Editorials
‘Terrorism’ – A Double Edged Sword
Volume 29 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: March 19, 2015
INTRODUCTION
This reflective essay serves as an introduction to a four piece section starting on page 10, titled ‘The Aftermath of Charlie Hebdo’. It looks at the recent ‘terrorist’ attacks from unconventional angles as an aid to deeper analysis of the meaning of this ongoing global shift.
The recent targeted assassinations in Paris of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo reveals a pattern of retribution which is not without rationale.
The ‘discussion’ of the overall causes and purposes of the overall situation per se have only now begun to reach a level of objectively useful analysis.
INTRODUCTION
This reflective essay serves as an introduction to a four piece section starting on page 10, titled ‘The Aftermath of Charlie Hebdo’. It looks at the recent ‘terrorist’ attacks from unconventional angles as an aid to deeper analysis of the meaning of this ongoing global shift.
The recent targeted assassinations in Paris of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo reveals a pattern of retribution which is not without rationale.
The ‘discussion’ of the overall causes and purposes of the overall situation per se have only now begun to reach a level of objectively useful analysis.
Initially, by and large, it consisted principally of histrionics of a certain nature, the kind deliberately inculcated for reactionary political purposes. As Robert Fisk says, the incessant use of the term ‘terrorism’ is a calculated ploy in the mainstream media, while conveniently overlooking ‘state terrorism,’ which has usually provoked specific attacks.
It is proving to be the collective version of the one-man theory of political assassinations, such as Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut killer. Upon closer examination, none of these three designated terms turned out to be true.
2.
What seems most significant about the Paris hit on the magazine is that the target was an alternative small media.
The defiant stance immediately taken by the magazine, the refusal even for a moment to consider how it could have been prevented, seems part of the lost opportunity to reflect more deeply and systematical outside the box, in the direction of tactful discretion around the tragedy.
The articles in the "Features" section written in the vein of the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo are offered in the hope of engendering fresh reflection.
The assumption in the first reporting was that the hit was arbitrary, virtually unanticipated and therefore would have happened anyway at some other ‘innocent’ target. It is lumped in under the umbrella subjective term ‘terrorism’ which serves the purposes of ruling reactionary forces.
The western intelligence community had a field day. All their ‘I told you so explanations’ have been moved off the back burners and occupy the pivotal media commentary chairs of interpretation.
3.
This fuels the acceptance of the Canadian federal government moving too swiftly to take over all sorts of access they have coveted to control with blanket measures. It is a superb example of how newspeak can be utilized by the ruthless to issue themselves carte blanche arrangements. They are not to be trusted with such a delicate issue as national security. The very methods betray their intent.
Their very attitude has provided the occasion of the difficulty. Their crass calculations are paying the sort of dividends, previously only in their dreams. Anything to enhance the increase of their powers in strategic areas of governing. Do you have any questions to my answers approach.
Just when their economic planning fortunes are faltering a la the Alberta tar sands, they move to distract and gain advantage in this other key area. Ironically the economic difficulties in the form of radically falling oil prices also originates in the Middle East. These were to be their capitalist allies who are now perhaps wielding the ultimate weapon against their interests.
By equating such capitalistic interests with western democracy, the anti-capitalistic anti-imperialist attacks are portrayed in a self-serving way by those who have been undermining democratic traditions more systematically that even 'terrorist' attacks.
One can easily recognize this convenient scrambling for higher moral ground as paltry cover against difficulties of their own design and making.
This storm of their own making could very well blow away all their carefully constructed cover. Their plans could very well be perceived to have backfired. The understanding of this unravelling is the very perspective from which the public must be protected.
Proper moral and political analysis requires an independence of perspective that can no longer be relied upon to be available in the mainstream media, thus the deeper irony of the hit on Charlie Hebdo
4.
Prophetic Catholicism has carefully locked down over the decades a moral analysis perspective based on gospel values, social justice analysis and the accumulated church social teachings. Catholic social analysis consistently depicts western corporate capitalism and its incipient decadence at the root of global underdevelopment and an unjust social order worldwide.
It is a spiritual analysis, religious in nature and as such is not that different in content from the Islamists, who identify the same decadent corruption of the truth as their root cause and motivation.
The main difference is that the Christian path espouses radical non-violence as the key to a revolutionary social order otherwise known as The Kingdom of Peace and Justice.
Those who have carefully followed and contributed to this path have regularly and systematically been discredited as hopeless dreamers, communist agents and other epithets.
Discrediting of such prophetic figures even within the church by right wing forces has come to be typified in Canada by the treatment of Archbishop Charbonneau of Montreal, Basilian Father Gene Cullinane, NDP Member of Parliament Father Bob Ogle and here on Vancouver Island Bishop Emeritus Remi De Roo.
These right wing forces have been in charge of the Catholic Church since the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978 and Canada over the last decades. With the election of Pope Francis, a thoroughgoing social justice advocate is at the helm of the church. His systematic leadership on this question of so-called terrorist attacks will be significant. His Jesuit brothers in Latin America were similarly murdered for their political stands and beliefs based on Catholic social teaching.
5.
Political not religious rationale is at the root of the difficulties today. When the prime minister misspeaks that the plots are being hatched in the basements of mosques, he both betrays his ignorance and displays the scapegoating that suits his own systematic mandate.
When seasoned Middle eastern war correspondent Robert Fisk was in Victoria in 2012 he cautioned against the propaganda purposes behind the term terrorists preferring Islamists instead. This indicates that the extreme politics of fringe religious elements was the question not the religion itself.
The role of ‘state terrorism’ in provoking the rise of Islamist extremism has been a principal theme of his life’s work, as explained in his international best seller The Great War for Civilization – the Conquest of The Middle East. The role of state terrorism in the mainstream media discussion is a telling omission.
Western Capitalism. in the prophetic Catholicism perspective, is an irredeemably corrupt system. Now that any viable conventional symbolic substitute system such as Marxist or Fabian socialism has seemingly been laid to rest by the events of 11/89, a much fiercer more rudimentary foe against western decadent capitalism has arisen marked by the dynamics of 9/11.
The collapse of communism triumphantly headlined by the New York Times had to be quickly followed by its mirror twin tower, the collapse of capitalism from both internal and external causes. Few on the socialist left seemed to have anticipated this sort of successful program of attack on its strident moral nemesis.
Given the parallel elements of analysis within prophetic Catholicism to the Islamist vision of destroying the great Satan of western decadence, was the current collapse so unpredictable? Can the moral chaos and the injustice of the system based so transparently on greed actually ever to have been expected to survive spiritually or actually?
Any study of the cynical attitude toward capitalism underlying the Russian adaptation of the system, with its 22 oligarchs virtually handed all the resources of the soviet empire, and then President Putin’s ruthless control of the 22 and his personal imperial gain from that domination, will reveal how much of the global community were fooled by the motives and purposes of neo-liberalism in the 1980s and 90s.
It will be interesting to see what Pope Francis will have to say in his ongoing reflections. Elements of his first social encyclical may well prove a helpful blueprint for the emergence out of the current morass.
Historically, the world is in the midst of the latest of its 400-year-cycle of paradigm shifts. The economic, environmental and political crisis at hand and the inevitable shift in the very underpinnings of society is our backdrop to the latest dramatic developments.
Salvation history is the key thread for people of faith through all of this. Analysis of the root causes of terrorism reveals how the hand of Grace is being worked out in our times.