they're both pretty cool.

I think I'm just having problems with your gang example. Gangs are motivated by personal interests like money or power, not some actual political change in society like terrorists are. Gangs can become terrorist organizations, but your example is of common crime I think.

I mean, is there not a clear difference here? Also your gang against gang example would be more comparable to state attacking state which would be just aggressive war?

i remember watching the Pirate Bowl in a bar in san antonio when one of those came on, the booing was deafening.

I don't agree with the distinctions you are making. As Catherine Wheel pointed out when I aimed too narrowly trying to figure out what he was saying before, "politics" is not just governments and international relations. Politics is just the interaction and power relations of human beings, really, at least according to Aristotle. All our actions are political. You are being a little reductive in saying that gangs are motivated by "personal interests," as if they do not foster the same fundamental ideas of community, cause, ideology, ingroup/outgroup, blah blah that any other type of organization does. You might think gangs are terrible and I wouldn't argue, but they seek to serve the same social purposes as any other example of humans organizing themselves into groups. There is no such thing as a "terrorist organization," just an organization that uses terrorism to get what it wants. If you are killing just to kill, you are not a terrorist. And states can use terrorism too. It's just a tactic. Like guerilla warfare, assassinations, missile strikes, espionage.

It might seem small to you compared to get your fucking troops out of my country, but shooting a dude up to get his bros to stop selling on your corner is still a political goal. It involves power and money.

Oh okay we've fallen into that black hole of trying to define terrorism. You have a degree in Political Science, right? Surely you've studied the difference between terrorism x guerilla warfare x freedom fighters etc. Also how by definition States can't use terrorism. I was focusing on these differences I suppose.

Your idea of the concept of politics is more broad and all-encompassing than what bignothing and I had in mind.

I don't have a degree in political science, I was one class short. But terrorism is a tactic, you aren't going to find anyone who seriously studies terrorism and thinks it is like an ideology or a type of organization. That shit all came from Bush and the knuckle dragging media. I'm not sure where you are getting that states can't use terrorism. Remember how the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japanese cities to coerce the military into surrendering?

well tbh I still don't know how you are defining your terms, you have been incredibly vague and opaque in what you mean by "terrorism" and "organized crime"

I mean at first I thought you meant terrorism to mean terrorism to affect national and international politics, but then you refuted me when I used political to refer to only the workings of large organizations of people. Then I stepped back and offered that I really agreed with you and had been confused, but I do usually think of political as being much more broad than just NGOs and states, but then you refute that too and say I am looking at more widely than you

so I am totally lost

Organized crime is motivated by finance. They use fear and intimidation to achieve their goal which is financial. Terrorists groups are motivated by political upheaval. They use fear and intimidation to achieve their goal of political change.

you fail to recognize the very, very extreme economic factors underneath the surface of why terrorists want political upheaval. This is 2014, can't we recognize that economics is pretty much at the bottom of everything?

The terrorism going on right now in Africa is motivated by religion.

honestly I am tired tonight and don't want to debate this anymore until tomorrow (although we should all pat ourselves on the back for having a debate without cursing at each other or being terrible), but I do think that most terrorism, like most political violence in general (by this I just mean violence which seeks to change power structures) has a big old root in money.

uuuuuurrrrrg can't not respond

I am going to assume you are talking about Nigeria and surrounding areas? That's what's been in the news I guess recently. I would argue (and so would some IR guys), that just because what you see on the surface is Islam vs. Christianity, that does not mean religion is the root cause. Religion and ethnicity are often the fault lines along which populations split in times of extreme economic turmoil.

a confederacy of dunces

redbreegull is a scrawny ol' windbag.

I'm working on beefing up

oh great. he is sleep-posting again.

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What if I told you all that capitalism is organized crime?