Slashdot Mirror
Defending The Skies Against Congress And The Elderly
theodp writes "After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?" An anonymous reader writes "CNN reported that Kennedy wasn't alone in being listed in the airport watch list as reported in a Slashdot article. Rep. John Lewis, D - Georgia, a nine-term congressman, has been stopped many times because his name appeared on an airline watch list as told to Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border security. He contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in an effort to get his name off the list, but failed. Instead, he received a letter from the TSA indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency even though he might still be subject to extra security checks."
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again. It was a tactic they could use once, and they did, and now the rules have changed. It used to be the case if someone hijacked a plane, they wanted to make a statement or go somewhere, and you'd probably live if you cooperated. Now we know they want to use them to hit other things and kill people. If someone hijacks your plane now, you're going to fight back. You're dead if you don't, but you have a chance of surviving if you do.
That's not to say we shouldn't screen for bombs and such. We should. They could still try to bomb planes. But I'd like to see more screening of pilots, and more attention paid to other possible forms of attack.
I haven't got on an international flight for around a year and a half now just because it's such a fucking hassle these days it's just not worth it.
Didn't I just read last week in the slashdot story about Kennedy's problems that the extra screening line is "where all the people with dark skin or funny clothes go"?
Every time this sort of thing comes up, someone says that it's all the people with "brown skin" who get targetted, but then they cry fowl when the TSA seems to make an attempt to fairly apply their searches.
So which is it? The brownskins? The US senators? Elderly men? People with "funny clothes"?
As an aside, I'll agree, to a point, that this type of security largely does nothing more than provide a false sense of the very same. But if a "false sense" of security, as it were, is what it takes to make ordinary Americans travel by air, instead of cowering in their homes (as many did after 9/11), isn't it fulfilling its its goal? The goal may not be security, per se, but simply preventing the entire US air transportation industry from collapsing onto itself (issues of privacy and anonymous air travel aside, for the moment).
You're right: we can't stop "terror" or terrorist attacks, almost by definition. But we can do our best to make people feel like they're being protected, and the people whose job it is to protect the public can do their best jobs trying. Simple as it may sound. (And no, I don't mean a police state or "Papers, please". I mean honest people, at many levels, legitimately trying to do their best to protect others. There's nothing wrong with legitimately good airport and airline security, for example...not saying everything the TSA does is perfect.)
After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?
If you're suggesting that there's any age, sex, race, religious disposition, disability etc that procludes someone from being a terrorist trying to get onto a plane then I'd like to see your evidence.
What would you say to the metaphorical parent of a victim of that terrorists acts when they said to you `why did you assume a guy in a wheelchair was not carrying a bomb`?
If the system is so friggin' easy to fool, just why is it being used??
I can only shake my head and wonder. It is not that I'm upset about a few people being harassed; what bothers me is that this is such a lame measure, which is easily fooled, and yet there are people who think it is useful. It is the presence of such people in decision-making roles is what really bothers me. If these people can't even see the problems with this system, are we expected to put faith in their abilities to spot real problems and design real solutions???
It's no wonder he/she potsed that anonymously... I can't wait for everyone with this attitude to get old and start complaining because when they were younger they voted out Social Security and they die a horrible death because of a lack of inexpenisve healthcare.
GET OVER YOURSELF and maybe you can still do some good with your life.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
This sounds more like political dirty tricks. Nixon was famous for it. A creepier version of Nixon may be behind these.
Good point. Y'know, there are people called "actors" who are trained to give convincing performances of people whom they are not. Just because someone looks old and frail, how do we really know? You remember how convincing Patrick Stewart was at playing a bumbling old Jean-Luc Picard in "All Good Things..."? A little bit of makeup and several months practicing and I bet you could get a normally young, healthy person to look and act very much like an elderly man. At least well enough for an overworked security screener who's been dealing with huge crowds all day long. Like brandon said, he's already got a built-in excuse for setting the metal detector off.
GMD
watch this
After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father,--8<--8<-- a Newsweek columnist wonders: --8<--"
And I wonder: why does it take a relative of this Newsweek columnist being hassled for said columnist to write a column about this? the TSA and its secret black lists, and the circus show that goes on in airports across the country, bringing nothing but the sense of security, aren't these enough to call this journalist's attention?
But no, apparently it's business as usual for reporters these days, unless what goes on in America *right now* affects them personally. If the Washington Post and other news outlets behaved 30 years ago like they do today, Nixon would have stayed in office until the end of his term.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
There are a couple of problems here.
First, the TSA people on the ground have to use some freaking common sense. It kind of disturbs me that the people on the ground can't recognize someone like Kennedy. On the news yesterday, they said some other bozo has been using "Edward Kennedy" as an alias. I can see some lesser known people being stopped, but seriously... who hasn't seen Kennedy?
These people are stopping senators and grandmas, and letting people through that probably should be stopped, all in the name of "political correctness". If a guy is acting shifty and has a foreign passport, chances are the guy is just nervous about being in a foreign country's airport security, so ask the guy a couple of questions... not my grandma.
Second, these congress people have start getting to the airport AHEAD OF TIME, just like the rest of us. They pull up five minutes before flights, and expect to cruise right on through.
Maybe if they start getting delayed more, they'll authorize more money to lower the waiting times at airports.
What we're seeing now is exactly what they were trying to achive in the first place: scaring us into giving up our freedoms. Every time we increase "security" because of terrorism, we validate their actions.
This is one instance where ignoring* the problem really will make it go away, since terrorists lose if nobody pays attention to them.
*rather, mostly ignoring, but quietly fixing our intelligence agency issues too.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Heheh, as far as USA is concerned, the terrorists don't need to do anything right now. The Americans are doing a great job of terrorizing themselves, living in constant fear of being bombed and hijacked, putting each other on lists, watching and tracking each other... Just look, there is hardly a single article on /. where someone doesn't bring up the terrorists. All this fear and terror for free, whee!
I can see fixing the security on planes (mostly by fixing the door so no one can get to the pilots).
But you're right. Any terrorist would have to be an idiot to try that again right now. If nothing else, the passengers would fight back this time.
This isn't about making anything "safer". This is about providing the ILLUSION that we are "safer" now because we are "taking these steps".
But illusions are not reality. Rep. John Lewis used to be tagged by the "security" issue. But he can bypass that if he registers as John R. Lewis. Which tells you how reliable that "security" measure is.
The "security" we've put in place is whatever is easiest for the "security" people to do. And that results in the stupid incidents we keep reading about.
The biggest deterrent to air terrorism has already taken place: 9/11. If a terrorist attempts to take over a plane now everyone is going to remember what happened to the Twin Towers and to the people on board those planes, and no matter what the terrorists say they're going to believe that they're the next barbecue up on the list.
I'd wager that any terrorist takeover attempt will last a few minutes at most, before the news travels the cabin and several hundred passengers mob the sons of bitches and do unto them before they can be done unto.
The 9/11 terrorists did more for airline security than the government ever could, or can: by forcing the passengers to realize that if *they* don't end the threat then death will almost certainly follow.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
...a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?"
Is this from a member of the same media who seem to feel that President Bush is doing a great job and that the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland of Security are of no threat to the American way of life?
The same media who are holding on to their jobs for dear life instead of acting on their (and our) rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press? The same people who are hiding behind "what the public wants to hear" instead of "what the public needs to know". The truth.
It never ceases to amaze me how much people ignore these things until something inconveniences them. Then all of a sudden "Something MUST be done."
Who'da thunk it, but maybe the no-fly list is actually non-partisan. So much so that people who are used to special priveleges get none and may actually start getting pissed off about it.
Interesting. Very, very interesting. Can't wait to see who gets booted off or detained next.
I know it sounds awful, but it's true. If we don't use racial prfiling, then what we're really asking for isn't to stop targeting muslim males, but rather harass grandmothers and children. Because hey, no one wants to be biased.
People against racial profiling usually claim it's just racism. And by a narrow definition it is.
Or is it just playing statistics? Doctors usually check black men for prostate cancer because they are 100% more likely to get it than white men. Is that racism?
So if 9/10 terrorists are muslim males, doesn't it make sense that more scrutiny should be placed on them, rather than seniors with heart conditions? Security needs common sense, and if that hurts people's feelings then it's a worthy tradeoff.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
If the US Government can't even decide to clear their own Senators for air travel, I sympathize with anyone who has anything negative to say about the government. "I realise that you're a senator, privvy to confidential information, on the board of various committees, but I'm just not sure if I can trust you to get on an airplane."
This is due to intentional malice, disorganization, stupidity, or any combination of the above. You'd think, though, at the very least - they'd remember to clear at least some of their more influential employees. I guess not.
Then again, it's all too often that those in power selectively choose which laws they are subject to, or get special treatment -- so it's refreshing to see some of them inconvenienced by the same laws they thought were good enough to create.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
Things like this (also: need for biometric data in passports, gathering passengers-data from airlines) prevent that i even consider a visit to the U.S. in this times.
And everytime someone brings up "giving up our freedoms" or other such rhetoric its seems to me like they are trying to scare us into voting their way. Its all scare tactics, just choose your flavor.
But according to your post, we'd have let Mcveigh through security because he's white. See the logic error?
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
I have to wonder if this is not a more important victory for the terrorists than 9/11 itself.
Isn't that what they always dreamed of, making american lives a real pain ? Destroying the "American Way of Life" and all that ? Making american citizens misable ?
I have to say that they were very successful. With a lot of help from USA government.
morcego
How about living somewhere besides the USA where when you get old, you die? After all, that is what is supposed to happen, isn't it? What is this with spending millions of dollars to try to get a few more hours of life? I think I remember reading that around 80% of the money spent on health care in the US is during the last six months of life. This is vastly different from other countries, and it is why other countries have quite different health care systems.
The disturbing thing is that for reasons that remain unexplained, people opposed to Bush's policies seem to get added quite readily. Combine this with Ashcroft's recent defense of using FBI resources to investigate (aka harass) Bush protestors and it's not hard to imagine how such a system could and probably is being abused.
When all else fails, run.
Wow, you really believe all that don't you? You're far more likely to be blown up by a baggage handler or ground crew than your fellow passenger. And what's more, your far more likely to be killed by a mugger or the guy living down the road than a terrorist. Wake up and smell the BS.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
With any security system, including the limiting case of no security system at all, it is easy to point out problems. What is hard is to come up with something better. And, to put it bluntly, it does not matter even slightly if a given system suffers from obvious and huge problems if it is still the best system anyone has come up with.
So what are the alternatives to a watch-list or no-fly list that uses names? We could have no identity check, so even if someone called Osama bin Laden shows up for a flight he gets waved through with all the rest. Sound good? We could have a list that uses universal unique ID's. Sound good? We could try to mash together a database that combines all the various existing forms of ID, like passports, drivers licenses, birth certificates, etc. Of course that would be more expensive, more intrusive, and only slightly harder to fool. Sound good?
Feel free to suggest your own scheme.
If the US Government can't even decide to clear their own Senators for air travel
To be fair, old Kennedy has a history of reckless behavior, which has lead to the death of an innocent on at least one occasion.
Just look, there is hardly a single article on /. where someone doesn't bring up the terrorists.
That's because the terrorists have already won!
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Look, I've got nothing against old people and Ted Kennedy, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with searching them. Random searches will only work if they are, well, random. As soon as you define a criterion, you define a loophole. That's OK if the criteria are actually relevant: This guy is carrying three bricks of C4; let's not let him on the plane. It's a disaster when the criteria are in fact orthogonal to the behavior you fear: This guy is Middle Eastern -- he must be stopped. This woman is WASP -- she must be OK.
Why else do you think "Al-Qaida said to recruit in Latin America"? Getting recruits who don't "fit the mold" would be a coup, especially if we fall victim to a profiling mentality.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
On another, related subject...
The worst part of the black-list that Senator Kennedy was complaining about? The committee he was talking to is not thinking about getting rid of the list, but rather moving it from airline control, as it is currently, to government controlled.
While I think that the airlines have bungled things up royally with it, am I really going to trust the *government* to do things better?
Of course Senator Kennedy was not able get anywhere talking to the airline. The airline checks its manifest with the government. The government says "This person cannot fly. It is your responsibility to deal with that." What can the airline do?
Getting a new driver's license takes me an entire afternoon. What makes me think that the government is going to make it easier to get off the black-list?
The problem with these lists (and the reason people are suing so they do not have to show ID at the security checkpoint) is that *we do not have a list of terrorists*.
I mean, Senator Kennedy was kept off the plane, but he was not arrested. The FBI did not come talk to him. Rather, he was put through more rigorous screening.
What does that mean? It means that the government realizes it will get innocent people with similar names, and that it is fine with that. It has no motivation for getting people off that list. Delaying people at the airport does not cost the government one cent. Indeed, they can use it as "proof" that they are doing something about terrorism.
So instead of using "T. Kennedy", Senator Kennedy uses "Edward Kennedy" and gets on the plane without problem. Yeah, the terrorists will NEVER think of that.
It is like the "Free Speech Zones" that Bush erects whenever he speaks somewhere. The reasoning? Protesters can cause problems, and we want to avoid those security and safety concerns.
Yeah, since people that want to cause trouble (be they protesters or terrorists) are not smart enough to realize they can get a lot closer without an anti-Bush sign.
No, as a frequent airline traveler, I can tell you that most of what the government and airlines have done since Sept. 11th. is "feel good security", designed to make it look safer, but really not improve things too much.
I have argued with a TSA employee at a security checkpoint when he overstepped his bounds. Have you?
We need to start speaking up, even if we worry we might not make our planes.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
You're correct that there will never be another successful hijacking, as the passengers who died in Pennsylvania demonstrated on 9/11. The purpose of the TSA and the entire cabinet-level department of pretense and hand-waving was to head off the *real* danger as perceived by the government, which is that we might all realize that our safety can NOT be assured by leaving it in the hands of the people who brought us Amtrak and the Post Office.
Terrorism is a very diffuse threat, and the only practical response is that which Israelis practice every day: many, many citizens carry weapons, and when you hear about a terrorist attack in israel, you usually will hear that the perp killed two or three people before getting shot by passers-by.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Umm, and how does the current system prevent this? Pilots are searched like everyone else, and then allowed to fly the plane. If we're going to let them fly the planes, do we really need to make sure they don't have scissors or nail clippers in their pockets?
With a lot of help from USA government.
While I agree with you that the terrorists are winning, I would like to point out that a lot of Americans are quite in favour of the U.S. government doing this in the name of protecting them. Since these are the voters, they will keep electing a government that says they can protect them from terrorism. Unfortunately, nobody can really be protected from terrorism, but most people can't accept that.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The real war front is not in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is in our own societies: at the airport check in, the railway station, the stadium, anywhere we have to trust other people. If we lose on this front, we lose the power to even demand a stop to the violence in Iraq.
Such 'security' diminishes us as human beings. Why can't our leaders see that the terrorists WANT draconian security inside their targets. Our leaders are doing the terrorist's work for them. Distrust and alienation is fuel for terrorism, not a solution.
First step is to recognise the humanity in those around us. Next step is to break the cycle and recognise the humanity of those we share the wider world with.
Think it through.
What do you think a Republican senator would do if they got hassled by being selected on every flight?
They would probably complain quietly to the TSA. They might get their personal problem fixed, or they might not.
But a Republican senator would be much less likely than a Democratic senator to announce the story all over the news media, embarrassing their own party in an election year.
Let it be said: I'm all for embarrassing the incumbent party in an election year, and for repealing the insidious liberty-destroying ineffective "No Fly" lists. I'm just pointing out a more likely reason why you haven't seen any prominent Republican politicians bitching about getting onto the no-fly list.
And for that matter: what do you think the outcome of this political storm is going to be? Is it going to be good or bad for the prospects of TIA?
I think that Ted Kennedy's announcement is going to weaken support among the voting populace for secret gov't databases. If I were in charge of the federal program to build TIA without alarming voters, I would take care not to include any nationally famous elder statesmen who can get on the television news any time they want.
Except that you don't make to 78 by having suicidal tendencies. At that age a radical cause is getting the lime jello off the menu.
But I'll go out on a limb and say that yes we should pat the old people down once in a while. Just to stir things up. You know these are the people that are making most of the stink about security. What, you want us to just frisk people who don't look like you? Nice try, pops.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
people forget that the events of 9/11 did not happen from a break down in security they were organized and carried out with items that were allowed. Security has lost the point, a weapon is not just something that is sharp and pointed it is intent. Take a look at your desk and think about how many items you have there that could inflict sever bodily harm. There needs to be a major reform in not only security, but the attitude that security is carried out with.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
sadly yes, the laws and acts that are passed to "save us from terrorism" are doing just what the terrorists want to happen, destroying america. Airline security was fine the way it was pre 9/11, the only thing that should have been added was either
a. pilots with guns or
b. security guards with guns on the planes
I don't remember planes getting blown up from bombs or shot up a whole lot before 9/11, so we must have been doing a pretty damn good job from that aspect on airport security
what was used to hi-jack the 9/11 plane __Box Cutters__ Now had a pilot (or someone else in authority) had a gun that wouldn't have happened.
also, had the people on the planes been aware of what was going to happen I doubt they would have let that happen
100-200 pissed off people would OWN 2-3 terrorists with box cutters
sad, but the america we know and love is slowly coming to an end : (
You just got it over all wrong. Osama didn't want to destroy American Life. His sole intention was:
1. So that American Troops will get out from Saudi Arabia, since for him, it is a sacred land.
2. Stop backing off Israel in term of every military movement they do against Palestine people.
Now what is the difficulty in at least taking the troops from Saudi Arabia??
Just so that Saddam won't attack Saudi Arabia? Nah. If Saddam ever did that at that time, it only takes several hours for several F-16 and B2 to go to Iraq and kick his butt. Or so that Saudi Arabia won't stop their oil production, so that there won't be any oil crisis like in the 80s? If that's the case, it is much better to reassign the budget for the troops that stay in Saudi Arabia for production of new fuel and new engine that doesn't use any fossil fuel, eg: bio diesel.
Unless the American's start looking themselves at the mirror, the Islamic people will always hate us.
Fair enough. I'm just saying the "threat" is way overstated than it is real. Most folks are in more danger just going to work than they are when flying.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The perfect crime is the one that noone even knows has happened. Is the perfect war victory the one that a country inflicts on itself?
The article ponders the question, "Have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?"
The question assumes the purpose of the screening is security. It is not. The purpose of the screening is to build fear in the population.
Only a fearful population will sit back and do nothing while the gov't and its neo-cons pass laws like the Patriot Act and eviscerate the Bill of Rights. The corporate media plays into this fear-mongering, with everything from shows like "Cops" to overreporting crime issues and parroting whatever the gov't says.
One example: NYC (and some other areas) are supposed to be on a "High" level of terrorism alert. That's serious, right?! Yet it was just reported that NYC has dispatched dozens and dozens of police across the country to watch American citizens who might be coming to NYC to protest the Republican convention.
Given this, obviously NYC has all of its terrorism options more than covered, right? Why else would they be wasting their police manpower to send cops around the country to do 24hr surveillance on Americans with no terrorist background?
The emperor has no clothes. This terrorism hype is just like the airport security hype. They know there's little they can do to stop terrorism, so they are instead focusing on domestic issues and creating a fearful population that can be easily manipulated after the next inevitable terrorist attack.
have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?
Hell yes. Generics in the form of "Initial. Lastname" are going to match many thousands of Americans for all but the most unusual names.
Its also worth noting that security still varies wildly from airport to airport. I flew from my home (DC) to Orlando and back in July:
Leaving Washington National (aka Reagan National), you must take off your shoes, empty your pockets and step through the scanner. If your pacemaker sets off the scanner, you get wanded. Period. And the scanner has been tuned so just about anything metalic sets it off. Any but the thinnest carry-on bag will be hand searched. They were very polite and decent about it, but they also missed the screwdriver I left in my backpack by mistake (I'm a computer guy. I always carry a pocket screwdriver with me along side my pencil and pen and completely forgot about it. Screwdrivers are currently banned what with them being pointy metal objects and all.) The folks both machine and hand searched that backpack, by the way. And they make one of my companions throw away his toenail clippers.
Returning from Orlando (destination: Washington National), there was no fuss about my shoes and my bags were OKayed with a simple run through the machine.
All of this BS because of 9/11, when the crux of the 9/11 security failure is very straightforward: Pilots were required to cooperate with would-be highjackers. Period. Try to be a hero and you would be fired, sued, and probably brought up on criminal charges. The statisticians said that the chance of survival was much better if you cooperated and by God that was what you were going to do. The pilot had no latitude to judge the situation at all.
DUH! The surprising thing was not that 9/11 happened, but that it didn't happen sooner.
The pilot, by the way, still has no latitude to judge the situation. He just has an alternate set of instructions. And its the same in many other sectors of critical industry, leaving us very vulnerable to the next errant requirement that those bastards can ferret out. Think of it like a real-life buffer overflow just waiting for the script kiddies, only in real life people die.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I've got a bit of inside view of the TSA and what is going on in the minds of screeners and their superiors. Without a little Q&A I'm not sure what people really want to know but I will put forth the following assertions that should not at all be surprising:
1. There are *some* screeners with sensibility about them, but they are seemingly outnumbered by a collection of morons who seem to enjoy causing people pain and discomfort. I've seen it too many times. God help the screener who doesn't follow the rules when I go to the airport because I'll cause them a world of problems.
2. The logic behind the screening process is that "Anyone could be a terrorist." The training is very "politically correct" and does not leave much room for personal opinion or feelings to come into play. This means that even when they are following the rules, they're often duty-bound to be assholes. That said, some people still go "above and beyond" and seem to love it too much.
3. I have been to other airports and even to another country... Japan in this case. Security wasn't all that different in Japan. (I managed to breeze through without incident.) I have also heard from other travelling TSA screeners who have visited other countries because we were interested to know how it is out there. Spain, in particular, was pretty rude by comparison to the U.S. security measures. I've also heard that certain places will not allow anything on board that uses a battery. I'm not saying the TSA couldn't use improvment here, but by comparison, the U.S. airport screening process is VERY streamlined and efficient while allowing people to actually enjoy their flight once they get through.
While people sit back and judge how bad things are with the broken system, I invite anyone to consider how it could be run without violating any non-discrimination policies. I think it'd be impossible to be sensible and non-discriminatory at the same time.
In my opinion, I think all flights should have two or more armed FAMs on every flight and they should all but do away with the detailed passenger screening that is being done today. Baggage screening is pretty much on-target but should be handled with more over-sight because too many bad things go on there as well. (Things like theft, damage and laziness are a bit too common in my opinion...especially when bagage screening goes on away from public view)
Ask questions and I'll answer honestly. I might be stirring up a bit of trouble for myself, but I don't think anything I've said so far would be surprising in the least to anyone.
The events that caused 78 year old Americans to undergo humiliating treatment at air ports have also caused Iraqis to have their country flattened - I wonder who has more cause to complain?
They should get a copy of the bill of rights, and have it scratched to their cornea, so that they can have a copy within sight at all times, but that's a totally different issue.
However, in this case, if they hassle or stop the a Senator or Representative of the House, that is literally unconstitutional. Unless they are charging him with a Felony, Treason, or Breach of the Peace. He can't be stopped and questioned in any place except the House he serves in.
It's the reason why members of Congress can't get a speeding ticket in Washington D.C. If they guy was on his way to Washington D.C. he's literally got constitutional immunity from this sort of thing. I'd much rather it be fixed in the general case, but in this particular case, I'd be curious to see what happens if he challenges it on a constitional basis.
Kirby
USA has gone nuts. That is Usama bin Ladens ultimate victory.
Okay hyperbole aside. We have those fancy reinforced cockpit doors on all airliners that serve the US now. The other pilot gets up to go to the bathroom (and really, on a cross country or longer flight, he's going to) and *click* that reinforced door is locked and it's all over. A pilot who wanted to could assuredly kill every person on the plane as long as he took himself with them. The only thing a "pilot with an Uzi" could do is do it without risking himself out. Until he landed, then it's all over for him anyway.
You're very young, aren't you? You will find that it is really easy to say "just let people die" when speaking in the abstract. However, it can be really hard to be that person, and even harder to someone close to that person. Modern medicine does offer more opportunities to extend one's life, and it's very hard to just let go when society offers other options. The fact that other cultures don't provide an alternative other than premature death is not a reason for a given individual to refuse a chance at life when it is given.
... but I can't easily place a monetary value on those two extra years.
My father died at 62 from diabetic complications. In decades past, he would have simply died since they hadn't invented peritoneal dialysis yet (regular hemodialysis would have killed him.) I got to have him around for a few more years because of that technology, for which I will be forever grateful, and I count myself a better person for having had that extra time. Should he have refused that treatment because he was just "supposed to die"? Should I have encouraged him to do so? I took care of the man full time for two years because I promised I wouldn't stuff him into a nursing home and yes, he died anyway
His father, as it happens, died from kidney failure due to hypertension, before they had blood pressure medications. Ironically, this happened the year that the University of Chicago built the first hemodialysis machine a few miles from his home. Had he survived to the point where he could have taken some Cardizem, or perhaps a little Lopressor, should he have refused them because it would be wrong to live a little longer than Nature intended? We are not lower animals: we are no longer entirely subject to the whims of Mother Nature. At what point do you decide that a person's life is no longer worth preserving, and more to the point, who decides? For many families, the value of their loved ones far exceed the cost to keep them alive for a few more years.
Many other socities have "quite different health care systems" because they may not have any particular respect for life, or may simply not have the economic capability to support advanced medical care. Either way, claims that another nation's health care system is superior solely because it allows people to die is really not much of a testimonial. Now, I know what you are trying to say, but I think you should reconsider that point of view. If you have family that you care about, you will eventually be forced to reconsider it.
The problem with the U.S. medical system isn't a matter of when a person's health care dollars are used, but a matter of how efficient the system is in providing care for the dollars it does use. We pay into Medicare our entire lives, we pay vast sums for private insurance, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with availing ourselves of that for which we've already paid. What is wrong is the level of fraud and malfeasance in the administration and delivery of our health care, and a pandemic of profiteering. And I have no idea how to cure that.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I choose to withdraw my support as a form of protest against the American government and their policies, not through fear of flying. Absolutely nothing against the American people. Quite the opposite. I hope they come to their senses and will lend every support to that effort.
The US electorate needs to realise how much goodwill their government has squandered around the world and that the US needs the support of the rest of the world if it is to continue long term as a superpower. By myself I'm insignificant, but as the US continues to squander goodwill the number of ants nibbling away at the US will increase.
It's not just that the US sends armies into other countries. With recent attempts by the US to undermine our electoral process, I'm beginning to thing that some of those Middle Eastern countries have legitimate grievances against the US.
PS. Yes, I'm living in a glass house with the treatment our government deals out to refugees. It's obscene. I live in hope, as an increasing (perhaps even a majority by now) portion of Australia objects to our current refugee policy.
As a non-American who has travelled frequently to the USA for work since 9/11, I can say that things are getting to the point that my co-workers and friends are reluctant to travel to the States. I've suffered through the embarrassment of an extended search multiple times because I frequently have to book return flights at a moment's notice and often travel with no checked baggage. The last time I left Houston, the check-in personnel actually apologized for what I was about to be put through at security - having seen me multiple times that month. My wife refuses to vacation in the US because she's reluctant to apply for a visa, go through the humiliation of fingerprinting, and then suffer the indignity of being photographed when she crosses the border. Its sad, because I want the opportunity to introduce her to some wonderful friends and places in the country -- but I understand her feelings. We don't subject Americans to such treatment when they visit Europe. I think its time for the US gov't to rationalize security -- no New Zelanders, Irish, or Icelandic people have ever committed acts or terrorism against the USA -- so don't try to tell them they're "increased risks"
What people don't realize is the finncial toll it still takes on the world. These terrorists don't have to reapetedly attack us, everytime a threat arises we spend millions, which total to billions and worldwide trillions. This way we will never be attacked again. Maybe it's worth it, but unfortunatly for us it is being spent at political conventions protecting the wrong people.
What's to stop some psycho from derailing a train or cashing it into a busy train station? Nothing.
Yes, but there are far jucier targets. Train derailments usually involve a lot of minor injuries but few major ones, and even fewer fatalities.
A small bomb in Times Square on New Years would be far more damaging (not to mention fear-inducing).
Only guys named Muhammad get searched? White guys can commit terror acts as well. And what better disguise for a terrorist than a sick old man?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Bruce Schneier has a great term for this: he calls it "security theater".
:-)
He hit the nail right on the head; that's exactly what it is.
Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it.
Shhh -- you're not supposed to say that, no matter how true it is.
But no matter how true that is, it is not what the general population believes. And when you think about it, you can't blame them too much.
When night after night the news talks about terrorism and our vulnerabilities, it sinks into people. It should, it's supposed to. It's just like crime -- if you overreport crime enough people will lock their doors, feel frightened of blacks, and support ever-increasing police budgets and prison populations.
It's simple propaganda.
The way for the system to be changed is for more and more elected Government officials to end up on this list. Break the system for them and they'll be forced to address the problems, and more than just "please remove me from your list" is obviously not enough.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Actually, he eventually was allowed to carry it once the issue got raised high enough in the chain of command for someone to know what they were looking at.
The real problem with airport security is that too many politicans (hounded by Islamic pressure groups) think that nationality profiling is "racist". There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens. The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
Unfortunately, because nationality profiling is considered "racist", the TSA has contrived an insane screening process whereby a handicapped American citizen, who could never be a threat to anyone, is subjected to an intensive check of all body cavities. At the same time, the airport screeners are forbidden, by TSA regulations, from intensively checking more than 2 Middle Easterners (i.e. without American citizenship) per flight.
Insane? Yep. You can blame the spineless politicians who refuse to stand up to Islamic pressure groups, La Raza, etc.
1. McVeigh was not an Arab or a Muslim. He was, in his own words, "an American Christian Patriot". If they did go to a terrorist training camp in the Phillipines, it sure as hell wasn't for religious reasons. Indeed, McVeigh made it clear that his intention was to start a war against Muslims.
2. Ted Kaczynski was not an Arab Muslim.
3. Eric Rudolph, the abortion clinic bomber and the guy who bombed the Atlanta Olympics, is not an Arab Muslim.
4. John Salvi, the guy who waltzed into Planned Parenthood and shot up a bunch of people, certainly was not an Arab Muslim
5. John Allen Williams Mohammed, while a convert to the Islamic splinter group called "the five percenters," is not Arab. Lee Malvo is neither Arab nor Muslim.
6. Evidence suggests that the anthrax attacks were the work of someone working in the BW community, and the list of current persons of interest does not seem to include any "Arab Muslims." On that subject, I suggest looking at this ABC story, and asking yourself this question: can you guarantee that if Donald Rumsfeld were brought a variation on this idea involving anthrax attacks associating Iraq with al-Qaida, he'd have had the sense that McNamara (I can't believe I just wrote THAT phrase) had and turn it down? Of course, this argument is used all the time in conspiracy theories, so I wouldn't blame you for dismissing it.
7. While Richard Reid is a Muslim convert, he most certainly is not Arab.
8. At least one person involved in the 9/11 plot was a non-Arab Muslim; and the protectors of the 9/11 hijackers were non-Arab Muslims (the Taliban are not Arabs).
9. I can think of four other terrorist attacks, and one foiled terrorist attack, on US soil since 1979 that involved Muslims: the CIA shootings, the Empire State Building shootings, the first World Trade Center attack, 9/11, and the foiled attack on LAX on Y2K. Three of these were planned by al-Qaida. The CIA shooter, Mir Aimal Kasi, was a Pakistani (Pakistanis are not Muslims; indeed, aside from behavior, there is no effective way of distinguishing a Pakistani Muslim from an Indian Hindu, Zoroastrian, Jain, or Christian from Indian states bordering on Pakistan.
10. If we become Nazi Germany, it will be thanks to racists like you. Have a nice day!
Then how about this: You are far more likely to be killed on the road by a drunk driver. I don't see cops with breath-alyzers standing outside of bars to stop people with blood alcohol levels over the limit from driving.
You're missing the point of the parent post. No one is saying that terrorists are winning any physical fight against the USA. The whole point of the post is that the terrorists have acheived their goal of "terrorizing" us, in making people fear them and spend billions on redundant defense measures. Of course, SOME kind of security is needed in airports and whatnot, but whether we have gone to far is up for argument. The point is, the whole goal of terrorism isn't to kill a few people, the goal is to use the killing of a few people to make huge (economic) impact for millions of people. It doesn't matter that there hasn't been another big terrorist attack on our land, we are still playing into their hands by making such a big deal of the terrorist attacks so long ago.
Senators can be terrorists too. If they aren't treated the same as everybody else then something is the fuck wrong.
The government controls the do not fly lists, not the airlines. The same goverment who do *NOT* have Osama bin Laden on that list.
Remember back int he '80's when we used to ridicule the USSR for their citizens having to carry around their papers for ID? So the US is turning into '80's russia in the name of security?
The Bush adminerstration hasn't stopped a terroist attack - the do not fly list will not stop an attack - the guys who flew on 9/11 were not on any list - the color terrorism alerts will not stop an attack - *nothing* can prevent an attack except not having enemies in the first place (which is pretty impossible).
Terrorism didn't start on 9/11/01 - the IRA (Irish Republican Army) had been killing innocent British people for 20 years previously, but nobody in the US cared then, did they? And terrorism was around long before that...
I agree that the Taliban were a pretty bad bunch and Al Queada need an ass whooping, but I can see no logical reason for war in Iraq - apart from impressing daddy....
This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
That may be THE most sensible thing I've read since 9/11 - thank you...
This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
Suicide is very common amongst old people.
Also, suicide bombers don't blow themselves up because they have a "suicidal tendency" but because they are desperate. Go take a look at how people in Gaza live, and you'll understand why they are willing to sacrifice their lives for a cause. Most of them simply wish to free their family from oppression.
Wow, I just read the parent, and then your reply.
You missed the point so utterlly and entirely, that to even explain it to you would probably make me look like something you wouldnt like, and probably a good candidate for guantonimo bay.
You turned something that was a jab at how the country is being run, to a Bush vs Kerry post faster than a rabbit runs from a fox.
We HAVE indeed lost a great deal of rights, things that we held dear. Many of seem to forget that terrorists win when they put you in... terror? That is relatively the definition of a terrorist. So when a terrorist commits a terrorist act... that leaves the country in terror... and makes it continue to do actions that will keep it in terror... IE becoming everything a free country feared most during the cold war era (reference some books like 1984, and a brave new world for this one) it sort of strikes you as somewhat symbolic.
To put it a bit more clear. At even the hint that someone was critisizing how the government was run, you went into a 5 paragraph party banner line specifically saying something marginally related to the parent post. And then you went into why this marginally related thing means you will be voting for someone who may not have even been the focus of either the parent or the grand parent post.
You then push the blame of the TSA list on someone else as if it didnt matter in context, in essence making your entire 5 paragraph prequel propaganda post completely worthless.
Quite amazing. My guess is your a republican, because no matter the subject or the context, they provide leadership and stick the party line, even if it has nothing to do with the subject. Any deviation to other branches of thought, must be immediately and completely swirved to the fact that someone might not beleive what they beleive, even if they arent sure what the argument is about.
Now that I have done what you have done, IE a few paragraphs about something un-related to make my point, I will guide you to the main problem.
Any kind of list uses profiling as a central reason to block someone from flying is bad. Because such lists are highly innacurate, and are often wrong at exposing the correct target. If we thought of profiling as a marketing database, marketing database pulls for targeted mail rarely get 2% hit rate on the target market. Would you want such a list to be only 2% accurate? I think not. And before you go crazy, I am arguing against such lists in general, and the people that would vote that such things get into place.
If you wish to put your party group/person/affiliation into the camp of doing something so wrong, thats absolutely fine with me. But I am sure I can find a great many people not in your group/person/party affiliation that have/would have voted for it as well.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
"also, had the people on the planes been aware of what was going to happen I doubt they would have let that happen"
"100-200 pissed off people would OWN 2-3 terrorists with box cutters"
You seem to have forgotten about United Flight 93, on which the passengers did just that.
Once the hijacking got underway on 93, some of the passengers were tipped off by seat-back and cell phone that three other planes had been taken over for suicide attacks and they logically concluded that their flight was due the same fate. While insufficiently armed to take control of the aircraft back from the terrorists, they were sufficiently armed enough (with a food service cart, it has been theorized) to deny the terrorists their mission.
In so doing, the Flight 93 passengers also forever changed the paradigm of hijacking aircraft. The message has gone out that if you try anything, there are going to be passengers and crew who will stop you.
Amtrak: transports thousands of people each day far more efficiently and cheaply than any other mode of transportation. Absolutely critical in the NE urban regions. Has received virtually nothing in subsidies compared to the airlines.
Post Office: Cheap, efficient, gets the mail to virtually every address in the US, no matter how remote, unlike all the private services. Has been turning a profit for years.
So explain again why the people who brought us those two services are so inept.
That the screenings are not needed. Sure we need to keep guns and explosives off of planes, but that's it.
The real security was put into place on Sept 11. The security system was installed flight 93 on that day. Once we learned what the hijackers where going to do the strategy failed. As we saw on Sept 11 and since then is that passengers are going to take action if threatened, because they know it's there best shot at surviving.
I say cut back on the screenings a tad, we are only hurting the innocent.
>>Terrorism didn't start on 9/11/01 - the IRA (Irish Republican Army) had been killing innocent British people for 20 years previously, but nobody in the US cared then, did they?
....as soon as I was old enough to understand (and had been introduced to it by a global minded history teacher in HS)..15 years old.
For what it's worth, I was bitching about the IRA since the mid-80's
So not everyone in the USA was blind to what was going on. Just 99.9% of the population.
I was also bitching about Arab terrorism ever since the Beiruit Marine Barracks Bombing in 82... my family and friends (except a few) couldn't care less...they thought I was going through a phase.... for all those years.... I knew that bad things were going to start happening in the US....
After 1993 WTC and especially after 9/11 I started saying "I f*king told you so..." everyone still thought I was nuts "they can't hit here"... even though there was a 5 story hole below the WTC for all to see.... Idiots.
-1993 WTC
-bomb in the battery tunnel (93)
-terrorists arrested in queens mixing fertilizer bombs (94) plan to bomb the lincoln tunnel, FBI HQ and others
-bomb found on plane at Newark Airport (95?)
-OKC 95 (not done by arabs..unless you find it coincidence that Terry Nichols was in the Phillipines the same time as the arab that planned 9/11)
-3 planes downed out of Kennedy Airport in 3 years (coincedence?)
Besides my personal experieces in the 80's hanging out with Muslim guys from Sri Lanka during college in the late 80's who told me 'more or less' that there's a growing force here in the states, getting ready to strike out. (I have since talked to the FBI about them....)
People still don't get it.... we haven't been hit again not because the bad guys can't do it... we haven't been hit again because the bad guys haven't planned to hit us since 9/11.
It's gonna' happen... I hope to god I'm wrong though.
Huh?
CNN reported earlier today that the 9/11 commission has published a couple of monographs exploring two issues: what laws did the 9/11 terrorists break when they acquired visas, passports etc; and how did they get funded.
I think that in about a year -- when it finally sinks in what has been going on -- that this "airline security" reported in the article will be viewed for what it is -- ineffective.
But the specifics on the "visas" monograph seemed to me to indicate something much more interesting -- that rather ordinary diligence using existing tools could be more effective than shaking down elderly people and congress critters.
More effective, but less visible. I think one of the biggest criticisms I have of the Bush Administration is that it has taken steps in the name of national security that is largely ineffective. And it seems to pride itself in a "bread and circuses" concept of national defense. Don't you feel safer watching some smuck getting shaken down?
I was in Israel a few years ago. I was in a market two days after it had been bombed and the place was full. They don't live in fear the way we do. Tons of random people carrying uzis isn't what makes them secure. By law, every public building has a security gaurd in front. That's a huge step from where we are now.
The post office is the best deal in the world. What else can you get for 40 cents? Neither Amtrak or the USPS is a government agency.
-B
Yeah, that foreign soil method worked so well in Korea and Vietnam.
Whilst you're talking about WWII you might also want to thank the Russians for their part in the victory, they not only broke the back of the German army but did it on their own soil and still managed to emerge as a super power without having to terrorize any civilian populations by dropping nuclear bombs on them...
Have those good times made up for the pain, suffering and cost involved in prolonging my mother's life? Yes, definitely, in this case. But every case is unique. I guess if I was offered a binary choice, 2 weeks of peaceful existance followed by death or 6 months of agony followed by death, it would be a pretty straightforward decision. But in the real world, medical decisions are often made with lots of uncertainties and unknowns. I think one thing missing from modern health care is the idea of doing a better job at discussing those priorities and options with patients in a caring and compassionate way.
Unfortunately, like I said before, sometimes doctors are wrong. In any case, the level of aggressiveness with which you would treat a sickly 79 year old vs. an otherwise healthy 55 year old are very different, as likely are the wishes of the individual and their family in those two cases. But you're right in that ultimately it's not just about prolonging life, it's about the quality of the life that you're prolonging. I know that some doctors, at least the really good ones (who are few and far between sometimes), do understand that concept and do make their best effort to try to help the patient and their family make a balanced decision about the type of care to provide.
"If the US Government can't even decide to clear their own Senators for air travel,"
Have you seen the US Senate lately? It seems the only think keeping half of them out of prison are constitutional priveleges against arrest!
Common sense suggests that Ted Kennedy isn't going to hijack a plane. Common sense suggests that an elderly American man isn't going to be a terrorist.
The thing is... Common sense suggested, until a few years ago, that no one would want to deliberate crash a jet into a skyscraper.
Sure, common sense would say that an elderly man isn't going to be a terrorist. But do you really want to stick to conventional common sense, which, arguably, blinded us to forseeing scenarios like 9/11?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Poor Osama Bin Laden. He was so starved, hungry, and tired of death, that he asked the friendly US troops for help. Oh wait, no he didn't.
A) Yes he did, it was to fight Russia in Afghanistan. We sent him help too. Lots of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles for one.
B) Some republicans like to point out that the democratic party is full of rich people yet claims to represent the poor and downtrodden. They claim that for all their rhetoric, the guys in charge have no idea what its like for the rank and file members that outnumber them by more than 10,000 to 1.
Do you think it is possible to recognize the same disconnect in a global organization that has actually directly killed members of the republican party? Or is it only the common American man that has it rough in this world, and all those dirt-poor people living under the oppression of US-corporate supported dictators are really just lounging away their time at Club Med?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
> The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
1) No it isn't. There are other nuts out there (think McVeigh, etc.) who might consider such attacks. Moreover, there are other folks who have betrayed this country and won't appear on this list simply because they're the not from one of the "terrorist" countries.
2) Any system which focuses our attention on "more suspicious" people can be abused by adversaries who plan ahead to be less secure than random searches. This has been proven mathematically; it was reported on Slashdot & elsewhere. It has also been published in reputable journals.
Thus, it is irrelevant whether the system you propose is "racist" or not--it only works to make us less safe, and is therefore should never be deployed if we want to be safer.
Our politicians may be spineless, but not implimenting this controversial and ineffective screening system is not something to complain about.
I've been sitting here, ove rthe past few days, thinking about how much the world I live in has actually changed since September 11, 2001. And you know? For a long tiem I was pretty happy. Things had, on a personal level, been looking up for me.
Recently, though.. I started thinking about how I went ABOUT my day to day life.
I've adopted a real hatred of air travel.
Everyone I know has.
We drive everywhere, we avoid airports and suggest to people they do the same. Why? Nothing to do with terrorism. It's the hassle of dealing with security around the airports. I live near a naval/air base and the local international airport has been in high alert ever since. Beautiful, freshly rennovated facilities are being entirely unused now, which I find rather amusing.
Security has skyrocketed. And none of it is out of a concern for safety. It's all flexing muscle and trying to look important, as if they have a reason to justify their existance.
Nobody REALLY gives any effort to it. It's all about shifting the grief of the job off on someone else.
So.. Yeah.
I'd hate to use the 'if we do such and such the terrorists win' cliche but.. well.. wake up, Grandma's dead.
They DID win.
Funny, ain't it?
To arrest you, there has to be actual evidence. (Disregarding the potential to just declare you an "enemy combatant" and disappear you...) But it seems you can be put on a no-fly list at a whim.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You should be flattered that others are worrying about the US, just as your family would worry about you if you were sick. Do you accuse your brother of an inferiority complex if he tells you to go and see a doctor when you are ill?
Pull off the blinkers. It's not inferiority which motivates criticism of the US. It is concern.
This is exactly the reason why, whenever a pilot goes to the bathroom, a flight attendant goes into the cockpit to sit in the vacated seat while the pilot is in the bathroom.
Read the fucking article, you knee-jerk, numbnuts bigot. It's pretty clear to me that this is all, like everything else in Western Civilation lately, about the fucking lawyers, God bless 'em.
Think about it. If you owned and operated an airline, and a quadraplegic showed up unescorted to fly on your airline, somebody without enough limbs to turn herself over if, say, something hot fell on top of her, or something was moving towards her very fast and she needed to move, or a rat started knawing on her... This is a no-brainer. You're not going to let somebody who's physically impaired to the point of not being able to remove themselves from harm's way to the extent that it applies to normal, everyday caution fly on your airline. They're a gigantic, huuuge lawuit just waiting to happen. You would be slaughtered, and rightly so, by the courts, the shareholders and the media. Can you think of a more sympathatic witness than a fucking quadraplegic? Do you want to be the one to answer the question: "And when you saw that this woman had no ability to remove herself from harm's way whatsoever, to the point that, were she buckled into her seatbelt and a pot of scalding hot coffee to fall into her lap, she would be unable to prevent herself from serious injury, *you deemed her fit to be her own escort on a commercial airline flight, with all the risks that entails?*"
And hey, if you hate the French so much (and before it gets mentioned I was born of poor British, Irish and Scottish stock in NC and reside in WI now), right after you get done giving them the statue of liberty back and thanking them for helping out against the Brits and being the only other democracy back when we were and producing some of the best minds (and best food) of most of the second millennium AD, not to mention the french kiss, after you're done with all that, why don't you be a *real* bigot and go start killing them? Just hang them from trees like you guys used to do, back in the good old days. Bigots back then were *real* bigots, they lynched their victims and were proud of it. Stood around for pictures of it. Put those pictures on postcards, in photo albums, in frames. But now have you, the ubiquitous Anonymous Coward.
Back in the good old days evil wasn't nearly as afraid to brag.
Mod me down as offtopic or flamebait if you want, since I adressed the topic, I personally don't think this is either - I'm a normal American who's fucking fed up with the anti-French shit. It's fucking ridiculous. There's a lot of countries out there more dangerous and subversive to the US than France. And at the end of the day racism is fucking racism, whether it's popular or not.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
How do we reduce the frequency of arson? Not purely by making it physically impossible, that's for sure. Instead, law enforcement derives its effectiveness by being able to identify the criminal(s) and bring them to justice. For the most part fireproofing is designed just to prevent accidental fires.
Terrorists can attack just about anything; airplanes are just one fairly juicy target among many. Trying to prevent terrorist activities with the TSA is akin to trying to prevent arson by forcing every building in the US to adhere to extremely rigorous fireproofing standards -- a ridiculously expensive measure that, pathetically, still doesn't do all that much to achieve its objective (any fixed set of standards still has a weakest point against which an attack is still probably realistic). Instead, the solutions lie in the direction of Brin's Transparent Society, with the NSA being the stopgap we currently have available.
I cannot believe no prominent politician understands this.
...with only a tiny bit of help from cannibalizing the remnants of Eastern Europe, and utilizing the technology of other countries to their advantage. The Russians stole the atomic bomb from us, they didn't develope it on their own. That, and their massive manufacturing capability (done at the expense of untold numbers of oppressed people) were the primary status symbols that allowed them to be ranked as a near-equal to the USA.
I am soooo sick of the "Hate America 1st" 'ers posting their ignorance.
1.) The oil crisis was in the 70's not the 80's
2.) Air Power cannot defend (or conquer) all by itself.
3.) Osama wants(ed) the establishment of a worldwide Fundamentalist Islamic state.
As an aside, Osama lived in a country where you were punished for playing chess and ancient statues were purposefully destroyed, he's from a country that would rather see female students burned to death instead of being seen in public improperly clothed. Nothing the United States could do, stop doing, or make others do could ever change that kind of ignorant religious zealotry.
No Links: Google them yourself.
I would like to point out that a lot of Americans are quite in favour of the U.S. government doing this in the name of protecting them.
Thats because our "society" is all for the "its not my fault" mantra. We've been brain washed by the media to believe we need someone to hold our hand, we need someone to make sure we don't hurt ourselves, and yes, even when you picked up that knife and killed your sister, it was really the bottled up rage of a repressed memory of being touched by your priest.
Our society has been led to believe it is not capable of doing anything for itself, and taking its own responibility. Our forefathers are rolling over in their graves; what they did has been thrown to the wind, in the name of government protection.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
Security in Israel has been achieved? That's news to me!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
" I am okay with that, because I cant remember the last time a Scandinavian, Frenchman, or German hijacked a plane."
Richard Reid (the inept shoe bomber) was a jamaican. Jose Padilla (the supposed dirty bomber) is hispanic. John Walker Lindh was as lily white as they come.
There was an article just yesterday about how Al Quada was recruiting in south america and the philipines. It has been known for quite a while that Al Quada is also recruiting in the prison system where there are millions of angry black people.
So it looks like we better start profiling everybody. Al Quada knows that we are looking at every arab with a skewed eye.
"99.9% of America does not live in fear of any sort, compared to many other places one could live."
I live in America and I call bullshit. People are afraid. They are uneasy and they are angry. Look at how divided this country is and look at the intensity of the hatred towards each other that we have. The fear is manisfesting in some unexpected ways but it's there. I bet 50% of the people who vote for bush are voting because they are afraid and think Bush will protect them.
evil is as evil does
The current anti-French shit has gone beyond the old stereotypes when you can't read a single damn thread around here without some anti-French shit. It's bullshit, 6th grade behavior and I'm sick of it. France is not a threat to the US and we have a lot to be thankful to the French for. And bigotry sucks ass and is not acceptable to me.
And how on Earth is "what do you expect from a French snob" not flamebaitish? If it was supposed to be a joke it wasn't funny.
And also, not only have I not yet begun to blow my stack (ax somebody AC), even if I had, racism would be an entirely appropriate thing to blow it over.
And if you really think words are only words, then you must also think that the Constitution (and every other law on the books) is "just words", and the Magna Carta was "just words", and that "Common Sense" and "Civil Disobediance" were "just words". Words, backed by blood, created the freedom whose tatters we cling to today. Those words mean a lot to me, call me crazy.
Mr Anonymous-I-Make-No-Sense-Coward.
But that's OK cuz I'm now officially waaaaay off-topic...
They will never stop until somebody makes the
When I travel, I see a badly designed security system in our airports. It *is* better than it used to be in many respects, but it is also worse. The no-fly list and mistreatment of elderly is a start (wonder if someone will eventually sue under the ADA).
The problem isn't that security has gone too far, but that it has been implimented in a way which leaves open the possibility of political harrassment or retribution, and offers very little security as a result. I am sure terrorists would have an easier time attacking our airports than in most third-world countries (they might not be able to attack the planes, but then it might not matter if they can cause massive economic damage without doing so).
What we need is an open and public political discussion about *how* to secure our nations' airports (except JFK, which is probably fundamentally insecure, at least in some terminals). We need to also recognize that if we can provide proper agility to our security measures, we can beat the terrorists to their attacks not with no-fly lists but by recognizing that they require *years* of preparation to launch any large-scale attack anywhere with the possible exception of places like Afghanistan where sufficient chaos exists to allow them to more or less freely operate in many parts of the country.
Once we identify weaknesses, we can count on havint at least a year, possibly three or more, to actually find and impliment a fix. As in computer security, we need to have a wide community of white-hats disecting the security of our nation's infrastructure looking for exploits.
No government can completely protect the public against terrorism by security measures or war (examples include N. Ireland and Israel). But we can ask our government to look for ways to reduce its impact. This means real, robust security at the airports which still respects civil rights, and it means the cultivation of "white hat" security communities who publically discuss the security or lack thereof to our nation's infrastructure. We can also ask them to make our country safer by pursuing a two-pronged strategy in combatting terrorism. This includes:
1) Hunting down terrorists and bringing them to justice.
2) Looking at the reasons why individuals might choose to support terrorist organizations and see how we can change our foreign policy to rob them of support (for example, we should start mixing actions with words regarding at least the Israeli settlement and assassination issues-- the words of opposition are simply not enough). Pursuing #2 should not mean that we stop working on #1. It means that the actual terrorists have no victory because even if we play against their rhetoric, they, as a group, still lose in the end.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
-snip-
[I don't like the dude either, but that's not my point...]
Why don't I support a pure democracy? Jefferson said it best:
'A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.'
I do not believe that citizenship makes one a good policy maker. All people should be equal under the law (another current problem). Beyond that, all bets are off. I do not wish to entrust my, or anyone elses, civil rights to a simple majority.
have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?
Yes.
Until we dispose of political correctness and start simply searching all Arabic males from 14-54, silly shit like this will continue.
But no, we continue to search handicapped Norwegian grandmothers. How many of THEM have blown up planes?
-Styopa
Except that all American military personnel left Saudi Arabia some time ago, but he didn't even call for a reduction in terrorism, let alone a halt, even temporary. Read a paper.
Look at yourself in the mirror, AC. By your logic, Eric Rudolph could have been appeased by a change in US abortion law. I doubt you campaigned for that. Yet you write as if this is simply some policy dispute. It's not.
Terrorists have many and complex motiviations, not "sole intentions". I think you'll find they have laundry lists of stuff they want to change after their current issue is resolved.
You don't have to pretend terrorists are misunderstood policy wonks in order to criticize US foreign policy.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Note to Michael Moore:
Don't bother flying.
Get serious. He'd make a movie about the idiocy of airport security and revel in how he had to jump a freight train like a hobo to get to his latest film award ceremony.
You've been watching way, way too many movies.
It was to illustrate a point (as I don't know what agent would be effective in that type of plot) - obviously, the full body chem suits for sarin would be a bit suspicious. Doesn't mean it's completely impossible.
But beyond that, your arrogance is disappointing. You're committing exactly the same sins that we all committed before 9/11: you believe it can't happen. You believe that there's something, some attack, some threat, that simply can't come to pass.
Not true, but I do think it's far more likely for someone to sail a nuke in a container on a ship up NYC harbour. Less posibility for detection, and a hell of a lot more damage.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
Brilliant doesn't imply any judgement on the morality of it. Hitler's blitzkrieg was a brilliant military move, no matter how repugnant the reasons and results.
Admiration? Hardly. Admission of the audacity and success of the plan? Yes.
They've forced the US to make such dramatic charges in what could be considered our basic way of life that the freedoms upon which we have based our lives are quickly being eroded.
We've unfortunately brought it upon ourselves by allowing those think that our culture and form of government is the only proper one and that other countries who are not follwing our every command are our enemies.
IIRC, it's "One NATION under God", not "One WORLD under U.S.".
We need to worry about our own people before we stick our nose into other peoples business.
If and when a country/group of persons/organization becomes a threat to the US, then and only then should we act to protect our people. We should NOT be sending our troops half way across the world because somebody's daddy couldn't finish a war. Not to mention the fact that we either trained (Afghanistan) or supplied munitions (Iraq & Afghanistan) to those countries that we are now invading.
What makes what we are doing in Iraq now any different than what Hussein did to Kuwait before the first Gulf War? We've invaded a country that couldn't defend itself soley for the purpose of gaining control of their oil reserves (and because Bush Jr. has to avenge his fathers failure to finish the job the first time)
You want to see where this whole Homeland Security/TSA/ protect the people BS is going to end up, go rent "The Siege" and watch it closely. If you change the country it takes place in, you can see the DoD / HSD's battle plan. It's just a matter of time before the country that it takes place in will match the movie.
The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American
Hey, couple of trick questions:
What race was Timothy McVeigh?
What was his nationality?
Fanaticism isn't a monopoly of the Middle East you know. Give yourself a nice listen to a bunch of Bible belt holy talk someday. It can be a most refreshing learning experience as to what some of the religious right would do if there wasn't a constitution preventing them.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
You propose to consign handicapped people to a life of dependence. How would another person help if hot coffee fell on the handicapped person? They couldn't do anything flight attendants couldn't already do. Anyway, the airline coffee system is designed so that coffee doesn't fall on people because, able or not, that's a lawsuit.
This woman knew the risks of flying alone, and decided that she was capable of doing so independently. Will you tell her otherwise? Her brain works just fine, and she's able to make choices for herself. In the US, we used to have a system in which physically handicapped people were virtually prisoners of institutions designed by able people. Handicapped people have rejected that system, and instead prefer to get the help needed to live as independently as their bodies allow. This comes at no higher financial cost to society.
The Disability Gulag, by Harriet McBryde Johnson is one of the articles that made me start to think seriously about these issues. I hope it will open your eyes too.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Let's see... how many years was it between attacks on U.S. soil that can be linked to Al Qaeda? Eight. So by your logic, our policies were working from 1993 until... oh yeah, Sept. 11, 2001. So much for that theory.
Hurry up and figure it out folks: Americans think a 30 second commercial is a long time. Al Qaeda plans attacks for YEARS. It could be several more years before they decide to show us that our policies have not accomplished shit.
I am sure Osama wants Bush re-elected. GWB has played right into the radicals plan. Kerry cant get elected - not in the plan. So, if there is going to be another terror hit, it will be before Nov. election. This will guarantee that GWB gets elected. And then whats left of our liberties will be flushed down the toilet.
Most people who have problems with Israel would be satisified if the Israeli government would stop oppressing the Palestinians. Face it, Israel goes out of its way to make their lives fucking unbearable. This is what pisses off so many Muslims and Arabs.
Give back the West Bank & the Gaza Strip at 67 borders, remove the settlements, and allow the Palestinian state to be a sovereign country, and a vast majority of the people who hate Israel will be content. Sure there will still be a minority that hate Jews, but when the situation is solved, they'll no longer have the audience of the people who hate was Israel does.
In 1900, there were a lot of Arabs living in that area, and a much smaller minority of Jews. They even lived together pretty peacefully. Then up to 1948, there was a huge influx of Jews that came there to reestablish "Israel". Can you blame the Arabs that were there before for not wanting to give up their land and the country they were promised as the Ottoman empire fell?
Now the Arabs there are being terribly oppressed by the Israeli government, and they do it with arms and money supplied by the US. The US nearly always backs Israel in the UN and blocks votes that call for any kind of action by the international community to try and remedy the situation. THIS is why those Arabs and Muslims who hate Israel also hate the US.
You really only have 4 viable final solutions:
1) The Israelis are "driven into the sea" as you say, leaving an Arab state
2) The Palestinians are neutralized, leaving only Jews living in the Israeli state
3) The land is split into two soveriegn countries - one for the Israelis and one for the Palestinians.
4) The two groups live as equals in one country.
Which solution do you advocate? Which one is the US advocating?
This comes at no higher financial cost to society.
This is not strictly true. All ramps, elevators, extra parking spots, wider isles etc. don't come free or without costing extra resources for everyone.
That is not to say its a bad thing. As a civil society I think its is important for everyone to do that little bit to help the disadvantaged members. This is true of all forms of inequalities, not just able-bodied vs handicapped. For example, everyone pays a little bit to have public transport systems even in the suburbs, without which peuple who can't afford a car would be completely paralyzed.
You got your path to peace confused with a path to bloody anti-corporate revolts/terror attacks. Replacing one arrogant supermacist group with another is not the way to go. At the end of the day if you are a slave to some US-propped king or a mega-corp matters little.
The path to peace is not only increasing the standard of living in there but making those people feel like they are worth something. That means respect. That means some dickheads do not propose buying off those "ignorant, inferior brown muslim people" (who you talk to FBI about just in case) in order to maintain standard of living for the "enlightened, civilized, gentle and peace loving" denizens of Israel or USA.
Oh, and as far as IRA is concerned, you neglected to mention the shit that the British dumped on the Irish-minded inhabitants of Norther Ireland (which was conquered by force by the British Empire). Picking one villain here out of two equally bloody groups because one side happens to resemble your pet hate group more then the other, tells volumes about your way of thinking.
And what were the US troops doing in Lebanon per-chance? Maybe protecting the murderous, arrogant, beligerent root cause of all the arab hate against the West, a country that turned well-off Lebanon into ruin, which presided over rivers of blood spilled in there on its behalf, the favourite "only democracy" in Middle East, probably the most reviled country in the history of the planet, Israel? Not that its neighbours are saints, but US took sides and from that moment on, that is all that matters.
The road to reducing terror will be looong and hard and will not be fought with armies . It will be fought with sharing of the wealth of the human race but far more importantly it will be fought against people who cannot understand the causes of terror and lump together a partisan who cobbles together rickety bombs to hurl at the racist/supermacist foe who now lives in the fighter's annexed ancient ancestral house and an idiot who does it because someone conned him to do so for some illegitimate, looney cause. Unfortunately at this point in time USA and Israel are the bloodthirsty, crazed loons which make even a wacko like al-Sadr look like a patriotic freedom fighter. That is not the way to win the "war on terror"
Terrorists are inspired by poverty, hunger, abuse, religious fanatacism, etc. They see something which is so abhorent to them they are willing to die to change things.
Most terrorist leaders(and revolutionary leaders in general, including those who founded the USA) on the other hand are nearly always members of an almost ruling class. Despite rhretoric to the contrary their goal is simply to replace the present ruling class with one which includes them. There are exceptions of course, the occaisional insane or truly evil person who just wants to cause destruction.
Now we can't really do anything about the leaders, so long as there is a ruling class there will always be people who want to replace that ruling class with one which includes themselves, since they rarely have any real ideology they can sometimes be bought off, but it won't solve the problem. We can however do something about the actual people who serve the cause(you'll notice that Osama bin Laden wasn't flying one of those planes).
The solution is to treat these people like human beings. You can't win this fight with an army without exterminating entire populations because for every person you kill you bring two more of his or her friends/family into the fight. You essentially become the monster people like Osama claimed you were, and bring more people into the movement.
No. You will be always a target for this sort of attitude. For the record: the computers were designed and manufactured in Taiwan, Singapore and China. Ditto for the printers. The concept of a computer itself was invented by dudes like Babage and Turing (both British). Packet switching networks, which Internet is an example of, were invented in Britain. What you just demonstrated is a way of thinking that leads to supremacism, so lovingly exhibited by major swaths of US citizenry, a primary and most important ingedient in creating every evil empire that the human race has ever had misfortune to witness. The second ingredient is fear and paranoia about imaginary foreign super-villains leading to suspension of civil liberties. Buckle your seatbealt because the ride is already well in progress it seems.
Osama lived in a country where you were punished for playing chess and ancient statues were purposefully destroyed
So you are saying, Taliban sent their soldiers on the mission with Usama's own nutcases? Saudi Arabia's mullahs sent the Crown Prince's F16's to help? Yes they are all religious nuts but all their wars are local. Usama would still rant and rave against "infidels" in some obscure mosque somewhere in some village in Saudi Arabia to a bored crowd of an old man and a donkey if it were not for Israel's rampages and US's cheerful support of them and its equally enthusiastic attempts at owning the entire Middle East. By force should the commerce and corruption fail.
To Osama they have all the cards. With a friend of theirs in the White House he knew that he couldn't shake them. But let's get something straight. Osama isn't against them because they are secular, it is because he can't stop them. The Saudi's are worse than the Taliban because we literally look the other way when they act secular and execute people in the name of Islam. His beef with them is deep. They invited us to stay. They treat their people like crap. I know this is hard to believe but humanitarian efforts are one of the key aspects of Islam (as well as fair treatment of animals and the like).
It isn't Israel. It has nothing to do with them, its all the actions of the Saudi's alone. His family is very close to the Royals and they don't use their influence to better their nation either. They are all in it for the money. Bin ladin doesn't seem to be in it for the money however. His goals are much higher.
I know it's lame (see my nick) - but here goes:
What do you do if your biggest enemies are unstoppable? Anything. Its the same reason McVeigh did it, it's the same reason the IRA does it. Their enemies are too big to simply fight against them in the traditional sense. I'm not saying that Osama is completely sane, or that he is noble in his efforts. But you must understand where these thoughts and actions come from. It comes from a lack of control. He can't do anything - the IRA can't, McVeigh couldn't. When faced with a Goliath you may only be able to sling a stone, hopefully you hit him good. Osama did just that.
One mans barbarian is another mans freedom fighter.
Get your Unix fortune now!
While true, you forgot about the critical factor in this equasion: the support and recruitment base. If the idea is something that every man, woman and child in his homeland feels is "right" and "just" and worth dying for to free them from opression or avenge injustices, the recruitment base is vast and support for the terrorist immense. Unfotunately, this is the case in most Arab countries and it is for the most part Israel's and US's own doing. If the idea is some abstract religious mumbo-jumbo which few consider part of daily life, the terrorist will end up a lone nut with no backing and more likely to be caught by an Arab cop down the street then a Homeland Security Officer in New York.
And that is why foreign policy is the focal point of the whole battle. Remove the grass-roots support and the terrorists become reduced to the ranks of rare and for the most part truly incompetent (for being delusional) nutcases. And to boot they will no longer have resources to wreak havoc abroad and thus will beocome a local issue, further turning their own public against them.
change the slogan here from "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters" to "Kerry For President, Republicans Are Evil, and Democrats are 100% Perfect!"
I don't agree one bit. If anything, Slashdot has a Libertarian slant.
Disliking Bush as President certainly does not have to be because of party lines. I know one *very* ardent Republican who benefitted greatly from Bush tax cuts. He *hates* Bush -- Dubya is, frankly, a lousy president.
Now, McCain (or anyone more moderate, less violent, and more competent than Bush) could probably garner a lot more support on Slashdot -- I haven't seen much criticism of McCain, and the few times he's come up it's generally been pro-geek stuff. But as long as Bush insists on being:
(a) a religious fundamentalist, determined to hammer a traditionalist Christian value set down every American's throat by use of state powers,
(b) an ardent militarist, to the point of making poor and ineffective foreign policy decisions,
(c) a man who surrounds himselves with men like the *extremely* militant and probably corrupt Cheney, the militant Rumsfeld, and the religious and uber-pro-expanded-police-powers and reduction-of-civil-rights Ashcroft,
(d) stupid (I mean, come on, even when Bush ran the first time, the image he projected was someone that would have a comptent cabinet to listen to)
(e) anti-research,
(f) anti-condom (the largest weapon in the fight against AIDS in Africa, and the cheapest and most practical way to keep birth rates under control),
(g) anti-gay,
(h) anti-environment,
(i) pro-large-corporation, anti-consumer (as in the HMO lawsuit restrictions),
(j) pro-PATRIOT-Act,
(k) pro-Iraq-invasion (there still has bee no apology to Iraq for invading them based on what was, in the most positive light, incorrect intelligence information)
I and many like me are going to be extremely unhappy with the way he's going. Some of these points are unavoidable; I doubt I'm going to see a President that perfectly agrees with me on every issue. However, nobody wants to have a President of the United States that goes against them on just about every point out there.
May we never see th
"Whatever the administration[1] does is wrong. If there is another attack, whatever they were doing wasn't enough. If there isn't another attack, whatever they were doing was too harsh."
That's the nature of having a species made up of lots of separate bits, therefore 100% public opinion is difficult to get.
Great observation, though. Right on the button. I can see you thought that through, and the astounding thing is that a couple other people thought that it would be interesting.
Personally, having lived through the most interesting decades in the UK, I've never blamed the government for terrorist attacks, because at the same time as breathing through my nose, I understand that my government isn't responsible for knowing everything, and that demanding that they place themselves in a position that they know everything gives them an excuse to create overbroad laws.
That some people want their bottoms wiping by government isn't a problem with government, it's a problem of people who can't take responsibility for themselves.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
It's true that the USSR played a far, far larger role in defeating Nazi Germany than the USA. (Indeed one of the main reasons for launching D-Day when they did was that Churchill & Roosevelt were worried that Stalin would defeat the Germans all by himself and end up occupying the whole of Europe - in a sense it was the first battle of the cold war.)
However, one thing you can't claim is that the Russians achieved superpower status "without having to terrorize any civilian populations". Aside from the fact that Stalin managed to kill more Russians than Hitler, do you think that the rest of Eastern Europe submitted to communism voluntarily?
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
Why shouldn't we be allowed to admit that the september eleventh attacks took a lot of hard work, skill, and cunning coordination to accomplish. Do you think that you could mastermind a more effective terrorist attack?
Although I probably wont be anonymous anyway. When the congress and Bush introduced homeland security I had a bad feeling. Having grown up near east Germany (Austria) and knowing my history, I always knew that having one ultra authority is bad, those institutions tend to become bureaucratic and opressive in the long term, to defend the bureaucracy. Classical examples for these are.
Austria under Metternich, the probably most classical example of a society drawn into oppression by extreme paranoia and to much power in the hands of a few.
Another one the german Gestapo or the east german STASI, with the STASI being probably the more classical one
The problem with all those examples was that there was this one superauthority which basically built up its own bureacracy, installed by politions with a tad too much paranoia or simply the willing to do evil (in case of the Gestapo).
The basic split between secret service and police and military always was a good thing, once you bypass that you might end up in trouble. It is not like that in the US, but you really have to watch out.
Which is exactly why we (the United States) had (initially) a democratic republic as opposed to a pure democracy. Some/most U.S. citizens are:
n 't think for themselves"/un-informed.
stupid/ignorant/evil/jerk-offs/small-minded/"ca
Just because they are citizens does not mean that they should be allowed to make policy. Viz, just because they happen to be human doesn't mean their opinion is useful, important, or valuable.
You do realise that that is the argument used for centuries to keep blacks and women from voting, right?
Can you prove that a dumb person has less value than a smart person, and is less deserving of being heard?
I would say that if most people are too ignorant or don't have the right values to make a sane decision voting-wise, then what is needed is a better education system, not a better voting system.
> You do realise that that is the argument used
> for centuries to keep blacks and women from
> voting, right?
> Can you prove that a dumb person has less
> value than a smart person, and is less
> deserving of being heard?
By virtue of being dumb, a dumb person will consistenly make more dumb decisions compared to a smart person. Therefore, their opinions should be held with much less value, if at all.
This is not the same argument that kept women and blacks from voting. Women and blacks were kept from voting simply because they were women or black. The reason for this is probably because it was thought that they were dumb because of this fact. We now know this to be false; a person's gender or race usually has very little bearing on their overall level of intelligence.
However, a person can be dumb (regardless of race or gender), and therefore their opinions will probably be dumb as well. It would be more beneficial and better use of time to listen to the smart people first.
Commmon sense would tell you to screen all people with arabic ethnicity.
love is just extroverted narcissism
You probably shouldn't waste your time arguing with Twirp when he wanders off on in to this paranoid haze. He lays awake nights playing out scenario after scenario where a terrorist might attack him. If you were to take his advice on how to make himself "safe" the entire world would grind to a halt under suffocating security and it still wouldn't stop a determined attacker willing to sacrifice himself for the cause.
"Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting."
At much as it chaps your ass, Twirp, it obviously was brilliant, and that says nothing about the motivations or morals of the people that did it. They spent maybe a half million dollars, and did hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in economic damage to their target and have completely tied the world up in knots in part thanks to the over of the U.S. government. By contrast the U.S. spends trillions on defense and was powerless to stop it. If they manage a few more of them they could well succeed in destroying the U.S. as we know it, not directly due to the attacks but because U.S. government's inevitable overreaction to the next attacks will probably result in a crippled economy, a police state and an America people who are miserable. While the U.S. spends these vast amounts of time, money, civil liberties and freedom trying to prevent the last attack, Al Qaeda no doubt working on a new attack strategy that will catch the U.S. as much by surprise as 9/11 did. Unless you stop them at the well spring you simply aren't going to be able to completely safeguard a nation as large as the U.S. without destroying it in the process. Israel hasn't been able to do it after more than 50 years trying and it is a tiny nation where nearly everyone is packing a machine gun.
Tommy Franks, he must be a hero of yours as much as you cherish the invasion of Iraq, in the new book he is plugging is pretty adamant it is thoroughly wrong headed to call the 9/11 attackers "cowards" or to otherwise try to denigrate them:
"I think we're, we're at peril if we underestimate our, our enemy. Going back into the '90s, Osama bin Laden indicated that he had great capacity, that, that he was ideologically supported by a lot of people. And he may or may not be a personal coward, but I do know that he is a worthy adversary, and it is in our best interest to, to treat him as such. And that, that actually is what I meant in the book."
@de_machina
The real problem with airport security is that too many politicans (hounded by Islamic pressure groups) think that nationality profiling is "racist". There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens. The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
It's not a matter of it being racist, it's a matter of it being stupid.
Profiling is the terrorist's friend, because it is predictable, and because it diverts effort from security measures that really are effective. It is easy to determine what is in the profile, simply by
observing which people are subjected to extra screening and which are not. Then, it is trivial to make sure that your operational team doesn't fit the profile. Do you really think that a serious terrorist group can't assemble a couple of dozen people who don't fit any imaginable terrorist profile?
The terrorist's nightmare is random screening, because how can you avoid a random factor? When even elderly caucasians are being pulled out of the line, there is an additional, unavoidable element uncertainty introduced into any terrorist operation. In addition, it adds "noise" that obscures any real profile based screening. Was Fred Mohammed Smith pulled out of line because of his mustache, his middle name, or random chance?
And if any profile based screening is going on, it needs to be as covert as possible. If a bunch of Islamic-looking guys get onto a plane together (like the recent case of a traveling Middle-Eastern music troupe that panicked a journalist) you certainly don't want to pull an unusually high fraction of them out for extra screening. Pull out just one or two, and let them wonder if it was random or purposeful. If something looks suspect, place a few extra marshals on the flight, or run some background checks behind the scenes, but don't make it obvious to the passengers. Better to give the appearance of being oblivious, so that the real terrorists might fall into the trap.
And common sense would tell terrorists to find a non-arab-ethnicity volunteer. Remember that guy who got onboard with the shoe-bomb?