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Date:      Mon, 3 Feb 2003 17:47:04 -0800 (PST)
From:      "f.johan.beisser" <jan@caustic.org>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
Cc:        Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, JacobRhoden <jrhoden@unimelb.edu.au>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: oh my god the nasa shuttle blewup
Message-ID:  <20030203173729.U63914-100000@pogo.caustic.org>
In-Reply-To: <3E3F1184.5C0A56AB@mindspring.com>

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On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Terry Lambert wrote:

> I find that extremely unlikely, actually, or the bad guys would already
> have won, since there are a lot of minimal effort things that you could
> do to disrupt the U.S. economy, if that was your target.  The WTC crash
> was a big deal politically and in terms of human interest, but it didn't
> significantly disrupt any of the underlying systems, to any real degree.

agreed.. except..

> It was an incredibly ineffective act.

no, it was remarkably effective.

if you're not going for the underlying systems (a difficult target to hurt
in any real meaningful way), you end up going for media coverage.
terrorism is effective because it creates FUD, and the WTC attacks were
just that.

if you want to create FUD in an entire country, you have to create
something unbelievable. it's not dropping bombs on people, it's creating
something so mediagenic that it can't be ignored. it has to look good on
camera.

i'm fairly convinced the timing of the impacts was intentional, designed
to get live media coverage over as much of the world as possible.

in that regard, it worked very, very well.

-------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+
  http://caustic.org/~jan                      jan@caustic.org
	"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for
	  my sham friends." -- Tom Waits


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