Truth vs Falsehood (50 page)

Terrorist Organizations

Additional Groups Listed in
Patterns of Global Terrorism

United States Department of State, 2003-2004

The following all calibrate similarly and collectively at an average level of 75-80:

Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)

al-Tawhid

al-Zarqawl Network

Ansar Al-Islam (AL)

Aum Srinrikyo

Communist Party of Philippines (CPP/NPA)

Dev Sol

Devrimci Sol (Revolutionary Left)

Egyptian Islamic Jihad

Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque)

Fatah Revolutionary Council

Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya

Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)

Helpers of Islam

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)

Jaish Ansar Al-Islam

Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad

Jihad Group (al-Jihad)

Jund Al-Islam

Monotheism and Jihad Group

Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)

Muslim Iranian Students Society

National Liberation Army of Iran

New People’s Army (NPA)

Partisans of Islam

Popular Front for Liberation

Of Palestine (PFLP)

Revolutionary Nuclei

Revolutionary Organization 17 November

Sangillan Force

Salafist Group for Call & Combat (GSPC)

Sendero Luminoso (Shining

Path, SL)

Talaa’al-Fateh

United Self-Defense Forces / Group of Colombia (AUC)

World Tamil Association (WTA) and Movement

Groups Listed in Prior Editions of
Patterns of Global Terrorism
The average calibration of the following group is 75-80:

3rd October Organization

15 May Organization

Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB)

Al-Fatah

Algerian Terrorism

Al Ummah

Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA)

Army for the Liberation of Rwanda

Chukaku-Ha (Nucleus or Middle Core Faction)

Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils (FACT)

Force 17

Former Armed Forces (ex-FAR) (Rwanda)

Interahamwe (Rwanda)

Khmer Rouge

Lautaro Popular Rebel Forces (FRPL)

Lautaro Youth Movement (MJL)

Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front

(FPMR)

Morazanist Patriotic Front (FPM)

Orange Volunteers (V)

The Orly Group (Armenia)

Party of Democratic Kampuchea

Popular Struggle Front (PSF)

Provisional Irish Republican Army

Puka Inti (Sol Rojo, Red Sun)

Red Army Faction (RAF)

Red Brigades (BR)

Red Hand Defenders (RHD)

Revolutionary People’s Struggle (ELA)

Revolutionary United Front (RUF)

Sol Rojo

Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA)

Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK)

United Popular Action Movement (MAPU/L)

Zviadists

All terrorist groups emanate from extreme egocentricity and narcissism and are a form of triumphalism that finds approval by mob agreement. Terrorism is a form of criminality that attracts the lowest elements of society, many of whom are inherently psychopathic personalities seeking an outlet for violence and hatred.

Basically, there is an envious hatred of true power and an effort to mimic it by force, which destroys the lives of the innocent. The ego thus replaces God as the Supreme and blasphemously claims Divinity as its authority for savage violence, even to children, and it gloats over desecration and destruction.

Throughout history, the basic energy has been referred to as “satanic,” and the perversion of truth used to justify it is classically termed “Luciferic” (i.e., pride and defiance of the sovereignty of God). When the twin attractor fields that characterize denial of love and truth are combined, the rabid dogs of sadistic terrorism are loosed that demonstrate the extreme downside of the ego itself. The perpetrators are thereby the victims of delusion for they cannot tell truth from falsehood and are thus easily proselytized because they are blind to their own enslavement and its karmic consequences.

Unfortunately, savagery is an addictive potential; therefore, terrorists see peace as the enemy and cleverly subvert it as being well-documented and demonstrated by the life of now-deceased Arafat, who was the primary core of terrorism worldwide for decades.

It is informative to examine the popular meme, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” (cal. 190). This is a seductive sophistry based on relativism and ignoring context.

“Freedom fighter” calibrates at 240, “terrorist” at 40-80. There is also the confusion of
res interna
(a mental notion) and confirmable external reality. Patrick Henry calibrates at 445 and bin Ladin at 40. The difference is in intention and context, just as the Patriot Act is integrous in times of war but not so during peacetime.

All dictators start out with propaganda as “freedom fighters” and end up as tyrants that kill more of their own countrymen than the purported enemy would have done. The human mind, unaided, cannot discern the difference between perception and essence. (Neither could Little Red Riding Hood.) The Fallujah insurgents calibrate at 85, the PLO at 65, etc.

To complicate the matter further, many leaders who start out as integrous ‘freedom fighters’ and calibrate in the 400s early in their careers, (Hitler, Arafat, Castro, Napoleon) then succumb to the seductive glamour of power and control over others. Later in their careers, they develop egomania and calibrate at less than 100. This is almost a certainty in all dictatorships, and with most sovereigns in history, such as Nero and others. Therefore, the catchy meme should be changed to “Today’s freedom fighter is tomorrow’s terrorist tyrant” (cal. 495).

Terrorism has been endemic to human societies throughout the ages (Curtie, 2002) and is currently a primary threat to all countries. Very deep within the depths of the ego and Freud’s “Id” are the primordial desire to kill and a thirst for the sheer pleasure of killing. We see it in the ‘sport killing’ of blowing off the heads of prairie dogs. We see this expressed overtly in the pleasure and cheers of the crowd at the Roman Coliseum (cal. 80). It reveals itself in the excitement of the gladiator’s fight to the death, and again in the pleasure and excitement of the cock fight, the dog fight, in the bull ring, and in the grim satisfaction of the public at executions and the strident call for the death penalty. Public participation decreases individual guilt, as seen in the lynch mob, or spectators at the French Revolution guillotine killing of eighteen thousand people, or the National Basketball Association riot on November 19, 2004.

Witnessing a dog-pack killing frenzy (as did the author) is rather awesome and unsettling—the dogs run from one animal to another in the barnyard and rip out the throats of chickens, then the ducks, and then the pet goat. They are not hungry and do not eat the prey but are in a state of great excitement. Notably, each kill does not slow down the pack but instead intensifies the frenzy and leads to further killing (e.g., the Japanese in Nanking and Manchuria in the 1930s). The behavior seems primitively instinctual but may subserve tribal bonding. The blood-lust excitement is contagious and insatiable and, in its human expression, is cheered on by the curious excitement of the spectator crowd. In the boxing ring, the rules prohibit actual killing and instead allow only the nearest thing possible to it—unconsciousness, bleeding, torn flesh, shock, and brain concussion.

In psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, as well in deep spiritual work, the rule is that the victim cannot transcend an impulse or instinctual drive unless they drop denial, own it, and stop projecting the repressed, forbidden impulse onto others. Diagnostically, Jihad is religiously sanctioned blood lust. It takes glee in blowing up buses full of children and destroying the innocent. This primitive instinct has no intention to stop or wars would have ended centuries ago. The primitive, evolutionary origin of the ego is still very much alive. The era of the dinosaur is not over but lives on, very much alive in today’s headlines. Freud termed this atavistic drive as the death instinct, or “Thanatos,” which is overruled in normal people by “eros,” the life instinct. Thanatos expresses as suicide, the impulse to jump from windows, or throw oneself off a cliff. (Nine did so in the Grand Canyon in just one year.) One thousand have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Others have crashed their motorcycles, etc. This is exemplified in human culture by the symbol of the skull and crossbones.

The religious precedent and justification for Islamic terrorism was unfortunately provided by Muhammad himself who, at the time of the writing of the Koran, calibrated in the 700s, but then, because of temporal lobe epilepsy, by age thirty-eight, he had fallen to consciousness level 130, taken up the sword, and begun the killing of infidels, which has continued ever since. After the battle of Medina, one of the first groups that he killed was made up of Jews (the clan of Qurayzah).

Fear and oppression still characterize Islamic countries today, and by comparison, their cultures still remain seriously primitive. Unfortunately, the entire Middle East calibrates below 200, which has unpleasant connotations. It means that its travesties are unlikely to be terminated or to be responsive to reason or appeal to morality or ethics, much less political rhetoric (i.e., the behaviors are clinically “ego-syntonic”).

Politically, Islam is theocratic. The word “Islam” means surrender and submission. Islam believes the Koran should be the only law and political structure and is therefore antithetical to democracy. Turkey, however, represents a workable compromise because of the influence of Ataturk.

Of serious importance is that, whereas in America, fifty-one percent of the population calibrates over 200, worldwide, that figure is only twenty-two percent, and in the Middle East and Arab countries, the figure is even lower among subpopulations. Thus, in the problematic cultures, seventy-eight percent or more of the population operates from nonintegrous motives and is unable to respond to or even recognize rationality or give it credence. The significance is that such cultures need to be dealt with at their own level, which is, very visibly, predominantly that of self-interest, and self-interest alone. The rule in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, spiritual teaching, or in any other educational endeavor is that the process does not start from where ‘you’ are but from where ‘they’ are and then works upward from there.