Also from Chatham House is an article worth a look- “Is this the age of Celebrity Terrorism” by Prof Paul Cornish, which starts:
“Quite apart from the scores murdered and the hundreds injured, what the Mumbai terrorists really wanted was an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion. In these terms, the attackers received as much attention as they could possibly have hoped for, and the Mumbai outrage can only be described as a very significant terrorist success.”
and goes several interesting places before concluding
“Welcome to the age of celebrity terrorism. The invitation to the world's D-list malcontents reads as follows: no matter how corrupt your moral sense, how contorted your view of the world, how vapid and inarticulate your ideas, how talentless you are and how exaggerated your grievance; an obsessive audience will watch your every move and turn you into what you most want to be, just before your death.”
As a friend wrote after I fwded this article:
“He's nailed something there. From Bash the Rich marches to SWP to celebrity stalkers to global Jihad, we must fill the emptiness with something. In a post modern world there is no longer any need to articulate a damn' thing. Just shop for it - off the peg.”
But of course, when the people who've been getting screwed lately because of the carbon emissions our parents put up into the atmosphere get properly pissed off, then it could all get more than mildly fugly...
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