Three (Hypothetical) Terrorist Attacks

Three Terrorist Attacks I Worry About the Most: Jeffrey Goldberg:
The ambitious terrorist of this moment in history seeks not simply to kill large numbers of innocent people, or to terrify an even greater number of people. He seeks nothing less than to provoke the thing we have so far mainly been able to avoid: a clash of civilizations.


I was going to write this whole thing about the Book of Revelation, but it was terrible.  Just read the article please...it is fascinatingly disturbing!

Prison and Pain

This is not a picture from an Ikea catalog.  It is a picture of the newest prison in Norway, where Breivik might spend some time.  Time Magazine has dubbed this place the "World's Most Humane Prison." 

You might have heard about this, as it has been making the rounds lately, and often with much yelling and anger over the fact that a killer of children may have the opportunity to record a world class sounding hip-hop album (seriously) while law abiding citizens toils away free-styling on their laptop microphones.  I am not going to act like it doesn't get me riled up thinking about it as well.

But I will say that it has made me start wondering about the connection between pain and satisfaction.  Or maybe another way of saying it is: "Would the death of Christ have mattered as much if he died during a freak badminton accident in the Roman Empire's hottest new prison?" Our society runs on the belief that you do the crime, you do the time.  And many happily embrace the knowledge that in prison, scary things happen (warning: adult language and themes).  What is the threshold where our satisfaction meets the appropriate amount of pain (and did I word this last sentence oddly?)? 

Breivik the Christian

Andrew Sullivan: The difference is not in ideology, but in the move to violence. That move is, of course, a central, profound and vital one, and [Bill] O'Reilly's views of the world are in no way responsible for what just happened in Norway. But it is hard to see where O'Reilly would disagree with vast tracts of Breivik's ideology - except the resort to violence. Ideologically, there is scarcely any difference at all.


Damn.

Sullivan's critique (please read the whole thing!) begins from this Bill O'Reilly quote: Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith.


It is interesting what we are willing to attribute to an ideology or religion in relation to one's actions in the name of said ideology or religion. Was Stalin actually a communist? The history books certainly label him as such, but would Marx have agreed?  Sullivan brings up Bin Laden, whom certainly is painted at the very least as an Muslim extremist, but do all Muslims claim him as one of them?  


And what do we do when this question is posed for that which we one cannot renounce?  I have had more than a few people look at my ID card and comment that I look like Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer (I swear I do not look like him...), but it would make no sense for me to say something like, "Well there is no way that he is a true Asian.  Asians don't do that."  Wouldn't that be convenient Mr. O'Reilly?


-Tim