[WikiEN-l] Terrorism

[Eric Demolli]

I would suggest to avoid the world terrorist to qualify people. After all
people change Arafat was a terrorist Menahem Begin was also a terrorist
before being a respected politician. A lot of ex-OAS members are today well
respected man in France but were clearly terrorists during the Algerian war.
Even if I'm quite sure than OBL is a terrorrist and will stay a terrorist
until the end of is life (is he's still alive), qualifying someone as
terrorist in is bio is implies a strong moral judgement. If you were
terrorist at 20 are you still a terrorist at 60 ?
A terrorist act can be defined in a neutral way. They are obviously
terrorist acts. The 9/11 is a terrorist action OBL is responsible for
several terrorist acts.

I hope I want be misunderstood, I'm not really at ease when I try to express
my POV on this subject in English.
Eric Demolli

.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 7:15 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism


> Toby Bartels wrote:
> >I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out,
> >but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute
> >when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement.
> >This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion.
> >And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position
> >is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement.
>
> And there is nothing wrong with making the statement better, It makes for
a
> better article.
>
> >It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say
> >that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a
> >terrorist.
>
> Why? Some things just go without saying because they are so pervasive.
That is
> common sense. Taking out attributed references to OBL being a terrorist
and
> then having to prove that he is (or is widely regarded as so) in order to
> have those references put back it, would be like having to defend
statements
> in our article on the Apollo moon landings that indicate that they
actually
> happened.
>
> When things go against common sense like that the burden of proof should
be on
> the opposing party. And don't give my any of the relativistic crap stating
> that there is no such thing as common sense - I don't buy it in this case.
We
> needn't entertain the the ravings of every kook by having to defend very
> obvious things.
>
> >In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the
> >west", and Ec may not know it in any case.  OK, so we're
> >wrong! But this is where NPOV comes in and says
> >"If people don't agree on the claim, then state the
> >reasons instead." Common knowledge cannot replace
> >NPOV when it's not, in fact, common.
>
> That's all nice and academic, but has little to do over the fact the OBL
is
> widely considered to be a terrorist in West. We could even add
*especially*
> in the United States too. Sorry, but polls don't exist for everything -
why
> would somebody think to have a poll on such an obvious thing? But his
article
> last time I saw it stated that he was the head of Al-Queda, which is
widely
> regarded as terrorist organization in the West. That is OK (but not ideal)
> with me.
>
> The same question applied to other people, such as Arafat, would be much
less
> clear cut.  Arafat at one time was considered to be a terrorist, but I've
> seen far fewer remarks to that effect since he changed hats from head of
the
> PLA to the PLO. So we could not state "in the West Arafat is widely
> considered a terrorist", because that would not be true (unless you parse
> "widely" liberally).
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
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