, pointy ones. Alternatively,
HRW and
AI could be given guns. Lots of guns.
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16 August 06 - 22:13Every airport traveller 'will be fingerprinted'
Sci-fi continues to be prescient
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16 August 06 - 22:09Grilled Cheese NYC remembered
Grilled Cheese NYC set a new standard for Grilled Cheese.
I simply am unable to bring myself to eat it anywhere else after eating there. The ingredients were so fresh, the choices so varied, and the soup - the soup was amazing.
Perhaps it'll reopen some day. Bleh.
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16 August 06 - 21:05UN needs a dentist
Nations refuse to disarm Hezbollah.
"France, the United States, the United Nations and Lebanon itself have all refused to accept responsibility for stripping the Lebanese Shiite militia of their weapons, despite a key element of the UN resolution that calls for the group to give up its firepower and vacate the southern part of the country."
As usual, UN resolutions are completely toothless. Like the previous resolution demaning Hezbollah to disarm, 1701 has no enforcement mechanism to make it happen.
The UN says the troops won't have the authority (uh, how about you give it to them?), and Lebanon refuses to either, partially because they simply can't; Hezbollah
would roll them. The UN is such a great idea on paper. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all they're good for - paper.
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15 August 06 - 14:40The Iran Plans
From the New Yorker: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
The Iran Plans. A lot of really interesting stuff there.
One thing that really stood out in light of recent events:
"When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel,
'Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.'" Whoops.
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15 August 06 - 01:44Wiggle
Methane Ice worm closeup and
colony.
These worms eat bacteria that feed off of methane hydrate deposits in deep, dark, cold ocean depths.
Speaking of ice, heres
Grimsvotn in the Vatnajokull.
Also, can
Conan the bacterium use a broadsword, do you think?
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14 August 06 - 21:47Political policy lesson for the braindead
So we've still got this whole issue in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Why does this problem still exist? Why are the players involved such numbskulls?
If you didn't know much about this conflict's history, and only listened to the diplomatic
rhetoric and relatively candy coated reasons why it's happening, you'd think this was just a
land war.You might think that two groups are fighting over some contested territory for some
of the usual reasons: "it's on our side of the $insert_divider_here" or "we were there first".
Nope. The claims to this land go back a long time. Many groups have laid claim to it over the
centuries, with different reasons justifying their soverignty over it. In this case, there are
two reasons: "these guys kicked showed up and kicked us out because the UN said it was OK"
and a bunch of claims based on religious nonsense that have absolutely NO PLACE in modern
political discourse or policy making. None. Not one shred. Neither side has any right to it
based on what a couple of religious works say. No policy in a modern, secular world should be
dictated by such absurd things. How about scientologists claiming California? How about Zoroastrians
wanting to take back Iran? Are you freaking kidding? These things get more clout because these
religions are popular? Guys, this is 2006. Not 500 BCE. Not 1200 CE. Sorry, political
policies and land claims cannot come from religious beliefs. This whole idea should be publicly
thrown out the window with comments amounting to "whoops, we've been to justify claims to land
based on religious garbage. That was a mistake, as this is nonsensical and untenable in this modern
world. Sorry!". Then maybe we can start to have an actual discussion that isn't essentially reduced to
totally illogical, spurious, and unfalsifiable trash. Let's go to the first reason, which
actually has some weight. "A lot of us got kicked out because the UN said it was OK".
Alright. You can make an argument out of this one. Unfortunately, one of those arguments can't
wind up amounting to "kick all these guys back out". If that were tenable, we'd be kicking
Americans out of the US for the Asiatic Americans, Australians out of Australia for the
Indigenous Australians, and Haitians out of Haiti for the Taino. As should be obvious by now,
this sort of policy doesn't work. You cannot simply kick out an entire people because a previous
generation acquired some piece of land through arguably unfair means. That amounts to collective
punishment. It's unethical and it's unfair. At the time the UN helped create Israel, they had good
intentions. They simply didn't foresee (or didn't care about) the results of their actions. They
didn't appear to learn the lessons of history. They did it, though, and now people have to live
with it. You can't simply kick the Israelis out, even though they essentially kicked out the
Palestinians. You cannot punish people for what a previous generation did. Hey, what if we found
direct descendants of some Canaanites. They were there before any of these groups. Should
we kick everyone out and give the land to them? Obviously this sort of thing can go back a long way.
That said, the Palestinians have a right to be pissed. You can't simply kick people out of where
they live and expect them to be OK with it. Not unless you kill them all, of course. Wondering why
the Taino aren't showing up at the Haitian government offices demanding that they leave?
They're dead. That's right, they're dead. When you leave people alive, they tend to stay ANGRY
and want to COME BACK! Shocking, isn't it? In this particular deal, the Palestinians got the
short end of the stick, and they're rightfully pissed. You can believe that if there were hundreds
of thousands of Tainos that could get a decent military force together that there'd be serious
talk about their claims to Haiti. The Arab League instructions barring the Arab states from granting citizenship to Palestinian
Arab refugees (or their descendants) "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland"
hasn't helped either. Protecting a group's "national identity" at the expense of their rights, opportunities, or well-being?
What kind of crack are these guys smoking, exactly?
As should be clear by now, noone really has any claim to any land beyond what force will
allow. Basically, if you can hold on to a piece of land by military means, it's yours. This
may piss off a lot of people, but it's the reality. Don't like it? Bring a bigger army. Then the
other side brings an even bigger one. Eventually, the winner is "whoever the UN backs",
since that's going to be the biggest army there is right now. It's basically becomes an "armed
forces arms race". These things are not stated directly by politicians or the media, and there's
this twisted sense of "indigenous ownership". It's all just land, and we're all
just people. People spread out a long time ago. How long does it take for a people to have a
"real" claim to a land? 100 years? 500?
1000? What if that "people" was a bunch of different former nationalities? Ethnicities? Languages? It
could go on forever, and these things just aren't a useful basis for land claims or policy. It's
just plain divorced from reality. Noone owns anything. You keep land because: a) noone can kick
you out or b) noone cares that you're there. There's no inherent right. No group is "truly"
indigenous. All we've got is "who lived there last" and maybe "who we think lived there longest".
Neither of those things imbue people or land with any sort of magical pixie dust that says they
belong together. That's just the unspoken reality of it.
So what should be done? Let's pretend for a minute that the radicals
that want to "wipe Israel off the map" aren't around and we've got some reasonable people to work
with. First step: the attacks stop. Yeah, this one is tough, but it's pretty much required. Next,
some division of land that's based on realistic needs, and not on religious nonsense
is worked out. Third, the Palestinians get their absolutely insane birth rate under control.
Abortion, birth control, and a reproduction limit policy are put into place. Fourth, a serious
development project is put together to develop the infrastructure and economy in the new Palestine.
After all this, another important thing or two need to happen: the UN needs to make sure
it never, ever bases any policies on fairy tale beliefs. Second, if a country attempts
to take over another, the UN needs to step in right away and not mess around. To be fair,
they've been pretty decent about this when it comes to military invasions. However, they
remain largely toothless when the "taking over" comes from within - see Burma and Sudan. The same
standards for action should apply to both offensive military action, and grevious human
rights violations. Of course, they need to get some real teeth when it comes to handling
human rights violations in general. Action should be swift and real. Not just statements
condemning governments and groups. Near immediate sanctions, UN-privilege reductions or removals,
or even military action. Iran should not be able to execute homosexuals and people who have sex
that aren't married, the US should not be able to toss Habeus Corpus in the garbage, and the
Sudan government should not be able to continue mass murder and rape without repercussions. When
violations are reported, a human rights team should be dispatched right away to investigate. If
violations are found to be happening, the offending government should have to act immediately or
face action. Change their broken laws, release people or charge them, stop the genocide, whatever.
If they don't, BAM, sanctions. Still not changing? BAM, you lose your UN vote or seat. No
change yet? BAM, military action. You follow what's laid out in the
UDHR or you get punched in the teeth.
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13 August 06 - 21:56Into the river
Went to the Bronx Zoo on Saturday with Viv. Many small monkeys and butterflies were gazed upon. The tiger exhibit was pretty underwhelming; I'd expected a lot more (like having people fed to them). Took some pictures of the Bronx river in a park nearby, which I had no idea was so clean.
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13 August 06 - 21:19Kitten attack
We're under attack!
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13 August 06 - 19:40Wikipedia bashing
This quote from Rusty (from k5) really sums up the state of Wikipedia bashing:
"I've read your diaries about this, and a few things elsewhere, and here's what I think the problem is. This reporter doesn't want to have to think critically about information from a source he has traditionally regarded as objective, accountable, and factual. It appears that as soon as you label something an encyclopedia, he believes that should mean you can trust the information in it without question, possibly modulated by the encyclopedia's publication date. In this case, since wikipedia is updated constantly, his internal truth-o-meter demands that it be 100% trustworthy.
The bit about how newspapers are based on "accountability" gets right to the heart of his problem. He's been taught that the system of newspaper publishing ensures that they are Objective and Factual. Despite working in a newspaper, and presumably seeing firsthand that the news is written by people, and reviewed (usually) by one or two other people, he believes that the magic pixie dust of accountability can imbue that information source with truth, while wikipedia articles (which are written by people, and reviewed by at least one or two other people) do not have that magic. He sees the existence of wikipedia as an attack on both his own magic powers of media objectivity, and a threat to his lack of critical thinking skills. My god, man, if we can't unquestioningly trust an encyclopedia, what can we unquestioningly trust?
The answer, of course, is nothing. And that right there is his problem."
If you just want to learn about a topic, Wikipedia is
great. If you're doing real research, and you did want to use Wikipedia as a source (especially good for contorversial topics where there may be lots of opinions and not much consensus), you'd use it as just
one source. You'd use plenty of others, and you'd likely ask experts, compare facts, do your own testing (if possible). Wikipedia is not the be all, end all. It's very good for what it does, though.
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13 August 06 - 19:39Ignorance of nuance in the war on TRR
There's so much oversimplification (and in some cases, real lack of understanding) of "terrorism" in mass media and by politicians. What do groups like ALF, Al Qaeda, the former IRA, ETA, and the United Liberation Front of Asom have in common. Political leanings? Economic desires? Religious beliefs? Nope. The thing that links them is the use of Asymmetic Warfare tactics (with them being on the lesser side). Using the sweeping phrase "the Terrorists" paints them with an impossibly broad brush. The United States and Europe has supported (and continues to support, like certain groups in Iran) organizations that use these tactics. That's fine with me; the use of AW is often justified and quite necessary. What is annoying, however, is the blatant double standards regarding it. Whether someone is a "terrorist" or a "freedom fighter" depends on what side you're on. In some cases, the terminology used can even change over time (groups in Afghanistan, for example). Instead of using this deceptive and hypocritical language, groups should be described by their goals and the tactics they use. "Basque separatists using Asymmetic Warfare tactics" is a lot better than "Basque terrorists".
Back to oversimplifications: contrary to the rhetoric employed by many journalists and politicians, it's not just "fight 'em over there or fight 'em over here" or "the problem is at home!". The threat is multipronged, and not confined to a single geographical location. Part of the effectiveness of the threat comes from its distributed nature; "memetic recruiting" allows for remote mobilization and recruitment of sympathetic forces without any interaction. News travels fast, and with it ideas and sympathy for your cause. An organization can now have recruits beating a path to their door, or who act independently in support of your cause (or what they believe your cause to be). The threats and targets are:
- Local and foreign training camps
- Local and foreign support sources, both governmental and non-governmental (military, logistical, financial, political)
- Foreign states that directly employ these organizations, either for proxy or direct attacks
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- "Inbound" organizations and their attacks
- Local memetic recruits and their attacks
- Local sympathizers
It's also not as simple as "religious fundamentalist causes" as the reasons for their existence and attacks. There are lots of reasons - and it's often more than one, with some simply acting as ostensible, rather than actual, goals. Like:
Disenfranchisement
Economic disadvantage relative to the majority of the state or of their state compared to others
Indoctrination by a broken culture, some of which go back decades or centuries
Desire to put a different, more palatable power structure in place
To achieve some "pure" version of their preferred culture/system
To spread their localized ideology, belief system, culture, or power base across a state, region, or the world
As "revenge" for perceived attacks on those they identify with culturally or otherwise
Dealing with these issues require different tactics, and even eliminating a cause isn't likely to automatically change the way people act. The effects could take years to be seen. Bombing insurgent strongholds,nation building, stopping people from blowing up a few planes, putting new surveillance programs in place, or massive cash infusions aren't magic bullets. "Terrorism" isn't just about blowing stuff up. Asymmetric warfare occurs for a number of reasons and has more facets than the laughably oversimplified news stories or sound bites would lead one to believe.
Edit:How browsers don't have autosave/buffer functionality these days is beyond me. You can spend an hour typing something in a web form only to have it lost due to a browser crash or going back (depending on the browser/form). Freaking sad. vIM to edit blog posts for life.
sth - Politics -
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13 August 06 - 19:36test
Whoa. A cat!
sth - Cats -
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