On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 7:04 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > On Monday 22 Dec 2008 10:26:38 am Deepa Mohan wrote: > > .terrorism is not just bombs and direct > > murder...trade and cultural terrorism works > > Deepa, that is fudging the meaning of terrorism and I disagree with that > type > of fudging. > > The word can be (and is) fudged in two ways. > > One is to apply the word terrorism to a broad swathe of actions so that the > attacks on Mumbai somehow become comparable to an act of business monopoly > or business intmidation. While many might be tempted to agree that > Microsoft > should be called a terrorist organization for monopolist practices, I > believe > that is trivializing the gravity of terrorism. > > I would describe this fudging as an act of "adjectival terrorism". It > clubs > a wide variety of acts under the word terrorism by creating new forms of > terrorism like "financial terrorism" and "cultural terrorism" that stand > shoulder to shoulder to be equated and counted along with your common or > garden "murderous terrorism" of guns and bombs. A moral equivalence is > created between all of these - after all they are "terrorism" of one sort > or > other, cooked up by clever adjectives. If US displays cultural terrorism, > it > is OK (perhaps even "natural") for the culturally terrorised to respond > with > guns and bombs terrorism. One entity must stop cultural terrorism if the > other is to stop terrorism of the guns and bombs type. Arundhati Roy's > critics often accuse her of implying just this and being a "serial > explainist" by creating inane equivalence of this type. > > The other is to narrow the meaning of terrorism down to such a fine point > that > the word is used only when convenient. MJ Akbar has written a fine article > in today's Deccan Herald about this - but the site is offline (perhaps > because of cut undersea cables) > > But I have scanned the article and uploaded it here > http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a11/cybersurg/terror-mja.jpg > > shiv > > OK, I will read the article and come back to rejoin the combat, sorry, discussion! :)
Deepa.
