Salient Point One - The Weather Underground (Chapter 4, Page 67) (Nacos, 1999) The Weather Underground, who

had changed their name from The Weathermen because they wanted to include women in their terrorist organization, was said to have been born out of opposition for the Vietnam War and to racial and social inequality in the United States (Nacos, 1999). Sensing others shared the same feelings as they did, a planned attack on Chicago's wealthy Gold Coast and showdown with the police failed; the event wound up drawing not the expected thousands, but just a couple hundred militants (Greenberg, 2003). They proceeded to wreak random violence in the Chicago streets and get arrested en masse, which resulted in alienated themselves from potential allies like the Black Panthers and furnished Richard Nixon with cheap ammunition for his rhetorical assaults on anti-war protesters (Greenberg, 2003).
After failing to secure the American publics concurrence and win over the working-class youth, they turned to terrorism. They began building bombs to detonate at sites of their purported oppressors, like a hall that would be hosting an US Army dance, but the bombs blew up prematurely killing three of the bomb makers. Then the Weather Underground went underground. The group then decided to target only empty buildings, making sure to send advance warnings before exploding the bombs. They bombed sites from the New York police headquarters to a Harvard international studies center. However, their meager form of decency to notify in advance of a bomb going off was lost once one realized that people could have been hurt or killed had they not evacuated in time.

The Underground spent most of the '70s hiding from the FBI between its bombings of corporate offices, National Guard headquarters, and the like (Greenberg, 2003). Of course, by the late '70s and early '80s, these terrorist radicals were tired of running from the law and began to turn themselves in. Ironically, because the FBI had so horrendously violated the law gathering evidence against them, most escaped conviction. Now some of these same people who chose to use terrorism to spread their propaganda against innocent Americans are teaching at American schools and universitieswhat a country. Salient Point Two The Proliferation of Religious Violence (Chapter 5, Page 85) (Nacos, 1999) Religious violence is not new as this has been going on at a global scale since the dawn of man. From the Crusades to the French Revolution to the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland, countries, groups and people have been using God as an excuse to rein violence upon others who do not share the same ideological beliefs. Religion is crucial for these acts [violence], since it gives moral justifications for killing and provides images of cosmic war that allows activists to believe that they are waging spiritual scenarios (Jeurgensmeyer, 2000). Others look from a different view such as society, The idea that religion has a tendency to promote violence is part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our institutions and

policies, from the limits on the public role of churches to efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East (Cavanaugh, 2009). Whatever your view, it is a fact that many killed and many more have died, all in the name of religion. As long as there is opposing sets of views, regardless of the argument, there will be violence between such factions. The irony is the majority of religions in the world advertise peace, love and harmony as their main tenets but somehow someone always misinterprets or supplements these non-violence tenets with acts of extreme-ism in order to destroy all those who disagree with their views. Unfortunately, they misuse the words of God to justify their own agenda. Salient Point Three The Lack of a Universal Terrorist Profile (Chapter 6, Page 116) (Nacos, 1999) An accurate process to separate the terrorist from the non-terrorist is, albeit, nonexistent due to many factors, but is not limited to psychological, socio-economic, physical, and/or racial attributes. So we look at or for variables that might contribute to what would make up the terrorist profile. With a clipboard in our hands we systematically check-off the boxes that correspond with what we deem what it takes to be a terrorist and build our case, accordingly. In a large population of individuals governments attempt to find the rare malfeasor [terrorist, for example] by assigning prior probabilities to individuals, in some manner estimating the chance that each is a malfeasor. Societal resources for secondary security screening are then concentrated against individuals with the largest priors (Press, 2008). Mr. Press article went on state, both emphatically and with mathematical formulations, that strong profiling is no more efficient than uniform random sampling of the entire population, because resources are wasted on the repeated screening of higher probability, but innocent, individuals. I disagree with Mr. Press findings, as stunning and insightful as they are, because I believe the majority of those who wish the United States harm, all have a majority of traits, ticks and features that set them apart from those who can effectively stay under the radar. I believe you can build an effective profile if it done on a consistent basis, not in a random sample perspective. Salient Point Four Catastrophic risks are disproportionately feared (Chapter 3, Page 35) (Stern, 1999) Our misinformed perceptions are largely a function of deep-seated apprehension about being powerless in treacherous situations (Shifrin, 2013). This stems from overblown and sensational journalism by the media who, successfully, attempts to focus on events such as tornados, fires, drownings, murders and accidents (Stern, 1999). This type of skew perspective event on a daily basis; count up the articles in a newspaper see how many articles there are on murder against articles about diseases. You are much more likely to get some type of disease then be murdered, but disease does not sell as well as murders do, so the murders get more attention; from both newspaper editors and the readers. When catastrophic events do happen, the chance of it happening again are exaggerated, rather than played down to ease public fears. It's time we

start assessing risks with sound judgment, not the irrational fear the media attempts to portray on a never-ending daily basis. Salient Point Five Using Chemical or Biological Agents in a Water Supply (Chapter 4, Pages 53) (Stern, 1999) Someone poisoned the water hole exclaimed Woody, from the Pixar Motion Picture Buzz Lightyear, to which everyone laughed jovially. A poisoned water system is no laughing matter, especially in this day and age where terrorist look for any venue that will give them the biggest bang for their extremist agenda buck. The ability to infect a water system has wide spread ramifications not only the large amount of causalities that would be involved, but the mesmerizing fear it would instill in every American that went to use their tap water. They would wonder if their water source had been compromised, deliberating on whether their water smelled different than it did yesterday. Of course this may seem impractical to terrorist due to the amount of chemical or biological agent needed to carry out an attack as the agent may become diluted too quickly to be anyway effective, this is due to the vast amounts of water that is stored for use. The same can be said about poisoning open bodies of water that are used by the public, as they too will probably also dilute too quickly to be effective. Salient Point Six Political Obstacles (Chapter 5, Page 78) (Stern, 1999) When a group acts in a way to further their cause and persuade their possible constituents to follow them, is to no alienate them. A peaceful demonstration will win over more possible constituents than acts of violence. You can look at the Weather Underground or the Black Panther Party, left-wing extremist groups, which deplored the Vietnam War as well as racial and social inequalities, as a prime example of how to alienate your base. Although their reasons and ideas were right along with a lot of the American sentiment concerning what was happening in Vietnam and within the United States, their violent actions quickly quashed any remain public emotion on these subjects. The old adage about attracting more flies with honey rather than vinegar still rings true in this day and age, especially with the plethora of hot topics that temper the American psyche. From civil rights to health care to immigration to border security they all evoke different feelings and reactions from people that go from the passionate to the maligned. Each side may have a growing constituency towards their cause, but these expanding numbers can quickly diminish once violence is either incited or started. Smart people look for non-violent means to express their discontent and know violence on begets more violence and then nothing gets solved.

References Cavanaugh, W. T. (2009). The Myth Of Religious Violence. New York: Oxford Universal Press.

Greenberg, D. (2003, June 3). Notes From the Underground. Retrieved from Slate.com: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2003/06/notes_from_the _underground.html Jeurgensmeyer, M. (2000). Terror In The Mind Of God. Los Angeles: The Regents of the University of California. Nacos, B. L. (1999). Terrorism and Counterterrorism. Glenview: Pearson Education, Inc. Press, W. H. (2008, December 23). Strong Profiling is not Mathematically Optimal for Discovering Rare Malfeasors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pp. 1716-1719. Shifrin, J. (2013, September 15). The Sun. Retrieved from Baltimore Sun.com: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-09-15/news/bs-ed-terrorism20130915_1_intelligence-budget-intelligence-assets-national-counterterrorism-center Stern, J. (1999). The Ultimate Terrorists. Boston: First Harvard University Press.