Politics and Terrorism

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“In theory, terrorists could obtain viruses, nukes, and the like from black markets, but these seem to be confined to James Bond movies and newspaper articles trafficking in rumor and speculation. They could also obtain weapons of mass destruction from one of the very few states that have such weapons and would like to see Israel or the United States suffer, but any leader pondering such a move has to consider that if his role in an attack were uncovered, his country would quickly be reduced to rubble.”

Overuse of Fear in Political

We often see politicians use fear in their campaign. It usually works. After 9/11, the President Bush was seen as a heros for striking back at terrorists. The Republican had used fear to promote their popularity for years. The tactic is simple: Promote fear and offer help. But, perhaps, they overuse it. The American feels safer but not safe. They got tired of the Republican and went for the Democrat. Barak Obama won the election in 2008.

The Aim of Terrorists is Terror

“Terrorists are not formidable foes. If they were, they would fight using other means. It is precisely their weakness that leads them to carry out the slaughter of innocents—the one form of attack available to even the feeblest combatant. In itself, such slaughter is unlikely to deliver a serious blow to the enemy. But it does generate fear, and fear can inspire reactions that terrorists hope will advance their cause.”

Terrorists always have two goals: Political goals and tactical goals. Most of terrorists rarely succeed in their political goals. But most of them can achieve tactical goals in three following ways: Revenge, renounce, and reaction. They want to revenge for what they think it’s unfair. They renounce to establish a good image for themselves and/or pose a bad image for their target. Renunciation helps them recruit new forces. Finally, reaction is up to the enemy. The goal is to provoke the target to over-react. For example, the target may pour a large portion of fiscal budget into military, and cripple its own economy.

“The terrorists wouldn’t destroy America; The terror would.”

Attacking the Terror

If the goal of terrorists is to create terror (not to destroy building), we should deal with or attack the terror that the terrorists want to create. We should convince the public not to be in fear, because being in fear make us do stupid things. And, that’s what the terrorists want.

SOURCE: The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain 

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Book or Audiobooks?

Personally, I prefer audiobooks. It's fun, and I can listen when I'm doing something else. It also makes other activities (e.g., jogging) a lot more fun. For more detail about audiobooks, please read [this post].

There is one more reason that may encourage you to go for the audiobook version. You can get it now for FREE. Audible offers you a free trial for 14 days. Even if you get the book and cancel the subscription right away (so that you don't have to pay), you can keep the book. And, don't worry if you lost the audiobook file. Just log into audible.com. You can keep downloading the over and over again.

   About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make  notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for.

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.