[extropy-chat] Alert for Suspicious Farmers' Almanacs

[Jeff Davis]

--- Samantha Atkins <samantha at objectent.com> wrote:

> Terrorism is so bloody loosely defined that saying
> it is this or that category of crime is virtually
> meaningless.  Its definition is arbitrary so any
> acts or purported acts or secretly accused acts may
> be subject to whatever whim the authorities care to
> exercise.

The term "terrorism" is the purest of propaganda.  It
doesn't so much have a definition as it has a purpose.
 It's purpose is to demonize and delegitimize anyone
who uses force to oppose the established order.  It
also seeks to obscure the underlying issues, the
usually legitimate grievances which provoke violent
opposition.  

As propaganda, the term "terrorism" presumptively
convicts the "terrorists" as "evildoers"--defines them
as such--using the targeting of "innocent civilians"
as proof. But warfare is the ultimate incivility,
which elevates victory to the highest moral good,
allowing any tactic--"all's fair in love and war"--no
matter how atrocious (to the other side, of course).
if seen as a path to victory.  The wanton destruction
and deliberate killing of civilians--to which, by
comparison, deaths from terrorism are but a
speck--seems a feature of all modern wars, from all
sides: Sherman's march to the sea, the Turks to the
Armenians, the rape of Nanking, the London blitz, the
firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear
obliteration of H & N, the free-fire zones of the
peasant farming villages of Vietnam and Laos, the
Turks to the Kurds, Saddam to the Kurds, just to
mention a few.  

Also the concept of the "innocent civilian" is a bit
thin.  There are very few 'neutral'--and in that sense
'innocent'--civilians.  Farmers feed the troops. 
Factory workers build the weapons.  Everyone who is a
taxpayer pays for the implementation of foreign
policy.  As to little Billy and little Susie, just a
few short years away from their own contribution to
the death machine/war, better to exterminate them in
their cribs than face their fully-developed productive
capacity on the battlefield.  The pragmatism of war is
the ultimate psychosis.  

And leave us not forget that in a putatively
democratic political system, the "governed" through
their "consent", ie their vote, acquire a large degree
of responsibility for the actions of their "public
servants".  In a democracy, everyone who votes for the
perp, or who pays taxes (even given the gun to the
head) loses any claim to innocence.  

But there's more.  Beyond the deliberate, egregious,
mass civilian slaughter, cynically shunted away from
moral inspection (if committed by YOUR side), is the
separate, the so-called 'justifiable' killing of
civilians.  Killings sanitized and made palatable (so
long as it isn't YOUR loved one who is savaged
indescribably) by the term "collateral damage".

But what of the Geneva Convention, the so-called rules
of war, as a moral metric for the conduct of war? 
Give me a break.  Is that the smell of the turnip
truck I detect wafting off your raiment?  The Geneva
Convention is a set of bogus 'limits' made by those
with substantial military resources, to "outlaw"
techniques of unconventional war-making which might be
of use to adversaries of lesser military resources. 
There is only one rule in war: win.

Best, Jeff Davis

"For centuries our race has built on false
assumptions.  If you build a fantasy based on a false
assumptions and continue to build on such a fantasy,
your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant
in others who are too lazy or too busy to question
it's truth." - Michael Moorcock






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