[Reader-list] Is the singular Rhetoric of Terror flawed?

[Partha Dasgupta]

Dear Taha,

Before we start running around like a dog chasing it's tail, let's segregate
two different aspects of a 'terrifying' event. To keep things in scope,
let's take something simple like a lightning strike.

If I was struck by lightning (or it came close to me), would certainly be
terrified - or perhaps dead.

However, to identify the event / person / group behind the act that scared
me as a 'terrorist' would first have to be able to define it / them as
thinking individuals who planned the event.

This you too have included in the definitions that you included.

Taking that into consideration, whom are you pointing at as the thinking
party that caused the flood ?

Rgds, Partha
........................


On 10/01/2009, Taha Mehmood <2tahamehmood at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Kshmendra, Dear Rakesh,
>
> Thank you for your posts.
>
> We seem to be moving in the range of ad hominem arguments and I have no
> desire to be dragged into that.
>
> So for the sake of reinstatement of my views kindly allow me to present my
> thoughts again.
>
> 1. Events related to loss of human life, property, and livelihood are
> happening in our country.
> 2. These events are framed and articulated by our media.
> 3. Media frames some of these events as 'Terror' and 'Terrorism' others are
> not given this tag.
>
> when I say -Terror- I refer to the following interpretation-
>
> c.1375 "great fear," from O.Fr. terreur (14c.), from L. terrorem (nom.
> terror) "great fear, dread," from terrere "fill with fear, frighten," from
> PIE base *tre- "shake" (see
> terrible<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrible>).
> Meaning "quality of causing dread" is attested from 1528; terror
> bombingfirst recorded 1941, with ref. to German air attack on
> Rotterdam. Sense of
> "a person fancied as a source of terror" (often with deliberate
> exaggeration, as of a naughty child) is recorded from 1883. The Reign of
> Terror in Fr. history (March 1793-July 1794) so called in Eng. from 1801.
> O.E. words for "terror" included broga and egesa.
>
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=terror&searchmode=none
>
> and  by Terrorism my interpretation is informed by the reading below-
> terrorism <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism> [image:
> Look
> up terrorism at
> Dictionary.com]<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorism>1795,
> in specific sense of "government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in
> France" (1793-July 1794), from Fr. terrorisme (1798), from L. terror (see
> terror <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terror>).
>
> "If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in
> a
> time of revolution is virtue and terror -- virtue, without which terror
> would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent."
> [Robespierre, speech in Fr. National Convention, 1794]
>
> General sense of "systematic use of terror as a policy" is first recorded
> in
> Eng. 1798. Terrorize "coerce or deter by terror" first recorded 1823.
> Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to
> Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine -- earlier it was used of
> extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French
> Revolution (1795) -- from Fr. terroriste. The tendency of one party's
> terrorist to be another's guerilla or freedom fighter was noted in ref. to
> the British action in Cyprus (1956) and the war in Rhodesia (1973). The
> word
> terrorist has been applied, at least retroactively, to the Maquis
> resistance
> in occupied France in World War II (e.g. in the "Spectator," Oct. 20,
> 1979).
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=terror&searchmode=none
>
> 4. I was curious that why does one type of event is constructed as
> -Terrorism- or -Terror- while the other not?
>
> Warm regards
>
> Taha
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-- 
Partha Dasgupta
+919811047132