And so they were British

And so the worst fears of some appear to have been realised, with reports that the men who committed last week's atrocity in London were born and raised in Britain itself. I cannot claim to be too surprised. Open societies will throw up all sorts, including people who want to commit murder against their fellow citizens.

It does, though, raise a thought in my mind. Some of my colleagues on the left, while being very sure of their ground in combatting things like homophobia, racism, sexism and so on, have been very reticent to criticise the cultures of some groups which are directly contrary to said values.

Some of my acquaintences on the right, on the other hand, while being very bolshie about having to turn everyone into a WASP no matter their background and having no truck for cultural relativity, quite happily engage in sexism, or racism, or homophobia.

You see plenty of examples of the latter - in the comments on this blog, for instance. You see rather fewer instances of the former, but it's around and not hard to find.

I have no time for either, to be honest. There's an old progressive slogan which says that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. It's an easy thing to say but a tricky thing to put into practice, whether you're on the left or on the right (though in the latter case, you tend to be quite happy with most forms of injustice).

I no more tolerate an argument that says the Koran makes women subservient to men, than I tolerate the view that same-sex marriage should be banned.

I no more accept the idea that we should allow radical Muslim clerics to preach the undermining of liberal civil society, than I accept the idea we should allow fundamentalist Christian clerics to preach that liberal civil society is destroying the nation's "values".

People who say they are interested in justice, fairness and equality can't ignore the total implications of that. Picking and choosing is not a luxury we ought to wallow in these days. Liberal societies need to think about just what tolerance means in these times, and how we might attain fairness and justice for all in a meaningful way, without undermining our own freedoms.

Interesting reading on the subject (I don't agree with all of it, but it's interesting nonetheless): Marcuse's 1965 essay, Repressive Tolerance (.pdf file). Raises many questions.

Comments

[che tibby]

you might want to keep an eye onthe racial vilification laws in Victoria that are being tested at the moment.

the premise is that you can say whatever the hell you like, Australia is after all a liberal democracy, but if you step too far over the line you'll be held to account.

willbe interesting to see the way it pans out. (by suggestions from informed persons in Victoria are welcome).

[che tibby]

PS. here's the link

http://www.theage.com.au/news/war-on-terror/holy-war-books-spark-legal-threat/2005/07/13/1120934301928.html

i seem to remmber them also being used to rein in some rabid fundy christians not so long agao as well.

[rightkiwi]

Good post.

I would go further and attack the whole notion of "tolerance". The word implies "tolerate" which is what I do when a restaurant serves brussel sprouts - I hate them but I'll tolerate them if need be.

It seems to me a liberal society should aim for a higher standard, which is more the celebration of valuable difference - that we actually enjoy the different perspectives of different people, not merely "tolerate" them.

Then there are things that we should neither celebrate nor even tolerate, like Islamic extremism. It should be denounced and attacked at every opportunity until it is crushed.

The values of the European enlightenment support this view - it was the enlightenment that encouraged people to be more open-minded and interested in different things. Ideas that conflict with the enlightenment should always be denounced.

BTW, the fact the bombers may have been British is irrelevant, just as the nationality of the 9/11 terrorists. They should just be killed or imprisoned as enemy combatants whatever their nationality.

[Sock Thief]

Marcuse, yes I found this passage particularly illumimating -

"The desublimation involved in this sort of self-actualization is itself repressive inasmuch as it weakens the necessity and the power of the intellect, the catalytic force of that unhappy consciousness which does not revel in the archetypal personal release frustration – hopeless resurgence of the Id which will sooner or later succumb to the omnipresent rationality of the administered world - but which recognizes the horror of the whole in the most private frustration and actualizes itself in this recognition."

I worry about that all the time too. Hard to get out of bed some days.

[Craig Ranapia]

Che -

I suppose it's an argument for another time, but so-called 'racial villification'/'hate speech' laws always seem to end up being the proverbial cure that's worse than the disease.

[che tibby]

craig, i agree, but considering the context i think it would be good to canvass these issues.

would be a pity to smother free speech to stop these munters venting their spleens.

and rightkiwi. that is what tolerate and tolerance means. putting up with sh!t even though you hate it.
i friggin hate both fundamentalists and extremists of any colour or creed.... but just tolerate them unless they cross particular (i.e. subjective) lines.

[rightkiwi]

Che - it's the hate that is the problem - do you think people should "tolerate" Asian or Middle Eastern immigrants, Maori, disabled people, etc etc etc ... or would it not be better if we sought a higher standard?

And why on earth do you "tolerate" islamo-fascists etc?

[Craig Ranapia]

Che -

I certainly agree that it's worth having the debate - which is necessary when you don't have a book doing your thinking for you and regard everyone with a contrary POV as Satanic scum. Bugger...

Rightkiwi:
Sorry, I've got to agree with Che here. If you believe in free speech, you can't just believe in it for people who look and think like you. The real challenge is to say: "I'll defend your right to shout from the rooftops, even though what you say makes me want to puke. But I'll be right beside you, saying exactly how full of shit I think you are." That's exactly what the Islamofascists and Tamiki-oids HATE.

If you're going to weaken that, well I say we better think it through very, very carefully.

[che tibby]

RK. i'm not too sure what you mean.

as the reaction to London shows, extremism is alive and well in the blosphere (for example). i tolerate that because i'm sure people like Tim Barclay aren't going to strap pipe bombs to themselves and wreck havoc.

but, if there was a reasonable chance that he was going to, then we call in the police.

the trick is knowing whether he's going to actually go postal or whether he just doesn't know when to shut his damn yap.

which the courts can decide.

social diversity is another issue altogether. some people really hate asians, maori and the like. they should be required to tolerate the minority, and not act out their hatred in violent ways (including unwarranted vilification) because it's anti-social.

[Rich]

Do you actually think that we should jail Brian Tamaki?

To me there is every difference between saying "Helen Clark should be shot" and "you'll find a gun in this lockup garage, go and shoot her".

The first is an opinion, the second is incitement.

[Sean]

I'm afraid the West's mask of 'tolerance' will quickly disappear if/when the terrorists go too far. For that reason I feel we should become a little less tolerant now before we're driven to do what we do so well - visit slaughter upon our enemies (the thought of which leaves me numb).

[sock thief]

Perhaps Marcuse can help us out -

"In the interplay of theory and practice, true and false solutions become distinguishable - never evidence of necessity, never as the positive, only with the certainty of a reasoned and reasonable chance, and with the persuasive force of the negative."

I think that clarifies a few things.

[rightkiwi]

Yes, I guess there is a place for tolerance - ie, tolerating people with different political views, religions etc - in the way we tolerate one another on this blog.

My objection to the use of the word is more when it is used (usually by the left) in the context of tolerating different racial and cultural groups. When someone says "we need to teach our kids to be tolerant of different ethnic groups" what are they saying? That they will teach their kids it is ok to hate different ethnic groups as long as they "tolerate" them.

This is all semantics I guess, but I would have thought we would want to teach our kids a bit more than to be tolerant - wouldn't we want them to learn to have open eyes, open minds and get as much enjoyment as possible from meeting and working with people with different ways of life and world views?

And wouldn't we also want to teach them to bear arms if necessary against islamo-fascists should they ever attack New Zealand? Surely we wouldn't teach our kids to tolerate them?

[rightkiwi]

More simply:

Is a person "tolerant" who mutters "bloody Maoris" under their breathe but would be warm and kind to the face of a Maori colleague?

I guess, under some definitions, people would say this is "tolerance" but it hardly seems worth striving for.

[stephen]

I'm still mulling this over. Tell you one thing that bothers me though.

Craig says "... I'll be right beside you."

That's be great. But I read today an interview with some young men in Bethnal Green who were happily convinced that the Jews run the world economy, and that 9/11 was a faked event to discredit Islam.

People who believe these things are people who by choice live in an environment where there are no Craigs explaining why the imam (or the bishop) is full of shit.

I am, in principle, a free speech absolutist (http://vital.org.nz/blog/2005/03/18#hatespeech). But it's a serious problem for the "answer to hate speech is more speech" crowd. How do you in fact get your contradiction in there?

rightkiwi, my heart is warmed by the notion of our fellow citizens aiming higher than toleration. On the other hand, even reaching toleration would be a good first step...

[Jordan]

The word I prefer is "Acceptance" which is more positive than tolerance. In an ideal world, we'd accept that the differences we all have make our society more interesting. Tolerance does have a clinical, cold feel.

It is, though, a much bigger challenge.

[Mark]

Many people believe that we have to look at the underlying reason behind Islamic fascists. If that's the case, do we have to also look at the underlying reason WHY someone holds racist views?

[Mark]

I meant "Islamic fascists' behaviour.."

[ZenTiger]

Rightkiwi, you said "BTW, the fact the bombers may have been British is irrelevant"

I disagree. I wonder how young 19 year old Leeds lads can be taught to hate and think this way. Surely their Islamic community were actively teaching the doctrine of peace and love, and their parents were imparting their social values of living in an integrated way?

Instead, at age 19 they have been indoctrinated to go and blow themselves up and kill many other people in doing so.

That "British people" can learn to do that and believe that underlines a very serious issue to think through.

We want to believe that the peaceful Muslims are quite capable of living in a Christian society, and yet now there is this mystery to explain.

We can equate it to acts of Christian violence etc, and then nod wisely and say "so be it" but the potential for this kind of incident to repeat itself demands more than that, doesn't it?

[sock thief]

I don't think we need to assume that there was a failing on behalf of the communities that these bombers grew up in. Look at English soccer hooligans - the extreme ones are not too different and generally have a strong racist element to their world view.

There is something about young men in particular that makes them susceptible to this sort of righteous grievance.

That said, Asian communities don't produce suicide bombers. And we don't have members of our parliament of Asia descent equivocating about stoning people to death.

The root cause argument is always problematic. If our government were to do something that really annoyed some young Christian fanatics and they started to bomb, who is responsible?

Compare this to the fact that some are suggesting that Blair is responsible for the bombings because of Iraq.

[Simon]

The bombers may have been British citizens but they got their inspiration offshore and they therefore were not British Moslems. British Moslems don’t blow up their fellow citizens. This not a straightforward tolerance/acceptance issue for a “liberal society” as there are obvious foreign influences.

British Moslems get it not many other people have just yet and they need wide public support.

[stephen]

What made them do it? Are they representative of British Muslims? This is relevant:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4680237.stm

There's a lot to chew on there. Certainly trips to Pakistan seem to be catalytic for disaffected young men looking for a purpose in life. And on the other hand their elders are genuinely appalled.

[tim barclay]

Homophobia is not the preserve of the right (I think you will be surprised how many gay men support the right) you have a muslum MP that tolerates the stoning of gays and Nigeria is about to do this very thing. And silence from the Labour Party.

[rightkiwi]

Tim raises an interesting matter on the "tolerance" theme. Should we "tolerate" people who support stoning gays - or actively fight them? Once again, Labour gets twisted up on the doctrine of tolerance.

[ZenTiger]

Sock Thief. A suicide bomber provides a different kind of problem than a soccer hooligan. We don't have Christian suicide bombers (at the moment), so that is just speculation.

What we have is young Muslim men living in a "peaceful" Muslim community that became suicide bombers. I'm not trying to blame the community, but the path has to be traced.

From the link above:
"We as a Muslim community need to take a role in dealing with this. And that means the community should come forward and do its part, for the sake of everyone."

Said by a Mulsim councillor, and sensible I think. Vital I think.

Simon said: "The bombers may have been British citizens but they got their inspiration offshore and they therefore were not British Moslems. British Moslems don’t blow up their fellow citizens."

Well, they have now.

The current theory is they got their influence off-shore, but that doesn't excuse the problem.

Apparently 6 months off-shore un-does years of living in Britain?

We are already trotting out a list of reasons: Blair's fault, Iraq war, poverty areas, off-shore indoctrination, parents shocked.

We have a list of parameters: Don't offend the culture, think up new terms, provide widespread support for Muslims, just the same as soccer hooligans, what if Christians did this, etc etc.

All fall somewhere in the bounds of reasonable and measured points. It just leaves the impression a response is not justified.

[Psycho Milt]

Tim raises a red herring would be a better way of putting it. If we had a Moslem MP that supported stoning gays, I doubt it would be tolerated and nor should it be.

Tolerance is the West's weak point. It means we provide civil rights and freedom of speech to people who are cheerfully working to take those things from us. Damned if I can see what more we can do about it without descending to their level though.

[gazzadelsud]

this is all silly. when the anglicans are suicide bombing gay nightclubs then you may have a point.

As it is, yes there are some fundies out there -everyone in christian society knows who they are, and if they do something they will be outed, dobbed in and shunned.

In islamic society - well we are not really so sure that the radicals will be exposed and handed over are we, and it is perfectly clear that they will kill and regard killing innocents as justified by religion.

When our progressive friends wake up to the lack of any kind of "equivalence" argument that works, then perhaps we can all move forward.

another examples -Christians may - some of them - disapprove of homosexuality. There is very very little gay murdering happening however, except in those countries governed by our muslim friends, where of course no-one talks about it.

Jeez, even the Brits have had to wake up to the thought that the honour killings going on (120 plus last year) are not being done by the methodists!

[GeniusNZ]

m afraid the West's mask of 'tolerance' will quickly disappear if/when the terrorists go too far.

I think it is inevitable someone wil lgo too far (as in somthing that will make people say "septermber the what?")
And then there is no nation on earth with the moral fortitude to not go postal, certainly not china or india or the USA (being the countries that matter).

> In an ideal world, we'd accept that the differences we all have make our society more interesting.

In any pair of things one is better than the other. for example we can agree that human rights are better than genocide. We could be tolerant of genocide but I suggest we should not be. To a lesser degree the same problem is faced in any choice. Pure acceptance is thus jsut another word for apathetic anarchy (unbelievably we have found somthing even worse than normal anarchy).
You certainly should not be intolerant for no reason but there are many reasons for being justly intolerant.

>That said, Asian communities don't produce suicide bombers.

Asian people seem to murder less and black people seem to murder more but I suggest we leave this topic fast before we start implying racist conclusions.

[BerlinBear]

Gazzadelsud,
You wrote: "another examples -Christians may - some of them - disapprove of homosexuality. There is very very little gay murdering happening however, except in those countries governed by our muslim friends, where of course no-one talks about it."

You seem to have forgotten the 1999 bombings in exactly the same city we are talking about here. Three of them, I believe. All targeting homosexuals, all carried out by a "Christian".

I appreciate that it is by no means the same thing, or on the same scale, and that it is not as widespread a problem as the Islamic fundamentalism that we are dealing with now, but we can't pretend that it has never happened, because it has. It's fundamentalism and extremism of *all* stripes that need to be rooted out. And that requires, as has been said here lots of times now, the more rational and reasonable insiders in whichever community it happens to be (Christian, Muslim, Tamils, Hindus, Chechens, whatever) to stand up and make their voices heard, and condemn the fundamentalists and extremists outright. At present, that is not happening effectively enough. I've seen a few encouraging signs in the UK since last Thursday, but I hope to see a whole lot more.

[ZenTiger]

BB: I think the key difference between a maniac/bigot targeting gays is that it is essentially a one-off. The population is big enough to have many "on-offs" but that is not quite the same as a Islamo-Fundy factory churning out bomb delivery units every few years, with specific production targets and manufacturing techniques.

As I read the family profiles of the three Leeds bombers I find myself asking how 3 months in Pakistan learning about their religion can undo years of living amongst the Brits. There is a path here that needs to be followed. What core values are imparted in growing up, that allows a young mind to be warped to such an inhumane degree??

One of them was a father with a daughter, and his wife pregnant. He taught special needs children. And he went and blew himself up along with lots of other innocent folk because he believed this is the best way to destroy Western Civilisation.

You also said "It's fundamentalism and extremism of *all* stripes that need to be rooted out. "

and I respectively suggest that sounds like an inborn desire not to single out one single religious faith whilst recognising a need for some kind of action to be taken.

I suggest there is nothing wrong with singling out the Fundy Muslim at this time. There is a need for action, it needn't be generically targeted, and in fact it might be best tailor made to the exact issue at hand.

What that action is, I do not yet know. Your suggestions I've also made on various posts and my own blogs, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.

How do you understand madness when you are not mad? Does understanding matter, when what is required is simply to understand how to prevent it.

[BerlinBear]

Zen,
You're right about the key difference. That's what I was getting at when I wrote "I appreciate that it is by no means the same thing, or on the same scale, and that it is not as widespread a problem as the Islamic fundamentalism that we are dealing with now". I am not trying to pretend that they are currently equal threats. They are not.

I have as much trouble as you understanding a) how people with the profiles you describe can be turned into suicide bombers, or b) how 3 to 6 months in Pakistan at a fundie camp could be enough to "undo" a whole (short) lifetime in Britain. It rather suggests to me that the seeds were sown well before they went to Pakistan. That in turn means that we need to have a hard look, and the British Muslim community especially needs to look, at where those seeds came from and how and then take steps to address it.

Your assessment regarding my motivation for stressing that we need to root out all forms of fundamentalism is probably right. I accept that, though I don't see such a desire as a bad thing. I would also add that it stems from a very deeply and strongly felt aversion to what I see as religion perverted and taken too far, regardless of what the religion may be. Like you, I recognise that the solution will be different for different forms of fundamentalism, and I agree that it is legitimate to focus on one at a time and that the most pressing focus must be Islamist fundamentalism. In other words, singling out, as you put it "the fundy Muslim" would have my full support. Lumping all Muslims in together, as I've seen discussed in pretty unpleasant terms on various forums, would not.

Like you, I have not yet formed my final opinion on what needs to be done, or how we are to do it. I wish I knew, because it keeps me awake at night. I'm afraid I am not optimistic at present.

[Simon]

When it comes to the British Moslem community when they say they are British first Moslem second that’s all you need to know. The right has been absolutely hysterical about it being all about Islamic fault and that the religion itself is the problem. What bollocks you get some bunch of clerical nuts into the UK from some poison basket case of a country spreading lies in the name of God they are going to get converts.

The only people who can sort it are the British Moslem community with the help of the wider public. That is developing more British born Moslem clerics and promoting western ideas of freedom of speech, universal suffrage and all that good British stuff within the community.

[GeniusNZ]

As time goes by smaller and smaller groups become significant threats.

100 years ago, generally speaking, if you were not a country you were not a significant threat. now we worry about complex but small organiztions with gas or dirty bombs and so forth, one day it will be much much worse and it will only take one person with a little bit of money and a lot of "crazy" to kill vast amounts of people.

Then there will be an ever shrinking amount of crazy people your society can absorb without being poisoned to death.

I have never heard a plausible argument against this scenario. So how will we deal with it?

[rightkiwi]

GeniusNZ wrote: "Asian people seem to murder less and black people seem to murder more."

Tell that to the victims of Hirohito, Mao, Pol Pot and now Kim.

Admittedly you could say those victims are more victims of socialism (compared with them, our suffering under Clark counts for little), but the fact remains those leaders were or are all Asian.

But, as you say, this is not a very positive line of discussion and counts for nothing ... murderers are all around us, usually wearing red.

[Russell Brown]

"You seem to have forgotten the 1999 bombings in exactly the same city we are talking about here. Three of them, I believe. All targeting homosexuals, all carried out by a "Christian"."

And - without wishing to assert any kind of equivalance - Auckland's most popular gay nightclub, Flesh (it's not actually as saucy as the name suggests) was firebombed and badly damaged at the height of the civil union flap last year.

I think that some of what radical London mullahs have been saying for the past few years is hate speech in any language: it's incitement to kill, and I think restraint on that is socially justifiable.

OTOH, if Brian Tamaki promises to take over the country, overthrow democracy, etc (which he does), we can assume that even if he means it, he doesn't have the wit to carry it out.

BTW, good discussion. And that Marcuse geezer's a hard shot. Bet he'd be a laugh down the pub.

Cheers,
RB

[Craig Ranapia]

Stephen -

Look, I'm not saying your wrong - but if an open, pluralistic society was that easy everybody would be doing it. :)

And to be blunt, I agree with self-described "Muslim refusenik" Isharid Manji who says both Muslims and non-Muslims really have the get real, and start being more vocal in condemning Islamofascism. Thankfully, the message seems to be getting through - but I can't help but wonder for how long, or how deeply.

[stephen]

"the British Muslim community especially needs to look..."

Nah, the British community as a whole needs to look.

I remember going out clubbing with workmates in Birmingham and them telling me that we couldn't go to certain places because they don't let Asians in. You don't have to be a genius to see that childhoods spent in Bradford or Leeds ghettos are not going to foster a generous view towards mainstream UK society. I reckon racism and lack of opportunity are one part of the problem also.

As it happens, my family were immigrants to the UK who spent decades in Chappletown in Leeds, because that's where poor immigrants go to live - the poor part of town. However my UK family are now happily assimilated Jews. No doubt being white has something to do with that.

You could look at whether native-born Sikhs, or West Indians, or young men from other similar groups are organising violence against their country. And then we might speculate that a particular kind of Islam makes the difference.

I reckon that there is no ONE cause on its own, there is an unfortunate combination of motives that together are enough to shunt someone over the edge. If as some people assert it's the Muslim community's problem to fix, it's the wider community's problem to give them a hand.

[sagenz]

take a young, impressionable & potentially suicidal person and fill their head with injustice and the idea of striking back and "achieving" something with their life (read death). There is a psycho cult operating that arises from young Muslims feeling inadequate. No different from Manson or the Oklahoma bomber. That is the psychology of what we are dealing with.

[sock thief]

Marcuse is an example of how Left-wing intellectual thought in the 60s and 70s got so very lost in a mixture of Freudian psychology and post-modernism.

Not only is this sort of material characterised by impenetrable laguage but it fails to take into account many of the advances that have occured in the study of human behaviour.

It has also bequethed an intellctual tradtion to the Left that has not much intellgent to say about the problems of developing and maintaining liberal values in the face of the threats we experience.

Peter Singer's "A Darwininan Left" is one of a number of recent books which make a far more interesting contribution.

Colin Talbot's "The Paradoxical Primate" is also a good read. Talbot's an ex-Trot who Professor of Public Policy at the University of Nottingham. Has had imput into the various public sector restructurings in Britain.

[stephen]

Apropos of the ridiculousness of comments on various ethnic groups' propensities for murder, I offer Aum Shinrikyo, ETA, the IRA, the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhof group, the Tamil Tigers, the Shining Path, FARC...

And from Ken Mcleod http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_kenmacleod_archive.html#112090840072827877 ):

"One area where the self-professed followers of the Carpenter have shown some superiority over those who abuse the name of the Prophet is in the creativity of their terrorism. Christian terrorists have invented or perfected the car bomb, the no-warning bomb, the false warning bomb, the secondary bomb, the proxy bomb, the VCR-timer bomb, the dump-truck bomb, the fertiliser bomb, the litter-bin bomb, and the on-camera hacksaw beheading. Even the airliner hijack was invented by (presumably Papist) Cubans. The world record for suicide bombing was until quite recently held by the Tamil Tigers, who are godless communists raised as Episcopalians. In terms of bang-for-a-buck and political effectiveness, the Christian fascist terrorist McVeigh accomplished more at OKC than Osama achieved at the World Trade Centre."

[rightkiwi]

Stephen: I think we should also add Adolf Hitler. And Idi Amin to prove that black-skinned people also, in fact, commit murder, as GeniusNZ rightly pointed out.

[stephen]

Absolutely, RK - we're all in this together.

[ZenTiger]

I didn't realise the Tamil Tigers presented a clear and present danger to London subway riders.

Then there's the Sydney Swans.

And aren't you guys just a little scared of high fat diets? Maybe the terrorist action plan could include something to protect us from bad diets.

Lets discuss it further after a burger and coke.

[Logix]

It is a paradox that the individual in the modern world is becoming both more powerful and less powerful at the same time.

Most people believe that they they have no legitimate means to participte in the process of governance, whethter that be local, national or global. As a result of this alientation most people hold the entire political system in utter contempt and try not to ever think about it. Equally we are all aware of the influence of non-governmental entities such as the IMF, the WTO, global corporates,and the like that have the ability to immensely impact our lives, and yet are entirely outside any democratic particpation. In this sense most people experience a profound sense of political powerlessness.

At the same time as rightly pointed out earlier, technology is paradoxically giving the individual new powers never thought of even just a generation ago. Some of these powers, such as the internet open up entire new possibilities, and others enormously amplify the individual's capacity to disrupt our increasingly complex world.

Just few dozen or so well placed 20lb blobs of C4 could likely cripple the oil industry and collapse the global economy. The London Underground is exquisitely more vulnerable than transport systems of a hundred years ago. A moments thought will reveal dozens of other ways to attack the world as we know it. Indeed, to me, the remarkable thing is that there have not been MORE terrorist attacks.

Clearly the confluence of these two trends is leading us in a fatal direction. So far our response has been to add more and more layers of security and restrictions onto all the people. Although in one sense added security is a reasonable thing, it also represents the terrorist's ultimate victory. Terrorist's aim to create fear. Fear creates irrational responses; we give the terrorist what he/she wants. Because more and more intrusive security only further alienates the average person, and increases their sense of powerlessness, the equation I outlined at the beginning, is only tipped further and further in favour of the terrorist.

[GeniusNZ]

RK,

> Tell that to the victims of Hirohito, Mao, Pol Pot and now Kim.

Indeed, fools like Marx have a lot to answer for...

------
Logix

> Although in one sense added security is a reasonable thing, it also represents the terrorist's ultimate victory. Terrorist's aim to create fear.

security protects your country against actions that will tip it over the edge of sanity. If you say "i wont have security because I dont want to live in fear" they will one day hit you so hard that you will change your mind and by the time you do that the rest of hte country will be wanting to genocide the percieved enemy and turn their hair into submariners socks.

Look at chechnya or afganistain - these were just russia and the USA being "a little bit annoyed".

-------

I would like to add mugabe to the list of screwed up terrorists (what else do you call raping of the families of your opposition) - lowering the average life expectancy from 60+ to 37 or so has got to beat most of the other guys.

[stephen]

ZT, no argument with you on the situation *right now*. Just wanting to counter some of the bizarre "Asians don't kill people, but Africans kill lots!" claims upthread.

[Logix]

Security is only ever a comforting illusion. Locks only keep honest men out.

London is the most CCTV'ed and videotaped city in the world...and it failed to stop the bombs. Security is always in catch up mode to the bad guys. As technology advances, the race between the two simply accelerates, until we will reach the an end point of absolute ubiquitous security, where no action, no thought goes unobserved, unrecorded, unnoticed.

As my favourite science fiction author, Vernor Vinge states, this is one of the more common terminal stages of civilisations.

I am old enough to have seen in just my life the steady erosion of personal freedoms I once took for granted. It is a trend that is accelerating and I see little effective countervailing force. Sadly fear always wins over rationality, and around me I see leaders only too willing to exploit this for their own political purposes.

[ZenTiger]

Stephen: Thanks for the comment. I am relieved to find it was understood. It makes it much easier to acknowledge your point.

Logix: "Sadly fear always wins over rationality"

Well, I could say "Fortunately, action always wins over fatalism"

I agree with the base points on security and personal freedom, but I am not willing to give up just yet.

Taking the war to the terrorists is actually a good strategy. It just offends the humanitarian instincts. But sitting around doing nothing offends survival instincts.

Has any-one here ever been personally attacked, like the classic dark street, dark alley? Has any-one here done much fighting at a personal level? I have. You learn. Some situations you can talk your way out of, and some you just have to fight or die. It's only if you win the fight do you get to decide how much mercy you are willing to bestow.

Some people are trying to dispense mercy before the fight has even started. You'll generally get spat at.

[Logix]

ZT,

Taking your advice to show no mercy:

http://amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

[GeniusNZ]

> Just wanting to counter some of the bizarre "Asians don't kill people, but Africans kill lots!" claims upthread.

Dont confuse wishful thinking with reality (I am battling with this one myself on this issue, so I understand)

http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/07/wishful-thinking-alert.html

murder rates also seem to go down where there are not many big cities, strict governments (ie many islamic countries - as opposed to barely functional ones like the former USSR) and of course bad reporting of murders.

> Locks only keep honest men out.

And yet having a security system does indeed significantly reduce the chance of people breaking into your house. (hey, insurance companies will effectively pay you to do it)

> this is one of the more common terminal stages of civilisations.

Is there any other end state? It looks (for good or for bad) fairly inevitable to me.