Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If Brits don't care and refuse to allow themselves to become victims of fear then how do you explain your media continuing on this path of frenzy?

[/ QUOTE ]


That's a very good question. I personally think it's as simple as sensationalism sells newspaper or gets viewers, but I'd be interested in any different persectives on that.

[/ QUOTE ]
In one of the earlier posts it was mentioned that it could also be a political tool.For sure though the media latch on to this as a seller.
I feel though that the thread is going off track.The idea was to belittle these humanoids.

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

Possibly less 'terror' more 'annoyance'
Even though these seem to be the most botched terrorism attacks ever they have caused hudge problems and cost at the airports, the IRA were amazing at causing terror- they didnt need to kill anyone to have London freaking out, a phonecall would have an area closed off and everyone [censored] themselfs.

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

I think we're being complacent thinking the kind of thing that happened in Spain could never happen in England.

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

USA (few attacks) = Scared
England (lots of expereince)= Not scared
Israel = ?

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

[ QUOTE ]
USA (few attacks) = Scared
England (lots of expereince)= Not scared
Israel = ?

[/ QUOTE ]

... a good way to stir things up ...

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

[ QUOTE ]

Any better names anyone? Anyone got any other suggested alternative methods of combatting this nonsense by ridicule, belittling and deride the whole thing outside the usual "be vigilant" and watch potential 'tosspotters?'


[/ QUOTE ]

Seem pretty obvious what to call them:

http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/4655/dramaqnci5.jpg
http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/1...onwhoreyi9.jpg

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

[ QUOTE ]
USA (few attacks) = Scared
England (lots of expereince)= Not scared
Israel = ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Having lived in Israel for a few years, the general attitude is probably like what OP described in England. Bombings are a regular part of life there, they are obviously disturbing, but life goes on around them.

This doesn't, in my opinion, require that we change the name from "terrorism" to some cushy euphemism that makes you feel better about the fact that fanatical suicidal [censored] are deliberately targeting random civilians.

The Israeli response has not been to call the terrorists anything other than what they are - "murderers."


I'd recommend a reading of George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" for those who want to rename terrorism to something more warm and fuzzy.
Politics and the English Language

[ QUOTE ]
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:


‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’


The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

not cool, cmar.

agreed, db. nudder word for "terrorist" plz.

Re: Can you call it \'terrorism\' if no one is scared?
 

Dylan's Alias

good input, thanks. Orwell is always something to treasure.


Just to be clear, I don't want to soften and make fuzzy what's done, I just want a term that is either more appropriate, or that belittle the hateful idiots that do this stuff. Preferably both if there's such a phrase.

I have a problem in making these guys scary monsters we are in a perverse way glorifying them which in turn feeds the whole thing and generates more people blinded to the actuality of murder by their belief systems. I think one way to counter this is if we use terms and ways of talking about them that belittle and show a strong level of disgust at their behaviour, and shines a strong light on what they are actually doing - murdering.



I do like 'murderers'.




-- Blarg

To be clear, I'm not suggesting the 'terror' is not around because these were failed attempts. I'm sure if they'd been more devestating, the reaction would have not been more more 'terror'. More anger, more sorrow of course, but not more terror. You get me?