Social structure and teror
Posted here Sunday, March 21, 2004 at 8:41:02 AM 
We have a social structure,which means we each have some local friends and work connections, not many.we don't know the mayor o city council,we hire people to do the stuff or us, keep the electricity going, the gas flowing,all people whom we don't know.Terrorism arises within tis framework. The ethos of terror is very complex,having to do with ambition and power and perception, and long historical rivers of symbol and meanings,all mixed with human nature.
Technology has fundamentally shifted the distribution of effectiveness. before incursion into Iraq,some in the military were talking about "the super empowered individual",which meant individuals with extreme tech and extreme money, or both. Perhaps with such people around we need to rethink social structure. the current trend is to put more stress on security as police and military, but maybe we are fundamentally flawed and in neglecting community, a world where each knows many, we have set up a response that only provokes en more hostility.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1174502,00.html
Forget the idea of al-Qaeda as a coherent fighting group, or even a flag of convenience. Call it what you will - 'Islamist', 'Salafi' or 'Jihadi' - it hardly matters. According to some intelligence experts, they do not wish to be understood.
For an increasing number of young Muslims, resistance to the western values is now a way of life. Most are not terrorists and those who are do not accept the term, because they believe they are fighting imperialism by western infidels.
As the investigators continued yesterday trying to piece together details of the terror network in Europe, the reverberations from the Madrid blasts swept America and Britain. The terrorists had scored a spectacular victory, ousting the Spanish Prime Minister and a key ally over the war in Iraq.
New security measures were being deployed to protect trains and tunnels from suicide bombers, and London announced a huge increase in the number of intelligence officers being deployed to hunt the enemy. They have one major problem: they are fighting a mindset, not an army, and nobody has yet patented a technique to read minds.
'At first we thought we were up against an organisation,' one western intelligence source told The Observer. ' Something with a definable body and head. In fact, the war on terror is being fought against an idea. That does not make it any easier.'
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