That's why I don't think that a (presumably) rich bored white male playing a first-person shooter with innocent people's lives, deserves to be dignified with the name of terrorist. He's not repressed. He's not sending a message. He's just a criminal.

I'll agree with that. My major problem with Al Qaeda (a group I think we can all view as terrorist from any viewpoint -- not that anyone brought it up) is that they don't seem to expend much effort in making their points known; it's all posturing. They're like a woman saying ``If you don't know why I'm mad, I'm not telling you''. The IRA and PLO, for examples, always made sure that everyone knew why they they were doing the things they did. But Al Qaeda seems much more interested in killing folks than trying to get things changed.

every media pundit in sight was saying, after Tiananmen Square, that global media in general and the Internet in particular were beginning to mean that totalitarian governments couldn't get away with that kind of stuff any more

Too bad they were wrong (so far).