That is the near-universal definition, but I don't think it captures the essence of it.
The difference between terrorism and warfare is the degree of top-down control. Warfare is done in uniform, by people in a hierarchy.
The reason for the distinction is that there is somebody taking responsibility. You end a war by agreeing to a treaty with the top level. You can hold the top level responsible for violations of the rules of war.
Terrorism, by contrast, is harder to stop. There is no authority to end it. Even state-sponsored terrorism need not end when the sponsoring state agrees; they can find a different sponsor.
That doesn't make one morally worse or better than the other. It's just a distinction worth drawing, because it governs how you go about bringing an end to it.
The US law for terrorism is about attacks against it, and they combat those differently from how they'd go about fighting a war against a conventional enemy.
What the US is doing to Iran is almost certainly unlawful, but I think that calling it "terrorism" obscures the fact that there is an authority to end it. The attack is legal in its own terms -- it at least has a law, which terrorists do not.
Again, not better. Arguably, much worse. Which is why I find the definition problematic.
You're conflating terrorism with irregular warfare. The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was terrorism committed by regular forces; the French resistance blowing up a German supply train was non-terrorist action by irregular forces.
The US has constantly been at war for like 250 years. How can you conclude war is easier to stop than terrorism? Can we make the USA stop waging war? Because that would be a nice change.
Just take Iran, they agreed to a treaty with the top level of the USA. But the next top level ripped up the agreement and now is threatening total destruction of their civilization. Should Iran sign a new deal with that guy, and what's to stop him from tearing that up and bombing them again?
The US stopped individual wars. They went on to attack somebody else, but the host of the previous war was happy to see it over. That's why they negotiated a peace treaty, and the US mostly respected that. (Except with the native Americans.)
There is nothing to stop the next guy from changing his mind, but it generally doesn't happen.
It certainly could, and yeah, there's a really strong case that with the current administration the US has gone completely off the rails. My last comment was speaking generally about civilized countries. It doesn't account for rogue states, and the US is increasingly fitting that definition.
Can a rogue state commit terrorism by my definition? Not with a uniformed army. That's another part of my definition of terrorism: it puts civilians in jeopardy by hiding its combatants among them. Uniformed soldiers are legitimate targets, which means it's possible to fight back only against legitimate targets, even if those legitimate targets are committing acts that would otherwise be terrorism.
I don't think targeting civilians is a sufficient definition for terrorism, because militaries have been doing that since forever. It's basically part of war, even if we wish to pretend otherwise.
> The US stopped individual wars. They went on to attack somebody else, but the host of the previous war was happy to see it over.
Right, until they come back and attack again though. USA has invaded several countries multiple times including Iraq, Haiti, DR, Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua... Seems to me "terrorist" is just something states call the warriors of the people they themselves are terrorizing.
Frankly, the current administration is just recycling the propaganda and playbook of the bloodthirsty Neocons, so I don't see how this current administration is an aberration.
With the same logic, you could also justify bombing white house since they're clearly using weapons to destroy civilian infrastructure in other countries, and also murder civilians. That would be classified as a terror act though.
I'm sorry if my general discourse is grating in this thread/in general on HN. It really is just kind of who I am and how I figure things out for myself, I'm very off the cuff and unafraid of looking/being stupid if it wins me some knowledge. I think the point of my question is that I predict this is how the conversation is going to go in the next few days (if the bombs start dropping), and I guess I'm trying to predict for myself where this conflict is headed. Big picture, Strait of Hormuz is just one front on the war to get Iran to submit which as stated is to remove their ability to achieve the bomb (if you believe the initial justifications). I don't know if that sheds any light on what my goals were or if it gave you a migraine. Apologies if the second.
You can believe whatever you want but I actually don't believe that Iran would use that bomb offensively even if they have been threatening to do so. In that sense they would be no different than all but two other nuclear powers. Only one country has ever used nuclear weapons and only two countries have threatened to use them in recent memory. Iran was more or less bottled up until Trump decided to cancel the deal that was in place and since then it has been going down further and further. You don't escalate like this unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences and it is pretty clear that Trump had absolutely no plan post the initial bombings and has been winging it. That makes him super dangerous, not just to Iran but to pretty much the whole world.
This conflict has the potential to spiral out of control in ways that make my hair stand on end and to not put too fine a point on it, it's the first time in my life that I actually wonder if there will be a tomorrow as we know it because apparently some idiot thinks he has the power to decide over life and death for 100's of thousands of people and for once the person with that power is deranged enough that he might actually use it unprovoked. In a sane world this guy would be behind bars instead of at the top of the food chain.
The Strait of Hormuz was open 6 weeks ago and Iran was not as determined to 'get the bomb' then as they are now.
> as stated is to remove their ability to achieve the bomb
As stated by the people committing the violence today and threatening massive civilian death and destruction, Iran's ability to achieve the bomb was already destroyed many months ago.
Non proliferation is over and done with. Every country that can afford it and has the capability will have the bomb. There is no way this genie will go back in the bottle. And that means that a future nuclear war - if not today - is all but a certainty.
So I guess we just gotta bomb every country until they call uncle!
If the capability of making a bomb is enough to allow bombing them, and every country has the capability to make a bomb, than what is the rubric again? When do we stop bombing?
I don't how exaggerated this story is, but one of my buddies did his internship at TD. One of his skip managers told him if you know COBOL there are departments that will give you a blank cheque during salary ngotiation.
Yeah it's hard to say but I believe there's at least some truth to that. I took COBOL off my resume over a decade ago just to combat the volume of recruiters trying to drag me away from the cloud back to on-prem land.
A good friend of mine who worked on a CICS based credit card processing application at that bank doubled his salary twice inside of 4 yrs. First by quitting the bank and going to a boutique consultancy to build competing software (which they sold to other banks) and then by quitting that job and coming back to the bank to takeover the abysmal state the CICS app had lapsed into in his absence.
And that was circa 2010.
One thing that was true of the bank then and I'm sure is true now is that when they see a nail they truly have just the one hammer. When a problem comes along, hit it with a huge sack of cash until it goes away.
I don't think "know COBOL" is enough. I'm pretty sure I can learn COBOL in a week. It's more about "know COBOL and know all this old stuff like CLIs, etc, and know all these old approaches".
Typically it's not just about knowing COBOL as a language, the bottleneck is having real expertise wrt. highly specific, fiddly proprietary frameworks that are implemented on top of COBOL.
My analogy is more akin to using Google Maps (or any other navigation tool).
Prior to GPS and a navigation device, you would either print out the route ahead of time, and even then, you would stop at places and ask people about directions.
Post Google Maps, you follow it, and then if you know there's a better route, you choose to take a different path and Google Maps will adjust the route accordingly.
Google Maps is still insanely bad for hiking and cycling, so I combine the old-fashioned map method with an outdoor GPS onto which I load a precomputed GPX track for the route that I want to take.
Does China go around the world invading countries in the name of freedom?
> Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed.
China: for Taiwan, they are in the planning phase. (Vietnam, Hong Kong, Tibet, Aksai Chin, Korea, Scarborough Shoal do not count in your view of course). Not saying they are worse than the US.
What China did to the Han Chinese makes them worse than ANY other modern country. The great leap forward and the cultural revolution have not comparison. Add in the chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959 and 1979 invasion of Vietnam and they are butchers and imperialists.
You need far better propaganda materials for your "great leap forward" blames in 2026. There were bad policies, but the intention good, it was all about moving the country forward. It failed horribly with huge consequences, that is just the reminder that a full scale industrialisation for over 1 billion people is not something that can be earned easily.
Like it or not, the "Exceeding the UK, catching the USA" (超英赶美) goal of the great leap forward has been overfulfilled under the leadership of the CCP with the help of brutal state capitalism. Everything else is just cheap talk.
Having a full scale industrialization larger than the G7 combined is not something handed to China on a silver platter - those very sad deaths caused by the failed attempts during the great leap forward was a part of the costs.
> and the cultural revolution have not comparison.
The cultural revolution is brutal, nothing should be used to defend it. It is just so wrong. That being said, the west is going through the exact same cultural revolution -
* extremely polarised society with everything is politicalised
* populism taking control
* suicidal policies destroying the civilizational foundations
the difference is 99% Han Chinese consider the cultural revolution as extremely bad, while the west is enjoying having its own ongoing cultural revolution.
if you add the recent woke cancer, the western version of the ongoing cultural revolution is far more brutal.
So you agree that 50mm Han Chinese dead makes the CCP brutal, correct? Every brutal regime thinks they are justified. Ask the US if they think they are justified. Woke is dead. China is much smaller than the west. The G7 is maybe 1/4 of the west. The west includes EU, US, first island chain (japan, s. korea, Philippines, etc), all of the western hemisphere.) China has no allies, it probably doesn't need them. However, China doesn't control its vital sea-lanes. It has less water per person than Saudi Arabia. China has more old people than the west and Confucianism prohibit to "great leap forward" them. China is not escaping the middle income trap.
I think you're being sarcastic, but just in case you're not
> Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic manipulation of information—including facts, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion, attitudes, and behaviors toward a specific cause, ideology, or agenda.
Sometimes what you choose to show, even if true, can impact how people see a situation or fact. That is what the OP is referring to. Your quote even mentions that propaganda can be made of "facts" and "half-truths" (a half-truth is usually a fact with a portion omitted to change the interpretation of the fact).
A large percentage of Americans are convinced that police will just shoot them if they happen to feel like it.
Even including ICE in this statistic, you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop. Police encounters that turn deadly, not even blatant murder, are on the order of 1 in 50,000.
However, that stream of police murder videos are definitely real.
Propaganda is often stoking tiny sparks into large raging forest fires.
> police will just shoot them if they happen to feel like it.
Well that's exactly the problem. There's nothing stopping them: no accountability, no justice. Many cops just don't feel like randomly shooting people, and that's good. The problem is if they do, and even if they brag about it, little will be done.
Take for example the latest Sainte-Soline repression scandal revealed a few months back by Mediapart [1] where videos show dozens of riot cops making a contest about maiming the most people, encouraging one another to break engagement rules, and advocating for outright murder. Everybody knew before the bodycam videos, but now that we have official proof, we're still waiting for any kind of accountability.
If i go around and shoot people, there is no way i will avoid prison. If a cop goes around and shoots people, or strangles people to death, prison is a very unlikely outcome.
> you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop
That's not how statistics work. Police abuse tends to happen in the same low-income social groups (and ethnic minorities). As an example, living in France, i've met several people who had a family member killed by police. Statistically unlikely if i only hung around in "startup nation" or "intellectual bourgeoisie" circles, which is not my case.
Being killed by police is different than being murdered by police.
Police in the US kill somewhere around 1000 people a year. But of those, it's something like 5-10 that are murders. There is maybe 1 every few years where the cop is itching to shoot someone who is clearly compliant and not a threat.
The 990 police killing videos that become available every year now are not particularly compelling, because its bad actors trying to kill police and getting themselves killed.
Sorry, I don't know anything about France and police though. The US has a different dynamic because guns are everywhere, especially where crime is. Every cop knows about the ~50 cops who are killed by guns every year.
The dynamic doesn't look very different here, at least from reading the news. I don't know about the US (though i suspect <1% murder out of all police killings is a gross under-estimation), just for anyone's curiosity, in France police killing of a threatening person is the outlier. [1]
We don't have guns circulating freely around here (though some people have them such as for hunting). Many police murders take place in police custody (such as El Hacen Diarra just this month). According to the most comprehensive stats i could find [2], out of 489 deaths by police shootings (1977-2022), 275 victims were entirely unarmed.
[1] Not very scientific method: any case of police being assaulted and using "self-defense" is widely spread in the media, and those few cases per year don't account for the dozens of deaths every year.
>though i suspect <1% murder out of all police killings is a gross under-estimation
It's easy to track because anytime it happens it's instant major news on the internet. Trust me, in the economy of social media clout, few things rank as valuable as police murder.
Pretti was frontpage of reddit within 30(!) minutes of being shot. Even without bystanders there is a whole group of creators whose whole channel is combing bodycam footage for wrong doing. These videos are worth (tens) of thousands in ad views if nothing else.
Some, maybe all, ICE agents were body cams, but I haven't seen any footage. I'm not sure what the process would looks like, this whole ICE violence thing is only a few months old, whereas most regular police have had bodycams for 5+ years now and getting the footage is well established.
Police also definitely don't turn it off when it suites them, although some have, but again, it's a Streisand effect when they do. I really cannot stress enough that police doing bad things has extremely high monetary value for the people who find it, and you also get paid for the crazy bodycam videos you find along the way. If you're a cop and you turn off your cam before breaking the law, you are almost certainly going to be the face of a 1M+ view youtube video. People, like yourself and me, gobble that up.
It doesn't matter much anyway, because there is 100x more footage of cops doing bad things with their cam on.
> Even including ICE in this statistic, you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop.
Uh.. I know someone who was murdered by cops while having a bad LSD trip (not violent, just incoherent). He was restrained too tightly despite protests of his family, loaded into a vehicle, and suffocated to death.
> Police encounters that turn deadly, not even blatant murder, are on the order of 1 in 50,000.
>Even including ICE in this statistic, you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop. Police encounters that turn deadly, not even blatant murder, are on the order of 1 in 50,000.
That just shows that people's social circles aren't that wide. 1 in 50,000 is rare in your personal bubble. For a town of 1 million people, thats 20 people.
Sounds tiny, but if we were to line up 20 people and have them murdered by law enforcement, it'd pretty much end the careers of anyone in that chain of command. Because that's not a behavior you want to let spread and expand.
I am not being sarcastic at all. It is a common misconception that propaganda means lies. Propaganda is information designed to get you to believe a certain thing or feel a certain way. The best propaganda uses entirely truthful statements to manipulate your beliefs and emotions.
One of the best examples of this were the endless photos and information about stocked store shelves, filled with fresh goods at dirt cheap prices, during the Cold War. In general truth is the best propaganda, because when you lie there's always a rubber-band effect when somebody realizes, sooner or later, that they've been had.
It's using information to influence public opinion in a calculated manner. Said information can include facts. It can even be entirely factual.
Manipulating the feed of a social media website for the purpose of swaying the viewer's opinion is a cut and dry example of propaganda. Doesn't matter who does it or whether the information displayed is factual or not. Those things make zero difference.
This really doesn't pass the sniff test. It reminds me of a recent post I saw: "what are movies people like only becsuse it is good?", calling it "quality slop". It's contradictory.
If people are given a wide perspective of a situation and adjusts bias for the Overton window (aka, we don't let Nazis have an equal platform to a more progressive group), then we just call that good reporting. The act of convincing people isn't inherently a bad thing. How you do it matters a lot.
You're subtly misattributing me though. "Convincing someone" is a superset which contains intentional manipulation of the information someone is exposed to but also lots of other things.
As you said, how you do it matters a lot.
You've also gone and (IIUC) equated the general biases of an outlet with propaganda which I certainly wouldn't agree with. They're similar, and the former can certainly morph into the latter, but they aren't the same thing.
That can be part of it, but usually it's not necessary - certain facts, or certain aspects of facts (e.g. exclude some context) can just get exaggerated to have the desired effect on a larger population.
That might be, but if it's amplified through social media it becomes propaganda.
Example, 99% of people are normal, but if all you see is the 1% that isn't you'll start to believe more than 1% aren't normal. Especially if that 1% is of a recognisable ethnicity / religion / background. This is why there's a shift to the right.
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