Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 18:49:27 -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: WTC Payoff [11 september] (was Re: oh my god the nasa shuttle blewup) Message-ID: <20030203183710.N63914-100000@pogo.caustic.org> In-Reply-To: <3E3F24FE.CB214F38@mindspring.com>
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On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Terry Lambert wrote: > Except that the media coverage didn't have and causative value. > An event that "looks good on camera" only works as well as your > ability to associate yourself with the event, so that the media > spotlight is on you/your issue/whatever. assuming you WANT the association. if you don't want, or don't care, and just want to create confusion and general fear, which seems to be one of the main objectives of the al Qaeda... > If they had called in and claimed credit, or told us what we > should stop doing to avoid it happening again, or what we should > do that we weren't doing, to avoid it happening again, then I > might agree with you. i'm not so sure. i grew up with various bomb threats and attempted bombings while in germany. many times, it was simply motivated by a dislike of americans. terrorism doesn't always have an aboveboard objective, or even one you'd really agree with as being rational. > As it is, it didn't. They apparently got some funding out of it, > by shorting the stocks of the airlines involved, through a stock > exchange in Germany, and that's about it. The shorting they did > doesn't touch the assets frozen as a result of the act, so it was > a *big* net loss for them. > > So what was the payoff? Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt would be payoff enough. instead of looking at the immidiate payoff, look at the long term. this wasn't something done for financial gain, not directly. if you are at war, you don't think directly in terms of financial gain. the WTC attacks were guerrilla warfare. inexpensive, fast, and not repeatable. -------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+ http://caustic.org/~jan jan@caustic.org "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends." -- Tom Waits To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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