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Can Terrorists Build a Nuclear Bomb?
kjh1 writes "Popular Science is just chock full of good articles this month. One in-depth article addresses the question many are afraid to acknowledge is a possibility - can terrorists acquire the raw materials and then deliver a nuclear bomb? A good read that explains the difficulty in doing all of the above, while pointing out calmly that it is still possible." From the article: "Most experts with whom I spoke said that a nuclear terror attack is plausible but not inevitable, and that there's no way to precisely gauge the odds. 'I don't think the public ought to lose a lot of sleep over the issue,' says nuclear physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "
With the help of Google, anything is possible! How to build a nuclear bomb Complete with book search!
I highly recommend this book by John McPhee from 30 years ago. He even discusses the destruction of the world trade center.
Their name is MuhammadGyver.
... would think that the possibility of a terrorist WMD is far-fetched.
Lose sleep? No. Sleep with one eye open? Damn right.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
However, if the answer you come up with is this one -- i.e. "erm, maybe, we don't really know" -- it's likely that it wasn't as good a question as it first appeared.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I think people are far more worried about the radiological and economic effects of a dirty bomb than a mushroom cloud vaporizing New York or San Francisco. The article should have discussed how easy it is to build a dirty bomb and the effects it will have on the area it's detonated in.
'I don't think the public ought to lose a lot of sleep over the issue,' says nuclear physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "
Sleep! No time for that now after that article. Thanks a fucking bunch Popsci. As if my dreams weren't f'd up enough.
-Teiresias
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/print/0,21553,1017201 ,00.html
The printer-friendly version of the article, with all the text on one page instead of spread out over 5.
If a terrorist group is able to build a dirty bomb that causes mass casualties why would they want a nuke?
"I'll be better when I'm older"
Knowing how and being able to obtain materials, supplies and equipment, and follow the procedures correctly are much different beasts.
If 30 kilos of Plutonium is enough to build one, I'd say they have a strong case...
But I think they would have big problems deploying it.
'I don't think the public ought to lose a lot of sleep over the issue,' says nuclear physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Because if it goes off in your neighborhood there is very little you can do about it anyway.
There is a blurring line between 'terrorists' and the countries run by lunatics who actively enable terrorists. The most likely short term scenario is that Iran will provide the infrastructure and financing necessary to build an atomic weapon and use it in the next 20 years. Iran may not hand it over to terrorists to use, but they will use it to accomplish goals they share with today's terrorists. Those goals are the establishment or protection of nation states built on criminal implementations of fundamental Islam and the destruction of the jewish state of Israel.
Wow, with so many countries producing nukes, I thinks the biggest threat is extra warheads being made with out the critical elements (the plutonium or enriched uranium) and these warhead "kits" getting loose. all it would take is plutonium made to critical dimensions, some HMX, maybe some RDX, and you have a nuke.
30 kilos of plutonium... check.... a nice book telling them what areas of their "alternative energy department" they need to improve... check....
If Ben Af-Hack can build a Nuclear Bomb with the help of leftist holleywood type producers, it can be so hard to do with a handycam and snort of that good old tasteing wahabism.
Please dont sit on the nuclear weapon.
My point being that I think they could get away with a small bomb, but if they were planning to launch one at us... KaBooooM right into the ocean. We have more sattelites than anyone :)
you have enriched uranium. Then you don't have to worry about precise detonators, imploding shells, etc. Just slap two pieces together fast enough by, say, firing a near critical slug of U down a barrel through a ring of near critical U. That's how we did it over Hiroshima.
Best Slashdot Co
The original article is already sluggish, so there.
Just
Ex Soviet troops guarding stockpiles of nuclear arsenal when the Second Superpower collapsed chose to supplement their severance pay with government equipment. I was in China in November 2001 and reliably informed that I could go up to the Russian border and purchase plutoniom which was readily available on the black market. I visited the largest mosque in China during my time there and wondered what would happen if I put a small bomb together, blew up the mosque and claimed responsibility for the IRA in conjunction with ETA and Greenpeace. It just seems so easy for a single person or small group to alter the course of world history. Which is why personally I believe what's necessary when dealling with issues such as global terrorism like this is moral responsiblity and not shows of force.
cL0h
The real question isn't whether terrorists could build a nuclear bomb, but whether they would want to. As long as the US can threaten smaller countries with the "invade first and ask questions later" approach to foreign policy, the fear will breed opponents to the US. The stronger the fear is, the likelier it is to fool individuals into thinking they can solve things by killing US citizens. The most effective way to combat terrorism is to stop people from being afraid, not by rounding up terrorists that are already known. America is channeling all its energy into short-term solutions and forgetting the long-term ones.
One good turn - gets all the covers.
Ok, one of you hard science types will have to check me on this one but isn't U-235 incredibly chemically toxic. So much so that Pu is easier to work with?
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
'I don't think the public ought to lose a lot of sleep over the issue,' says nuclear physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Then he turned to the camera and said, "Lunatic Fringe! We all know you're out there!"
Somebody mod this up a few points. It is dead on true.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Although terrorists might be able to build a bomb they can probably only build a, as in one, bomb. They are unlikely to be able to build and deploy many bombs. That is why one of the best defenses is to create a more distributed economic infrastructure.
I fear that NYC is a dangerous single-point-of-failure waiting to happen. Decentralizing the economic might of the country (reducing the number of company HQs in NYC and relocating financial networks to outlying areas) would reduce the magnitude of any event.
We already have most of the marketing executives in NYC, now if we could only convince the telephone sanitizers to move there.....
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Mr. Cochran then proceeded to run back into his armored bunker as he chuckled to himself "Would you like to play a game?".
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
So can they make nukes? All depends on what part of the world you live in and what side of the coin you picked.
Or is this question based on the stereotypical version of the word terrorist?
Yes, we are safe because where, oh where, would they be able to get the plutonium
What would you use such a powerfull bomb for?
To prepare occupation?
The only thing such a bomb is useful for is to create fear, terror in your enemies' hearts.
while (!asleep()) sheep++
Most people in the Defense and Military sectors around the world say that terrorists or any small nation wanting nuclear capability will NOT build a nuclear bomb. It is much easier, cleaner and way cheaper to buy it from a willing seller.
Assessing the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities In recent years there has been increased awareness of the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities, which could have widespread consequences for the environment and for public health.
This is an interesting 148 page report about the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities in the UK
Or the quick four page summary ;-)
Interesting the worries this report generated as politicians and commentators thought it might be a how-to guide for budding t3rrorists...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
I'd be more worried about them trying and then causing a huge radiation leak or something. I'd much rather be vaporized in a nuclear blast than die of cancer.
Why would they build one when they could BUY one. Could they? That's the real threat.
No kidding. We already tell the bad guys how to pull something off in all our our US action movies. This is all we need now- tell them our weaknesses, publically. Good grief.
We're spending a whole lot of money in Iraq every day and have found no fissile material. How much better would we be doing in the war on terror if all of the money and resources were simply being used to ferret out terrorists and stopping them from obtaining the materials they need? I'm not saying Saddam wasn't a bad man who needed to be ousted, it justs seems like he should have been pretty far down the list of objectives.
Derek
Don't Panic...
There's a lot of things we know terrorists can do - blowing up trains, flying planes into buildings, releasing nerve gas on the underground - because they've already done it. And look how often that happens. The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are about 10,000 times smaller than dying in a car accident.
What is the defense against the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist? The answer is not a missile shield. Even if the shield is 80% effective, one successful nuclear bomb would be devastating.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc. If the most pressing issue of the day in Syrian become "Gay Marriage: Yes or No?" instead of "Suicide Bomber: Here We Go", then the world is safe. A Westernized Damascus itself would hunt down any nutcases trying to build a nuclear weapon.
I'm not trying to be a troll, but Western culture is the finest in the world. A Western acquaintance who adopted a Korean orphan is proof of the compassion and goodness of Western values. That Korean orphan, shunned and left to die in Korea, eventually attended MIT.
The women in the Middle East are even worse off. The brutal treatment of women in the Middle East speaks volumes about Middle Eastern culture.
i don't really know about this one. be prepared for this response to kind of go all over the place (as that's how my mind works)
i can remember in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, someone asked a similar question of the taliban. reporters found a guy willing to talk to them and asked them something along the lines of 'hey, you got any plans to make a nuclear weapon?' and the taliban guy replied "dood, we can't even make GLASS. nevermind a nuclear weapon". then he called him an infidel and made that high pitched warcry. haha just kidding.
but nuclear weapons. plans for it are all over the internet, am i right? you'd think that if someone were going to do it, they would have done it by now. if someone were going to light one off, they probably would have done it by now. the way i tend to deal with this fear is to just assume it will never happen. and if i am proven wrong, well, i won't have all that much time to lament my incorrect prediction, will i?
i can remember some shitty television version of "timecop" where some guy went back to try and get hitler the plans for the bomb, and it was on a laptop, and the timecops were like "oh snap, they've got plans for the bomb". i think it takes more than just a laptop and some plans to pull it together.
maybe if we are lucky doc brown will trade some terrorists a suitcase full of old pinball parts for delorean modifications. wooord.
----
when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious shit
"when the sun sets on the ghetto, all the broken stuff gets cold"
Interesting enough I'm doing a paper on this. What it basically comes down to is can they gain nuclear materials? They can thanks to the disarment of nuclear weapons. 80ish cases of soviet nukes gone missing. Quite a few scientists were stealing small amounts of nuclear materials and selling them. A few were caught but not all. Saddam Hussein has bought dud nukes from South Africa and another country (I think Russia or N. Korea). It's only a matter of time until he gets the real thing. A of couple of Russian hunters have ran into discarded nuclear batteries.
Unfortunately this is a preventable catastrophe but one we're not doing enough about (N. Korea). If you want to learn more I reccomend watching the PBS documentry "Avoiding Armageddon".
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
After the cloud arrived, there were areas in Germany (esp. Bavaria) where you shouldn't eat (wild) mushrooms and venison anymore because of the radiation. And even today, almost 19 years after, it is not wise to eat too much of certain mushroom types. The joys of half-life.
If that's what you call hysteria, I'd like to get your definition of severity.
Building a nuclear bomb is pretty easy when you have the right stuff. The only thing that is hard to get is the Uranium-235. Once you have that, further building is a piece of cake (in a lab). You need two chunks of the uranium that fit together. Best way is a sphere, cut in half with on one half, in the middle, a topped piramid sticking out. On the other half the exact same piramid cut out, so the two pieces fit together. Behind one of the pieces you place some explosives so that piece will be lauched with great force into the other piece. Within 1*10E-12 seconds, induced fission will blast everything away. You'll feel the effect at about the same time :)
Do not try this at home kids, leave it to Donald Rumsfeld.
42 + 1 = 42
I think the answer to this question has more to do with how you define "terrorist" than anything else.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
My first reaction when reading this headline is: If you did read the article Inside Al Qaeda's Hard Disk (bummer! requires subscription now), you will see that this very sort of journalism gives those people ideas to pursue.
The sensationalism that the media puts on some things can make these attacks a self fullfulling prophecy in a way.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I have no *clue* what the administration's "Iran know how in six months" crap is, nor do I see any problem with terrorists building a bomb (though the latter might wind up with a nasty melter, rather than a BOOOM).
All they'd have to do is have someone look up what that kid wrote in the late seventies. He got a visit from the FBI, I think - his science project was "how to build a nuclear bomb", and they looked *really* dumb when he showed them that he'd only gotten stuff out of magazines and standard texts.
Hell, I have a 20 year old issue of, umm, Mother Jones? that has a cover story on how to do it. Of course, the hardest part is the centerfuging, when you have the liquid in a bucket, and have to spin around as fast as you can in the living room for half an hour.
mark "this is 'secret'?"
Popular Science is just chock full of good articles this month. One in-depth article addresses the question many are afraid to acknowledge is a possibility - can terrorists acquire the raw materials and then deliver a nuclear bomb?
Except, of course, that article was in last months issue. Or at least the issue that they sent me last month. Why are magazine publishers and car manufacturs always releasing stuff a month/year before the date the put on the product? When did we get this far ahead? Can't they just release an "intrim" issue (Febuary, 2005 B) or something and get the dates back on track?
#include <signature.h>
I totally agree that major news sources have become degrading to watch for all the fear fanning. My kids are 11. They've seen some R-rated movies, particularly where it was just language or skin that got the rating. I won't let them watch the evening news on TV, though. Too exploitive. We watch "The American Experience" instead.
But what happens when you let people choose their news, slashdot style? Do we not get a ton of "Microsoft is after world domination" items here? There's at least a serious echo chamber for scary news about the RIAA and the MPAA.
Aside: We have a local radio station, WCCO, that's only recently stopped using this fabulous "tag line" in its on-air jingle:
If you knew the station, you'd know how that played. Yes, folks, it's just the news you want to hear, and it's only about the white people. They know their market.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
With that inline link, you've put the majority of active /. readers on the FBI's "watch this guy" list.
At least I no longer have to worry about remembering what I ate for breakfast, they'll do it for me.
Stay scared.
You notice how we never had these kind of problems during the cold war? I guess wee needed a new boogie man to fear so they could pick our pockets in the name of staatssicherheit.
Were's that damn "peace dividend" they were talking about when the wall came down? Where's my flying car? Where's my moon city? Where's my pony?!!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Unfortunately, there are a lot of nuclear states with very bad economies. If you only need a few nukes, buying them probably wins out in the build versus buy debate.
when I realized that living and working close to a large, urban area was no longer enjoyable and even dangerous. We moved to an agricultural area that is less risky from a terrorist standpoint just because of the paucity of victims and lack of headline material ("suicide bomber kills 3 pheasants, a rabbit, and 14 beetles"). It takes a bit more energy to make a living in rural America (or rural anywhere I expect) but the rewards are great even disregarding the enhanced safety. No crowded freeways, a lower noise threshold and abundant recreation (fishing, boating, hunting, bird watching, etc.). Plus, the advent of the Internet and high bandwidth has made moving to the country easier than ever. Overhead is less expensive too; I pay $350 a month for about 600 sq feet of office space in downtown and a 3-br/2bath house in a nice area is less than $100k!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
IMHO it is quite clear that a terrorist, with adequate education, can aquire/ develop a plan for a working nuclear device.
Getting the nuclear material and refining it to useable weapons grade is much harder. Then again, given proper funding or complete disregard for ones own populace (see North Korea) it is possible.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
The first terrorist "nuclear bomb" will be stolen plutonium or whatever together with high explosive to spread it around. A real mess.
I'm not saying that I disagree with you but you really can't say your culture is better than someone elses. Yes in our respects how they treat women is crazy, but in their eyes the same occurs when they look at us.
Just because we adopt children from other countries, yes it is a sign of compassion, however it is in no way proof. We as a country can afford to adopt children, and furthermore our society accepts it, but don't for one second believe they would not do the same. They are human too, it is just that they likely do not have the same amount of resources perform the adoption (this includes lack of money or lack of knowledge about adoption of foreign children).
One should never force another's belief onto another, using force is a sign of weakness. Rather, lead the person in the direction you want and he or she will make the correct decision themself.
[!] No, I can't see my comments. They are not worthy of +3 moderation.
You're jokin, right? After all we have proven that even in the "western" world, we have terrorists, and they are very effective at building and deploying weapons. Ok so Oklahoma City was not a nuke, and it might be lot harder to build an deploy such a weapon, but our superior valus probably won't stop some people from trying.
This is a fair pont well made. Also illustrated really clearly here: livinginterror.com.
It's a news monitor that focuses specifically on terror-related news items... 203 per hour on average. We're drowning in this shit.
Problem is many in the middle east don't want to become westernized. And it's not something you can force upon them.
Besides, their view of the west took a major turn for the worse when we invaded Iraq, so it becomes even more unlikely that they'd 'accept our values'.
This is exactly what I was going to post. Although, I was going to post straight rather than sarcastic :-)
There is a huge list of things far more worrying than terrorist attack; and a huge list of terrorist attacks far more worrying than nuclear attack.
So, all in all, not something to lose sleep over.
I'm a physicist. I know how hard it would be for an unskilled, untrained bunch of terrorists to build a bomb from scratch. I don't lose sleep over this.
However, why would terrorists want to even try this? Assuming they wanted a real nuclear detonation rather than a dirty bomb, isn't the possibility of purchasing or stealing an intact, complete weapon of more concern? Reading this doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies about the former Soviet Union. And remember, the Pakistanis and North Koreans have the expertise, know-how, materials, and a desperate need for hard currency.
Just because it happens here, does that mean there's a group meme saying it's OK? As a member of the /.ing public that *isn't* perpetrating such behaviour, I dislike being implicitly accused of it.
It's unamerican to want to have any understanding of politically undesirable individuals or parties. Clearly, you must support terrorism, because you believe there's some kind of motivation behind their actions beside raw hatred of our freedom.
It's worth noting that the size (i.e. yield) of a nuclear weapon terrorists would be likely to acquire/build would be very low (maybe a few kilotons). And while the destruction sowed by such a device would be larger than that of a plane or truck bomb, it would not destroy a city.
First the bomb is likely to be detonated at ground level, or a few stories up in a garage. This limits the blast damage significantly. Assuming an urban environment, tall buildings would also limit the devices blast effectiveness. US and Soviet bombs of the Cold War were several *mega*tons, and were detonated several thousand feet in the air. With a terrorist's bomb you will not see the massive air burst followed by a blast wave that topples buildings and vaporizes people for miles.
The most dangerous effect from small bombs detonated at ground level is fallout. This would likely be enhanced by the very structures that limited the blast radius. Surrounding buildings would force radioactive dust and debris up, making the likelihood of winds blowing the fallout over a larger area higher.
Indeed, a nuclear detonation in Manhattan would destroy several blocks and kills tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Such an event would be devastating to our economy and to the lives of millions. IMHO this is something completely different from Cold War style nuclear scares. A nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union would have killed hundreds of millions of people, billions in the after effects. Here, the likelihood of you being personally and directly harmed by a terrorist nuclear weapon is relatively low when compared to the effects to the economy on a national (and global) scale.
sig
It's an order of magnitude easier to build a Chemical or Biological weapon. Not to mention that they're far smaller and don't set off radiation detectors all over the place.
Not to mention the ramifications. Detonating a nuke would give the victims (read: USA) free hands to respond in kind. And who's got the most nukes of the two?
I cannot for the life of me see a single reason why any terrorist would choose a nuke over a chemical or biological weapon.
Check out this project: livinginterror.com
Clarly illustrates just how far the media is pushing this nonsense. There are over 200 terror related news stories published every single hour of every single day. In contrast, poverty, the bigegst single killer on Earth, gets just one tenth the coverage.
We need some perspective.
Um, yes.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
But Bush sure has plenty of them!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So is Russia arming the Chenyans (sp)? Is Isreal arming Islamic terrorists? Is Britain arming the IRA?
I can't believe your tinfoil hat opinion got an insightful moderation. Any logical Bush opponent knows that the US doesn't have a problem with having a weak opponent... it's that Bush is overzealous when defining who that opponent is. (I don't personally believe that, but my Bush hating friends do).
Iraq is a perfect example. It's not like we decided to drop loaded weapons for Saddam to use right before we attacked. We're not going around arming insurgents in Iraq... the hate for Americans is strong enough that we don't have to.
Note: Before anyone brings up that we armed Saddam back in the day, it's not relevant. That's long before we realized that he would be someone we would have to fight. The parent poster is talking about arming KNOWN foes.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Right on. News are crap here (especially local news)
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Its important to note that no conventional design test has ever failed. US worked on the first try, Soviet bombs worked on the first try and every indication is every other nuclear power's tests worked on the first try.
And those were built without the help of computers.
Making a bomb work is simple if you have the nuclear material. Making it make a HUGE bang is hard. Making the bomb itself tiny is hard. But making a bomb is easy.
The thing that is really keeping it from happening, I think, isn't the fact that making a bomb is hard, but making a bomb that can go supercritical with a small amount of fuel is very hard. The Ted Taylor book talks about that issue in some detail. (He made both the largest and smallest fission devices).
*sigh* Chechnyans
Need some caffeine NOW.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
My shoulders were hunched in apprehension reading your post, waiting to see the sea of naysayers disputing it. I was pleasantly surprised that you didn't receive any.
You're dead on, and it's something that most people, especially on the left, don't want to admit. "Us change them? That's absurd!!" Why? We have the most peaceful, most egalitarian, and most influential government around. Other countries would kill for the economy that we complain about. The current "human rights alert" is about whether a publicly funded college can fire a professor over, it's debatable, either an essay he wrote or whether or not he's incompetant in his subject area.
Westernization essentially means revolutionizing their government, economic and social systems. I'm not saying it's impossible, but we've got an *internal* fight ahead of us just trying to prove that this is the right thing to do, without mentioning the fight about how it should be done.
--trb
Actually, you should remove asbestos from that list. The US doesn't need any more of those "frivolous" asbestos lawsuits...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Never mind if the rest of the world doesn't want to be "westernized" right? I mean, it's all justified as long as we get rid of those pesky comunists! Er, i meant terrorists. Also, the afirmation that western culture is the finest in the world is INFINITELY debatable. It is a huge world out there, you know.
Come on, the problem is not as simple to solve as "let's westernize them" - look how well that went in Iraq.
IM (very) HO, America needs to deal with terrorism by analizing what makes it appear in the first place instead of assuming it spawns in the vaccum, with people that hate the Western "for their freedom".
Noooo, he wanted change now, so we decided to go piss everybody off, kill several tens of thousands (regrettable, oh so regrettable, but hey, that's war, kids!), tie up our military in a grand neoconservative experiment, and piss away every last ounce of goodwill and "I wanna be like you guys" we'd spent several decades building.
We were so well on the way to westernizing the world. Now, we've turned ourselves into the very kind of monster we're trying to defeat. We've gone from being the world's beacon of freedom, democracy and civil rights to "oh, shut up--at least we're better than Saddam was!"
Just wait. It has yet to get really bad.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
What we _all_ need to do is to learn to value each others as equals. That goes from the Mullahs in Saudia Arabia tellling women to cover themselves completely, to the Baptist Preachers in Alabama telling women that their place is behind their man.
Why go through the trouble of trying to build a nuclear weapon and risking discovery when you could just buy it from a cash-strapped country who views your enemy as their enemy as well? Or why not just steal it from someplace with lax security or cash-strapped personnel?
Isn't there already another, earlier paper on this? Written by some guy named "Clancy."
You forgot to add that WCCO taylors to the left-leaning white people...
root@allevil:~#
People need to learn (again?) how to think. If you stay skeptic (not paranoid, skeptic) of what you see in TV you'll find out a in time what is beleiavble and what not. Also, always try to find a different point of view on an issue. Fox News is not the guardian of all that's true and right.
When people think of "terrorists", they think of some poor, young Middle-Eastern guy who trains in a poorly made camp in the desert and rigs up bombs using duct tape and sticks.
But you're forgetting about all the professionals who are sympathetic to their cause. These are highly educated people who might already work in places that give them access to the things they need. You don't need to build a bomb from scratch- all you need is an organized network of people who are willing to "turn a blind eye" to a warhead that gets "lost in the warehouse". If you find out how the security of those places works, you can find a way to currupt that security.
Hell, we've already had nuclear scientists in Pakistan who have admitted selling nuclear secrets to rogue states. Money corrupts people.
..because trying to take over other's cultures has worked _so_ well in the past. We already have way too much hypocrasy to do this anyways. We demonize Iran, with universal suffrage, while kuwait and saudi arabia are 'alright' and we install a 'democracy' in iraq.
and no, if we westernized them, they would not care about human rights. I would wager that right now you are wearing clothing made in sweatshops and probably today you drank a soda whose sugar was cut by a preteen. Westerners cause more horror than any terrorist from the middle east and I think that both are wrong. Western culture also treats its elders horribly. Late life care in the US way too often consists of warehousing the elderly and keeping them so drugged up that they don't care. We demonize youth, shoot each other, are too scared to walk the streets, flee to the suburbs and terrorize the environment. We have little sense of community and are horribly depressed. These are GREAT values to thrust on other cultures. And we couldn't westernize everyone, Implicit in the western system is that we get easy lives on the sweat and graves of lesser peoples in crappy places who we an systemically abuse. Need cheaper Bananas? lets flood a small country with surplus grain so that the farmers can't make it except by selling the cash crops that we tell them too. Some celeberty chokes on a banana crashing the market? oops, I guess they are fucked.
And the nutcases already have the nukes. The US used them TWICE. on CIVILIAN targets. There is no fucking way that anyone who really considers it would think that dropping them was justified. Before the release of the cracked transmissions, sure, "save US lives by not having an invasion" maybe could get some people, but we knew that they were ready to surrender, and even if not, we dropping fucking nuclear weapons in the middle of a city! 1/4 women in the US has been sexually assaulted (1/6 men too..). We definitely have some strong points, but to claim that we are perfect and should thrust our beleifs on people who don't want them is fucking stupid and xenophobic. Iran is probably less crazy than the US 100 years ago. 150 years ago we had slavery!!!!!!! Maybe we should stop overthrowing democratically elected governments with dictators (*cough* pakistan *cough*) and let the people in the region decide what they actually want. If we have values that are so great, stop bombing them and maybe they will beleive us and vote* them in!
(*universal voting not available in saudi arabia)
If you didn't already think this was a possibility, then you haven't been paying attention. Remember, there's several groups out there who have already developed nuclear weapons. They've all happened to be governments of countries, but nonetheless they had enough smart, motivated people to figure it out. There's nothing intrinsic about a so-called "terrorist group" that would make it unable to figure it out as well. That doesn't make it easy, just possible.
Unfortunately, you showed which is the main problem of this world even if you didn't intend to.
Is people that think their culture is "better" who make it this bad.
The first question I would ask you is, who decides which culture is better?, or, who has the right to say so? you're right, each person should decide which culture is better, but for him/herself, not for somebody else.
Secondly, have you ever thought how would you feel if somebody else wanted to impose his/her culture to you based simply on the fact that he/she believes it is better than yours?
Haven't you thought that maybe the eastern world think tehir way of living is the best?
Unfortunately, we're victims of our own nature, a big majority of people are blinded by ignorance, and use any excuse they can find to achieve their ends. Some use the "democrazitaion" of the "axis of evil", others the "anhihilation" of "infidels".
The fact is that there will always exist a good excuse to try to impose one's views, as a matter of fact I'm doing exactly that, it's unavoidable.
As much as some people would like to live in peace, there will always be somebody that will find a way to manipulate people in order to achieve their goals in a destructive manner.
IMHO there is one solution that might work, but this is just a dream, and this solution will not come without education.
If we were educated to accept people's differences, if we were educated in order to accept the good things that other cultures have to offer, if we were educated in finding and rejecting what is so wrong with our own culture, then we'd be much better off.
Of course problems would still be present, but in a much less dangerous manner, that's for sure.
Unfortunately, those same people that manipulate others will never allow them to think for themselves.
What we _all_ need to do is to learn to value each others as equals. That goes from the Mullahs in Saudia Arabia tellling women to cover themselves completely, to the Baptist Preachers in Alabama telling women that their place is behind their man.
Please, PLEASE, mod this comment up. This is some of the most insightful stuff i've read in Slashdot in quite a while.
We should always trust mad scientists.
After all, Tom Cochran changing his name to Zephram Cochrain and waiting for a nuclear holocaust just to make his Warp drive is nothing to worry about.
If you get modded down for a first post... What do you get for a last post?
The brutal treatment of women in the Middle East speaks volumes about Middle Eastern culture.
And the brutal treatment of Iraqi children by americans speaks volumes about the west. Not to mention the lovely photos of Abu Ghirab.
If the US weren't such a sadistic nation they'd have won by now. I am sure for far less then the $300Billion spent so far. They could have sent in a platoon of realtors into Iraq, bought everything, set everyone up with a low priced GMAC home mortgage and had a Mc Donalds on every corner and a WalMart in every town by now. $300Billion could have bought Iraq up for less than 2k an acre on average for the 170 million acres that constitute Iraq. That's a pretty high price for a desert view and no mod cons. On top of that, at 6% interest the money could be doubled in six years.
Instead, they're just setting up for more trouble. That $300 Billion is just a down payment on a money pit in a bad neighborhood made worse by their presence rather than better.
it's probably burried in your back yard...
... and the fix was worse than the problem.
It's a classic scenario. What we really have to worry about is going back in time and accidentally doing something that makes us cease to exist.
That appears to have already happened, and then been corrected. Unfortunatley, we now have Biff in charge of the world, so things are even worse off in this timeline than they were in both the original timeline, and the one where we don't exist. God damn that delorian and misguided science!
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Clancy's 'Sum of All Fears,' circa 1990 or so, IIRC, has that exact plot; Islamic terrorists build a nuke.
In the afterword, he laments the fact that information on how to build a nuke was SO easy to obtain, he felt obligated to not reproduce it in his book. He mentions calling up Oak Ridges and asking about specs for some of the fabrication machinery, and having blueprints FedEx'd to him the next day.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
information slipped out about a confidential
real estate conference in Crawford, TX, concerning
the opportunities for land barons and real estate
developers in Texas after Pu-238 dirty bombs have
been exploded over Washington, DC.
The 20,000 year half-life of Pu-238 was proffered
as an excuse to move the Federal government's vast
bureaucracy to Texas. An unnamed source was quoted
as stating "Nobody will ever associate the Bush
administration's meager efforts to improve the
USA's border, seaport, and air cargo security
with our land development plans."
The repeated statements made by Bush admin-
istration officials that "It is not a matter of
IF new terrorist attacks occur on USA soil, it
is only a matter of WHEN" were never taken by
the press as a policy goal, but merely as a pre-
conceived excuse for the Federal government's
failure to prevent such an attack. The same
unnamed source was quoted as saying "The buck
doesn't stop in the White House; it stops right
in our private offshore bank accounts."
Noooo, he wanted change now, so we decided to go piss everybody off, kill several tens of thousands (regrettable, oh so regrettable, but hey, that's war, kids!), tie up our military in a grand neoconservative experiment, and piss away every last ounce of goodwill and "I wanna be like you guys" we'd spent several decades building.
I'm sure that he woke up one morning and decided to go piss everybody off, yeah that seems like a logical decision that a world leader would make. Several decades??? We were hated long ago for being a superpower, this was long before the current administration. So my question to all the people that say we are as bad as some of the islamo-facist states that exist, then why don't you move to another country if this is so horrible? Put your money where your mouth is.
root@allevil:~#
threaten back.
These people are not a country. They claim to represent an ideology.
It does no good to merely threaten them with bombing them back into the stone age. Look at the Afghan war. Western technology was merely shifting rubble around.
Looks great on TV but doesn't accomplish much. Where's Osama? Right?
The Taliban were defeated suicidal buggers before we ever set foot in there. (They were DEMANDING food as if we owed it to them! The Arab states we responding to that with bushels of air.) We MADE them, Omar and Osama, made them into folk heroes.
The ONLY way to threaten them is to threaten what they hold holy. Butv its not theirs. It belongs to the House of Saud.
How could we, the western world, make that the citizens of the western world, not some government, destroy everything from Mecca to Medina? Just leave a trail of Glowing Glass?
In response to an attack, that's how, and why. Let the mullahs stick that in their pipe and smoke it.
Leave us alome or lose two pillars of Islam, for at least longer than you've had Islam.
Osama can blow things up? Well so can we.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Like you, I certainly find the plight of women in the middle-east appalling. However, when viewed from the outside, many might say that Western culture is also deeply flawed. A random sample of these issues might include:
In most Western countries there remains a huge gulf between the wealthy and the poor.
Women in Western societies often feel compelled by the media to conform to a given body shape and appearance. It still seems that many base the value of a woman on her appearance.
Men in Western societies are often defined by their job and earning capacity.
The elderly are often disregarded and ignored. Perhaps this is because they no longer possess beauty or earning power, or perhaps people don't want to be reminded of infirmity or death.
A major portion of a individual's existence in the Western world is concerned with the accumulation of wealth and possessions.
I'm not trying to voice reactionary views, or suggest that I would rather live in a non-democratic state. However, regarding our Western culture as a being vastly superior and virtually flawless would seem to be dangerous. If we look carefully at the past, we might see that we share more in common with the previous fallen civilisations than we would like to admit. So you should not find it surprising if there are those who might fail to welcome the idea of being "Westernised".
US Media to citizens:
"We in the US media wish to shield you from this world. We bring you only news stories from your own country,
The top two stories on CNN. The headline and the one on the top right.
1. Blasts rock Baghdad, kill 20
2. Putin: Iran not developing nukes
Top stories on Fox news:
1. Attacks Target Shiites in Baghdad
2. Putin: Iran Has No Nuke Plans
The US reports plenty of world news. I know while any post that says (something in the US = bad) is modded up here, this is just silly. When the Tsunami happened, it was 24/7 Tsunami coverage here. When the Russian Schoolchildren were held by terrorists it was basically 24 hour coverage. Sorry if CNN doesn't report soccer scores from around the world, but America doesn't care about trival stuff from around the world.
unless the story furthers the goal of making you even more freightened. Besides, who wants any real news about other countries?
The BBC is available in America, the fact is people are more interested in their local news than world news. Sorry if this bothers you. It isnt' a media consperacy though, it's just a free market economy reacting to what people want.
They don't even have NASCAR in those strange lands!
I guess you are trying to generalize about southerns now, since NASCAR's following is mostly in the more rural section of the country.
Do you really care about what happens in a place without NASCAR, unless they are IMMINENTLY ready to attack! Like SHARKS, and ASBESTOS, and POWER LINES!!! News at 11!!!!!!"
Please. Yes, people care more about trivial events in their own country than trivial events around the world. When something big happens, it is covered ad nausem.
The article has inaccuracies but IMHO the conclusion is accurate.
It says that 100 lbs (about 45 kg) of U235, enough to achieve critiacl mass is the size of a bowling ball but it's the size of a grapefruit. Other sources say that 50 lbs is needed for critical mass but it's not clear what degree of enrichment was used for the calculatons and whether depleted uranium or other neutron reflector is used. A neutron reflector effectivly lowers the amount of fissionable material needed to achieve critical mass.
Fabricating a U235 device should be fairly easy after enough U235 is obtained especially compared to a PU device.
Even if the detonationn would be a spectacular fizzle there would be deaths and radioactive contamination and the psycological impact would be tremendous.
Nate
Come on now...a nuclear bomb? maybe a dirty bomb... i can see them making that but a actual nuclear bomb. even with google i seriously doubt it. The would need massive resourses to create a device and they would have to bring it into the country. because no country in its right mind ( other than N. Korean) would have the balls to launch a Nuclear device via rockets. after afganistan and iraq, i that would be polictical suicide for a Nations leader. its always possible but not probbable
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
The "western" countries (including Japan) are hated by some just for being rich. Sure, pushing others around doesn't make you popular. But plenty of people around the world believe that their culture has a god-given right to be top dog.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Keep in mind that when you think of terrorism you are talking a form a asymmetric warefare with the primary goal of causing fear. So terrorists often use low tech means to get as many people as possible fearful.
The press and hollywood are horrible on this issue. From the current series of 24 that misinfoms about turning all the nation's nuclear power stations into atomic bombs with a mythical bloackbox "Dobson device". Movies like True Lies that make it look like an Joe Shmo can hijack a train, grab a nuke bobmb and use it.
Hoooookay?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Seriously, I'm not so worried about terrorists getting raw material and building their own weapon from scratch as I am of them buying or "stealing" one. Building a weapon would require a lot of time, knowledge and raw material, but with an unknown number of unfriendy states posessing or already developing weapons who can say buying one outright is out of reach for some well monied extremist group? For all we know it might be a way for say, North Korea to detonate a weapon inside the US with plausible deniability. Can't you just hear Kim Jong-Il saying "Oh those darned terrorists, they stole one of our weapons!! We sure are sorry you lost Washington :(; maybe you shouldn't have been such capitalist pigs."
Some might say it's a little kooky to imagine a black market for ready-made nukes, but is it really any less likely than a group like Al Queda building one from scratch? These people have money, lots of money; and everyone, even countries, has their price. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus all our attention on the raw materials and brains required to build one for an independent organization like Al Queda, when they could just as easily follow our American lead and outsource their dirty work to someone else.
This is 1940s technology, there are plenty of people who can do this if they want.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
> US Media to citizens: "Not worried yet? Why not??? There is plenty to be afraid of, like tururists, nookular bombs, dirty bombs, Ay-rabs, tururists, environmentalists, communists, Eye-rackees, protesters... Oh, did we mention tururists yet?? There's a big, SCAAAARY world out there, filled with scary non-American people!"
A simple fnord would have sufficed.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that the bomb 'ought to be put under international control.' But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us namely: 'How difficult are these things to manufacture?...
Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralized police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a 'peace that is no peace.'
-- George Orwell, "You and the Atomic Bomb," October 19, 1945
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Far more worrysome is if the terrs could acquire enough deuterium and tritium to build a fisson-fusion bomb (thermonuclear H bomb). These are in the megaton yeild range, with much larger damage radii. Instead of tens of thousands, millions might die.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc.
If Western Culture is the best in the world, then why is every 'western culture' type county under replacement rate when it comes to population? In most of Europe, and the US more people are dying than are being born. That is not the sign of a 'great culture'.
I'm not trying to be a troll, but Western culture is the finest in the world. A Western acquaintance who adopted a Korean orphan is proof of the compassion and goodness of Western values. That Korean orphan, shunned and left to die in Korea, eventually attended MIT.
Adoption is not unique to Western culture.
I agree that democracy might bring 'world peace' eventually, since democratic nations tend not to attack one another. I think the US would be better served if she followed the advice of the founding fathers and avoided foriegn entanglements, but that is just one citizens opinion and not a popular one in this day and age.
"Gun type" - This was the way they built the Hiroshima bomb. Two bits of fissile material banged into each other using high explosive to form a critical mass. This only works with Uranium as plutonium bombs built using this method would "fizzle"- chain reaction kicks off before the core go's critical. Nobody makes bombs like this because of the inherent danger of accidental detonation- they could concievably go off in a crash or fire. The advantage of this type of bomb is that it's easy to make and you can be pretty sure it will go off ok (which is why they chose it for Little Boy).
"Implosion type"- a sphere of fissile material with a hollow in the middle is crushed into a critical mass using explosive lenses. This is much more efficient than the gun type due to the increased density and the detonation speed. Getting the high explosive lenses right is a real bastard though. The literatures pretty light on the explosive details strangely enough.
So, basically, your common or garden "building it in his cave" terrorist stereotype is going to have to go for the gun type. All the cross section and neutron transport data's available, you only need some world war II tech high explosives and machining ability and you're done. Thing is you're limited to highly enriched uranium.
Ok, so nobody's serious suggesting that any non-governmental group is enriching their own uranium (at least I hope not). So they have to aquire very high U235 content uranium from somewhere. Where's the only place you find this? Bombs. Basically I reckon that anyone in a position to sell terrorists material for a bomb is in a position to sell them one pre-assembled.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Information cannot be stopped. Knowledge about how to build a nuclear bomb eventually will spread to even terrorists. Well funded terrorists with friends in oil-rich states in the Middle East also have money to acquire all the parts to build a weapon.
What is the defense against the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist? The answer is not a missile shield. Even if the shield is 80% effective, one successful nuclear bomb would be devastating.
True, what never ceases to amaze me that certain people in the US still seem to think that nuclear missiles being launched at the USA by rogue states is the main threat. To me it seems like an excuse to throw money at defense contractors. If I wanted to detonate a nuclear device inside the USA it would be ever so much more simple to slip it through in one of the millions upon millions of cargo containers that move through US harbors every year. Another way is simply to land it off a small vessel somewhere in an sparsely inhabited place. There are stretches of coastline in the US, hundreds of kilometers long, that are patrolled by a handfull of coasguard cutters and a dozen or so state troopers, but still offer direct access to the road infrastructure. The really difficult part about building a terrorist nuclear bomb is staying off the radar screens of Russian/Chinese/US/European intelligence services as you buy the materials and build the thing since preventing Terrorists from getting their hands on an A-Bomb is probably one of the few things those guys would all be willing to cooperate on. Once it is built and on the loose a terrorist A-Bomb would be about as easy to find as Osama Bin Laden seem to be. That is if you stay away from idiot schemes like launching on the tip of some rickety badly designed ICBM on the USA.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Haliburton bought the company (companies?) that many of the largest class action asbestos lawsuits have been brought against. In fact Haliburton's stock value has suffered quite a bit because of the large payouts it will have to make. The War on Terrorism will ultimately help pay for those asbestos lawsuits. Truth is stranger than fiction.
in the article is that the bomb would be assembled outside the country. If they had the right type of people in a sleeper cell here in the US, all they would need to do is get the enriched uranium into the country, far easier than an entire bomb. I think its far more likely that we'll see suicide type bombing, akin to what is going on in Iraq, in the US proper. I think it would be far more deadly in the long run and far more scary. Look at what two morons from the midwest were able to do to an FBI building in Oklahoma.
You are aware of Guantanamo, right? Most people in other "Westernised" countries would regard indefinite internment with trial as being a barbaric practice.
More generally, many would define a "Westernised" society as one that has a certain level of civil liberties. Consequently, should we "change" your nation to match our view point? Of course not. Essentially what you're suggesting is that a nation, if it has sufficient power, should enforce it's view of the world on others. The problem is that one nation's view of what constitutes a utopian society might not agree with another's.
What is the defense against the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist? The answer is not a missile shield. Even if the shield is 80% effective, one successful nuclear bomb would be devastating.
I think you missed some of the points somewhere along the way. Terrorists nukes aren't going to be coming into the U.S. in the form of ICBMs. A missle shield would be 0% effective against terrorist nukes. Their nukes would probably be inside of a cube truck or something similar, or they could assemble one in a studio apartment in downtown NYC. I think the article says that once a terrorist has a nuke, and would just want wanton destruction instead of ransom money, it would be easy to do.
As for your lame 'western culture is the best' comment, have you even experienced every other culture? Maybe the pygmys have it down spot! How would you ever know?
You're putting words into his mouth. He didn't say that the US is as bad a place to live for the average citizenry (and certainly not as bad a place for immigrants). The "kind of monster" we've become is the state that invades those we don't like or pretense or the one that decides that people we don't like (say, those that end up in internment camps) don't really need their civil rights. That's not to say that your average citizen (or even your foreign visitor) doesn't have more rights here than there -- rather, it's to say that we've publicly broken the principals we once claimed to have. In short, it's no longer a question of type -- now, it's just a question of degree, and for the moment, said degree is by no means severe.
And no, the US wasn't hated the same way 10 years ago -- sure, it was hated, but not as widely, and the folks who did so had less ground to stand on.
Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc.
What, like the United States does?
AHHHHH
AAHHHHH HAAA HAA HA HA HA
*wipes tear away*
You mean Westernize them like this: ""One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old," he says of one of the testimonies he video taped recently, "She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything."
The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and witnessed the war crimes first-hand.
"They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head," he said. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead. "??
There's more, a lot more, here. I'm not sure that we are creating many friends in Iraq or anywhere in the Mideast, except Israel. Polls of Iraqis show the overwhelming majority want us gone, now or in the very near future. But the US Army is not planning to leave anytime soon.
To say nothing of Abu Graib, etc.
So tell me again--how are we helping them, exactly?
Of course they can, the bigest terrorist USA already done it. He have already more than 40000 Bombs.
I think it might be more accurate to say that the entrenched power structures in the rest of the world don't want liberal ideas spreading to their population, because that might create a population sufficiently knowledable to demand unusual things like fairness and transparency in government.
As long as people are ignorant they can be controlled; and those at the top of a given social structure will repeat short-term benefits at the expense of the population as a whole. In the meantime, wielders of power at the top of a given structure can demonize its supposed "enemies" (The United States, Western Europe, Israel, secular values, etc.) to distract its people from real problems at home.
Oh, but wait: I forgot that things like human rights and accountability were culturally relative.
We were so well along the way, that people decided to hijack planes, fly them into buildings, and when the buildings collapsed, killing thousands of people, people across the world were actually seen cheering on the streets. Yup, we were just inches away...
And keep in mind, before September 11th, there was a previous attempt to topple the WTC. I believe the bombing (which I believe was under the Clinton administration) was supposed to cause one building to collapse into the other.
Some people like to point out that the relative inaction by the US government after some of the terrorist attacks prior to September 11th (US Embassy attacks, the USS Cole), emboldened the terrorist groups and allowed them to make bigger plans. I think that interpretation is open to debate, but that is one train of thought for some of the military action taken. And ignoring Iraq for the moment (which is definitely hard to do), do you feel the military action in Afghanistan was uncalled for or justified? My general impression is that most people supported action against Afghanistan, but when Iraq was brought into the picture is when the general solidarity fell apart.
All I want to point out is that while there is some level of modernization in all parts of the world, there are still plenty of people that don't like the US. Whether this hatred is rational or not probably varies from case to case, but, deserved or not, a lot of people like to make the US out to be the great devil of the world. And another thing to consider is that simply because a society is "modern" doesn't necessarily mean they'd like us. Many examples of this. :)
I agree with you. In a lot of ways, I'm very surprised that there have been no incidents in the US. Whether it's that other attempts have been foiled by the government, or there are grander plans being made, only a few know...
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
If the media would agree to only write long, well researched pieces about terrorist activities, instead of shooting footage of the body parts on video as they fall back to earth.
If they did that there would be NO TERRORISTS.
Terrorist events are a side-effect of having an irresponsible media. (Actually, they started with some executive at Boeing being too cheap to provide pilots with their own door into a plane back in the fifties, cutting off the possibility of cbin take-overs by not having a fucking door there in the first place.)
With responsible journalism, we don't stop the news, but we stop the immediacy of the "Fox5" mentality of "We report.You decide" clap-trap, sensationalist attitude that would show you anything and everything to make buck.
Imagine that...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It is a simple coincidence that Congressional testimony concerning the dangers of chemical and nuclear terrorism are occurring just prior to a larger effort by the administration calling for renewal of the Patriot Act.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Depending upon the size of the blast, just sailing one into any US harbour and blowing it would be enough.
Otherwise, you'd put it on a moving van and just park it in the same city as your target.
With nukes, "on target" can be a mile away.
A much more practical possibility is that a current or future nuclear power would see an advantage in giving a group of terrorists a nuclear bomb, either because thay sympathized with their cause
While the rest of his post clearly went into tin-foil hat land, the first part is a valid observation. Would China in a bid to destablize the US leadership tell North Korea to sell weapons to Terrorists to be used in the US so China could finally make it's move for Taiwan? Would the US support chech rebels in their fight with Russia if Russia became 'a problem' again? While it sounds crazy, look at some of the people the US and Russia backed during the cold war against one another.
The one thing preventing this sort of thing is globalism. Anything that effects the US economically could hurt China and Russia, and vice versa.
From Wikipedia:
In interviews following the Oklahoma city bombing, McVeigh said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War.
I think it is easy to see how this was a consequence of US policy, if indirectly. Besides, McVeigh was clearly not altogether sane. Contrast this with other terrorists, who know exactly what they are doing and think, if misguidedly, that it will bring about a real change.
One good turn - gets all the covers.
"Don't look at nuclear flash with remaining good eye."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How ironic is that a London Nuke Plant Lost 30 Kilos of Plutonium just prior to this story? That's weird.
My lame blog.
How do people westernize?
Screwing your momma?
First define 'western' and stop being such an ignorant bastard with throwing around labels.
I live in the Netherlands and the majority of the public feels americans are so conservative and puritan, that you are living in the middle ages, dumber than sheep. Poorly informed, maximally exploited by commerce, very easy to scare, mainly due to the fear of the unknown, and boy, are the majority poorly informed, if not simply indifferent about everything non-american.
Your democracy is not our democracy, your values are not our values. What is 'western' ?
Our nude beaches are mostly topless, our (soft)drugs legal. Love for sale too, we collect taxes on them. Is that western?
Women reduced to sex objects, cosmetic surgery for boob, butts, lips and genital surgery, is that western?
Being judged by your looks (increased superficiality and shallowness), is that western?
Or indifference, selfishness, feelings over meaning, is that western?
Parents who become indifferent about the well-being of their kids as soon as they are 18 and kicked out of the house, is that perhaps western?
Being materialistic, is that western?
Look up civilization in any major dictionary, look up international declaration of human rights, it speaks of "dignity".
East and west, all religions and non-religious people alike, they share that one thing.. they all strive for greater dignity of man.
The question is how best to serve it.. dictatorships don't serve this, but neither does capitalism and individualism it promotes and exploits.
To figure out which ways serve dignity of man best, not on short term, but long term as well (wealth based on maximum consumption, maximum exploitation of poor people in poor countries and depleting natural resources, as capitalism depends on, and globalism spreads world wide, is not durable.. to be a winner, you have to make losers, and the biggest loser is nature, natural resources, animals and eventually people), you have to make judgements based on much deeper philosophic exitential insights, than such superficial indifferentiated labeling.
What of dirty bombs made with depleted uranium? Older X-Ray machines have a readily available supply which could be obtained cheaply and realatively inexpensively. And what of Korea? They have already refused to agree to the UN treaty barring nations from actively developing nuclear weapons, I'm sure Korea would be more than happy to supply a few terrorist groups with some lower grade weapons.
A device would not have to be very large or have a 12 kiloton yield to do alot of damage. Property would most likely be lost at ground zero, the real threat would be the iradiated area and secondary fallout carried on wind currents. Imagine one going off in Central Park large enough to iradiate the total area of the park. How many residents would be in that area at any given time?
This worries me more than bieng caught in the blast from an ICBM, at least then it flash, your dust. But a death from radiation poisoning, that is terrifying.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Nascar is one of the fastest growing sports in the country, its geting very popular in New Hampshire, for instance.
Their ratings do amaze me, and I do know people in my 'blue' state that watch NASCAR.
The problem is sensationalism- Yes sensational disasters in foreign countries are well covered, but little else, often without background information or context.
But this isn't a bias against 'world' stories. The US media covers every story like that. The grandparent argued that the US media 'ignored the world' and was only reporting stories that cause fear. That simply isn't true.
The criticism is the "depth" of covereage, not local vs foreign.
The original post seemed like it was more about local vs foreign news.
The major media outlets in the US should be criticized more, not defended
I agree, I usually do not defend the US media but I will if the arguements against them are not valid.
Grandparent: unless the story furthers the goal of making you even more freightened.
You: The top two stories on CNN. The headline and the one on the top right. 1. Blasts rock Baghdad, kill 20 2. Putin: Iran not developing nukes
I don't see how stories about insurgents in Iraq (essentially equivalent to terrorists, and spun as a threat to the US) and nukes in Iran disprove the original point.
As to people being naturally more interested in their local news, well, sure. But the tendancy is far more pronounced in the USA. There may be any number of reasons for it, but it's certainly the case. Let's compare the top stories on news.bbc.co.uk, for example: Aside from the Baghdad explosion, the top two stories are about Nepal and the Congo.
Care to rebut?
Dirty bombs spread radioactive dust and debris.
This is only dangerous if you inhale/ingest it.
The first rainstorm would wash most of it into the ocean. Any parks and such would have to have the first few inches of topsoil removed, but that's about it.
The US media is only interested in one thing: money. Reporting on the things US citizens fear is good business for them as they know that fear will translate easily into ratings. Reporting only on issues that American's care about is also good business, for obvious reasons.
So I guess where I fall between you and the grandparent is that I: a) don't like or trust much of the media in this country, but b) think that they do report on international issues, if only to the extent that American's want to hear about them. To me, this isn't perfect, as the average American doesn't get much in the way of international news or exposure to the problems other countries are facing, other than when they impact us. Then again, welcome to the real world, right? The world would likely be a much better place if more people read, say, the Economist (look at their international coverage vs. CNN, Fox News, or NYTimes), but that isn't very realistic.
BTW, on this point: I guess you are trying to generalize about southerns now, since NASCAR's following is mostly in the more rural section of the country. You missed the mark here. Yes, it was a dig: at rural America. I'm from the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, and let me assure you that NASCAR is huge up there. The North vs. South argument is played out. The REAL conflict will come from rural America vs. urban America. Let the revolution begin! :)
Taft
The USA (which I suppose you meant when you said 'America') has been 'analizing' the rest of the world for a long time now...and we're not going to bend over and take it any longer.
I did, bad habit - sorry.
Anyway, you're "not going to bend over"? Take it any longer? You had one terrorist attack (given, a really awful one), and all of the sudden you're a crusader for the cause? The rest of the world have been suffering terrorism for much longer and resorted to fight it without colonizing countries. Hint: check Europes' recent history.
The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are about 10,000 times smaller than dying in a car accident.
I have to call BS on this one. There've been, what, ~3500 terrorist-caused deaths in the US in the past decade? With your math, there must have been 35,000,000 US car accident deaths in that same decade. Traffic deaths, however, are closer to about 40,000 a year -- not 3,500,000 a year.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I guess you are trying to generalize about southerns now, since NASCAR's following is mostly in the more rural section of the country.
Actually, you introduced this generalization. NASCAR fans constitute a broad cross section of Americans. They are much more diverse than most people realize.
Terrorists building nukes isn't the problem. They may (probably) already have them from the former soviet union. What about the so called missing suitcase nukes?
An interesting introduction to the possibilities.
Even if they cant build one, they can just go buy one on the black market.
Besides, dirty bombs are much more sinsiter.. more to their liking. Why kill entire towns at once, when you can watch them suffer?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I live in the UK, and have worked in the US. My parents live in France.
It seems to me European news is much more global than US news. Sure, the US new reports the really big things, but in general it reports a lot less about the rest of the world. There is a big area between the massive things like the tsunami, and trival stuff that never gets coverage.
Now, it may be becuase Americans on average care less about the rest of the world. Or maybe they care less becuase they know less, becuase they are shown less. Hard to know.
Yes, they worked the first time with billions in spending and legions of the best scientists they could find. Granted that was 60 years ago but it is by no means easy.
Other than obtaining the materials (which can be traced), you have to create the "lens" which focuses the implosion. You can take two slugs and run them togehter, but even that is more complicated than just pushing the material together. If not done correctly, the reaction with be quenched and you get a dud.I have some pretty serious doubts about this particular claim. Sounds made up. Pakistan may be a lot of things, but it ain't stupid, and it has its problems with Islamists as well. Any weapon or weapon-grade material they might sell could very well end up being used against them.
If, however, if you have evidence, then by all means please provide it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
funny in it's own way.
I was skimming the stories on the front page and had to scroll a few stories up and down a couple of times.
One story claims the a 'good read' will explain the difficulty in getting the raw materials for a bomb
The other story's headline is 'London Nuke Plant Loses 30 Kilos of Plutonium.
Huh.. go figure.
Dirty bomb?!!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Yeah, it's not like there's anything to be afraid of.
Listen, it may sound like we're being alarmist, but you're just as guilty of listening to the American media apparently as those you are insulting. There *are* real threats to the US at this time. WE'VE FUCKING BEEN ATTACKED ALREADY. It would be very naieve to think that it's "all over now."
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean we're all running around screaming about terrorism and living in bunkers.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
that a lot of the reason they worked on the first try was because of all the double checking that went on. It's easy to make a U-235 bomb, comparatively. But it's really hard to make a gas centrifuge that won't be corroded by Uranium Hexiflouride. There is a considerable material and technical barrier there. mechanical, electrical, materials engineering, nuclear chemistry. And then we get into the manufacture of the gadget, which still requires some talent for math. With Plutonium, it's somewhat easier to get the material, which is very effective as a simple poison, but very hard to make a bomb that doesn't just spread the radioactive crap around.
Again, the computers are an aid for the easiest part of it. Understanding the geometry you need, that's pretty available. But being able to precisely machine the parts, accounting for things like thermal expansion, that requires real professionals. People who've invested a lifetime in cultivating a very special set of skills. CNC machines might make some of it simpler. But there is a wide gulf of know-how that a lot of people aren't accounting for.
The people with these kinds of skills don't have the kind of go nowhere lives that lead a person to cast their busted hand in with Osama. They're not some dumbasses with a BS in engineering, and an inability to get laid. They've got a decade or two of insight that practically defies reduction to the printed word.
All in all, it's probably much simpler to steal or buy a nuclear weapon than to build one.
Given enough time and money, why wouldn't the technology, materials, and know-how come to a group with that much power and money?
Next Week On Slashdot:
Can Terrorists Write The Complete Works Of Shakespear?
By now you should have guessed...I'm your magic negro.
Records recovered last month from a raid on Al Qaiada show they recently aquired 30kg of Plutonium. Al Qaiada denies having such material, saying in a statement "if we had that much material, we would have used it by now."
In related news, Al Qaiada's senior weapons expert has been executed for failing to maintain accurate records.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
9/11 wouldn't have been done with planes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, the best defense is alternative energy. Like Thomas Friedman is saying (google for 'geo-green'), the surest way to get political reform in the Middle East is for oil prices to be under twenty dollars a barrel.
Take away the current regimes' ability to maintain the status quo with oil money, and political reform in the Middle East will come quickly. (In my opinion.)
normal(adj)- people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots [DECS]
"We in the US media wish to shield you from this world. We bring you only news stories from your own country, [...] Besides, who wants any real news about other countries? They don't even have NASCAR in those strange lands! Do you really care about what happens in a place without NASCAR"
NEWSFLASH! People care more about news that affects them than news that doesn't! Film at 11.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
In fact, what's happened is that Iran has unilaterally declared that it will back Syria against the US. Syria is noticeably unenthusiastic.
From the BBC article:
'Syria's ambassador in the US denied that the common front was an alliance against Washington. "We are not the enemies of the United States, and we do not want to be drawn into such an enmity," Imad Moustapha told CNN.'
Please, a nuke being detonated in America - hey, what is that bright flash outside of my win
.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
it would render the city useless.
so the building might still be there, but people wouldn't be able to go back for some time.
So I would say the city wuld be effectivly destroyed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Intelligence Analysts and fiction writers have been on this tack for years. Remember, America built the first nuke in 1944 using technology which today is absolutely primitive. There exists a body of open source knowledge these days to allow your average college educated engineer to construct a functioning nuclear weapon capable of 10 or 20 kilotons. That's enough to take out a city block, and poison 10 city blocks with radiological fallout.
But then, you have to consider something else - the expense. Currently, third world governments are hard pressed to operate a weapons program under the radard. It would be far harder for individual organizations run as charities are to pool the resources for such a weapons program while maintaining terror operations. One nuke may have the political value of a million suicide bombers, but 20 suicide bombers can have the political, economic, and social impact of one nuke at 1/1000th the price. For that reason, you're unlikely to see a terrorist organization carry out a nuclear attack unless they do so with state sponsorship. After Afghanistan and Libya, no state on this planet (save for the crazies in Pyong Yang) will dare transfer such technology to a non-state actor.
The biggest danger we'll face is someone making a dirty bomb from radioactive materials from old medical equipment.
As John Kerry said during a stump speech in South Carolina, "...and who among us does not love NASCAR?"
Really. I kid you not.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Don't tell other people that.
The city is great. Stay in the city. In the urban area we got fewer starbucks. For your own saftey stay away from urban areas.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
-
Radioactive cobalt dumped in vacant lot in Bangkok. 3 dead, 12 injured.
-
Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Turkey. Two injured cutting up the scrap.
-
Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Brazil. Four dead, 300 exposed.
-
Radioactive cobalt shows up in Mexico. Recycled into rebar and metal furniture. One known dead, injuries unknown. Discovered when some of the furniture was trucked to Los Alamos and set off radiation alarms.
And that's with the stuff in big chunks. "Weaponized", ground into a powder for distribution, it would be far more dangerous.Actually, he said that God told him to invade Iraq.
You're going to argue with God? Good luck.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
We shouldn't fear. Yes, there is a chance that Bin Laden can concoct an atomic weapon in a cave using a band-aid, some rocks, and a vial of something that is either Uranium or puke.
There is however a much bigger chance that he will steal/buy such a weapon from a country that's actually capable of building them.
We should be focusing on that. I bet if you asked these scientists if it's theoretically possible for Bin Laden to make the moon fall on America, they would say again that it's hard, but not impossible. Is that ever going to happen though? No.
If O2 is good, O3 must be 1.5 times better!
You are comparing a pure meccanical phenomen (friction of tectonic plate having a probability to provok earthquake within a certain epriod of time and thus a tsunami) to a social phenomen. The difference is that you cannot reason / change your environemental politic to avoid Tsunami, but you can VERY WELL change your foreign politic to lessen or even avoid the threat of terrorism. And if you REALLY think that terrorism is only a matter of probability instead of politic, then you world perpsective is, allow me, really screwed pessismisticaly up IMO.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So you state that the us is a much bigger threat to the world?
Check out Website development, maintenance and accesibility cons
I think the support for action against Afghanistan
was percieved as self-defense, because the (false)
claims of the administration were that Afghanistan
was materially supporting the attacks of September
11, 2001. Of course this has since been proven
false, and was known to be false within the administration
at the time. When the same pattern of deception
and slaughter was repeated in Iraq, it became
increasingly difficult for intelligent and informed
people to deny the painful truth. Ignorant and
misinformed (or just plain evil) people blithely
continue to follow after the lies, of course.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The people who really are selling weapons on the open market to terrorist throughout the world are the Yanks. Ask Saddam Hussain where he got his biological & chemical weapons from or the Israelis about their nuclear weapons and F16s and Apachee helicopters.
There is an old saying "people who live by the sword will die by the sword" - kappish.
Anglo-American cultural influence over the Islamic
Middle East has always been shallow because of
Anglo-American support for the genocide of the
Palestinians. That's the root of the issue here.
Without it, the very concept of terrorism as we
know it today would never have developed.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Basically, a fairly average high-school student was well along the way to building his own working nuclear reactor using radioactive substances taken from common devices (like smoke detectors).
He had worked out a sequence to get different radioactive materials from the ones he started with to reach the point of starting his reactor.
When I first read this a few years ago in Harper's, it sounded so fantastic I couldn't figure out if it was a fiction piece or not.
Apparently it isn't.
Crack babies? You're kidding, right? What are the chances that crack baby is going to do graduate study at MIT and pay your retirement?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
see, now they would use computer, and really, how reliable is that?
With anyluck they'll us excel to handle there calculation. So they think there building an atomic weapon, but really its an expensive paperweight.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You want to do damage, it's a whole lot easier to buy a truckload of fertilizer, and openly buy 500 gallons or so of diesel fuel from any truck stop for cash, and if you have them delivered to a farm, nobody will notice or even think twice about it as it would be routine, and the chances are excellent you can get away with it and never be caught.
For probably $10,000 you can create a dozen nasty good sized bombs without even having to do anything which in any way looks suspicious or illegal until you set the damn thing off. I doubt that you can go nuclear on less than a million. A million bucks will probably buy you a thousand Oklahoma City-sized bombs, but at best gets you one lousy nuke. Which is going to have more effect for the same amount of money? One spectacular bomb that kills about the same number as the World Trade Center, Second Edition, or a thousand WTC-sized bombs?
Estimates are the WTC attacks cost Al-Qaeda maybe $100,000. Would a nuclear bomb have done better in terms of horror, publicity or terror than two hijacked airliners? Above a certain level it really doesn't matter, you've already made your point, and trying to use even stronger methods doesn't buy you anything more.
Further, you don't have to be a martyr to use ANFO, but you'd better be intending to die if you use a nuke, because otherwise if you drop a nuke, you guarantee they will hunt you down for as long as it takes. And let's not forget that it's possible for a very tiny group (2 people, maybe even just 1) can set up an ANFO bomb. And it doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to do it. It's going to take a lot more people - with intelligence - to set up a usable nuke.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
It takes some brains to build a bomb. But --
Nuclear weapons and nuclear-grade materials became available to wealthy criminals, with the collapse of the Soviet Union:
Around the same time, parties unknown stole the entire supply of gold from the Soviet central bank: For more about nukes, gold, and global organized crime, see Thieves World by Claire Sterling.
-kgj
-kgj
Hehe, that's a funny analogy, given the origin of the term "Poisson distribution". The name of the distribution derives from a simple analogy -- fishing (poisson means "fish" in French)
;-)
Well, if you find that funny, I have another good one for you
The Poisson distribution was named after Simeon Poisson.
So the irony is doubled. Or standing on its head or something.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Chechens.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc. If the most pressing issue of the day in Syrian become "Gay Marriage: Yes or No?" instead of "Suicide Bomber: Here We Go", then the world is safe. A Westernized Damascus itself would hunt down any nutcases trying to build a nuclear weapon.
I agree with your points, but the reason why the nutcases want us dead, is basically because they hate the majority of the things that come with westernization. They whole "gay marriage: yes/no" thing is exactly why they want us dead. The "we use them for oil" thing isn't such a huge deal to them since they do get moeny for it.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Anglo-American cultural influence over the Islamic
Middle East has always been shallow because of
Anglo-American support for the genocide of the
Palestinians. That's the root of the issue here.
Without it, the very concept of terrorism as we
know it today would never have developed.
Bull-shit. The palastinians aren't that important. It's a cause celebre. It goes beyond such a simplistic issue. It's a fairly deep seated racial hate mixed with a long history of broken promises (europes fault), topped off by colonization(also europe), and a huge amount of local scape goating. The palastinian cause is just a spoonfull of shit on the shit pile.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Steal one from Israel - they have lots.
Remember, there is no such thing as military security.
Why Al Qaeda hasn't figured this out yet baffles me.
Considering that the idiots are using books from libraries printed in the 1920's to learn about chemical warfare, I'm not too surprised, though.
The bottom line: the state needs enemies. The reason bin Laden hasn't been found is because Bush loves him like a brother for giving him an excuse to further the neocon agenda of fascism at home and imperialism abroad.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Also a nice political touch to it where it kind of puts a null terminator by declaring Mohammed to be the last one--so no one will actully be able to change things. Later, other people added the rich philosophy etc. but the.
In my reading of different core books, I found this
1. Bible - Actully tells people that don't kill/steal and be faithful to your familiy/clan.
2. Vedas/Puran - too obtuse, too much rocket science phillosophy, beyond my intellectual ablity and I think too much for common people to understand. but there are some cool descriptions of advanced weapons c. which you might find interesting
3.Buddhist - probably most balanced one, something people can understand. I like their idea of balancing the life etc.
For the most part, all of them are ok, and I think the problem is not with the tool, but what people do with it.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
But its how terrorists would look at it. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The entire theme fo a vengeful deity is THEIRS (not mine.) They're the ones who came up with the terms Fatwah and Jihad.
I would hope like hell it never happens.
But if they had something to lose, they'd apply the brakes.
If it would stop Osama dead in HIS track, its a lie I wouldn't mind having spread about me.
Out bullying the bullies.
Yes the logic is insame but its a rational response, if you happen to have the rationale of a religious zealot.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Absolutely.
The very existance of nation states is a threat to humanity for they divide us into warring, squabbling, bickering groups.
There is no such thing as a 'race'; there are only great extended families; racial conflicts are really family feuds.
There is no such thing as religion; its all in the mind.
There is *only* humanity.
You are all human beings; you are not Americans or Iraqis or Moslems or Christians or Semite or Caucasian.
You are human beings dammit!
Your lives have value beyond the artificial bollocks called 'race' 'nation' and 'religion'
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
That reminds me of kid who built a nuclear reactor out of duct tape, old clocks and dead smoke detectors. I realize it's a far cry from a nuclear bomb, but it still makes you wonder.
Well by the definition on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist) , the US can be seen as a terrorist (and a big one at that). I imagine that it wouldn't take them that long to create a new bomb. :)
I hadn't realized that Slashdot had degraded into fear mongering. Really.. what's next? The latest discussion over "orange alert"? haha...
The first question I would ask you is, who decides which culture is better?, or, who has the right to say so? you're right, each person should decide which culture is better, but for him/herself, not for somebody else.
IMHO there is one solution that might work, but this is just a dream, and this solution will not come without education.
Things are not so relative. There are "better" cultures and I'd say technological and social innovation is a good benchmark. The cultures that have resulted in growth in technology and social well being are the ones China/Japan/Russia/US/Europe and Canada use. Fairly progressive, possibly authoratarian, and a clear seperation from dogma and policy. China was incredibly backwards for the just after WWII when the communists valued idealogy over all else. Now with a more progressive culture their thriving. Historically, Conservative cultures tend to suffer a lack of innovation and invention and only get minor refinement of exsisting technology. Also, it's a sign of the decline of that civilization. It will continue to declien until some new idea reverts the cuture to a more progressive one.
I do not mean Democrat vs Republican but more of favoring change vs favoring old values.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Well the history shows that western values are a dead-end. The West is slowly dying out its values slowly being replaced vy the culture of muslim migrants.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
The real terrorist organisations are governments. Many of they already have nuclear weapons, and many more would be willing to build them. The US government is both the leading terrorist state, and the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war. We already have rogue extremists leading our nation. Why doesn't the rest of the world get together and send some weapons inspectors to help us disarm!
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
And keep in mind, before September 11th, there was a previous attempt to topple the WTC. I believe the bombing (which I believe was under the Clinton administration) was supposed to cause one building to collapse into the other.
Human nature didn't radically change on 9/11. The biggest change was that we--the United States--discovered that we really were vulnerable to terrorism. Terrorism wasn't born on 9/11; it just felt that way for most Americans.
9/11 did make a big difference--but it's hardly a repudiation of the steady, impressive progress we'd been making ever since the days of the Cold War. We didn't win the Cold War with missiles--we won it with culture. The Berlin Wall was not torn down by NATO tanks--it was torn down by people who wanted what we had to offer. That intangible, American essence of freedom has been, and always will be, far mightier than any army we could ever field.
There are always going to be people who are willing to resort to deplorable, senseless, vicious crimes against humanity to get their way. We can minimize it, but we cannot eradicate it--and the more we're willing to use any means nessecary in trying to eradicate it, the faster the ranks of the enemy will grow.
We just can't kill 'em fast enough. This war cannot be won on the battlefield.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
pakistan's Chief Nuclear Scientist personally travelled, executed, and followed up on the nuclear weapons sales to rogue states like Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
- iran.htm
t m - iran.htm
- dprk.htm
k han.htm
d .html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4242771.stm - and I quote
"The US has called Dr Khan the "biggest proliferator" of nuclear technology."
Country-specific proliferation by pakistan.
==============
Selling to Iran
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/khan
Selling to Libya
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4228713.s
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/khan
Selling to North Korea
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/khan
Other states that are not yet CONFIRMED include Syria, Saudi Arabia.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/pakistan/
In his startling televised confession Wednesday, Abdul Qadeer Khan insisted he acted without authorization in selling nuclear technology to other governments. A.Q. Khan admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. A.Q. Khan asked for clemency, but the Pakistani government made no public announcement about whether he is to be prosecuted. The confessed proliferation took place between 1989 and 2000, though it is suspected that proliferation activities to North Korea continued after that date. The network used to supply these activities is global in scope, stretching from Germany to Dubai and from China to South Asia, and involves numerous middlemen and suppliers.
Summary
=======
If you think that the chief scientist of pakistan could travel all over the world and SELL nuclear designs AND ENCASH the money AND SHIP the nuclear materials WITHOUT the permission of the government of pakistan, then the pakistanis are too stupid to be allowed to hold WMDs.
If the government of pakistan did allow the transfer of WMDs to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Syria, and North Korea, then they are too dangerous to be allowed to hold WMDs. (remember 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were saudis, and ALL were muslims).
Either way pakistan will be disarmed. Its too much of a basket case to allow them to have WMDs.
======
And as a dessert, let me finish by saying that the money for the 9/11 attack on WTC ($100,000) was transferred from Karachi (pakistan) to chief terrorist Mohammed Atta (saudi) by a certain ISI-trained Saeed Sheikh from Mohammed Khalid (kuwaiti). Saeed Sheikh was also responsible for the murder of Daniel Pearl cos Pearl had almost proven that the pakistani intelligence (ISI) was somewhat involved in WTC. Saeed Sheikh is currently in pakistani custody, but FBI/CIA are not allowed access to him. WHY would an "ally" not provide access to such a critically important terrorist ???? Khalid was caught in pakistan too and handed over to CIA but khalid is not pakistani and hence did not know the internals of the ISI involvement.
http://billstclair.com/911timeline/main/essaysaee
Of course, your beloved pakistan is a "stauch ally". yeah fuck right!
Sig Heil: Scumerica - Land of the Free* (* 18+, valid papers, health insurance, some restrictions apply)
No wonder there's war and terror in the world when we have people like you. Haven't you considered just for a second that the reason we have exactly war and terror is because some people can't figure out how to leave others alone?
They look down on our society the same way you look down on them, claiming that your way is "the right way", not even considering you might be wrong. They don't want our filthy lives, living like whores and without morals, where money is everything and people are worth nothing. They want a society where women aren't jugded by their looks, where family stick together, where the childern listens and follows the advice of their parents, and where people don't have sex before marrige, and they live in that society.
What I just wrote isn't "the great truth" about muslim/middle east countries, but I am illustrating a point here. You are as much wrong as they are, and they are as much right as you are. It's just another way of looking at and living life. The only way to have peace and freedom in this world is if people like you start to respect other people and cultures for the values that they have, instead of marching ahead with you're ideas of what's right and wrong. The world simply isn't black and white, remember that at least one in five people in the entire world disagree with you (those being muslims).
Yes, I think a lot of their culture down there is discriminating women, and I think they have a lot of wrong morals despite what they say. But most of the time *they* don't think so. They are happy, everyone's just happy. Who knows, even the average person down there lives a happier, better life than in the western world? They have to want the change themselves. If they don't want our society, we can't force them. Just imagine if the US had a mayor money-crack or something, and the middle west (the only ones with a working economy) started invading the US and whatnot and demanded we all switch to muslim culture. Would that be fair? Would we like that?
They like their culture just as much as we like ours. They think their culture is just as "good" as we think ours is. There is no absolute right, and there is no absolute wrong. Western society has it's share of horrible discrimination, wars and other terrible things, and middle east countries certainly has their share as well. I'm not saying they're perfect, far from it. That's not the point.
There is no black or white, there are only grays. In fact, statisticly you might even be wrong. That is, there might be more people living on this world that are happy living their non-western-lives as they are now, and disagree with what you just posted, than there are people agreeing with you. Just like we would oppose the change they might try to force upon us some day.
Just like I can't force you to agree with me. I will not try to force you to believe in more respect for other cultures, you are entitled to your own opinion. I just think other non-western countries are too.
(And for the record, I do actually think certain aspects of their culture needs change, but I also believe they must want it themselves, which is the point I'm trying to get across.)
Life is Reality
Don't get all high over American-Supremacy. I am a US citizen too, unfortunately I know that.... no empire last forever.
It's a pity that some of the doomesday flavor of nuclear bombs rubs off on dirty bombs.
How many people do you think a dirty bomb is going to kill? People are killed by radioactive cobalt because they keep it around. They 're not careful because they don't suspect danger. The trouble with a dirty bomb is you chase people away. They wash afterwards. If mass murderers get together, they won't mention it. They don't want to be considered an amateur.
I won't say it's no problem. It will scare the shit out of people if it happens. It may have much more emotional impact than classical explosives even if not many(or no) people die(in the short run). There is a huge medical followup cost. Some real estate may be declared inhabitable. Expensive cleanup. All kinds of stuff.
Still, "weaponized" eh?
Dont be fooled. This threat is a very real one. I read that article in PopSci and subsequently bought the book "Nuclear Terrorism The ultimate preventable catastrophe". It has some great info about how insecure the worlds nuclear stockpiles/research reactors are. Furthermore, NK and Iran are on the virge being able to pump out nukes, if not are already there. Iran hates our guts and for the right amount of cash would gladly sell a bomb or two to a terrorist group and get a two for one deal. Once they have the bomb, getting it into the country is as easy as cake. I believe it was 60 min that sent some shielded depleted uranium from (forgot exactly where, but it was a place known for terrorist activity indonesia maybe?) all the way to the US without the shipping container being opened once for inspection. There are serious flaws in our deterrence against nuclear terrorism, if left unchecked we are going to be very sorry. In the event of such a catastrophe, Ossama would have us by the cahones, because there is nothing reasonable and equal that we could do to strike back. I think even if we tighten up our ports and points of entry to this country, a determined terrorist will be able to sneak what ever they want in. Even if we stop Iran and NK from going nuclear, a determined terrorist can obtain nuclear material. The solution? Exterminate the determined terrorist as fast as possible. Also we should think about revising our foreign policy that got is in this world of sh*t in the first place...
Unrefined uranium is legal to acquire, and can be refined via a centerfuse or failing that spining a fucking bucket over your head. Although it would take along time to do it inconspicuosly (buying 3 tons of unrefined uranium may cause a few problems) it is certainly possible, and thats assuming they don't just steal the weapons or refined uranium. Isreal developed its nuclear program by stealing from the americans, you really think it would be that hard for a guy with a sniper rifle to kill the driver of the correct truck?
Within limits, you simply crunch the numbers.
The probability of the events is fairly easy to guage given our level of scientific knowledge. The cost of the events should be estimable to within an order of magnitude. Figure the average annual cost of the event by taking the total cost and multiply it by the chance the event will happen in a given year and you have the annual average cost. Then you discount that annual cost using the standard financial formula to derive a net present value of that future cost.
Now, suppose you can alter the probability of this by spending present day dollars. To figure out whether this is worthwhile, you redo the calculation with the new proabilities, and arrive at a new net present value figure. If the difference between the original and revised estimate (the gross savings in other words) is greater than the dollar cost of the project, it's worth considering. The difference between the gross savings and the dollar cost is the net savings.
To compare the importance of two different projects, you simply figure out the net savings of each project. The one with the highest net savings wins.
The reason I say "within limits" is that this idea of assigning dollar costs falls apart at some point. If we're talking about the extinction of the human race, it may not be possible to put a price on that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Israel is a country that I would certainly call a terrorist state, and there would even be a decent proportion of the American population that would agree with me on this one. I believe Rumsfield said just the other day that Israel 'might' launch a pre-emptive strike against Tehran. Might , eh? That would be terribly convenient for the US, now wouldn't it? It's already been leaked that they have advanced planning for an invasion of Iran ( which would be more than I could say for their invasion of Iraq ). But the powers-that-be would prefer us to look the other way in this case as well.
OK then, lets move onto Iraq. They of course had massive stockpiles of WOMD, including 'nucular' weapons. The problem here is that they didn't go around terrorising other people with them. Sure they invaded a middle-eastern country here and there, but let's be honest
Getting back to the title of the article
Any terrorist organisation worth their weight in oil ( ponder who I'm referring to for a while please ) can afford nuclear weapons, whether they can make them themselves or not. The real questions are:
how far can the US push them before they give the order?
will they take a leaf from the US's foreign policy and launch a pre-emptive strike?
will they target the real enemies in our governments and corrupt business leaders?
will the citizens of the US be too blind to realise why they are under attack before it's too late?
However we are still going to care about our news the most...then probably Canadas if you are in the North and south america's if you are in the south
I think you mean "Mexico", not "South America".
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Isaac Asimov figured this out. When the number of people you are concerned with gets large enough, you begin to have to look at them statistically, rather than as individuals.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If a nuclear weapon goes off in L.A. tomorrow, whom do we attack? Pakistan? North Korea? India? Russia? France? Maybe, we should just attack everyone, maybe we should burn Saudi Arabia to a the world largest sheet of glass or irradiate Pongyang so hard Seoul has to be abandoned.
Yeah and our intelligence services are so distinctly honed that they were either tricked by a tin-pot dictator into believing that he was just inches away from his own nukes, or we've invaded a whole country and they can't find any evidence that he did have them. Either way, I don't think the fate of millions upon millions should be decided by the same people who didn't seem to think that the guy who was on a terrorist-watch-list outta' be....I don't know, say watched!
As for the shiver of apocalyptic pleasure that ran through your post about how much destructive power is held by the United States, you're sick.
This is real, these are real people living lives entirely separate for you and you would execute them because they live near someone you think had a hand in something as horrible as a mushroom cloud in an American city.
I'm tired of the apocalyptic weapon's porn that runs through this thread.
You're thinking just as the terrorists do, you're thinking in apocalyptic terms. Just like Osama.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
You're probably thinking of the Nth country experiment. One point you may have missed is that the project designed a plutonium-based implosion weapon, not the uranium-based gun-type design discussed in the pop science article. Despite this, a couple of "undistinguished" new physics PhDs, who came from other sub-branches of the discipline rather than nuclear physics, came up with the design in about two years.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You're going to argue with God? Good luck.
I'll take that challenge. I declare myself the winner in my argument with God. In the absense of reply I shall assume he/she/it/them concedes to my obvious victory, and... what is a lightning bolt doing, slowly forming -inside- a building? Hey, it looks like it's
[NO CARRIER]
Thanks for the resource pointing to a bunch of useful URLs, but no thanks.
If I look at some of the URLs from the same IP address, I suspect I'd trigger the monitoring system used by Homeland Security to find people who want to make such a device. Ring, ring, my lame not-privacy-protecting ISP gets a call from the FBI or Secret Service asking for my personal information based on the IP adddress and time of my access, and next thing I know, I have an FBI file and can't board a plane.
Color me paranoid.
-ez
That's all it takes to keep the dust out of your lungs.
How about firefighters? Ever see the gear they wear so they don't die from smoke?
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0091472
If he can, so can terrorists. Sorry, but that's all there is to it.
"Good news, everyone!"
You know, the terrorist leaders are all wealthy men. Arafat was a billionaire, ditto bin Laden. Why aren't people like you demanding they share THEIR wealth and improve the condition of THEIR people?
Here in America, we use the democratic process to reform our own government, not to impose our will on other governments.
When we want to impose our will on other governments, we use spooks and armies.
-kgj
-kgj
"How to Build a Nuclear Bomb (and other weapons of mass destruction)" is a very good, quick read that isn't hysterical about the threat.
Lays out what a nation would have to do and procure in order to build a WMD, what the effects of one going off would be and how difficult it is to construct them.
It uses North Korea and Iraq as case studies and while it doesn't state any conclusions, you can only realize that Iraq was in no position to build WMDs. Programs like that would simply be too difficult to hide given the level of scrutiny they were under.
We are talking all the bullshit that Saddam was going to build nuclear bombs and hand them over to the sort of fanatics that would blow him up as well too seriously. The current fanatical terrorist threats don't even have the attention span to build a remote control or timer like the IRA bombs. It takes a state to build a nuke - even if you can get hold of vanishing Niger Uranium .
Back when the word "terrorist" actually had a definition, it was understood that the use of conventional weaponry was not really an issue, as terrorists are stateless and typically without access to stockpiles of weapons. And, that a "bomb" can always be made from easily found materials, like the gas we put in our cars. "Can a terrorist build a bomb with a tanker truck full of gas?" I suppose we'll see a slashdot story about that soon.
And for what it's worth, why would a terrorist group bother to construct a nuclear weapon to bring to the USA? We have all the nuclear material right here in silos, old armories and stockpiles, energy plants, and hey, pretty soon on the road to Utah any terrorist needs.
15 of 19 of the 9/11 killers had errors or omissions on their visa forms that should have denied them entry. The 20th was kept out of the country by an immigration officer who simply asked him where he was staying and how he would get there. The 20th guy didn't even have a good story for those two questions.
So sure, why not, I'm sure they could build a nuclear weapon, but why bother?
Nineteen guys with box-cutters.
I looked up some links after this.
There's a general article at
How Stuff Works.
A study of several cases at
Federation of American Scientists. Death rates will depend a lot on the thresholds for closing an area and moving people out. Meaning that cancer rates climb but not enough to evacuate the area. I think the numbers in the FAS article assume people stick around. Say rich people move out, poor people move in. FAS death rate numbers assume more things. Like no advance in cancer treatment in the next 40 years. And little protective measures.
And an article at
American Institute of Physics that says don't make such a fuss.
Man, linking a few WTC images and swearing isn't that convincing an argument. Roughly 3000 people died on 11 September. Each year, about 40,000 americans die from automobile accidents. Are we going to declare a War On Driving? Do you think there is some secret underground organization of cars out there plotting to destroy Americans? Do they have car sleeper cells?
There is no evidence that the world is full of terrorists all imminently threatening the USA. There is no evidence that there are all these sleeper cells in the country, just waiting to strike. 11 September was an isolated event--a bunch of sociopaths who pulled off their Islamist wet dream.
You are being sold fear and anxiety, and you are paying for it with your freedom.
Honestly, who cares? They can buy them a dime a dozen in certain parts of the former Soviet Union. It's not a whole lot of trouble to buy an ICBM to put them on either and let's not forget the brainwashed humans who are willing to kill themselves to deliver terror.
> he injustices the west (the US) does is no worse then the ones they do to themselves
Perhaps if our injustices were vastly less bad - or even not committed at all! - then it would be harder to redirect discontent against us. Saying "but he's just as bad!" won't convince anyone we're the good guys. If we do bad things to the people of a country, we're giving extremists in that area all the ammunition they need to paint us as the "real" bad guys.
If we didn't make ourselves a convenient scapegoat, the corrupt regimes in the area might undergo change from within, something that I think almost everyone can agree would be positive.
I understand the sentiment but even making the statement ironically reinforces the mistaken impression that it *is* OK. So please don't do it, you are contributing to the problem.
..it as OVER Hiroshima. Had it been at ground level the greater share of the energy would have been directed upward into the atmosphere. Airbursts are discussed here in the FAQ you linked to. And unless terrorists lug their device onto an airplane and detonate it at the right altitude, my statement stands.
I heard a Palestinian once say that if only they had one Michael Collins, Israel would be gone in a week. But there never has been another Michael Collins, which is why Ireland is still partitioned. The Palestinians never got their Collins. The Israelies never really had theirs, their fight for independence from the british being rather hap-hazard (if you can believe it, Zionists actually tried to allign themselves with NS Germany against the British in order to obtain a Jewish state. There were many Nazi leaders who where into the idea in order to just put the Jews someplace, but the idea didn't carry enough weight). Bin Laden is no Collins.
The man orchistrated the assassination of all the major British intelligence agents in Dublin in a single day, causing them to go blind, effectively, and lash out more irrationally than usual. This caused lack of popular support on the British side as well as outrage from abroad helping to end a nearly 800-years long war, for the most part, within 2 years of his taking command of counter-intelligence of the IRA (also, finance minister for the Provisional Republican government). His death in the civil war in 1922 is really what fucked up the whole situation and why there is still shit going on in the North (although, it appears to have largely died down 'cause its retarded).
The point is, yeah, I agree with you. We produce some damned fine "terrorists" ourselves. But for some people, they are patriots and heros. "western" values became an anachronism with the reformation. There is a lack of continuity and cohesiveness in what used to be called "christaindom." So, yes, we produce terrorists, but there is a lack of values within our own areas which is why. If people believe their cost is just, they will do what is necessary. Al Quaeda believes their cause is just. McVeigh believed his cause was just. The only difference is that McVeigh didn't believe it was his duty as a Catholic, but his duty under the Declaration of Independence.
...you know...decaf tastes just as good as regular.
"Apocalyptic porn..." Neatly put. Mother Nature, please take a note: Next time, no brains for apes.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
You're comparing a planned, targeted, purposeful attack to automobile accidents? Are you that dense?
Linking to images and swearing may not be a great argument, but I doubt logic will work on you either. You think we should wait until we are attacked several times before we consider terrorists to be a threat? Fine. We have. Look at our embassies. And the *first* WTC attack. Still not convinced? Take off the rose-colored glasses and look again.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
From the article "The canisters were loaded back onto the Antonov 12 and flown to Russia, where their contents were sent to a secure facility and blended with less-potent materials to create a mixture that is of little use to aspiring terrorists."
Can anyone tell me why they didn't add the less potent materials _BEFORE_ they chose to transport it? I would imagine that it would drastically reduce the chances of terrorists having an interest in it and getting their hands on it while it's in transit.
ogglelog
The point is, terrorism is just not something ordinary average suburban America needs to worry about, yet it's the top story every single day in the media.
I repeat, there is no evidence of a vast global terror network.
There is no evidence of "sleeper cells" hidden amongst America ready to strike when commanded.
There is absolutely no reason to suspect that your Arab neighbors are terrorists.
Just like there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is a great effort out there to make you believe lies. The simple answer is that the media just does it for ratings and money. The tin-foil hat crowd believes it's a vast right-wing conspiracy, and the government is forcing the media to lie. I think it's a little of both, and considering recent events we need to have some skepticism of what we see on the teevee.
Oy! Hasn't someone revoked her author's license yet?
Yeah, I should have mentioned that Sterling has her critics -- she may have been a CIA mouthpiece, or some such front, either knowingly or unwittingly.
Nonetheless, she did rake up a lot of muck, and is worth reading (with a critical eye, of course). Whatever her faults regarding the "plot to kill the pope", Thieves' World is a hell of a read. And there's no doubting her passionate conviction that organized crime is a global menace to nation-states (which, I think, is substantially true).
As to revokation of her license, she died several years ago.
-kgj
-kgj
How can you just ignore the WTC attacks and tell me "nothing to see here, please go about your business?" And the embassy attacks which have been much more frequent? The attack in Spain?
I'll ignore the attacks in Iraq for now, seeing as I expect those after we invaded.
I don't suspect my arab neighbors are terrorists, nor do I have any evidence of "sleeper" cells. But I do know we have been attacked multiple times already.
As much as most slashdotters *hate* the whole "in this post 911 world" stuff, I think they're naieve in ignoring it as well. "Ahh well, 3000 people were killed. But nobody *I* know so it doesn't effect me and I don't see why others are nervous." Some of us don't bury our heads in the sand so well.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
They want to manipulate people through fear instead of through rule of law. So it's a psychological campaign to get people to change their behavior. Sounds like PR to me. It's just not the typical corporate PR we're used to.
The 9/11 terrorists were aiming for the buildings - the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and one other significant "symbol" of America. The human casualties were collateral damage; sauce for the goose. If they wanted to maximize the human loss, they would have targeted a Sunday afternoon NFL football game where 80,000 folks would have been packed into a stadium. Dropping a 767's worth of Jet-A into that environment would have maximized the human loss, but probably would have had less lasting effect overall. Attacking specific individuals is limited. Attacking the symbols of a country affects *everyone*. The terrorist folks aren't stupid. They understand how powerful good PR can be.
It would be terribly difficult for the bad guys to sneak a nuke into DC and detonate it. However, setting off a nuke at the Mall of America at 3am is probably more effective in terms of crippling the economy and causing widespread fear. Few people travel to DC. Everybody goes to the mall.
So I disagree. I think it *is* a PR contest.
Sorry, you might have missed my point because I touched on military action. My intended point was that I'm not so convinced this supposed cultural spread throughout the world is really happening as you are envisioning. Yes, the end of the Cold War was primarily cultural (although some like to point out the failure of the USSR in Afghanistan - there I go, bringing up military action again). But anyway, I want to simply point out that Eastern Europe and the Middle East are very culturally different. Some of the negative sentiment that the US has in the Middle East is exactly because of this cultural encroachment. The simple fact is that the entire world doesn't want to adopt US culture. Some people absolutely hate it.
The main reason I brought up some of those other incidents was to show that perhaps the spread of culture wasn't as successful as you were stating. I admit, then, that I got a little side-tracked by bringing up the military angle. While you point out there has been steady progress, I feel that 9/11 shows that there isn't as much progress as you are saying. Granted, the attacks were not carried out by a large number of people, but there seems to be a considerable number of people that generally supported them, or at the very least understood why they did what they did. The images of those people cheering in the streets, holding up their hands with the "V" sign will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. Another possibility is that there is success in some regions, but not in others. I think this is probably one area where we will just continue to disagree (which is fine, I think we're both entitled to our opinions on something that seems to me hard to prove conclusively).
And ultimately, if some of these countries/regions do become "modernized," there's still no guarantee that this modernization translates to good will towards the US. Hopefully, it would reduce things like acts of terrorism, but we've seen in countries who are supposedly moderns acts meant to kill large amounts of innocent people (Oklahoma City in the US, subway gassing in Japan, there are probably more).
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
You could say that. I was just going by the usual sense of the word: Your average company's "PR" department. All PR departments that I know of try their best to create a good impression on the public and try to down-play disasters.
So what do you do when some American militia or one of the US-financed terrorist groups uses an A-Bomb in the USA?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Sensibly in their pants, not dangling in the breeze... and not glowing in the dark. And they'd like to keep it that way.
The only direct option the US has there is to start a war that must go nuclear. Demonstrating their full half a gram of sense, they are trying to convince the Chinese that the nutjob next to them needs to be reigned in. Remember: efficiency is intelligently applied laziness.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Yes, this is true. There exist significant numbers of people who do not want to adopt Western values. I'd wager, though, that they wouldn't have been able to defeat the proponents of Westernization in their own homelands--their numbers, while significant, would not be great enough. Add to the mix a dedicated, non-military push to spread Western values around the globe, and they'd have trouble even maintaining their numbers.
Instead, we've given the anti-Western forces the rough equivalent of a brand-new pony on their birthday. We've become easy marks as overbearing, ruthless, uncaring, soulless killing machines. Our actions aren't nearly as reprehensible as some would have us believe, but we've made a number of very important mistakes and missteps, and we've compounded our errors by failing to take responsibility for them. We're not the evil demons our enemies make us out to be--but we're certainly giving the other side plenty of material to work with. Young, naive, impressionable minds know no boundaries. So long as we keep blundering about, killing civilians, torturing prisoners, and circumventing the rule of law in the name of expedience and counterterror, the other side is going to have easy pickings for new recruits.
The images of those people cheering in the streets, holding up their hands with the "V" sign will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. Another possibility is that there is success in some regions, but not in others. I think this is probably one area where we will just continue to disagree (which is fine, I think we're both entitled to our opinions on something that seems to me hard to prove conclusively).
You're right, we will continue to disagree on this point. Bush does get the gist of it when he talks about democracy and freedom. There are universal values. Human beings--whether they're American, Iraqi, North Korean, Ukrainian, Japanese, Spanish, Venezuelan, Indonesian or Rwandan--have in common some basic desires. They want peace. They want justice. They cherish their values. They want happiness and comfort. They want security. They want freedom to lead their lives without fear, poverty, hunger or oppression.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're living in America in early 1945. If I were to walk up to you and tell you that within your lifetime, the Japanese would become the very model of Western civilization, engaged in active but largely amicable competition with America, you'd call me crazy. You'd say that Japan is a nation of ruthless, bizzare, ritualistic brutes. You'd say they live in paper houses, think that raw fish is high cuisine, and walk around town in bathrobes. You'd say they're absolute zealots would rather fly an explosive-laden Zero on a suicide mission into an aircraft carrier than cede one inch of their country to our troops. You'd say that there was no way that such an alien society could ever accept the ways of the Western world, and that if we did manage to win the war, the best we could hope for is keeping them isolated and militarily weak--if there was anything left of Japan, as they would probably fight us to the last man, woman and child.
Yet here we are--a mere sixty years later, Japan is the very model of a Western society. They have their problems, but in many respects, they're even more "Western" than America is. The
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
This was one tragic event. Should it be front-page news for the next decade? Should it be used to justify every new restriction on our freedom that our government puts into place?
I hate to use the cliched "the terrorists have already won", but look at our country post 9/11. People look upon every Arab with suspicion, due process for certain suspects are non-existant, the majority of the civilized world distrusts us, nuns and grandmothers are being frisked in airports, and our fellow citizens are at each other's throats.
Our government has responded with everything except an attempt to discover why Arab Islamic zealots hate us. They claim the terrorists "hate our freedom", yet it wasn't terrorists who signed the PATRIOT Act into law.
Here's something you won't find on CNN or Fox: Arabs don't hate our freedoms. They hate our meddling in their affairs, namely Israel. And while there is potential for some semblance of peace among Palestinians and Israelis in the works, our invasion of Iraq has given the zealots a new cause to rally behind. Good call, Bush.
9/11 was a tragedy that possibly could have been prevented (another discussion for another time). The appropriate response, however, is not to let the events of one day be used by politicians to further their careers.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This was one tragic event. Should it be front-page news for the next decade? Should it be used to justify every new restriction on our freedom that our government puts into place?
How can you just ignore the WTC attacks
You seem to have missed the "s" there. Apparently you've already forgotten the 1993 bombing. Perhaps it *should* be on TV 24/7, as it's so easilly forgotten by people like you.
You think we should forget D-Day? Pearl Harbor? Why shouldn't the attacks on the WTC get the same attention? You just "write it off" as a "tragic event" and move on? You also conveniently ignore attacks on embassies. It's easy to move on when you ignore things isn't it?
Here's something you won't find on CNN or Fox: Arabs don't hate our freedoms. They hate our meddling in their affairs, namely Israel.
I'll give you that. I believe the same thing. But that doesn't make them any more *right* in this matter does it?
I don't know why you brought up the PATRIOT ACT. I never even mentioned it, nor do I really support it...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Do you watch footage from D-Day and Pearl Harbor every night to remind you of the threat that Germany and Japan pose to the free world?
Yes, these events should be remembered, but we don't need to obsess over them.
You also conveniently ignore attacks on embassies. It's easy to move on when you ignore things isn't it?
I have enough things in my life that need my attention to waste time on things I have no control of. We elect politicians whose job it is to deal with these problems.
Living in constant fear of another attack is not a constructive use of my brief time on this earth. And people who sew the seeds of fear usually have something to gain from keeping people afraid and ignorant.
I don't know why you brought up the PATRIOT ACT. I never even mentioned it, nor do I really support it...
Just one of many examples of how politicians have used 9/11 as an excuse to take away our freedom in exchange for a false sense of security.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy