On Thursday, November 22, 2001, at 02:12 , PNFPNF@aol.com wrote:
> or, did any of you happen to see last night's (Wednesday's) "Law and
> Order"? I only caught the end, but in it the hero (played by ex-"I'll fly
> away's" liberal lawyer) confronts 20-something "Coyote"'s webmaster,
> telling him it is his website's call to "eco-terrorism" that has inspired
> the teenage eco-activists (whom we in the last scene see in the courtroom)
> to set fire to an apartment complex, accidentally killing a person.
> It is a very scary attack on ecology activists (as if these were
> terrorists who, accidentally or otherwise, kill people), and on websites
> advocating [well, I'm not going to put the direct object on this sentence,
> since clearly this is only the first salvo in a still-vague attack on
> civil liberties].
> Oh, if anyone's interested--The webmaster makes a strawman argument or
> two (inc. "someone else would do it [if I didn't]" and explaining young
> people want social change, whereon lawyer says "teach them [other ways]
> to change things" whereon the webmaster says something to the effect
> "there's a war on and this is war". The teenage girl in court makes some
> statement like "we're ruining the earth, there's too many of us" as
> reason for their act.
> Paula
Paula,
I think that you are touching on a double edged sword that clutters up the
political land scape here in america. In this case the writers put
together
an episode that plays mix and match of 'eco-activism' and 'war language',
but they could just as well have selected 'anti-abortion' and 'war
language'
in which case we would be hearing from the 'rabid right' about the horrors
of the liberal media.
So a part of the problem remains, when is the use of 'war language' a
legitimate use of 'the right of free speach' - and when does it over step
the acceptable limits and become in fact incitement to the commission
of a felony. { murder, treason, arson, hoax anthrax attack, other }
Part of your concern, I fear, is that the Government has not been quite
as forthright as it could be about articulating who are 'terrorists' and/or
what really rises to the level of 'terrorist activities' - and it is
getting
even muddier with the current 'follow the money' approaches to neutralizing
'terrorist activities'. But that also has to do with the failure of various
'social activist groups' to make a clear and clean distinction between
funds
raised for 'strictly humanitarian purposes' and when and where and how
monies
are disbursed to deal with 'issues related to the armed faction'.
We never solved this 'debate' in the 'sixties' with regards to when, where
and how, it was time to escalate from mere rhetoric to 'military style'
operations and/or how to deal with 'war language' in general. So while I
may personally support the 'pie in the face' approach to public protest
as good old fashion political pranksterism, some of the 'security fears'
that are free floating in the current political climate makes that a
questionable tactic. Fortunately no one has to date decided to make the
pies dangerous, nor, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone on the
security details 'misread' the attack and shot first.
It would follow then, that we have the obligation to make sure that we are
clear about which symbolic approaches we use, and making sure that the
symbols
are readable to the wider audience out there. The tactics that we choose
need
to make sure that the message is not hidden beneath the easily confused
method
of presenting that message.
To provide the probably simpler to graps approach to this problem, allow
me to
illustrate from my disagreements with the 'anti-abortionists' - who like
to use
the phrase 'death camp' as a synonym for 'womyn's health clinic' - knowing
full
well that they are trying to invoke the emotional imagry of Hitler's KZ's.
This
offends me as a professional - since what I keep hearing is the simpler
message:
"there are all of these death camps out there,
and I personally do not have the Juevo's to take them out.
hence if they come after born persons, do not count on me
to defend liberty with My Life."
So I keep asking them, "why, if you believe that these are DeathKamps, are
you
still sitting on your BUTT?" - at which point we can move into how they
were
planning to honor in the breach our 'glorious and heroic fallen dead' who
actually DID something about the KZ's and paid with their lives.
But then again, I come from a culture where we do not give orders, but that
they are ones that we ourselves would do.
As such, there needs to as critical an analysis of our 'friends' and their
confusion of when, where and how, 'the war' started, and what is at stake
in 'the war', and, gosh, how do we go down that path of differenciating
the combatants from the non-combatants - all that heavy intellectual
lifting
that the current seated government remains either unable, or unwilling to
do.
Hum... what if the maxim:
"You are either a part of the solution,
or you are a part of the problem..."
were a reasonably good standard by which to analyse if advocating
'violence'
to achieve some political end, might not be the PRINCIPLE PROBLEM that
needs
to be addressed prior to kvetching about the merits of the political end
itself?
ciao
drieux
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