Defining Terrorism

[Danny Weltman]

Anyone interested in a bit more of an in-depth look at the question might
enjoy this article: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/terrorism/

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 4:10 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> A good article, thanks. And leans more toward Joseph.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 5:28 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> > By Phillip Cryan
> >
> > "Terrorism" may be the most important, powerful word in the world right
> now.
> > In the name of doing away with terrorism, the United States is bombing
> > Afghanistan and talking about possible attacks elsewhere. Political
> leaders
> > from many countries are at once declaring support for the new U.S. war
> and
> > seeking to re-name their own enemies as "terrorists."
> >
> >
> > http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pine/Phil110/terrorism.html
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 5:26 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> My apologies if this has been posted to the list before.
> >>
> >> What is terrorism? Few words have so insidiously worked their way into
> our
> >> everyday vocabulary. Like `Internet' -- another grossly over-used term
> that
> >> has similarly become an indispensable part of the argot of the late
> >> twentieth century -- most people have a vague idea or impression of what
> >> terrorism is, but lack a more precise, concrete and truly explanatory
> >> definition of the word. This imprecision has been abetted partly by the
> >> modern media, whose efforts to communicate an often complex and
> convoluted
> >> message in the briefest amount of airtime or print space possible have
> led
> >> to the promiscuous labelling of a range of violent acts as `terrorism'.
> Pick
> >> up a newspaper or turn on the television and -- even within the same
> >> broadcast or on the same page -- one can find such disparate acts as the
> >> bombing of a building, the assassination of a head of state, the
> massacre of
> >> civilians by a military unit, the poisoning of produce on supermarket
> >> shelves or the deliberate contamination of over-the-counter medication
> in a
> >> chemist's shop all described as incidents of terrorism. Indeed,
> virtually
> >> any especially abhorrent act of violence that is perceived as directed
> >> against society -- whether it involves the activities of anti-government
> >> dissidents or governments themselves, organized crime syndicates or
> common
> >> criminals, rioting mobs or persons engaged in militant protest,
> individual
> >> psychotics or lone extortionists -- is often labelled `terrorism'.
> >>
> >>     Dictionary definitions are of little help. The pre-eminent authority
> >> on the English language, the much-venerated Oxford English Dictionary,
> >>
> >>
> >> https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-terrorism.html
> >
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20151130/2cb92300/attachment.html>