Fri Feb 19 02:20:00 CST 2010 AlunFoto wrote: > 2010/2/18 John Sessoms <jsessoms002 at nc.rr.com>: > > It was violence directed against innocent third parties for the purpose of > > making a political statement and/or influencing government policies. > > > > That makes it terrorism in my book whether he was affiliated with any group > > or not. > > hmmm... > > The lone "terrorist" is more often a person suffering from mental > illness. He/she may express disdain towards particular political > issues, but mostly they're out of sync with the world in general. For > reasons that has nothing to do with terrorism. >
It is very much discussion about definitions, - on how one defines what "terrorism" is. E.g. Merriam-Webster online defines it as " the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrorism I'd like to remind that well before 2001, according to the international conventions (Tokio 1963, and later The Hague 1970, Montreal 1971), aircraft hijaking was considered and act of terrorism, regardless of the motives. (here is a list of the most famous cases: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080823163951AAPLoCP ) Arguably, some of the hijackers were considered to have certain mental problems. It was proven e.g. in the old case of the UT-Austin shooter (1966): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman So, the bottom line is that regardless of motives and actors, it's the methods that define what terrorism is, at least according to the dictionaries and international conventions. Igor -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
