The Net and Terrorism

[Vladimir Z. Nuri]

[TCM]
>Can anything be done? To stop the likely effects of lots more
>surface-to-air missiles, lots more nerve gas available on the black market,
>and so on?
>
>In a word, "no."

there are various parts of this essay I agree with, and other parts that
I don't. your conclusion that such things are unstoppable is quite
tenuous and not backed by evidence. what you fail to note is that
law enforcement agencies usually benefit from the same innovations
in technology that criminals benefit from. the FBI for example has
vastly improved their ability to deal with criminal fingerprints
through technology for example. in fact one could argue somewhat
that government agencies stand to benefit more from new tehcnology
because in some ways they are better organized and better funded
than small nefarious cells of terrorists.

however, I tend to agree that there is a continual arms race going 
on here, and that it's not necessarily desirable. the "solution"
(TCM would argue against the use of such a word) is not to merely
try to have a warfare, siege-like mentality imho, and a continual
"trying to stay ahead of the criminals". we do not have
regular open terrorism in the streets of the US and I see no reason
to think there ever will be as TCM suggests.

nevertheless what his essay misses, and many in law enforcement miss,
are the root reasons for crime. I'm not going to sound like a liberal
here and say criminals are blameless because they have been psychologically
abused. its not excusable to react to any situation through crime or
terrorism. however they have various gripes that are always seeded
in reality. it seems to me no nation-state has ever experimented with
trying to take away the root causes of violence and discontent. 
why? 

because a policeman holding a gun is so much more visceral and
the public responds to this image readily.  other "programs" that
try to decrease discontent among the budding terrorists of tommorrow
are usually ridiculed. it is very difficult to prove that they work
or that they are worth the money. terrorists invariably have a 
patricular pathological psychological profile that sees the world
in terms of "martyrs vs. villians" with the villians in the government,
and the villians taking away or abusing respectable citizens.

the "problem" of terrorism will be solved when we take the view
that insanity and violence is *not* 
a natural aspect of human behavior (as TCM tends to suggest), and that
there are specific environmental conditions that breed it. like
malaria, if you take away the swamplike breeding grounds, you will
largely remove it. such a thing is a radical hypothesis, but one that
nonetheless has never really been tested in practice.

>FBI Director Louis Freeh and the TLA spooks are already sounding the alarm
>about the "Four Horsemen." Sen. Sam Nunn is calling for measures to ensure
>that cyberspace is "secured" and that the Net is not used to further
>chemical and biological terrorism.

the military and spook establishments require threats to survive.
I believe they are largely manufacturing a new one that has marginal
actual danger content.

>I'm not advocating such "terrorism," by the way, merely telling it like it is.

ah yes, the standard amusing TCM disclaimer. hmmm, your signature suggests
otherwise.

>Keep your head down, avoid crowded downtown areas, prepare for moderate
>disruptions, and reject arguments that an American Police State will do
>anything to stop terrorism.

once you lamented about the impractability of Duncan Frissel's 
suggestions for tax avoidance for regular people and a real society.
many of your own suggestions seem to
be to fit into the same kind of category of "not viable for regular
human beings".

>(Remember, terrorism is just warfare carried on by other means, with
>apolgies to Von Clausewitz.)

disagree. the purpose of warfare has traditionally been to seize
something tangible like territory. terrorists are after intangibles--
namely, terror itself, disrupting a "peace process", etc. 
in warfare, the warfare is directly aimed at
obtaining the "thing", like the way Hussein invaded Kuwait. terrorists
do not obtain a physical "thing" by bombing some symbol. terrorism
is extremely symbolic at the root.
however I agree in the use of violence they are identical.

Tim McVeigh apparently bombed the OKC Murrah building for a reason: he was
pissed off over Waco. in a country in which the populace believes that
the government is truly "of, by, or for the people" you won't see
this kind of discontent and barbarianism. terrorism is not normal but
generally an indication that a nation-state has gone badly off track and
neglected some important psychological need of some significant part
of its populace.