[extropy-chat] terrorism solutions?

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 28 10:40:08 UTC 2004


The more I think about it, the more I see the
complicity of the media in terrorism. Terrorism needs
the media in order to prosper. The news is like a role
call of glory for martyrs. I think that if terrorism
reporting were handled differently, martyrdom would
quickly become much less appealing to new recruits of
the terrorist organizations. First off I believe that
media coverage of successful acts of terrorism should
be downplayed to the level of ordinary violent crimes.
The families of victims should be notified privately
and the names of the organizations and individuals
responsible should never be mentioned in the news even
if it is known by officials. Successful terrorist acts
should mere sound bites and not "breaking news". What
should be emphasised as "breaking news" are failed
terrorist attempts where the would be terrorists
undergo public humiliation (perhaps even culturally
specific- like being shaved and made to wear a dress
or being fed only pork while being forced to wallow in
a pig pen) on TV before they are punished by
conventional means. Something like the stocks or
pillories in the town square of old. They should be
laughed at and not made out to be scary powerful
people. This is a war of memes after all. The idea
being to reduce the rewards of success and upping the
ante on getting caught. (Death being preferable to
dishonor for these "holy warriors".) Make them look
foolish for what they are doing and they will stop
doing it. After all martyrdom is not a long term
sustainable strategy anyways as it doesn't promote the
survival of those that carry its memes. If we reduce
the percieved appeal of the meme i.e. everlasting
glory in paradise if they succeed, versus prison or
death if they don't changed to anomynity if they
succeed versus humiliation and muslim sin if they
don't. As long as the meme doesn't spread faster than
the martyrs can kill themselves, it will burn itself
out like an ebola outbreak. Every time one of them
gets caught, our women should be dancing brazenly in
the streets in bikinis and thong underwear.

On a lighter note... check out http://www.jibjab.com



=====
The Avantguardian 


"He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind."


		
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