IX. Read the text, discuss the style of writing it belongs to and consider its features. Fulfill the exercises after it.

ESSAY ON TERRORISM

One of the many depressing features of the present crisis is that we do not have an adequate vocabulary for describing it. Are we at “war”? Have we suffered a “military attack”? Is the Taliban our “enemy”? Or is it rather that a “crime” has been committed, and we ought to seek United Nations help and “use diplomatic means to bring the criminals to justice”?

Our inability to describe the situation is a symptom of a deeper misperception. Most of the public discussion I have heard in both the United States and Europeis based on the belief that because our actions are a result of the eleventh of September, that is what they are about, that we should primarily be seeking justice or revenge or some such. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our actions should be directed at, for example, the 18^th of July 2008. On that date six teams of terrorists working at six major American cities simultaneously detonate nuclear bombs whose parts have been carefully smuggled into the country over the years and whose assemblies and detonations have been coordinated. That attack kills over five million Americans. The nuclear attack is itself the follow up to several years of germ and biological warfare. Those who wish to kill us learn from their mistakes. Just as the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center benefited from the mistakes of the 1993 attack, so the anthrax pandemic, of 2003 benefits from the blunders made by the early primitive mailbox anthrax of 2001. However, even after the pandemic of 03, it is obvious that anthrax is an inefficient method of biological genocide, because it is treatable. It is not until the PTP germ warfare of late 2003 and 2004 that fatal and untreatable germs are introduced in sufficient quantities to produce over a million U.S. fatalities. These weapons had been prepared in Iraqi laboratories in the years following the abandonment of UN inspections.

If these scenarios seem to you exaggerated, ask yourself what you would have said if someone had told you on September first that within two weeks the World Trade Towers would cease to exist. Or better still read the New York Times. On October 28^th it reported a Muslim cleric as claiming that “Islamic extremists… had bought more than twenty nuclear warheads and were paying Soviet scientists to break them into chips that could be carried in suitcases.”

Given the certainty that these people wish to destroy us, and the probability that they will use increasingly effective explosive, chemical, biological, and nuclear means to do it, what is an intelligent response on our part?

1. We need to give up on the fantasy that we are going to find bin Laden in a cave, and when we do so, our troubles will be over. Unless he is betrayed by his confederates or is very stupid, it is very unlikely that we will capture or kill Osama bin Laden. When the Taliban falls he will slip away to some other friendly haven. And even if we should be lucky enough to capture or kill him, that is not the end of the conflict. There will be plenty of others, perhaps reinspired by his martyrdom to take up where he left off.

2. We need to give up on the illusion that there is some policy change on our part that will change the attitude of the terrorists. Short of all of us converting to an extreme version of fundamentalist Islam and driving all the Israelis into the sea, there is no policy change that will alter their determination to kill us. The policy changes that are urged on us – stop the bombing, use the United Nations, etc. – might peel off some of their moderate supporters but will not weaken the resolve of the terrorists.

3. We need to remove, one by one, those governments that continue to give the terrorists a territorial base, organizational support and financial aid. That, I take it, is what we are now trying to do in Afghanistan. Perhaps if we inflicted a stunning defeat on the Taliban and installed a broad based government, other nations in the region would get the message, and diplomatic means alone would lead them to drive the terrorists out into the open. Does that sound likely to you? Much more likely is a long and bitter struggle in Afghanistan and several other such struggles elsewhere. The point of the struggles is that without a territorial base, the terrorists are reduced to a gang of criminals on the run. As long as they have a territorial base they can continue to hit us at the times and places, and with the means, of their choosing.

4. While we, alone with the British, are going to do most of the fighting, we need to keep reminding other governments and especially Islamic governments that we are all in this together. Our enemies want to make the conflict appear to be between America and Islam. We must continue to fight against any such misperception.

5. We need to understand the motives of our adversaries. Both sides survived the cold war because both sides wanted to live. This conflict is different. Our adversaries are members of a death cult, who, as one of their leaders said, “want to die the way Americans want to live”.

6. Perhaps most important, we need to get an intellectual grip on the structure of history of the events that are unfolding. The conflict did not start on September 11^th. It has been going on for over thirty years. One of the reasons for our present predicament is that our responses to earlier assaults were so feeble. The taking of the hostages in Iran, the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am 103, the destruction of our embassies in Africa, the bombing of the destroyer Cole, the attempted assassination of former President Bush, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center – all were met with no, or only limited and inadequate, relation. Given this history, September 11^th should not seem surprising. It should seem inevitable. Our greatest need is to understand the nature and permanence of the struggle we are now in.

(By John R. Searle,
Mills Professor of Philosophy University
of California, Berkeley)

a) Find the words in the text that mean:

to cause to explode, a disease which is widespread, stupid or unnecessary mistakes, sacrificial death, trying to escape or hide, a difficult/unpleasant situation, weak.

b) Discuss the following points:

1. What does Dr. Searle predict could happen in the next five years?

2. What illusions does he feel America has today? Are there any you would add to the mentioned in the text?

3. The author` s prescription includes both actions and attitudes. What are they?

X. Read the text and tell what cyberterrorism is. Is cyber­terrorism the same as haching? How do cyberattacks work? What other form of terrorism are you aware of?

BRITAIN FACES THREAT FROM CYBER-TERRORISTS

Britain faces a growing threat of an electronic attack by terrorists linked to Al-Qaida that could paralyse key public services, including electricity and water supplies, the Government’s adviser on computer security has told the Guardian.

For terrorist groups like Al-Qaida with limited resources, it would be “a very attractive method” of attack, that would cause “huge damage”, said Stephen Cummings, who is director of the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre. The unit is working with the intelligence services to gather information about the electronic capabilities of terror groups.

It was set up three years ago to alert government agencies and companies to threats to computer networks, and protect what it calls Britain’s Critical National Infrastructure or CNI.

The CNI includes those parts of the country’s infrastructure “for which continuity is so important to national life that loss, significant disruption, or degradation of service would have life-threatening, serious economic, or other grave consequences for the community”. It includes telecommunications, energy, finance, transport, central government, water, health and emergency services.

Terrorist groups, including Al-Qaida, are aware of the potentially devastating effect of such electronic attacks, which would be hard to trace, according to Mr. Cummings.

Newspapers in the United States this summer reported that signs of Al-Qaida’s skills in cyberspace prompted officials to conclude that terrorists were at the threshold of using the internet as a weapon to kill – by taking control of floodgates in a dam, for example.

However, Mr. Cummings stressed that terror groups did not yet have the capability to mount such attacks. Much more likely and more common would be further attacks on individual websites using a virus through hacking. But he said that while the threat of an attack that would knock out a critical public service or power source was lower than attacks on websites, it was increasing.

(By Richard Norton-Taylor From Guardian Weekly)

a) Find a proper Russian equivalent:

1. He has a disruptive influence on other students.

2. Tension mounted as we waited for the decision.

3. The old lady mounted the stairs with difficulty.

4. The dead insect was mounted on a card by means of transport services.

5. The debt continued to mount up.

6. We didn't meet in San-Francisco – we met in cyberspace.

7. They've started a campaign to alert the public to the dangers of smoking.

b) Fill in the gaps with a suitable word:

1. Yesterday Grandpa Gomez _____ a doghouse for his grandson's dog

/exclude, conclude, construct, exert/

2. The weather bureau's ______ for a sunny day was not very accurate. It's raining now

/selection, emission, prediction, exclusion/

3. San Francisco was _____ by a terrible earthquake and fire in 1906

/explode, devastate, execute, devote/

4. The soldiers were _____ on fine black horses

/to ride, to mount, to set, to go/

5. A crowd of protesters _____ the meeting

/to close, to do with, to disrupt, to finish/