colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (07/07/85)
["You're under arrest for resisting arrest!"]
First, can we drop the term "terrorist?" As I understand the word, it means
somebody who kills or destroys things just to frighten and dishearten people.
The Shi'ite hijackers are obviously political extortionists, since they're
using threats.
Everybody knows that it's hard to hit a moving target. Countries are
sitting ducks, because they're _fixed_ political organizations.
They're so fixed that in most of the world they even have geographical
borderlines.
In the computer age, fixity is the ultimate liability, and countries
are obsolete. As soon as we develop dynamic political alignments to
replace countries, the international extortionists will have nothing to
aim at.
--
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
BI: csdsicher@sunyabvagabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) (07/11/85)
From the Colonel's Collected Koans <904@gloria.UUCP>: > In the computer age, fixity is the ultimate liability, and countries > are obsolete. As soon as we develop dynamic political alignments to > replace countries, the international extortionists will have nothing to > aim at. > -- > Col. G. L. Sicherman This is one of those great truths whose opposite is also a great truth. The demise of the nation-state has been predicted with every technological breakthrough of the last 150 years. Most enlightened people in 1900 agreed that WWI cannot possibly happen: humanity has surely transcended those kinds of tribal squabbles with world trade, instant communications, interdependence and what not. As to extortion in the computer age, what we are most likely to see in our lifetime is new forms of 'network warfare': sabotaging electronic funds transfer networks or mucking with economic models at Chase or the Treasury. (Anyone got a path to gosplanvax?) ----- Gabor Fencsik {dual,nsc,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor