It seems to me that one possible common thread is a fear of being subsumed in a larger culture. The French and Northern Irish don't want to be Anglicized. The Basques don't want to become Spaniards. Bin Laden doesn't want to be Americanized.
> But aside from whatever motivates a given terrorist group, they usually,
> I suspect, for their own morale need to feel that there is some sort of
> popular basis for their actions. Thus while quite possibly Bin Laden (as
> well as many but not all of his followers) does not give a shit about
> the Palestinians -- it is also possible that without the repression of
> the Palestinians as a context he would not have been able to mount a
> complex or protracted terrorist campaign.
I agree. But saying that the Palestinian crisis is part of the problem is a lot different than saying that the root cause of the problem is poverty or inequality.
>...
> Name names.
In this case I was responding to an article by Robert Hunter Wade:
"Slow economic growth and vast income disparities breed cohorts of partly educated young people who grow up in anger and despair."
Naomi Klein:
"Have the issues brought to the public consciousness by the anti-globalise movement become more or less present in the media since September 11?
If anything September 11 has made it easier to talk about poverty and inequality and democracy,"
UN Environment Chief: http://www.gci.ch/DigitalForum/digiforum/articles/ens_2001/unenviron.html
"It is the forces of poverty, environmental degradation and hatred that give birth to the intolerance that can lead to fundamentalism and terrorist acts, Klaus Toepfer said today."
Ms Krista van Velzen (Scottish socialist) http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TOL111A.html
"emphasized world wide poverty breeds terrorism."
M. Zaki Azam: http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/15/ebr10.htm
"There are many contributory factors to terrorism and the most critical is, the 'injustice galore' -being caused on a global basis. Hence the 'Operation' seems very timely. In the main, three streams serve as the spawning grounds for terrorism. The first and foremost is economic."
>...
> But this sort of free floating attack on "some leftists" or "the left"
> is simply offensive and pointless.
I responded to a particular article. Nevertheless, there is nothing wrong with attacking an erroneous idea in a forum where one expects to find defenders of it. If we agree on lbo-talk that the idea is erroneous and politically damaging then we can go forth and spread the word among leftists in general. If we don't agree then we should discuss it.
Paul Prescod