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What's Your Terrorism Quotient?
unassimilatible writes "From the Department of Pre-Crime, the AP reports: before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange), a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists - sparking some investigations and arrests. The 'high terrorism factor' scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project. According to Seisint's presentation, dated January 2003 and marked confidential, the 120,000 names with the highest scores were given to the INS, FBI, Secret Service and Florida state police. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns."
From TFA:
" He said Matrix, which has 4 billion records, merely speeds access to material that police have always been able to get from disparate sources, and does not automatically or proactively finger suspects."
where do terrorists get their money?
if you buy gasoline, it may come from YOU
I agree, but it looked familiar so I googled for it.. There is a copy at least here, which looks like a copy/repost itself.
I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner. The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs never are).
You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You don't want the threat, but you don't want to do anything about it, and you want your children to grow up in a militarized world, and you want your government to default to surrender because it can't allow itself to fight guerrilla tactics because somehow they are impossible to employ in the persuit of victory? After such blatant and simple to unravel contradiction, where you are speaking crosswise to yourself without pausing to take a breath, why should we listen to anything else you have to say?
The world is fu*cked up enough as it is. The food chain has been poisoned so badly the average human is full of chemicals normally found in plastics and toxic waste. I'm sick of global warning and environmental damage to the planet and the fact the all this time the greenies were right. I'm sick of America being the biggest wilful contributor to the pollution of the planet.
America is not the biggest polluter, intentional or otherwise: China and Russia are, followed by many of their previous holdings in Africa and South America. People just go after America though. It's uncanny.
I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty.
Whether you worry or not is your choice. Grow up. We all have to be adults here and face the real world. A world where like it or not, be at peace or not, people are just going to come out of the woodwork and try and kill you. This is NOT a "live and let live" world. You think it is? Talk to Neville Chamberlain.
The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us. You know how we fix this problem? We MUST destroy BOTH their ability and desire to wage war with us, and we don't stop until those have been absolutely achieved. The Japanese were a far more brave and zealous enemy than the fascist militant Islamics are, and we won. Our current enemy is far more dangerous because of their tactics and capability. Wishing for the threat of new attacks to go away will not take them away. Myself and hundreds of millions of other American citizens are not going to let snide "armchair quarterback" academics try and reason-away responsibilities. We're not going to let them establish moral equivilance between the U.S. and it's current aggressors, brutal murderous terrorists.
Other than those things, you did have some decent rants about the sillyness of modern living. But TRUST ME! Those silly "cultural behavioral patterns" are not at all limited to the U.S.A.
I'm not sure how to take this... are you trolling here? Most people would say Americans invented most of these - even foreigners.
However:
the Internet: American in origin, though the Web is Anglo-Swiss and the software running it is increasingly Finnish
computer: British in origin, but developed to its current form mostly by Americans
motor car: German, I think. Benz, IIRC. Mass-production of cars, however, we owe to Ford.
light bulb: British. Joseph Swan, to be precise; I heard he even won a lawsuit against Edison proving that to be the case.
telephone: Bell was American, wasn't he? I think that on this one they have a quite undisputed claim.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Chemical weapons found.
Who's dense?
This is a troll and/or flamebait. Regardless of whether you agree with its contents or not. Someone, or multiple someones, are just reposting it wherever they damn well feel like it.
For instance, it was also posted in the story about Intel's patent problems (here).
It's probably ripped off from somewhere else by someone looking to stir up trouble or artificially inflate their own ego by watching some post of theirs to slashdot get modded up. I'd suggest modding it down just for the fact that its most likely ripped off from somewhere and blanket posted wherever the AC thinks he can score up a few mod points. He just got lucky with this story, don't give him the satisfaction.
here
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Gray never filed a patent, he attempted to file a caveat -- a warning that a patent was coming, on February 14, 1876. However, Bell had been in the same patent office earlier in the day -- Bell was the fifth applicant to be processed that day, Gray was 39th.
Source : Library Of Congress
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This database looks like it could be one valid tool among many, but not conclusive evidence all by itself. So, it alone won't prove anybody guilty, but if some other independent reasons cast attention on someone and they showed up high on this list, then it would be prudent to take a deeper look at them. Doing otherwise would be negligent and could cost the lives of thousands of innocents, versus a fairly non-obtrusive background check or questioning of somebody with a suspicious history.
and that 'about 100 or so' soldiers have died in Iraq.
:)
Yeah, well, if even the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S DEPUTY SECRETARY doesn't know the figure (he was off by at least 40%), then what expectations can we possibly have of an average Joe? I mean, it's like like it's Joe's *job* or anything to know this, but Wolfowitz... it goes beyond incompetence, it's just insulting to our soldiers. He may as well have walked over to the Arlington cemetary and started pissing on the graves for that matter...
Speaking of dense, (but completely unrelated), this is a great stat: 19% of Americans think they're in the top 1% of the income range.
Chew on that one for a little while
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
My girlfriend and I were asked to take part in the Nielsen TV survey. They give you $5 or $10 to participate (no big deal, but it it is at least somewhat of a "reward"). The other interesting thing is that you can tell them how many TVs you have in your house. They give you one diary for each of these. I said 5 so they sent us diarys. She watches The Daily Show, South Park, Chapelle Show, BBC News and I watch Adult Swim (I work until 12:30 AM).
Saying that only complete losers take part is pretty short sighted. I never feel like a loser when I take part in a survey. It's not like the people go out and seek to be a part of the survey because they feel like they need to be heard. We are just the sort of people that will listen to a person conducting a survey and to help in the study. Insightfull my ass. If you think that most of the people are uneducated and eldery you must not understand how random samples work.
I'm a UK citizen, living (with a Green Card, happily married) in the USA. Prior to 9/11, I could travel easily within the country - rarely stopped, security were somewhat courteous, and life was easy. Since 9/11, I can't make it through a single airport without being taken aside for a full search! Last time, I asked why - and was told that I'm in a database of likely travel threats. The only connection I have to terrorism is that I authored my Master's thesis (back in '98) on Terrorism and Democracy (the basic thesis was that terrorism is extra-effective against Western-style Democracies because panic reactions to acts of terror tend to remove the freedoms on which the society is based; terrorism therefore 'wins' against the Democracy because the rights of the citizens are increasingly compromised until the society is so locked down as to not be free at all. I really didn't think it would be that prophetic!). I can't find any way to have myself removed from this database, so now I travel Greyhound!
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
Anyone want to guess one of the CIA's main sources of income? This site has ongoing related coverage, a documentary on the subject, and of course Google will tell you more, since the one attempt to cover this in the mainstream media resulted in the journalist being slandered and the paper denouncing its own article (more on that).
Osama was never paid or trained by CIA. It is true that the CIA funded muslim extremists in Afghanistan, the "Afghan Arabs" as they were called, and that Osama was an Afghan Arab fighter, but there is no evidence that he ever was offered money by CIA and in fact there is some evidence he would not have taken it had it been offered. That is not to downplay CIA involvement in and responsibility for the growth of al Qaeda -- US arms and money flooded the region during the 80s, the CIA built bases (many of which were later used by terrorists) and made deals with Afghan warlords (including Hekmatyr, now one of our biggest enemies in the region), and surely Osama's men benefited from this -- but suggesting that bin Laden was on the CIA payroll just makes the argument seem looney. There is no evidence of any direct contact between CIA and bin Laden during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Sure the US is perhaps the wealthiest place on earth,
Nah..not on a GDP per capita basis. There is a lot more poverty in the US than in the average western European country. The most wealthy country is actually Luxembourg.
don't see why people who watch "good" programs will automatically shun being polled
This is *always* a contentious issue in polling, and it's why good pollsters get paid lots of money. They write efficient, streamlined questionnaires that don't inconvenience the pollee to any great extent. As the commitment required to complete the poll increase, the error increases greatly. Or, often in the case of then nielsens, I suspect, people just don't fill out the diaries accurately.
So you have definitive proof that the occupation would have gone smoother if Saddam
No, actually the occupation would have gone smoother if we had done it back in 1991 when we had just cause to do it. Hell forget that -- perhaps we actually would have been welcomed as liberators if we hadn't told them to rise up against Saddam then stood aside while he mercilessly crushed them after the first Gulf War.
How about another tact? Perhaps the occupation would have gone smoother if Robert McNamara.. err I mean Donald Rumsfeld had listened to his Generals and deployed enough manpower to actually carry out a real occupation instead of trying to wage war on the cheap.
Just like we shouldn't have gone to war with Afghanistan before Sept 11th?
Sorry, we already had cause to go to war with them -- specifically the attack on the Cole and the bombing of our embassies in Africa. Show me some evidence that Iraq actually attacked us and maybe I'll change my stance. The United States doesn't launch preemptive wars -- or at least we didn't used to.
Delivery systems -- you mean like commercial boats or airplanes? How hard do you think it would be to smuggle destructive devices into the U.S. through Mexico or Canada? Not all that hard, considering the massive amounts of drugs flowing into this country.
Oh, please explain to me why Saddam would want to attack the United States knowing full well that we would figure out he did it and respond with massive overwhelming force. Or did mutually assured destruction cease to be viable against dictators? That's funny it seemed to work quite well against Stalin and Khrushchev and I don't think Saddam has anything on Stalin in terms of evil.
And we all know that Saddam heartily approved of Al-Qaeda's WTC attacks.
So did the Saudi royal family (or at least elements of it) and you don't see us invading that country do you? I'd point out that 15 of 19 hijackers came from there (how many came from Iraq? Zero) -- but of course we aren't going to do anything about that (except perhaps censor out parts of the 9/11 report relating to the Saudis) because the Saudis are good friends of the Bush family and they have millions invested in oil coming from Saudi Arabia.
A small group of unpopular "rebels" are not a threat to the upcoming interim government.
Unpopular? Is that way the common people in the street mutilate the bodies of fallen Americans? Not a threat? When that interim government can police the streets without American troops let me know. In any case the "interim Government" is going to be an American puppet and everybody knows it. We aren't even going to give them control over their own military and police forces. Do you really think that's going to fool anyone?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.