From the Wool-sack
| Publication year | 1986 |
| Pages | 2025 |
1986, November, Pg. 2025. From the Wool-Sack
Once there was an elephant Who tried to use the telephant--- No! No! I mean an elephone Who tried to use the telephone.
Laura Richards, Eletelephony
My readers will forgive me if, from time to time, I share a thought or two that has little to do with the law but seems worth sharing nonetheless. This is such a column. It is prompted by the recent terrorist bombings in Paris. I have a suggestion which, if adopted, will put an end to terrorism. Being therefore of some significance, it should be shared with more than just the few hapless readers of my weekly newspaper columns. Here it is.
The world needs a terrorist hotline ("THL"). Here is how THL would work. THL would be established at a central location. A telephone operator would be on duty twenty-four hours a day. The operator would receive reports of all natural and man-made disasters wherever in the world they occur.
As soon as a disaster is reported, a terrorist group wanting to claim responsibility for that disaster would call THL and ask to have responsibility for the disaster assigned to it. If the disaster had not already been claimed by another group, it would be credited to the requesting group. Without THL approval, no claims for responsibility for disasters would be attributed to a group by the media or any government.
Here is why THL is needed. Disasters are a part of life. Some, being divinely inspired, lack human intervention and qualify as pure accidents. Others, being deliberately caused by man, may qualify as acts of terrorism. Because there are so many terrorist organizations (twenty-two in the Mideast alone), there is an overlapping in responsibility claims as well as a tendency for terrorist groups to claim responsibility for disasters which are pure accidents or which were in fact caused by others. Here are three examples.
On April 1, a Mexicana airplane crashed. When word got out that the cause of the crash was unknown, a group equally unknown claimed credit for the disaster. A spokesman for the Organization of Arab Revolutionary Brigades and the Egypt Revolutionary Organization said the plane was destroyed by a suicide bombing in a joint operation. He said it was in retaliation for something the U.S. had done. The Mexicans found no...
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