Upton Sinclair - Terrorist

[deadfong]

It's terrorism if you're trying to scare people. Killing them is just fine. 

Worse even than that - a terrorist is now someone who tries, not to scare people, but to enable them to make better informed choices about how they live their lives.  Facts become a casualty because facts are now defined as tools of terror.

I would say that the only ones who are scared are the powers that want to keep us in the dark, except that they know they have nothing to fear from us.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Missing the point, here.

Defamation now equals terrorism.

MORE TO THE POINT:

Terrorism is no longer "causing terror to achieve a political objective", and is now "anything we don't like."

Yep.

[Cain]

I'm going to have to be honest here - terrorism was always "something we didn't like".  I have a professor whose entire postdoctoral thesis was terrorism was a way for states to delegitimise violence done by people not caused by them or in support of them, and there is a good body of evidence to prove his point (for instance, when the Cosa Nostra were blowing up judges and police commanders with car bombs, that was not considered terrorism, because the Cosa Nostra were tight with the Sicilian Christian Democrats, the ruling Italian party for most of the First Republic.  If you're not threatening the status quo, you're a militant group, or a self-defence group, or an organized crime group, but most certainly not terrorists).

The only innovation here is that the terrorism doesn't even have to require violence, but things had been moving that way for a while now, like with offering legal advice to terrorist organizations being considered "material support" and so on.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Terrorism is nothing but the new word for "Communism". It doesn't mean anything per se, it's a pavlovian trigger that sets the electorate masses frothing at the mouth and demanding less freedom.

Terrorism is - enemy of the party - terrorist is the generic name for the guy featured in today's two minute hate

Terrorism, according to the dictionary (will no doubt be edited in later editions) means using violence against non-combatants to achieve political objectives.

Current record for largest and most successful act of terrorism is held by the USA for the bombing of  Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 where between 150 and 250 thousand mainly civilian fatalities ensured Japanese surrender in less than a week.

America has subsequently declared war on terrorism which is considered badwrong when other people do it.

[Junkenstein]

This surprises me little.

Activists have been classed as "Domestic Terrorists" for a while in the UK.

The violence aspect was eroded a long time ago. As I understand it, a closer definition would be

"Disagreeing with an authority figure in a location likely to be seen, heard and understood by the larger public"

Obviously the only sensible way to deal with this is to increase the number of secret trials so you don't have to encounter this nonsense. Carry on about your business....Or else.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

This is all too close to home and 

[McGrupp]

I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime. Our best hope is for three people to gather together. One takes a picture of animal abuse and the other 2 stand on either side of him and each take a picture getting the others in the shot.

The person who took the first picture gets arrested for taking a picture of a crime. The other two both get arrested for taking a picture of someone taking a picture of a crime. But wait! The two also got pictures of each other taking a picture of someone taking a picture for a crime. As this is a new crime they each get charged again but since the same picture also showed themselves taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime there are more charges.

Now the two on the side have been charged with taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime, as well as with taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime, and also for taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime. Naturally this generates another crime.

Basically we do this until the court system breaks or we divide by zero. Whichever happens first.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.

Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.

Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.

It's quite simple really, "crime" does not mean what you've been led to believe it does. Incidentally, most "criminals" I've met are merely people who either realised this instinctively or worked it out for themselves.

I'll spell it out. "Crime" is an opinion held by people who are in a position to force their opinion upon you. It's a double edged billy-club, too. If they say it's not a crime then it's not a crime. Even if they arrested you for it yesterday.

[Cain]

"Big criminals hang small ones."

State formation in this day and age is a little beyond that of competing mafia gangs, but the mentality is still very much there.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.

Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.

It's quite simple really, "crime" does not mean what you've been led to believe it does. Incidentally, most "criminals" I've met are merely people who either realised this instinctively or worked it out for themselves.

I'll spell it out. "Crime" is an opinion held by people who are in a position to force their opinion upon you. It's a double edged billy-club, too. If they say it's not a crime then it's not a crime. Even if they arrested you for it yesterday.

To me, "crime" is to willfully or negligently deprive another person of their rights.

Given that standard, guess who is the biggest criminal gang in my country?

[Cain]

If protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making – quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy – qualify as our largest examples of organised crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries,a portrait of war makers and state makers as coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I love Charles Tilly, in the same manner as I love Smedley Butler.


But that's not the correct answer.

The correct answer is:  The largest criminal gang in the USA is its citizenry itself.  The USA is the biggest collection of freedom-hating assmonglers that ever drew breath.  What makes it particularly horrible is that we've even co-opted the words "freedom" and "liberty" to mean "conformity" and "police state".  The government didn't do this.  Goldman Sachs didn't do this.  The American public did this, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

[Cain]

Oh, I was quoting it for people who didn't click on the PDF.  Because I know some people wont.

[McGrupp]

I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.

Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.

I got a feeling it's going to be a long century.

Couldn't agree more about crime being whatever arbitrary thing authorities decide. Downright insidious.