2009/7/8 George Herbert <george.herb...@gmail.com>: > I see where Ken is coming from on this, but there's not a bright line. > > One does not immediately do exactly the opposite of what a terrorist > demands be done, in order to frustrate the value of them issuing > demands completely. One example might be, for instance, > extrajudicially executing prisoners that terrorists demand to be > released.
I feel we could also mention the notorious situation of a terrorist faction endorsing one political candidate over another, as I believe happened quite prominently recently! > Doing what terrorists demand, in total, encourages them. Same with > criminals. But when lives are at stake there is usually a large grey > area of various levels of partial cooperation that increases the odds > of successful survival of the victims. In that large grey area are > usually large swaths of cooperation that nobody really feels are > unethical (i.e., holding discussions / negotiations with the terrorist > or criminal), large swaths which are commonly done but sometimes some > people object to (news blackouts, etc), some which are commonly done > but feel like giving in (paying ransom). Mmm. If someone takes a hostage and demands that you not report they've taken the hostage, you may well do that because it's not the *point* of their demands - we figure they're going to ask for a million dollars and a plane to somewhere unpleasant eventually - and it gets treated by everyone involved as an integral part of the hostage-taking to some degree. (In cases like this, the ethical issue then becomes to what extent people should be trying to ensure that others comply with that process, and how they should represent it to them...) If they take a hostage and demands you not report something entirely unrelated to the hostage-taking, it escalates into a demand in its own right, something to be treated as such, and responded to appropriately. But it's really not the same as something which is part and parcel of the "process". There's an important distinction here - I'm afraid I might not be getting it across very well, but I think it holds. The information suppressed here pertained only "to itself", and I find it hard to consider a situation where that wouldn't be the case *and* we wouldn't treat it as something to be rejected. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
