Terrorism’s FIVE Fundamental Principles/Truths:
Applied to Hamas attack on Israel
(Draft 9-18-23
Updated 10-29-23)
FP#1. Terrorism is a dangerous word. Terror is an emotion. A terrorists use fear as a tactic to achieve a result. No amount of violence, weaponry, or war can defeat a tactic.
This flexible verb can be used by anyone who is terrorized by someone or something. It plays on our primal urge to survive and thrive. And any threat to one's life can be terrorizing.
Radical Hamas extremists or Russian troops invading Ukraine in 'special military operation mass murdering innocent civilians is terrorizing. The use of traditional weapons, knives, vehicles, drones, bio, chemical, nano, or nuclear weapons is terrorizing. A siege cutting of all water, food, and medical supplies to force a political achievement would be terrorizing to anyone with children. If a pilot or an astronaut knowingly sabotaged a critical system already in flight would be terrorizing to most any conscious person on board. When anyone can use this word anything they feel terrified it would be wise to have a more accurate noun and verb to use if one intends to better prevent or preempt terror. Engineering a sustainable political, economic, or environmental system for human life on or off this planet will require the use of words that are precise and functional in the context of ensuring life, liberty and justice for all.
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." -- Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
“The beginning of wisdom is
to call things by their proper name.” ― Confucius
"The battle for the world is the battle for
definitions." -- Thomas Szasz
(1920-2012) Hungarian-American Professor of Psychiatry, Author, Libertarian
“But
if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’ – George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" [1946]
"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950) British author
“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass.
“The true
terrorists of our world do not meet at the docks at midnight, or scream “Allahu
Akbar” before some violent action. The true terrorists of our world wear
5000-dollar suits and work in the highest positions of finance, government, and
business.” Peter Joseph
FP#2. There are three types of truth. One is the self-evident truths in nature. The other two truths exist only in the human mind (personal and political truths).
Our personal truths: What God do we believe in - or not. Nearly everyone has a
different personal truth regarding their religious beliefs. The second is our political truths. Truths we have grown up with, learned
from those they love and trusted, and our own culture and/or personal life experiences.
Nature’s truths include “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”. These are the foundational “truths” that “we hold” “to be self-evident”. You may remember these within the Declaration of Independence. The US was founded on Judeo/Christian ideals. Every other major religion including Islam shares the most fundamental religious ideal - the Golden Rule. What is so complicated about this fundamental need to take care of nature (our shared life support systems/God's Creation) and each other?
“There are some persons who, by habit acquired in youth, or by
ill guidance, or foolish desire, or perverse inclinations, are so strongly
attached and bound to an error or false view that they refuse to relinquish it,
and it is grievous to them to hear any notion to the contrary, and they become
unpracticed in hearing the truth.” Aristotle, Metaphysics.
“The only
way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies.” Golda Meir
“We
Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs - We have no place to
go.” Golda Meir
FP#3. The human mind can believe anything!
-- Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.)
Dictator of the Roman Republic
"Men prefer to believe what they prefer to be true." -- Francis Bacon- (1561-1626) Philosopher, British Lord Chancellor
"There are two different types of
people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to
believe." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"American people are very much like the children of a Mafia
boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don't want to
know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room
window." - William Blum - The
Anti-Empire Report
Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a
nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have
greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex. –
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America [1835]
We ignore obvious and credible warnings!
1980 bi partisan US Presidential
Commission on World Hunger warnings more wars, genocides, terrorism,
refugees, environmental degradation, infectious disease if Congress didn’t collaborate
with other nations to end the worst aspects of widespread hunger and poverty by
the year 2000.
1995: Back Hawk Down spurs
CIA study. After the US military incident
in Somalia, the Clinton Administration asked the CIA to analyze over 200
factors that could lead to a nation state failure. The intention was to find the
likely factors enabling the prediction of one with the intent of reducing the
need for US military intervention. The study
concluded that the top indicator was a nation’s infant mortality rate (IMR).
1997 DOD, CIA, CDC, and
National Academy of Sciences unanimous warnings about the threat of new and
re-emerging infectious diseases.
2001 bipartisan US Presidential
Commission on National Security in the 21st Century unanimous warnings
of Terrorism being our nation’s greatest national security threat just 6 months
prior to Sept. 11th.
2017 book WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP CATASTROPHES By Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, 2017: https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-7-2/Article/1401978/warnings-finding-cassandras-to-stop-catastrophes/ The first 8
chapters detail the millions of lives and
hundreds of billions of dollars lost to catastrophes,– natural and human
engineered – due to people in power failing to act on the advanced warnings of
experts. The last eight chapters
estimates the billions of lives and
trillions of dollars that could be saved if humanity collectively works to
prevent the other dire warnings now being given regarding other threats (some
existential). Chapter 11 “The Journalist:
Pandemic Disease”. Most instructive is
Chapter 9. It outlines three cognitive
reasons why humans ignore such warnings.
FP#4. Every tool/technology can be used for improving life on Earth or as a weapon. And how any tool is used depends entirely on the heart and the mind of the user. A hammer can be used to build a home for the Homeless. Or to crush their skulls. A computer can be used to start a new business or crash a nation’s energy grid or banking system. Biotechnology can be used to cure cancer or a bioweapon targeting a specific genetic profile within a Jewish, European, African, Asian, or indigenous population.
It is true that without all nations abiding by the
golden rule, and basing their laws on the global rule, humanity will continue its
devolution with the law of the jungle.
And under this law, the evolution of weaponry will enable even a single
individual with the killing capacity of a superpower. Biological, cyber, and nano weapons often replicate when used. Unlike traditional weapons that are used up when they are used. Security is an illusion. It's something we all want and need. But if one or more people are so motivated they can find many ways to circumvent the best defenses. Military strength is
not the path to humanities sustainable freedoms and security.
More than a year before Trump was elected a survey
of US national security experts were asked to rank the threats our nation faced. They concluded terrorism to be our greatest
threat. Second was our own “government’s
dysfunction”. These rated above Russia,
China, N. Korea, Iran, and climate change.
And this was before COVID19 awoke the nation and the world
(including terrorists) to the power of pathogens and their capacity to of bringing powerful
civilizations to their knees. TRUTH: More pandemics will come. Be they from
nature, intentional creation, or accidental release. And humanity is unprepared for them and doing many things that are accelerating the inevitable risk of new and re-emerging infectious diseases.
CONCLUSION: The surprise attack on Israel last week, and the surprise attack on the United States on 911 was more than a failure of intelligence. These were failures of wisdom.
"Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate. - Gen. Moshe Dayan
Last week the Washington Post printed the first op-ed
I'm aware of calling our constitution into question regarding our democracies
sustainably. They offered several useful amendments but knew they would never pass given the hyper political polarization
of our nation. But they failed to
consider the three most fundamental flaws within our constitution. Flaws that require a Constitutional rewrite.
Thomas Jefferson said every law and Constitution should be “changed every 19 years”. Because “the future belongs to the living. Not the Dead”
Our Constitution's greatest existing flaw is that it is based on the concept of independence. A mental construct that exists nowhere it is known universe. Fundamentally independence t is an illusion. And we are delusional in believing it exists.
Second our laws do not provide justice. They provide
relief to people who are wealthy and guilty. And imprison those who are often innocent
and poor.
The third is the inability of our legislature to respond quickly to the emerging threats coming from the exponential growth in most technologies. The constitution was engineered to work slowly.
Fourth, those we have elected have failed to achieve any of the intentions in the preamble. And it is “We the People” who prioritized our comforts, indifference to the suffering of others, and our lack of distinction between the three kinds of truth, that have led to our own loss of faith and trust. Yet we blame our nation's dysfunction on social media. Until we transform our constitution to abide by the wisdom expressed by our Declaration of Independence we are doomed as a civilized nation.
What is so complicated about taking care of nature and
taking care of one another? Independence
is an illusion. Everything is connected,
interdependent, and vulnerable. You don’t need to be Einstein to know a global approach is urgently needed. Simply because
all people are created and equal endowed by their Creator, with life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness and health.
In simple words, we must abide by the laws of nature and nature is God if
we want to make this country and the world a garden of Eden on earth. Just as heaven intended.
In the
Jewish legend, the great warrior Samson ends up, as John Milton famously puts
it, ´eyeless in Gaza´. He is blinded by the Philistines and harnessed to a huge
millstone, forced to drag himself around and around in circles, always moving
but unable to go anywhere. Eventually, in the most spectacular of suicides, he
gets his revenge by pulling down their temple on top of the Philistines,
killing both them and himself. The story is apparently supposed to be heroic,
but it feels more like a fable of vicious futility. Cruelty begets cruelty
until there is nothing left but mutual destruction. - Fintan O´Toole
in the New York Review of Books, October 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment