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the category terrorist is a problem--it entails a view that refuses to think about possible motives, that actions could be understood as political--regardless of how appalling one might find them--once you remove the possibility that these are political acts, then it becomes easy to fill in the blanks with terms like evil.
there are good books out there on this term, its uses, its functions.
it would be better to think about what kind of conditions exist for people that would drive them to such nihilist acts as 911 and work to eliminate those conditions. but that requires differentiated thinking and analysis and does not permit of the good guys/white hats vs bad guys/black hats idiocy of bushworld. people who commit these actions are not merely driven into fits of intense snippiness because they are jealous of american consumer goods.
and these folk do not have a monopoly on screwing up. i would not take any solace in ineptness. but i would expect that until the americans can start thinking and acting in a different way about the world they are such a big part of creating, such actions will always be possible.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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