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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Doug writes:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>> Foreign policy, British and American, is obviously a big part of
the<BR>> story, but these guys were British, and hardly poor. So the
mechanism<BR>> is a bit more complex than simple blowback.<BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And Michael P.:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> "don't lefties and liberals overdo the poverty breeds terrorism
line?"</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Part of the problem is accepting the blanket label,
terrorism, which is more often than not, loaded.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It is important to distinguish the popular
struggles that were branded terrorism (I am thinking of 20C. national liberation
struggles, primarily) and those individual acts of terrorism, like the
Unabomber, or indeed Timothy Macveigh.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Also, once popular movements can descend into
individual terrorism when they lose contact with their social
base. That happened in France in the early 20C. when the revolutionary
socialists were isolated by the legalisation of the trade unions. The
Bonnot Gang used terror to carry on their underground struggle in
increasing isolation as most French workers embraced legal unionism (See
Richard Parry's book for an over-sympathetic anarchist account). So to the
Irish National Liberation Army in the 1980s, which had carved out a popular base
to the left of the IRA were isolated by the latter's turn to the left. Less
constrained by popular expectation, and holding authority over its membership by
reckless encounters, the INLA descended into murderous feuding, which cost it a
whole generation of cadre.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And then there are those pseudo-revolutionary sects
that aped the military organisation of third world national liberation movements
more as a cover for their own lack of support, than because they were responding
to popular demands. I mean the Red Army Faction in Germany and Italy. In Italy,
in particular, these claimed from war-time Partisan militias that had been
isolated by the Italian Communist Party's constitutional politics. In Germany,
the actual roots of the RAF in '68 failure was more apparent.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>These latter movements were more a psycho-social
expression of the collapse of popular militancy than an expression of
it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My argument is that the Al-Qaeda 'movement' has
much more in common with the latter than with the national liberation movements.
It is a loosely-based coalition of usually western-based or cosmopolitan
intellectuals, who are characterised by their distance from popular struggle.
Their actions are largely arbitrary, because they reflect isolation rather than
movement. Their tactics are rightly called terroristic, because they relish
killing people and commonly demonise the masses as corrupt and unworthy
(somthing they have in common with the R.A.F. and Unabomber). </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>To consider this as a popular reaction against
Western policy seems to me to be wholly deluded. It is quite distinct from, in
fact isolated from, the militant opposition to American and British forces in
Iraq, even.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And if that's what Fox News is saying then Fox News
is a more trustworthy newssource than the LBO list.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>