Breaking News - Reports of an Ongoing Terrorist 'Incident' in Woolwich,London.

[Jacob]

Yeah this is what he wants the definition to be.  I mean there is no question the term is used by governments and the media for its own purposes but the term still has a pretty clear meaning and its not that.

My reading is that he's not saying that's what terrorism means, but that that's how the term is used.

[grumbler]

Yeah this is what he wants the definition to be.  I mean there is no question the term is used by governments and the media for its own purposes but the term still has a pretty clear meaning and its not that.

My reading is that he's not saying that's what terrorism means, but that that's how the term is used.

I think he is weaseling out of conceding that it is terrorism by modifying the definition of terrorism to include elements that, supposedly, "many argue" that terrorism "must" include.

It is a crap argument, meant solely to introduce his moral equivalency argument.  And that argument is introduced merely to support the idea that it is all the West's fault.

[mongers]

Terrorism seems like a quite useful and appropriate label for this murder. 

It has the virtue of allowing politicians to condemn the crime, say we will not be swayed and for the mass of the population to continue going about our daily lives in defiance of this or any other act of terror.

Rather than the endlessly playing with different word forms and positions that can't help but betray our own political bias, as the journalist did in the above item. Which might help to generate a divided response to this crime and give the terrorist's sympathisers the idea that their actions have had an effect. 

[jimmy olsen]

I'm inclined to agree with Brazen. The media frenzy and COBRA meetings just feed the egotism of these narcissistic losers who are best regarded as brutal murderers.

At the risk of being too cynical they also take away the headlines from Cameron's euro omnishambles.

I'm not sure where the powerful  need to label these events somes from. Whether it's terrorism or not is much less important immediately than whether the murderers acted as part of a group or by themselves.

It was Theresa May who summoned COBRA, wasn't it? She has her own agenda too.

She's obviously a pawn of Cobra Commander.

[Legbiter]

Was the London killing of a British soldier 'terrorism'?

What definition of the term includes this horrific act of violence but excludes the acts of the US, the UK and its allies?

Two men yesterday engaged in a horrific act of violence on the streets of London by using what appeared to be a meat cleaver to hack to death a British soldier. In the wake of claims that the assailants shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the killing, and a video showing one of the assailants citing Islam as well as a desire to avenge and stop continuous UK violence against Muslims, media outlets (including the Guardian) and British politicians instantly characterized the attack as "terrorism".

That this was a barbaric and horrendous act goes without saying, but given the legal, military, cultural and political significance of the term "terrorism", it is vital to ask: is that term really applicable to this act of violence? To begin with, in order for an act of violence to be "terrorism", many argue that it must deliberately target civilians. That's the most common means used by those who try to distinguish the violence engaged in by western nations from that used by the "terrorists": sure, we kill civilians sometimes, but we don't deliberately target them the way the "terrorists" do.

If any Islamoid savage wants to take said columnist and chop him into bite-sized pieces with a machete, I'll be very happy to go "No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam".