Re: chat and terrorism

From: Dr. Bill Blanton (blantonW@miami.edu)
Date: Sat Sep 29 2001 - 04:49:47 PDT


At 09:16 AM 9/29/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Bill,
>
>Why are you using this word "terrorism" and how could work be done on it.
The plan is not a plan for peace..

Paul, I wrote that the object was a plan for terrorism. One ccan certainly
work on/implement a plan.
No doubt, the US plan is to disrupt their plan of terrorism and it
distributed activity systems
I don't know what the object would be from their point of view. I would
guess that they see it as a plan for terrorism.

>I've been sickened recently to watch Henry Kissinger on the tube,
>pontificating and puffing, and I know that he is a number one individual who
>harbored and abetted the murder of far more than 6,300 human beings during
>his hey day. That he personally worked out the arrangements to have at
>least one democratically elected government overthrown by grisly dictators
>who tortuted and murdered thousands of people; and this isn't even to start
>on his activities with respect to Vietnam. So when you propose to study
>"terrorism": will you study HK? or is terrorism only terrorism when it
>isn't carried out by a nation-state but by some other organization?

How one views HK and war depends on one's experiences. I was in Germany
shortly after WW II. I was "terrified" by what I saw, even after a few
years of clean up.
As a yourng soldier, my responsibility was to organize plans for
time-on-target offensives. Interestingly, I saw the outcome of war as
terror, but our plan for war. I was yet to develop concepts for enabling me
to re-interpret my experiences. All war is terrorism. Bullying iseven a
level of terrorism. Any serious study of war as terror would include all
wars, don't you think. I would include the US in the sample.

 The US
>government has trained people who carry out activities that could clearly be
>called terrorist for more than 50 years, especially for use in Central and
>South America. Would you call the US flying B-52s over Guatemala City in
>1954 to intimidate the population into rejecting a popularly elected
>progressive government an act of terrorisim since it's only purpose was to
>instill terror; or do they actually have to drop the bombs? Wasn't
>Hiroshima the greatest act of terrorism the world has ever known, even if it
>was conducted during war time, what about Dresden??? All civilians, no
>military value to the targets. Who started this deadly cycle, who nourishes
>it daily by supporting the worst of autocratic and dictatorial regimes.

A better question might be what kinds of thinking produces these cycles of
terror. Fundamentalist thinking is not restricted to a particular culture.
For example, the well organized plans of terror and the murder of nurses,
doctors, and patients participating in abortion clinics is the outcome of
the same kind of fundamentalist thinking that produces what we have been
experiencing. Look at how the good Reverend Falwell, another merchant of
terror, proclaimed that the Sept 11 event was caused by God's disappointment
in our tolerance for feminism, lesbians, gays, and probably
me.Fundamentalist thiking could disrupt our society quickly were it not for
our support for law and order.
>
>Who's the terrrorist?

The person next door, the person over there, the person we don't know - the
person with a plan and the will to implement it. The implementation of the
plan makes one a terrorist.

Thanks for the response, Paul. This is a complex and complicated think,
with a history that we need to understand.

Bill Blanton

>
>The chickens come home to roost!
>
>On the other hand, I think that CHAT could provide a powerful tool for
>analyzing how racial profiling is being given new consideration since it
>isn't cost effective to search everyone at an airport although everyone
>recognizes that racial profiling is a violation of the fundamental ideals of
>the Amerikan society.. What clearer manifestation of the principle
>contradiction of all activity systems in capitalist society could you ask
>for?
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>



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