Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Well, it sounds absurd. But so does the attempt to denounce such people as just “cowardly”.

My point is about language and politcal culture and convention.

And the use of cliché tends to defuse the emotionality of the event. To make it somehow easier to assimilate.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2025 7:57 pm

Youngian wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2025 3:01 pm IRA made "cowardly attacks." Would brave attacks have been OK and what was the criteria that would change a cowardly attack into a brave one?

This. Emphatically this. I have long wondered about this boilerplate supposed denunciation of terrorist and other atrocities as “cowardly”. Why on earth is such an act deemed to be “cowardly”, and why should that be such a very bad thing? Apart from anything else, it seems to me that (for example) undertaking a mission to blow yourself, and your target victims, to pieces by means of a “suicide vest”, necessitates a measure of courageous fortitude, however deluded by religious fanaticism, that is quite a long way from being “cowardly”. Is cowardice really such a characteristic as to warrant this maximal denunciation ?

Although the British devised modern guerilla warfare tactics in the Peninsula Wars, when it was used against them successfully by anti colonial forces it was a different matter. Sneaky, not playing the game, old boy.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2025 8:30 pm Well, it sounds absurd. But so does the attempt to denounce such people as just “cowardly”.

My point is about language and politcal culture and convention.

Well what would you call it then? Driving a pick up truck into a street full of people killing 14 people I'd call that the actions of a sociapath and a coward.

With you on sociopathy, but not, necessarily, on cowardice. What was this terrorist supposed to be afraid of confronting?
It clearly was not the all but certain prospect of meeting his death in a shoot-out with security forces. So where's the cowardice?

Is it not an appeal to honour, in some sense?

Abernathy wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 8:56 am With you on sociopathy, but not, necessarily, on cowardice. What was this terrorist supposed to be afraid of confronting?
It clearly was not the all but certain prospect of meeting his death in a shoot-out with security forces. So where's the cowardice?

I think it's the idea that the people being attacked, the 'innocent civilians', don't have a chance to 'fight back'. But that just shows how absurd the the mental gymnastics becomes when you think about this stuff in such a shallow fashion.

Oh right so because I think he's a coward that's a sign of my thinking about it in a shallow fashion.

Please remember Denis Healey’s first law of holes.

'Coward' has become the lazy-thinking alternative meaning for 'without honour'.
We are cursed to live in times where words have very loose meanings..

And I agree that one can be a right bastard and brave at the same time. We have become so addicted to clichés that 'brave' is always used in positive settings and cannot easily be understood by basic users in any other context (eg Sir Humphrey Appleby). In fact we have a whole raft of words which are now so imbued with false values that they have lost almost all strength.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 3:42 pm Oh right so because I think he's a coward that's a sign of my thinking about it in a shallow fashion.

I was a general observation rather than anything addressed at you personally, but fel y Saeson yn gweud, if the cap fits..

RedSparrows wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 9:15 am Is it not an appeal to honour, in some sense?

Yes very similar to the '60s screenwriters cliche "Took the easy way out".

Whenever terrorists struck in the past and politicians were on the telly, their accusations of cowardice often struck me as weak insults because, rather pathetically, that was the best they could muster. Just insults which would never shift the dial. If anything, it just cemented an understanding that they were following deeply held convictions.

Setting off bombs to kill children and horses has nothing to do with bravery or a lack of it. It's just murderous, delusional cuntery, as is the decision to wipe out a few souls before the eternal disappointment of there not being too many eager virgins on the other side.

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 4:07 pm 'Coward' has become the lazy-thinking alternative meaning for 'without honour'.
We are cursed to live in times where words have very loose meanings..

And I agree that one can be a right bastard and brave at the same time. We have become so addicted to clichés that 'brave' is always used in positive settings and cannot easily be understood by basic users in any other context (eg Sir Humphrey Appleby). In fact we have a whole raft of words which are now so imbued with false values that they have lost almost all strength.

I think if you drive a pick up into a crowd full of people then you be said to be without honour. Going back to your earlier point what did you expect the New Orleans police chief to say? I mean the police in Magdeburg used similar language so it's not like it's unique to America to use evil or cowardly to describe a terrorist attack.

Anyway getting away from semantics about language. Here's a portrait of the man accused of doing the attack.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ans-attack

Military records and media interviews are painting a clearer portrait of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old Texas man accused of crashing a truck into New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans, killing at least 14 people.

Jabbar served in the US army for 13 years, including a deployment to Afghanistan. On Thursday, the FBI said investigators believe Jabbar acted alone when he attacked the busy intersection of Bourbon and Canal streets. Officials had earlier said they believed Jabbar had accomplices.

The FBI has said Jabbar had a flag of Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group, on his truck and the bureau is treating the attack as an act of terrorism.

The FBI also announced that it had found no definitive link between the New Orleans attack and the explosion that occurred later on Wednesday outside a hotel owned by Donald Trump in Las Vegas.

Jabbar appears to have been born and raised in Beaumont, Texas.

He served in the army as a human resource specialist and information technology specialist from 2007 until 2015, according to an army official, and deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 4:07 pm 'Coward' has become the lazy-thinking alternative meaning for 'without honour'.
We are cursed to live in times where words have very loose meanings..

And I agree that one can be a right bastard and brave at the same time. We have become so addicted to clichés that 'brave' is always used in positive settings and cannot easily be understood by basic users in any other context (eg Sir Humphrey Appleby). In fact we have a whole raft of words which are now so imbued with false values that they have lost almost all strength.

Has anyone described either attack as genocide yet? Give it time.

No.

Oboogie wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2025 4:50 pm

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 4:07 pm 'Coward' has become the lazy-thinking alternative meaning for 'without honour'.
We are cursed to live in times where words have very loose meanings..

And I agree that one can be a right bastard and brave at the same time. We have become so addicted to clichés that 'brave' is always used in positive settings and cannot easily be understood by basic users in any other context (eg Sir Humphrey Appleby). In fact we have a whole raft of words which are now so imbued with false values that they have lost almost all strength.

Has anyone described either attack as genocide yet? Give it time.

That's a difficult one. There is actual genocide at one end - the attempt to eradicate, kill or destroy and entire category of people as a matter of policy and in an organised and industrialised manner, and there is mass murder in which a smaller (but still huge) number of people are killed, we don't have a handy term for just killing even more huge numbers of people in an organised and planned manner. Such as Israeli policy in Gaza, for example. Wholesale slaughter? What do we call it and remain true to the actual meaning of genocide.

Of course it is possible that Israel's intention is actual genocide, but that would require some industrialisation of the process. How about 'particularly bloodthirsty ethnic cleansing'?

For the last few years genocide has been increasingly used as a synonym for mass killing (with mass defined by smaller and smaller numbers), but in the last few months I've seen it used for events in which nobody died eg locking up the Farage rioters and imposing inheritance tax on farmers.

Seems to have become an euphemism for "getting rid of a way of life". Which if you're burning libraries and demolishing monuments and outlawing languages is fair enough. Bit more than telling people to pay some fucking taxes.

Indeed, I think Littlejohn had something to say about that in his magnum opus "To Hell in a Handcart". Along the lines of "Don't talk to me about culture; the only culture [travellers] have is thievery."