The Cosmopolite
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2010.07.27 21:39:00 -
[1]
While not a principal to this topic, I note that our name has been invoked nonetheless. People often complain about us 'taking over' GalNet threads yet it seems to be quite fine to conjure with our name regardless.
Leaving aside the whys and wherefores of this case, I think the Star Fraction's position on blowing up freighters packed with people is well-known: we abominate it. I think CAIN can confirm that but let us leave all that aside and let the disputants here continue while, hopefully, leaving us out of the matter.
The Cosmopolite
The Star Fraction Communications Portal |
The Cosmopolite
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
|
Posted - 2010.07.28 19:16:00 -
[2]
Well now, as it has been asserted repeatedly that this event partakes of the features of Fraction propaganda, I shall now comment on the matter.
What we are dealing with here is an attentat, which is to say a very violent act of propaganda of the deed which has as one of its aims the highlighting of a particular cause while also, in theory at least, striking at the foes of that cause. The cause is of course that of Minmatar liberation from enslavement of the body and mind by the Amarr Empire and the religion that exists to underpin and advance the interests of that empire.
There is a story told that, on the occasion of a much-publicised Minmatar attentat against the Amarr, a Gallente just back in his town from fighting in the Caldari-Gallente War, shouted from the housetops with the approval of his comrades, that human life is sacrosanct and must not be threatened, even in the cause of freedom. It appeared that he excepted the lives of Caldari and the cause of the Gallente in that war. Illogicality or hypocrisy?
So then, let us not have too much hand-wringing from such as us about the value of human life. There are only murderers party to this conversation. We have all killed and we no doubt shall all kill again. Is life then to be disregarded as a value? By no means. It is a horror whenever a sentient being is destroyed and all the myriad possibilities of the future are diminished by the scope of that personal infinity. If one has been killed it is a tragedy. If ten thousand have been killed it is ten thousand tragedies. Yet we are all willing to exercise deadly force on one grounds or another. Some of us, perhaps, more justifiably than others, and I would assert that the only justifiable violence is anarchist violence, but we all of us have the mark of the killer upon our brows.
Leaving aside the question of tragedy, the critical questions when dealing with an attentat are: Can it be justified as a proper use of force to answer force? Is it an economical use of force? Is it tactically sound? The question of the use of force at all requires there to be some existing violence to which it is a response. The continuing state of slavery in which billions toil and to which any adherent of the Amarr religion is party seems to me to establish the basic grounds by which a resort to force may be justified.
The question of the economy of force û which is not a puerile concern with how many bullets are used û is more important in many ways. Is it a necessary and efficient use of force, not going beyond that which is justifiable? One might observe that if Minmatar freedom-fighters killed 28,985 agents of subversion in, say, 20,000 separate acts of violence it is possible, at the very least, that very many entirely innocent bystanders could be killed in so many actions. That said, many such actions were carried out very efficiently with minimal civilian casualties by agents of the Elders at the time of the attempted liberation of the slaves of the Amarr Empire. The more penetrating question of economy of violence is whether or not it is necessary and efficient to kill all these people to achieve the aims of the attentat.
Then we come to the question of whether it is tactically sound to proceed in such a way given a particular aim. In truth, the question of justification and economy are intimately bound up with tactics. A teasing apart of the strands can aid understanding but the simple fact is that one's tactics are selected to achieve a certain aim and from that aim flows justification and economy of means. If this act intended no more than the execution of 28,985 potential agents of subversion then in many ways the question of tactics is answered. Yet it didn't intend only that. No attentat intends only the immediate result of the violence. The publicising of the event is part and parcel of the attentat. In that respect was it tactically sound, and therefore justified, as an act of violence? We shall see.
The Cosmopolite
The Star Fraction Communications Portal |