#1
The author fails to mention or refer to the potential of advanced USVS as anti-Sub, anti-Surface Ship, anti-DEAD, + general LR land attack, espec vee "dual/multi-use", "tranformer/transformation" NT.
On a separate note, looks like the Russians were once again premature in scrapping their "Typhoon" heavy subs, as opposed to using them for NT testbeds.
[Dawn] IN a report titled 'The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism,' published in 1999 by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, social scientists had warned that "Al Qaeda's expected retaliation for the US cruise missile attack against Al Qaeda's training facilities in Afghanistan on Aug 20, 1998, could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation's capital."
Thus, even before 9/11, social scientists had come to grips with the etiology of terrorism, but 9/11 accelerated the process. The PsycINFO database, the largest psychology database in the world with entries dating back to the 1880s, shows that post-9/11 research on the phenomenon surpassed that of all the past years combined.
Several findings now find currency in social science, which suggest that compared to the ordinary citizen, forces of Evil do not exhibit unusually high rates of clinical psychopathology, irrationality, or personality disorders. Indeed, as shown by John Horgan in Terrorists, Victims and Society: Psychological Perspectives on Terrorism and Its Consequences, which has been edited by Andrew Silke, the archetypical "terrorist personality" is misconceived on shaky empirical grounds. In fact, sustainable terrorist activity requires a certain amount of ingenuity in evading the law, choosing targets, ensuring supplies of explosives and improvisation, and indeed a supply-chain management capability of a level not incomparable to a successful corporate manager running a successful company which also evades taxes, an analogy to the forces of Evil also evading the law in their own context.
Nasr Hassan put it succinctly during a 2002 lecture: "What is frightening is not the abnormality of those who carry out the suicide kabooms, but their sheer normality."
Another report, the American National Research Council's Terrorism: Perspectives from the Behavioural and Social Sciences, says: "There is no single or typical mentality -- much less a specific pathology of terrorists. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... forces of Evil apparently find significant gratification in the expression of generalised rage."
This rage sometimes relates to events close to the terrorist's perception horizon. Researcher Ariel Merari, for instance, found higher incidences of terrorist tendencies in Paleostinian jacket wallahs that had at least one relative or close friend killed or injured.
There is also a demographic profile. It has been shown time and time again that forces of Evil tend to belong to a male cohort between 15 and 30 years of age, the same that is likely to commit general crime, and the one least likely to be daunted by use of coercive force by the other side. Thus, it is not a coincidence that most commanders and diehard cadres of the Taliban in Pakistain tended to be within the same cohort.
Beyond that, there is no other template into which we can fit forces of Evil or their behavioural patterns. However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... ideology has a definite part to play. The influential thinker Nichole Argo argues that ideological beliefs such as religious extremism do not "go out" to mould individuals, but exist as "sets of ideas that 'are there', as if on the shelves of a supermarket waiting for someone to make them their own". Individuals who are not able to interpret their environment, or in other words do not find solace in the material world without these ideals, adopt this available ideology. It is not just the adoption of cut-thoat ideas which comforts such individuals, but core values such as fighting for life, and giving it up for dignity and equality also bestow an emotional reward which is critical in itself.
"We need to be asking new questions," she writes. "For what are normal individuals able to kill? A plausible answer is: their community, under threat. When does a person make costly sacrifices to do so? Within a social structure -- a terror cell, a military unit, a family, or group of friends -- that continually regenerates conviction to a cause, a feeling of obligation to do something about it, and a sense of shame at the idea of letting each other down. Whether one lands in a social group with religious-militant tendencies may be random. But the prerequisite for this path is perceived injustice".
We live in a connected world no matter where we are, and religious cut-throats are no exception. Argo narrates an interview with a turban who had joined the intifada because of television , reaching a conclusion that the ummah was threatened: "The difference between the first intifada and the second is television. Before, I knew when we were attacked here, or in a nearby camp, but the reality of the attacks everywhere else was not so clear. Now, I cannot get away from Israel -- the TV brings them into my living room...And you can't turn the TV off. How could you live with yourself? At the same time, you can't ignore the problem -- what are you doing to protect your people? ...We live with an internal struggle. Whether you choose to fight or not, every day is this internal struggle."
How many times have we seen programmes on television and inadvertently thought "this has happened to me". What we see on television will be tinged with more reality if we relate to it to begin with, even if we were watching fiction. Thus affective reactions and cognitive appraisals shape our perception of reality after experiencing media such as television. We tend to interpret characters onscreen compared to how we feel about the topic to begin with. Thus, if you felt an empathy with the images of what you perceive as your group under attack, there are bright chances that you would interpret these images as the truth.
In today's world, many of the religious cut-throats do not necessarily come from war zones. But like many fighters foreign to the conflict theatres to which they gravitate, they see images of injustice, or have friends or family 'there', and feel obligated to help out. Such is the alluring appeal of group solidarity.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/05/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
"There is no single or typical mentality -- much less a specific pathology of terrorists.
So anti-semitism is a figment of our collective imagination ?
Security: From leaks about the late Osama bin Laden ... who no longer has to waste time and energy breathing... to those detailing cyberattacks on Iran, a disturbing pattern of publicly disclosing classified material to give Barack Obama I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick... a political boost is emerging. Under this president, our enemies don't need spies.
The fact that the Allies in World War II had the ability to intercept and decode German and Japanese military transmissions, leading to critical military victories at Midway and elsewhere, remained a secret until long after World War II was over, and it didn't matter who knew it. "Loose lips sink ships" was then more than a clever wartime slogan.
Last week, the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... published insider accounts of Obama-administration policies, one involving "kill lists" of gunnies being targeted by drones. The other exposed our involvement in cyberwarfare attacks against Iran to disrupt its nuclear program.
The computer virus program, dubbed "Olympic Games," along with many counterterrorism policies and programs, was inherited from the administration of President George W. Bush.
But Bush knew how to keep a national secret and, unlike the incumbent, was aware that national security is more important than the next election.
Thanks to the Times article, details of the previously unknown operation are now known, including how the program was supposed to operate and the involvement of Israeli intelligence in it.
"It's a pattern that goes back two years, starting with the Times Square bomber, where somebody in the federal government, probably the FBI, leaked his name before he was captured," said Rep. Pete King, the GOP chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
"That's why he tried to leave the country -- he knew they were on to him." Calling the episode "amateur hour" at the White House, King said: "It puts our people at risk and gives information to the enemy."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
