Terrorism

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by flowperson

C'mon EM, as a practicing mystic I find the above statement to be very inciteful and racist. I know that you can do better than that. Your vibrations tell me so.

flow....

Politeness Man hurls his steel hanky. I dunno, the epithet is appropriate to the cut of the satire I presume. It makes a point.

Chris

[China Cat Sunflower]

Terrorism is just a tactic. It's not an honorable way to fight according to our sense of military tradition, but if one considers only the body count in terms of collateral damage, it's pretty clear who kills more innocent civilians, and it ain't the terrorists. And really, their fight isn't with us. They attack us for street cred, but the fight for them is really at home in the ME. Insofar as we, and I mean the US and whoever wants to join us, involve ourselves in these volatile regions we're going to be a bigger target. We want stable oil production. The ME has oil. But the ME is also home to dictatorial governments which we wind up having to support. So we wind up taking the side of the evil tyrants against the people. And then...Surprise! We get a little taste of the homegrown resistance.

Chris

[flowperson]

Hi Chris...I think that we're all overlooking a fact that has a lot to do with ME societies proclivities towards terrorism. You might wish to rent a copy of the film, Lawrence of Arabia. That was the time when the British attemped to unite Arab monarchs under the Saudi King to repel the Turks who were an arm of the Kaiser in the ME during WWI. It couldn't really be done (despite the help of Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif) because the culture was thoroughly tribal oriented and governed, and their legal frameworks were tribal in nature with familial blood ties and revenge as the primary motivators for short term change.

Lawrence failed in his attempts because tribal cultures, as they are structured, simply cannot organize themselves very well to run large cities and cohesive national governing structures. Some progress towards the transformation of nomadic mindsets and tribal governance structures over the decades since WWI has taken place, but even with the huge injections of wealth and educated individuals into their societies from Western nations through tourism and trade, the cultural mindset of tribalism still predominates on the streets. And it is now an acknowledged fact that U.S, forces knew more about Arab culture when they were over there during WWII than they did when they were sent there in the early 90's and once again in 2003.

And now people are resorting to terrorism because of the forced changes which have been imposed upon the ordinary people there over the past 75 years or so, when such transformations from one such mindset to another formerly took centuries of natural change to occur. Don't ever forget that all that is coherent in our technical and scientific heritage and history was preserved mostly by Arabs while Europe decayed in the dark ages until Europeans were "ready" to progress.

The issues the West has with that entire situation has prompted the West to declare a global War on Terrorism (thanks to our current Administration), and to somehow associate the need for this with the Islamic religion. This seem to be just another exercise to label people and nations into submission before the Western-Capitalist-Urban mindset.

9/11 was tragic, but it was/is not the cause of all this. It was the trigger that started all of this, and, IMHO, it still isn't very clear just who or what pulled that trigger on 9/11. The real cause is that you can take people out of their culture over the short term, but you can't take a culture out of the people unless it happens over the long term.

politeness man (flow)....

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by flowperson

Lawrence failed in his attempts because tribal cultures, as they are structured, simply cannot organize themselves very well to run large cities and cohesive national governing structures.

Is this a problem? It seems to me that large cities and 'cohesive national governing structures' are often problematic for an enduring civilization. Some people might claim that I inhabit a revisionist fantasy land, but I do wonder if we could all benefit from a healthy dose of decentralization and anarchy in the world in general.

Originally Posted by flowperson

Some progress towards the transformation of nomadic mindsets and tribal governance structures over the decades since WWI has taken place, but even with the huge injections of wealth and educated individuals into their societies from Western nations through tourism and trade, the cultural mindset of tribalism still predominates on the streets.

Sometimes I think we mistake imposing a certain kind of 'civilization' and governing over people as progress.

[Eclectic Mystic]

Originally Posted by flowperson

C'mon EM, as a practicing mystic I find the above statement to be very inciteful and racist. I know that you can do better than that. Your vibrations tell me so.

Originally Posted by whatever his name is

Well I do not know that he can but agree it is unwarranted and disgusting. There are plenty forums for cheap racist jibes.... i hope this aint one of them.

Oh.
My.

God.



At least Chris got it...

[flowperson]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Is this a problem? It seems to me that large cities and 'cohesive national governing structures' are often problematic for an enduring civilization. Some people might claim that I inhabit a revisionist fantasy land, but I do wonder if we could all benefit from a healthy dose of decentralization and anarchy in the world in general.



Sometimes I think we mistake imposing a certain kind of 'civilization' and governing over people as progress.

All quite true Pathless. What I was trying to emphasize in my post are the governance systems which may be naturally amenable to both the nomadic and urban/city-state mindsets, and what their adoption entails.

When one looks back 6.000 years and examines the original boundary lines between the two and the original dichotomies involved in their evolution and degradation, we see that these sorts of transitions are meant to take a very long time to accomplish...for exactly the reasons that we are staring at and wondering about everyday now when we read/watch the news.

Yes...the imposition process and the impatience of the imposers is what is causing all of this. I think some of us were just naturally born to be tribal, pagan, and nomadic. What do you think brother ?

flow....

[flowperson]

Originally Posted by Eclectic Mystic

Oh.
My.

God.



At least Chris got it...

Hi EM...yes most of the rest of us got it too, but you'll notice that many of us hardly ever use hard-edged sarcasm or satire unless it is off the hook banter that everyone knows is just fun stuff.

In a public forum that examines very sensitive topics and issues, such commentary can so easily be taken the wrong way, even by an Islamic Harvard grad who could be living and working in say, Yemen.

CR, Brian's site, is getting spammed and otherwise attacked on a regular basis, and he wages valiant battles in countering all of that on our behalf, in the interest of the free exchange of ideas. As a writer, I need that sort of environment in which to grow, even at my OF age. We all have our reasons for being and staying here.

By not going over certain lines as a community...we can all help him out in these efforts by limiting misapprehensions that inappropriate statements may cause. I'm not criticizing your activities or what you thought or wrote, but only trying to help us all understand what's at stake in the world today, and what our roles in all of that might be.

We're all familiar with your comments in the context of a caring and empathetic advocate for real change on lots of these issues, that's why I commented as I did above when I usually don't even get involved in such exchanges. It just seemed so "out of character" for you to have written that.

Peace to you my brother....flow....

[China Cat Sunflower]

Which is more derogatory: Rag head or islamofascist? One mocks a culture's preferred choice in haberdashery, the other implies a connection between a religion at large and a particular form of despotic rule.

Chris

[flowperson]

Hi Chris...Kinda like voting for elected officials huh ? One bad choice is no worse than another. Sometimes all choices turn out to be bad. So, you go ahead and vote anyhow so that you're not judged to be "un-American", and just so you have the license to bitch later.

In the case of derogatory terminology it is also a matter of choice, and choosing not to do it at all when discussing serious matters in public is my choice of preference. But hey...different strokes, different folks.

flow....

[China Cat Sunflower]

Oh, I know what you mean Flow, and really I agree. Well, substantially anyways. I just hate to see good satire go to waste and I can't help sharpening a stick when something becomes a free speech issue. What would the world be without derogatory epithets? Sports rivalries wouldn't be any fun anymore.

Chris

[flowperson]

Hey Chris...You are absolutely right..YOU BIG DUMB DIPSTICK!!!!

*Heh, heh...that felt so good !*

flow....

[China Cat Sunflower]

See, ya old fart! I feel better too. Plus, I get double word score for using haberdashery in a political context.

Chris

[flowperson]

Hey Dipstick...See everything's connected like I've always said. Harry Truman was a "Haberdashery" owner/manager before he ran for congress...and the rest is history. The title for the film, The Truman Show, would have meant nothing if it weren't for Harry's Haberdashery.
Think about THAT for a while Mr. D******* !!!

And, as we all know to the depths of our souls...political context is everything in life.

*hey I'm getting to like this sarcasm and satire stuff*

flow....

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by flowperson

Lawrence failed in his attempts because tribal cultures, as they are structured, simply cannot organize themselves very well to run large cities and cohesive national governing structures. Some progress towards the transformation of nomadic mindsets and tribal governance structures over the decades since WWI has taken place, but even with the huge injections of wealth and educated individuals into their societies from Western nations through tourism and trade, the cultural mindset of tribalism still predominates on the streets. And it is now an acknowledged fact that U.S, forces knew more about Arab culture when they were over there during WWII than they did when they were sent there in the early 90's and once again in 2003.

I think we discussed elsewhere one time the endemic difficulties associated with the relationship that authoritarian governments in the ME maintain with tribal power structures. It's a time honored recipe for graft and corruption at the expense of both the freedom and socio-economic well being of the people.

I think that the word terrorism is mostly pejorative. Enemies are labeled terrorists. Allies are always thought of as freedom fighters. I was trying to come up with a list of all the famous terrorist groups I could think of off the top of my head. I thought of the IRA, the FARC, Shining Path, Mandela and the ANC, Jomo Kenyatta and the Mao Mao uprisings in Kenya, the Algerian conflict with the occupying French, the PLO and the PFLP who hijacked theat Airbus and forced it to fly to Entebbe, Uganda. What was the name of that group that set of the serin attack in the Tokyo subway? What do all of these groups have in common as far as motive and tactics?

Chris

[bob x]

What do all of these groups have in common as far as motive and tactics?

That the murders they committed did not advance even their own interests in any way.