From: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com (roc-digest) To: roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: roc-digest V2 #465 Reply-To: roc-digest Sender: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk roc-digest Sunday, September 16 2001 Volume 02 : Number 465 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 11:28:16 -0400 From: "Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC" Subject: Re: Knives used in hijackings One thing to note here. You don't need ANY weapons to hijack a plane. You just need to convince others that you have them. Just the threat of weapons is enough. I just saw an interview with a lady (who is a flight attendant with United) whose male relative was on the plane that crashed in PA. He had called using the in-flight phone in the seat back and said that the hijackers claimed to have a bomb. She said that he did not mention any other weapons like knives, razors, box cutters, or guns. They probably didn'y have a bomb and she speculated that her relative and some other male passengers probably tried to subdue these guys and in so doing made them fail their mission... Chad - --On Wednesday, September 12, 2001 7:59 AM -0600 Scott Bergeson wrote: > charles hardy wrote: > >> Obviously, allowing random firearms into pressurized planes >> is not a very good solution. Even LEOs have to go through >> special FAA training before they are supposed to carry their >> guns on planes. So as much as I support RKBA, you'll not hear >> me suggesting passengers--even those with CCW permits--be >> allowed to carry guns on planes. > > Although one would not want to shoot into the cockpit or damage > flight control mechanisms, small holes in the fuselage are no > big deal. It is rather unlikely to rupture, nor will several > bullet holes overwhelm the pressurization system. Nevertheless, > sky marshalls carry grooved aluminum hollowpoint bullets. > > Considering your other concerns, perhaps passengers should > carry fighting knives. Istr once seeing ads in places like > Soldier of Fortune for fiber composite knives that would > not activate metal detectors. I'm not advocating smuggling > weapons to defeat airport security, but rather emphasizing > the need to change those restrictions, as these incidents > show. In the meantime, I wouldn't fly commercial except > under duress. (assuming flights resume) Attacking brawny, > knife-wielding hijackers with bare hands and feet isn't > my first choice. However, why not an airliner enhancement > on the CCW permit (or instead of, should we get Vermont > carry), much like the motorcycle enhancement on a driver > license? > > Scott > > - > > - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 11:49:59 -0400 From: "Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC" Subject: Go get them! (fwd) Hi ROC Here is a message I just sent to President Bush by email. He will probably never get it but someone there might read it. This is not a job for cruise missiles. This is a job for the boys of SF and their worldwide buddies. Chad - ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 11:46 AM -0400 From: "Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC" To: "president@whitehouse.gov" Subject: Go get them! From: "Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC" Reply-To: chad@pengar.com To: president@whitehouse.gov cc: chad@pengar.com Subject: Go get them! Message-ID: <116254556.1000295219@[192.168.99.66]> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.1.0 (Mac OS X) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Mr. President! I wanted to let you know that we, the American people, are behind you. I'd much rather have you and Gen. Powell and the rest in charge than that spineless Wimp Algore, AKA Albore. There is a well known fictional President or two that you can use for your role models. Jack Ryan, someone who did not want to be President, but who was a damn fine President and did not take things sitting down would be the first example role model for you. The second would be the President as depicted by Harrison Ford in the movie "Air Force One." When you are sure of who was behind this, Mr. President, kill them all. If, as suspected, this Osama Bin Laden guy is behind this, with his Taliban protectors, send in a bunch of special forces hunter killer teams and kill all of Bin Ladens people and him in Afghanistan. Kill them all. Leaving any left will allow them to rebuild and seek revenge. No one will know they are there and no one will know when they do their business. As was rumored in Iraq and, with Bristish SAS in Argentina in the 80s, these soldiers can go in and stay hidden for weeks and do whatever they need to do. I'm sure Vladimir Putin will help out with access through Russia. And that Tony and Gerhardt and the rest will volunteer the SAS, and other help as needed. They realize that they are not immune to this as well. Then, tell the Taliban they had their chance to hand him over and that now it is too late. As accessories to the crime, bomb EVERY Afghanistan government building. Bomb the crap out of them, Mr. President. And then send in the relief agencies to help the poor Afghan people who are suffering. An Afghan Marshall Plan. Good luck Mr President, we are counting on you. Be a Jack Ryan President. Sincerely, Chad Leigh - ---------- End Forwarded Message ---------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 09:59:51 -0700 From: Bill Vance Subject: Morning of Horror - by L. Neil Smith (fwd) From: Swftl@aol.com Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 22:58:32 EDT Subject: Morning of Horror - by L. Neil Smith [cp] FW: [Lis-LEAF] MORNING OF HORROR -L. Neil Smith Subject: [Lis-LEAF] MORNING OF HORROR -L. Neil Smith MORNING OF HORROR By L. Neil Smith Special to _The Libertarian Enterpise_ First of all, expect never to learn the truth about what happened at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and elsewhere this morning of September 11, 2001, any more than we did with regard to the murders of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, at Ruby Ridge, Waco, or Oklahoma City. Ambiguity and uncertainty serve far too many political interests. Another certainty is that, although I'm told 50,000 people worked in the World Trade Center, more innocent individuals will die as a result of what the Old Media are lovingly referring to as a "lockdown" of Manhattan and other places, than any acts of terrorism that may have occurred. The military has just said they'll shoot down any plane they see flying. Only one civilian plane is in the air this morning, Air Force One; that's as grim a warning of things to come as I can think of. "Collateral" deaths won't just happen as a consequence, say, of somebody with a heart attack being unable to get to a hospital, but whenever and wherever some dumb kid in an army uniform gets startled by a car backfiring and starts spraying everybody and his pet poodle with automatic rifle fire. Or to whomever the martial lawyers decide it's safe to liquidate using this foul mess as a cover. Or, vastly more ominously, to people in the not-so-distant future who decide they must resist the police state that will inevitably result from these events. It's extremely difficult to think coherently about long term effects, let alone to get it all down in writing, when you learn that, not only were hijacked commercial aircraft used to commit these unspeakably evil acts, but that 90 passengers died helplessly in the first plane, and others yet unnumbered may have died in subsequent attacks. _Somebody_ has to think about it, though, or this situation will be used to turn the Bill of Rights off forever. Depending on the planning behind it, or who did the planning, it may already be too late. All airports have been shut down today, and I shudder to think about what flying will be like from now on. The Clintons, Schumers, and Waxmans will try to shut down the Internet, calling it a breeding ground for terrorism. The Bushes and Cheneys will "reluctantly" go along. Rush Limbaugh will cheer them on. What should those who value their freedom do? Every chance you have, from this moment on, whether it's on talk radio, or on the letters to the editor page, on the Internet while it's still possible, or in communication with everyone you know -- it's time for even the most apolitical to write to senators and congressmen - -- emphasize two points: First, inform them that closing down the First or Second or any other Amendment is not an appropriate response to what's happened, and that any politician or bureaucrat in office who attempts to capitalize on today's horrors is committing the same sort of blatantly criminal act I've always insisted must be punished under Bill of Rights enforcement. Second, these things happen to nations with imperial ambitions. There has never been a major act of terrorism I know of that hasn't resulted from an act of government that violated somebody's rights. The way to keep this sort of thing from happening again is to stop those violations. Hideously enough, my new novel _The American Zone_, scheduled to be published next November by Tor Books, begins with an act very similar to this one, carried out to force the creation of a strong central government in the governmentless "North American Confederacy" that figures in so many of my books. As anybody who knows my work can safely predict, the evil scheme doesn't work and the villains are defeated. Life isn't as predictably pleasant as fiction. Happy endings are few and far between. But it's important to act swiftly if we're to preserve anything resembling the freedom that made this civilization great. Pass the word. http://www.smith2004.org/ **************************************************************************** "I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else." John Locke **************************************************************************** "I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another for none comes into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him."- Last words of Richard Rumbold before being hanged for planning an insurrection against the tyrant Charles II, 1679 - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** RKBA! - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 12:20:37 -0700 From: Bill Vance Subject: Bombings -- START TAKING NOTES (fwd) Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 09:48:46 -0400 Subject: Bombings -- START TAKING NOTES From: semperfidave@juno.com - --------- Begin forwarded message ---------- From: RevCOAL To: CIA Drugs list Subject: Re: [CIA-DRUGS] The Bombings -- Start Taking Notes Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 15:56:58 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Mike Ruppert wrote: >Now is the time that all of us need to be the best investigators that we can >possibly be. I suggest that, in the earliest moments, some of us take >responsibility for monitoring CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and MS-NBC to log >reports as they come in. As with previous stories of lesser magnitude our >strengths lay in keeping side by side evaluations and watching for >discrepancies and alterations. I've been mostly watching the one local NYC station still operating (the other local stations all had their antennas on top of the WTC), and one thing I noticed that has been mentioned by survivors or rescue personnel who have been interviewed is the fact that all of them have mentioned secondary explosions occuring at the bottom level of the Towers after the planes struck. One rescue personnel person actually stated that vans with explosives had been parked in the lower parking level and rigged to go off after the planes struck.... I haven't heard this mentioned on any of the national media stations... A construction worker who had been working in one of the Towers was just interviewed, he said that after the first plane struck and they saw debris raining down, they debated what to do, and this guy said that 'someone' told them that they should stay put and not evacuate, but they decided to ignore that advice and leave anyway...that is the only reason this guy and his coworkers were still alive... I wonder who this person was who went around telling people to stay put, and how many vicitms can be attributed to those following that advice... June - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** RKBA! - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 18:46:06 -0700 From: "Lew Glendenning" Subject: RE: Go get them! (fwd) BS. This approach would make all of us feel real good (well, except for lingering regret for all the women and children and other civilians who will be killed in our 'surgical' strikes). However, it won't do anything for the terrorism problem, and will likely make it worse. These terrorists have raised the art to an entirely new level: they are going after economic infrastructure, not just political targets. They started using technological and economic thinking, not acting like poly-sci/sociology/psych majors building simple bombs to make simple political statements. The western world is balanced on a tall needle of technology and techno-infrastructure. Any idiot can kick it over with minimal effort: any engineer can give you a dozen ways that 20 guys can cost us 20% of the economy's output for at least 3 months each. Some guy out of the Monterey Naval Graduate School wrote papers on this, said he could put the US into a long-term recession for $20M (memory here), 20 people and make $1B while he was doing it. Osama Bin Laden should have made a lot of money trading stocks yesterday, having had advance knowledge of what stocks were going to have problems. We can avoid a war on/with terrorism. Go back to the Constitution: abrogate all of our mutual defense treaties, withdraw from the UN, bring all the troops home, defend our borders, announce free and open trade, lower taxes to the best in the world. We will continue to be the world leader as we are now, but without any of the burdens of Empire. Nobody has ever won one, not where the terrorists have reasonable community support. No Empire has ever survived its ascent to this level, and they die faster and faster. The complexity has killed them all, and I have no faith that our politicians are up to the task. Go read "Un-intended Consequences" again guys. The British people lost Civil Rights, the IRA didn't stop bombing. Half the British Army wasn't sufficient to control a couple of small counties. We are in much more danger from our own out-of-control gov than we are from foreign Terrorists. Indeed, our foreign terrorism problem is entirely due to the prior actions of our out-of-control government. More 'solutions' by our gov is certainly not the answer. Lew Glendenning - -----Original Message----- From: owner-roc@lists.xmission.com [mailto:owner-roc@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 8:50 AM To: roc@lists.xmission.com Subject: Go get them! (fwd) Hi ROC Here is a message I just sent to President Bush by email. He will probably never get it but someone there might read it. This is not a job for cruise missiles. This is a job for the boys of SF and their worldwide buddies. Chad - ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 11:46 AM -0400 From: "Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC" To: "president@whitehouse.gov" Subject: Go get them! From: "Chad Leigh, Pengar Enterprises, Inc. & Shire.Net LLC" Reply-To: chad@pengar.com To: president@whitehouse.gov cc: chad@pengar.com Subject: Go get them! Message-ID: <116254556.1000295219@[192.168.99.66]> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.1.0 (Mac OS X) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Mr. President! I wanted to let you know that we, the American people, are behind you. I'd much rather have you and Gen. Powell and the rest in charge than that spineless Wimp Algore, AKA Albore. There is a well known fictional President or two that you can use for your role models. Jack Ryan, someone who did not want to be President, but who was a damn fine President and did not take things sitting down would be the first example role model for you. The second would be the President as depicted by Harrison Ford in the movie "Air Force One." When you are sure of who was behind this, Mr. President, kill them all. If, as suspected, this Osama Bin Laden guy is behind this, with his Taliban protectors, send in a bunch of special forces hunter killer teams and kill all of Bin Ladens people and him in Afghanistan. Kill them all. Leaving any left will allow them to rebuild and seek revenge. No one will know they are there and no one will know when they do their business. As was rumored in Iraq and, with Bristish SAS in Argentina in the 80s, these soldiers can go in and stay hidden for weeks and do whatever they need to do. I'm sure Vladimir Putin will help out with access through Russia. And that Tony and Gerhardt and the rest will volunteer the SAS, and other help as needed. They realize that they are not immune to this as well. Then, tell the Taliban they had their chance to hand him over and that now it is too late. As accessories to the crime, bomb EVERY Afghanistan government building. Bomb the crap out of them, Mr. President. And then send in the relief agencies to help the poor Afghan people who are suffering. An Afghan Marshall Plan. Good luck Mr President, we are counting on you. Be a Jack Ryan President. Sincerely, Chad Leigh - ---------- End Forwarded Message ---------- - - - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 09:09:22 -0700 From: Bill Vance Subject: Seven Deadly Sins (fwd) Subject: Seven Deadly Sins Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 08:24:34 -0400 From: Charles Riggs Lord Mountbatten--"...For in the last resort, civilization stands or falls not by covenants, but by the sword..." "The Seven Deadly Sins of Terrorism: Lord Mountbatten Didn't Die For Your Sins" written by Paul Johnson (British journalist; former editor of the New Statesman) The unedited version can be found in the New Republic, September 15, 1979, page 19-21. Most of you will recall that Mountbatten, (related to the Queen of England and was also a British Lord), was assassinated in a terrorist attack carriedout by the Provisional IRA. - --------------- "The Seven Deadly Sins of Terrorism: Lord Mountbatten Didn't Die For Your Sins" by Paul Johnson (edited) September 15, 1979 The wrong approach to terrorism is to see it as one of many symptoms of a deep-seated malaise in our society . . . . This analysis usually ends in the meaningless and defeatist conclusion that society itself is to blame: 'We are all guilty.' International terrorism is not part of a general human problem. It is a specific and identifiable problem on its own. . . . It is a remediable problem. To say it is remediable is not to underestimate the size and danger of the problem. On the contrary: it is almost impossible to exaggerate the threat that terrorism poses for our civilization. . . . One reason why it constitutes such a grave and growing threat is that very few people in the civilized world--governments and parliaments, TV and newspapers, the public generally--take terrorism seriously enough. Most people, lacking an adequate knowledge of history, tend to underestimate the fragility of a civilization. They do not appreciate that civilizations fall as well as rise. . . . There was a common factor in all these great [falls]. They occurred when the spread of metals technology and the availability of raw materials enabled the forces of barbarism to equal or surpass the civilized powers in the quality and quantity of their weapons. For in the last resort, civilization stands or falls not by covenants, but by the sword. . . . Menacing improvements in terrorism have been brought about by the international availability of terrorist support, supply, and training services. Terrorism is no longer a purely national phenomenon, which can be destroyed at the national level. It is an international offensive--an open and declared war against civilization itself--which can only be defeated by an active alliance of the civilized powers. The impact ofterrorism . . . is intrinsically evil . . . for a number of . . . reasons--what I call the seven deadly sins of terrorism. First - Terrorism is the deliberate and cold-blooded exaltation of violence over all forms of political activity. The modern terrorist employs violence not as a necessary evil, but as a desirable form of action. The Second deadly sin is the deliberate suppression of the moral instincts in man. Terrorist organizers have found that it is not enough to give their recruits intellectual justifications for murder: indeed the abandonment of any system of moral criteria becomes an essential element in its training. (Recruits are made to experience and participate in moral depravity like murder or rape because they cannot be expected to be an effective terrorist as long as they retain moral elements of a human personality.) Third is the rejection of politics as the normal means by which communities resolve conflicts. To terrorists, violence is a substitute for the entire political process. [Which explains the difference between Bin Laden and Arafat and Sinn Fein, which used terrorism as a bargaining chip to gain themselves a place in the political process, but now that they are at the table, want to participate in the political process.] The Fourth Deadly Sin is that it necessarily and actively assists the spread of the totalitarian state. Countries that finance and support terrorism are without exception despotic states. Fifth, international terrorism poses no threat to the totalitarian state. That kind of state can always defend itself by judicial murder, preventive arrest, torture of prisoners and suspects, and complete censorship of terrorist activities. Terrorism can only get a foothold in a state where the executive is under some kind of restraint, legal, democratic, and moral. Sixth is that terrorism exploits the apparatus of freedom in liberal societies, and thereby endangers it. In meeting the threat of terrorism, a free society must arm itself, but that process of arming itself threatens the freedoms, decencies and standards that make the society civilized, because of the emergency actions that must be taken. These actions may threaten those freedoms. The Seventh deadly sin is that if a free society reacts to terrorism by invoking authoritarian methods, it damages itself. But even worse, if free societies in their anxiety to avoid authoritarian excesses, FAIL to arm themselves against the terrorist threat, then the terrorists triumph. The seventh and deadliest sin is that terrorism can sap the will of a civilized society to defend itself. We have seen it happen. We find governments negotiating with terrorists . . . to concede to their demands. We find governments providing ransom money . . . releasing convicted criminals in response to demands . . . conceding them the status of political prisoners. . .. We find newspapers and TV networks placing democratic governments and the terrorists on a level of moral equality. We find governments failing time and again, in their duty to persuade the public that terrorists are not misguided politicians. They are criminals. They are extraordinary criminals, indeed, in that they pose a threat not merely to the individuals they murder without compunction, but to the whole fabric of society. In short, the seventh and deadliest sin of terrorism is its attempt to induce civilization to commit suicide. - ----------------------- Charles Riggs - Gunsite 1991 - DVC! "Fight Crime - Be armed - Fight back!" President, KC3 - GOA - NRA ********************************* A parable for our times: http://www.kc3.org/sheep.htm ********************************* The Kentucky IDPA Studies Group: http://www.electricrain.com/~tyler/IDPASG/index.shtml - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** RKBA! - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 10:23:24 -0700 From: "Lew Glendenning" Subject: RE: Seven Deadly Sins (fwd) In fact, no free society has WON over a terrorist movement that had wide-spread support. The IRA is 300 guys with very few resources, and half the British Army can't prevent them from planting bombs at will. Despite Britain having suspended civil liberties-- torture, killings, imprisonment without trial. The Northern Ireland terrorist problem is a remnant of the British Empire. Sri Lanka ditto. All the existing terrorist movements are 'liberation' movements of some kind. We can expect them in China, various parts of the ex-Soviet Union, ... Our problem with the Islamic world is that we have been mucking around trying to control their world for a long time. We overthrew ?? and installed the Shah, reaped an Islamic fundamentalist whirlwind. We helped Afghanistan, trained Bin Laden. Continuing support for Israel, whose actions match those of South Africa. (My wife and son are Jewish, FYI). Embargo against Iraq that the UN says is killing 10,000 women, children, old people each month via mal-nutrition and lack of medicine. (Every Moslem knows those numbers very well, no matter how you and I may suspect them.) The list of our 'end justifies the means' actions is very long. These actions have resulted in a more screwed up situation in the world. Of course, we know that is the effect of large, out-of-control government. The idea that we can see enough moves ahead in the game of foreign policy to have ANY idea what to do next is delusional. Everything in these systems is attached to everything else, there are far more side-effects than anyone can think of, most negative. The solution to the United State's problem is easy: Get out of the empire business. Switzerland doesn't have a terrorism problem, and is simultaneously the richest per-capita company in the world. It is greatly in our self-interest to get out from under our Empire. No Empire has survived, and most of the nations who tried it have died also. We could Restore Our Constitution, if we did so. Empire is far outside of the Constitutional boundaries. Retaliation that involves killing women and children or innocent civilians is far outside of my ethical/moral boundaries. As a purely practical matter, such actions perpetuate the cycle and make genuine, long-term peace less likely. Without genuine, long-term peace our social, political and economic future is stunted. In the year 2001, World War I is killing more people than died in the trenchs at the height of the war itself. These people die because the economy didn't develop, because scientists were killed in the war, and technology of all kinds was slowed down by 40 years as a result. Including medical technology. Lew - -----Original Message----- From: owner-roc@lists.xmission.com [mailto:owner-roc@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Bill Vance Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:09 AM To: roc@lists.xmission.com Subject: Seven Deadly Sins (fwd) Subject: Seven Deadly Sins Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 08:24:34 -0400 From: Charles Riggs Lord Mountbatten--"...For in the last resort, civilization stands or falls not by covenants, but by the sword..." "The Seven Deadly Sins of Terrorism: Lord Mountbatten Didn't Die For Your Sins" written by Paul Johnson (British journalist; former editor of the New Statesman) The unedited version can be found in the New Republic, September 15, 1979, page 19-21. Most of you will recall that Mountbatten, (related to the Queen of England and was also a British Lord), was assassinated in a terrorist attack carriedout by the Provisional IRA. - --------------- "The Seven Deadly Sins of Terrorism: Lord Mountbatten Didn't Die For Your Sins" by Paul Johnson (edited) September 15, 1979 The wrong approach to terrorism is to see it as one of many symptoms of a deep-seated malaise in our society . . . . This analysis usually ends in the meaningless and defeatist conclusion that society itself is to blame: 'We are all guilty.' International terrorism is not part of a general human problem. It is a specific and identifiable problem on its own. . . . It is a remediable problem. To say it is remediable is not to underestimate the size and danger of the problem. On the contrary: it is almost impossible to exaggerate the threat that terrorism poses for our civilization. . . . One reason why it constitutes such a grave and growing threat is that very few people in the civilized world--governments and parliaments, TV and newspapers, the public generally--take terrorism seriously enough. Most people, lacking an adequate knowledge of history, tend to underestimate the fragility of a civilization. They do not appreciate that civilizations fall as well as rise. . . . There was a common factor in all these great [falls]. They occurred when the spread of metals technology and the availability of raw materials enabled the forces of barbarism to equal or surpass the civilized powers in the quality and quantity of their weapons. For in the last resort, civilization stands or falls not by covenants, but by the sword. . . . Menacing improvements in terrorism have been brought about by the international availability of terrorist support, supply, and training services. Terrorism is no longer a purely national phenomenon, which can be destroyed at the national level. It is an international offensive--an open and declared war against civilization itself--which can only be defeated by an active alliance of the civilized powers. The impact ofterrorism . . . is intrinsically evil . . . for a number of . . . reasons--what I call the seven deadly sins of terrorism. First - Terrorism is the deliberate and cold-blooded exaltation of violence over all forms of political activity. The modern terrorist employs violence not as a necessary evil, but as a desirable form of action. The Second deadly sin is the deliberate suppression of the moral instincts in man. Terrorist organizers have found that it is not enough to give their recruits intellectual justifications for murder: indeed the abandonment of any system of moral criteria becomes an essential element in its training. (Recruits are made to experience and participate in moral depravity like murder or rape because they cannot be expected to be an effective terrorist as long as they retain moral elements of a human personality.) Third is the rejection of politics as the normal means by which communities resolve conflicts. To terrorists, violence is a substitute for the entire political process. [Which explains the difference between Bin Laden and Arafat and Sinn Fein, which used terrorism as a bargaining chip to gain themselves a place in the political process, but now that they are at the table, want to participate in the political process.] The Fourth Deadly Sin is that it necessarily and actively assists the spread of the totalitarian state. Countries that finance and support terrorism are without exception despotic states. Fifth, international terrorism poses no threat to the totalitarian state. That kind of state can always defend itself by judicial murder, preventive arrest, torture of prisoners and suspects, and complete censorship of terrorist activities. Terrorism can only get a foothold in a state where the executive is under some kind of restraint, legal, democratic, and moral. Sixth is that terrorism exploits the apparatus of freedom in liberal societies, and thereby endangers it. In meeting the threat of terrorism, a free society must arm itself, but that process of arming itself threatens the freedoms, decencies and standards that make the society civilized, because of the emergency actions that must be taken. These actions may threaten those freedoms. The Seventh deadly sin is that if a free society reacts to terrorism by invoking authoritarian methods, it damages itself. But even worse, if free societies in their anxiety to avoid authoritarian excesses, FAIL to arm themselves against the terrorist threat, then the terrorists triumph. The seventh and deadliest sin is that terrorism can sap the will of a civilized society to defend itself. We have seen it happen. We find governments negotiating with terrorists . . . to concede to their demands. We find governments providing ransom money . . . releasing convicted criminals in response to demands . . . conceding them the status of political prisoners. . .. We find newspapers and TV networks placing democratic governments and the terrorists on a level of moral equality. We find governments failing time and again, in their duty to persuade the public that terrorists are not misguided politicians. They are criminals. They are extraordinary criminals, indeed, in that they pose a threat not merely to the individuals they murder without compunction, but to the whole fabric of society. In short, the seventh and deadliest sin of terrorism is its attempt to induce civilization to commit suicide. - ----------------------- Charles Riggs - Gunsite 1991 - DVC! "Fight Crime - Be armed - Fight back!" President, KC3 - GOA - NRA ********************************* A parable for our times: http://www.kc3.org/sheep.htm ********************************* The Kentucky IDPA Studies Group: http://www.electricrain.com/~tyler/IDPASG/index.shtml - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** RKBA! - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 10:20:07 -0700 From: Bill Vance Subject: From an Afghani in the US - good think piece (fwd) Subject: From an Afghani in the US - good think piece Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 11:54:12 -0400 From: Charles Riggs Food for thought for the Militarists Written by an Afghani in the U.S. I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ron Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing. I speak as one who deeply hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. My hatred comes from first hand experience. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden,think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban. We come now to the question of "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age". Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs would not really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time. So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else? In Peace, Tamim Ansary Charles Riggs - Gunsite 1991 - DVC! "Fight Crime - Be armed - Fight back!" President, KC3 - GOA - NRA ********************************* A parable for our times: http://www.kc3.org/sheep.htm ********************************* The Kentucky IDPA Studies Group: http://www.electricrain.com/~tyler/IDPASG/index.shtml - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** RKBA! - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - ------------------------------ End of roc-digest V2 #465 *************************