Bruce Schneier Blasts Politicians, Media

An anonymous reader writes, "In his latest newsletter, security author Bruce Schneier delivered a scathing critique of politicians and the media for promoting fear and ultimately doing exactly what the terrorists want. Citing several cases of false alarms, Schneier writes: 'Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat... Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.' Are the terrorists laughing at us?"

Comments

Machiavelli

[Itchy Rich]

Dissent gets stifled using anti-terror legislation... government fuck-ups get buried beneath terror headlines... people are given an enemy, and a reason to be obedient. Terrorism makes it easy for politicians to get their own way. Considering the mind-bogglingly small impact of terrorism, why wouldn't they want to encourage it?

Re:Machiavelli

[$1uck]

That's down right sinister. I'm not disagreeing (or agreeing) that this is happening. However I believe a sort of Social/Group Darwinism happens in significantly large complex organizations (like governments). Unthinking beauracracies evolve into whats best for the "beast" and not whats best for doing its job. Someone wrote a blog recently about whether the government agencies are grossly incomptent or "divinely comptent conspiracies" (not sure the quote is precise but its close enough). I prefer to think of it as both.

Where's the frontier where one can escape the thumb of large business and large government?

Re:Machiavelli

[IAmTheDave]

Where's the frontier where one can escape the thumb of large business and large government?

Buy an island. Or maybe move to SeaLand.

As long as there is money, there will be greed and corruption. As long as there are humans, there will be a desire for power and control. Since the human race currently reigns the planet, and international cooperation is almost entirely based on money, all four (greed, corruption, power, and control) exist.

They also all feed off of eachother. Greed breeds a desire for power and money. Greedy desire for money breeds corruption. Corrupt people with reems of money can buy control and power.

What's interesting is that despite greed, and the desire for ultimate control, said corrupt greedy controling individuals DO ban together - if pushing forward the collective enhances the individual. So as corruption grows inside of a large group, it's bound to effect (often in a positive money sense) the individual seeking said money and power. As a group becomes more powerful, the individual gains more power inside the group, which gives the group and individual more control.

It's vicious, rampant, and all-too-difficult to keep in check.

So the idealism held by a few true blue men (the founding fathers) was bound to fail, as is any new government set up today. (Although, I should point out, or at least not pretend to deny, that almost all the important founding fathers were all men who held positions of power and control in said new government, and were all pretty well off financially too. Best way to gain control of a country? Make one up.)

It's the crux of why all governments fail - and the crux of why, despite how perfect it looks on paper, communism is a dismal failure as well.

The democracy... sorry... republic... in which we live (US) is, to many, the best that we have come up with as a species thus far. To which side it leans can be debated forever, and whether or not more socialism is a good thing is also debatable. But we're far from a perfect society, and I dare say that we won't see one... ever.

Or, at least not as long as greed, power, corruption, and money are in the equation.

Re:Machiavelli

[russ1337]

Its 'mutualism symbiosis' at its best. It is much like the Movie stars and the Paparazzi - the movie stars loath the Paparazzi, but need the publicity they give them; and the paparazzi need the movie stars to stay employed.

Politicians NEED the terrorist threats to push through legislation giving themselves more power. (If there was no threat, there would be no Patriot Act). They politicians may not like them, but it is the terrorists that enable the politicians. (Here is the redundant bit, but it proves the point:) When the politicians use the terrorist threats to gain said power, they are spreading the word of the terrorist, giving them more power..... thus fueling the terrorists ability to enable fear, and so on....

Re:Machiavelli

[Hijacked Public]

You'd have to buy an island that no one wants. And I think SeaLand burned half to the ground and isn't going to be able to resurrect itself without help, which means some government or corporation somewhere is going to earn themselves some leverage by providing it.

The important thing to remember is that things aren't the way there are simply because humanity willed it so. Our true blue, slave owning, whore fucking founding fathers didn't just get to draw up a consitution and the country birthed out of that and everybody went around respecting everyone. They ordered thousands and thousands of common people to march face first into the outstretched bayonets of our enemies. When all the boides were finally piled up and counted, more of their guys were killed than our guys, so we could call this place our own and go back to being eaten alive by bears and half starving to death until we recuperated enough strength to go on a murderous genocidal rampage against the people who were here when we arrived.

So no, buying an island won't do. You'll need a massive economy to produce airplanes and rifles and metal hats to ward off all your bloodthirsty neighbors. You'll then need to develop a culture that resists encroachment, otherwise you'll wake up one day and there will be shops on every corner selling shitty hamburgers and piping your money back across your borders, so that the hamburger vendor's homeland can pay for more machine guns to open up more markets to peddle hamburgers in so they can pay for more machine guns.

And if you discover gold or copper or oil or anything else of any conceivable value on your island, even sand, shoot yourself in the face in preemptive capitulation because someone will have already developed a cleverly named campaign, "Operation Friendly Help" or the like, that involves a boat the size of Rhode Island parking 15 miles off your shore and hurling bombs at you continuously for months on end.

Thing are looking pretty bleak for sovereignity in general.

Re:Machiavelli

[radtea]

Politicians NEED the terrorist threats to push through legislation giving themselves more power.

Nothing illustrates this better than George W. Bush's citing Osama bin Laden's belief that "we are engaged in a third world war" to bolster his (Bush's) claims that the U.S. government needs to be able to ride roughshod over the fundamental liberties Americans have fought and died for over centuries.

When I heard Bush say that it suddenly made perfect sense: two sides, both of whom have an interest in a war that is by definition practically unwinnable. And the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth claiming the blitherings of a man hiding in a cave constitute a creditable attack on our world-spanning civilization. Neither is interested in victory. Both are interested in pervasive warfare and fear. That is what secures their own power-base.

It is time for the rest of us to say we are tired of this make-believe war that is only in the interests of the nutters who want to lead it. Ordinary police work has been and continues to be an effective tool for fighting the minor threat that terrorism presents. We know terrorism is a minor threat because major threats actually kill people, whereas death by terrorism was negligable in 2001, much less 2006.

Ordinary police work, within the strong framework of rights and liberties that is fundamental to Anglo-American law, and not "security theatre", is what has kept us safe for decades. And even depending on ordinary police work did mean we were a little less safe, I personally am willing to trade a little bit of security in favour of liberty for myself, my compatriots, and my children.

Re:Machiavelli

[generalphilips]

I've never heard a more idiotic comment that was hoping so badly to sound intelligent. You obviously don't live in New York. I do. The impact of 9/11 was decidedly not small. Have you even read Machiavelli? Have you even read Bruce Schneier's blog?

Re:Machiavelli

[tbannist]

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Re:Machiavelli

[theStorminMormon]

I'm glad you got a +5 Insightful. We'd hate for people to have to actually read an article before responding to it. Most Slashdot posters operate by a pretty simple switch statement;

if (gotfirstpost == true)
          makestupidfristpostjoke()
else
    Case (topic = terrorism)
          Bush is evil! America is evil! Terrorism is just an excuse to take our rights!
    Case (topic = MS)
          Down with the evil empire! M$ is the great, white Satan!
    Case (topic = linux) ...
end else

Having actually read the article, I thought I'd talk about that. And I find that the contention that terrorist attacks are simply a means to an end, and that the end is terrorism, is outright stupid. You'd think someone concentrating on separating means from ends would be smart enough to follow the chain all the way. Terrorism itself is a means to an end. Let's keep this discussion in perspective. The ultimate goal is not to make airline passengers wet themselves, it's to bring down the American/Western Empire and instate a medieval religious empire founded on some perverse version of Islam.

If you focus on the corruption of US politics to the exclusion of that real threat, you're ignoring the rock. If you focus on so-called "islamo-fascism" and ignore the very real blights in US/Western politics and culture, you're ignoring the hard place. You have to keep your eye on both (a skill radicals from either side are notoriously deficient with.)

In addition, if you treat "terror" as the ultimate measure of the success of terrorism, then why not simply instate severe censorship? If the ultimate goal is to prevent terror - then just ban any reporting about terrorism. That's pretty simple isn't? Saying that the main objective of this fight is to not get scared is like saying that if you have to fight a grizzly bear, the only thing to worry about is not getting eaten. Not panicking is a great idea, but you might want to also figure out how to avoid getting eaten.

Obviously terror isn't the ultimate measure of this conflict. I don't want to be a US citizen living in safety without any fear if that means I've lost the liberties that made America America. And that's exactly what this article - implicitly - advocates.

The reason radicals like to fixate on one end of the spectrum or the other is simple: it makes the problem easy. Trying to figure out how to balance safety concerns and civil liberties, idealism and realism, is difficult. It doesn't lend itself to grand rhetoric, dramatic action, and so on. It's easy to die for a cause if you really believe in that cause, it's harder to actually find a cause that you can rationally support and continue to muddle through your life supporting that cause without the convenience of a world view that bestows black-and-white contours to your environment.

If you ask me, the real danger isn't terror. It's not civil liberties either. It's becoming what we face. And I don't mean we're all in danger of becoming radical Islamic fundamentalists. I mean there is a very real danger that the stressfulness and ambiguity of the present conflict will lead increasingly large numbers of Americans to radicilize. To seek emotional and mental respite from complexity by turning a blind eye to either the rock, or to the hard place.

That is the danger that we face. Because in reality we are between a rock and a hard place, and the only way to see this true is to keep one eye on both.

-stormin

Re:Machiavelli

[TheWizardOfCheese]

As long as there is money, there will be greed and corruption. As long as there are humans, there will be a desire for power and control.

So what? As long as there are humans, there will be love, gratitude, kindness, and self-sacrifice. You don't even need the humans; you can observe all of these behaviours in animals too. Any philosophy that tries to pretend that humans have no "good" attributes is just as nutty as a philosophy such as communism that tries to pretend they have no bad ones.

But we're far from a perfect society, and I dare say that we won't see one... ever.

Well, of course not! But that's hardly the point. Making things worse is easy, making them perfect is impossible. But just making them better is not impossible, even if it's hard work. At this point, it would be progress just to stop making things worse.

Re:Machiavelli

[n00854180t]

About time someone said this. Seconded. The victim attitude is pathetic and ridiculous. More people died in car accidents in two weeks following the "terrorist" attack than in the actual attack. The impact of terrorists on citizens is so absolutely minor when compared with the millions of other ways you could conceivably die NOT involving terrorists. It's far more likely to trip and break your neck/back or get run over by a car than it is to be attacked by something as nebulous and insubstantial as "terrorists". People that allow themselves to be frightened and herded like sheep over something this riduclously minor do not deserve to live in a country called "the home of the brave". And for all the trolls that undoubtedly will call me a "liberal" (since they apparently don't know how to make any logical arguments), I am not, was a former military servicemember and indeed hold very dear the TRUE ideals of the country (personal liberty and freedom, not the oppressive fear mongering garbage that so many cowardly people want).

Possibly.

[FatSean]

I mean, remember the ban on LIQUIDS and GELS on US aircraft? Despite all the improvised explosives experts stating how freakin' hard it would be to succssfully hide and then deploy explosives packaged in a tube of hair gel or other consumer packing?

Yeah, they're probably laughing. As we slowly give up our freedoms and rights bit by bit for some safety that nobody can prove we actually have.

I can quantify the infringements on my rights and freedom...can you quantify how much safer we are?

Re:Possibly.

[ResidntGeek]

can you quantify how much safer we are?

Yes. Every infringement you can quantify is another warm fuzzy feeling among the masses. Since fear is about the only thing they're in danger of from terrorism, they're safer.

refused to be terrorized

[farker haiku]

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

I'm more afraid of the politicians than I am of the terrorists. I can't refuse to be terrorized by them, however.

Are the terrorists laughing at us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the terrorists laughing at us? Yes they are. 9/11 was a tragedy but it killed only few thousands, what happened after (and its not over yet) killed freedoms of entire nation. By far the most damaging was what 'happened after'.

Naive

[October_30th]

He's naive if he thinks that the politicians don't realize that. Fear mongering serves politicians' interests as well -- especially if you'd like to exert more control over the public.

The terrorists don't care about that

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Here's what the terrorists care about:

1) they don't want the US to have such economic and political power over their countries
2) they are pretty miffed that the US supports Israel
3) some of them want Islam to be the dominant religion all over the world
4) they don't like the US propping up regimes that suppress their brand of religion
5) they don't like the US propping up regimes that treat their citizens inhumanely
6) they want to be taken seriously
7) they want to act on equal terms with the West

They don't care whether or not we are squandering our freedoms. That is a cop-out and jingoism that makes it seem like there are all these external forces that are causing us to give up our freedoms. It's a way of appealing to our nationalist nature instead of our patriotic nature.

We are losing our freedoms because we are letting it happen. Period. This has nothing to do with terrorism or terrorist wishes except that politicians on both sides use appeals to our emotions to take those freedoms away on the one hand and to lamely protest their usurpation on the other.

I have no analogy for this. It doesn't need one. So why do all these pundits keep spouting these hackneyed bad analogies? Because they don't think you're any smarter than that.

I think you're smart enough to see through it. It is my fervent hope that we (the true intellectual elite) can move this country forward without jingoism and without nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance.

Re:The terrorists don't care about that

[cp.tar]

without nationalism, you don't have a country to move forward anymore.

Instead, you have a world to move forward.

Then again, who cares about the filthy foreigners, right?

Re:How Is This News For Nerds??!!!!!!

[kfg]

. . .when did slashdot start covering terrorism issues? This isn't even close to news for nerds, or my rights online.

Somebody hasn't been paying attention.

KFG

Wha...whaaaaat?

[Lumpy]

From the article... "Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.'"

what rock has this guy been under? I have never EVER met a journalist that was not out to further themselves at the expense of others. Every interview I have given or was with a friend or co-worker that was interviewed had their words rearranged and mis-quoted to "crank up" the drama.

Journalism has been pretty scummy for a long time, I guess that comes from the fact that if it's not sensational it does not get published.

Re:But the problem is:

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking false security IS burying your head in the sand.

Obviously

[retrosteve]

What surprises me is that more people aren't speaking up like Schneier. It seems to me that the role of the press and politicians in promoting terror is very much like that of oxygen and fuel in promoting fire.

If you don't feed the spark, it goes out.

If you doubt this, look at other, more important issues (affecting much more than a few thousand people) that routinely die out in the press because they're ignored.

Not to hijack the thread, I'll give a tiny sample, and ask politely that you don't reply to the examples, just to the general principle

* Voting machine irregularities and bad faith at Diebold
* Retraction of whistleblower protections in the US Federal Government
* Increasing exemptions to the US FOIA
* FCC regulation changes making it possible for 2 media giants to completely control any given local market.

The impact of these little stories is far more interesting than which 10 or 100 people will be killed by a terrorist attack someday. As someone just recently put it, more people are killed every year by peanut allergies than by global terrorism.

The War on Peanuts awaits.

He has a point...perhaps everyone is missing it.

[JasonBee]

It's not that we're aiding and abetting the terrorist's fear mongering agenda by spreading fear. Perhaps he's saying that the spread of fear is totally intended, and that the effect has been welcomed...although not by most of society. Fear is control. It's also a great method of cover in case we start questioning things.

The reason the fear tactic keeps getting brought up is because there is something to be gained by keeping everyone fearful. The trick is to follow that intent and then maybe we can clearly see where we're being taken.

Don't feed the troll

[vrtladept]

We have followed this advice in USENET for quite some time. Don't feed the troll, it's what they want. (Terrorists are just real world trolls if you think about it)

Re:Repeat often

[Jack Sombra]

I fly internationally about 4 times a year (US-UK routes) and i still agree with that statement. Some security is common sence, like locked cockpit doors and no obvious wep's (inconceivable for anyone in Europe that these were not enforced in the US before 9/11) but there is a huge difference between common sence security and what pass's for "security" these days, especially as all these extra measures don't really add any extra security, just a load of aggrovation for 10's of millions of people

Re:Really?

[jc42]

Quote: Our job is to think critically and rationally... Isn't this an oxymoron for the media and government?

Perhaps for the politicians. But not for security analysts like Bruce, or for the many people with security-related jobs inside the government.

And it shouldn't be for a gang of high-tech "nerds" like us. Instead of the usual political flameage, we should be behaving like the geeks we claim to be. We should be discussing how we can use our high tech to expose and interfere with both the terrorists and the politicians who are trying to take advantage of it and push us back into authoritarian societies with them in charge.

With the Internet, we have the best tool yet for tracking and exposing the people like bin Laden, Bush and Blair (and Cheney and Rumsfeld and ...). It's a tool that can't be controlled from the top nearly as easily as the centrally-managed mass media. We should be using our expertise with this tool to get the details of their shenanigans into the minds of the general population.

The growing importance of the political blogs is a good sign. But they're mostly journalist types; they really could use the help of us techie nerd types to develop tools for exposing the political and religious types, and for blocking their attempts to control our communications.

So get to work out there. For a few fun reads on the topic, google for "sousveillance".

Pussies

[drooling-dog]

Those who would give up freedom in exchange for security, deserve neither.

Yet it's amazing how often those of us who think this way get called "pussies" or worse by conservatives who themselves are hiding under their beds trembling in fear, begging Daddy Government to please take all of our rights and liberties if that's what it takes to keep the Boogie Man at bay for one more night.

Makes you wonder who the real "pussies" are...

Re:Pussies

[Skye16]

There's rolling over and pretending nothing happened, and there's running around like a fucking moron screaming the sky is falling every other day.

Honestly, in the giant scheme of things, I don't fucking care about 9/11, I don't fucking care about the two towers, and I don't fucking care about the pentagon. A few thousand people died in a country of about three hundred million. Whoopdifuckingdoo. About 460 thousand people died of heart attacks in 1998 - where the fuck is our War on Candy Bars and Whoppers, huh?

It was a rhetorical question; don't bother answering it. Obviously you try to stop terrorists, just as you try to stop anything that kills people. But we're more worried about a bomb on a subway than we are of dying in a car crash because some jackass is drunk driving. As if that bomb is going to kill you any more dead than an idiot in a pickup truck. It's fucking retarded.

We've lost any and all sense of context with this whole "War on Terror" bullshit. I'm not saying Democrats have the answer, but I know for sure that Republicans don't. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure anyone in a government position does. All-in-all, I find them uniquely suited to be completely incapable of figuring out how best to deal with this. But when given a choice between an asshole dropping bombs and an asshole banging an intern and not doing much of anything else, I'd rather have the latter.

The real sad thing is all I really want is a viable choice. You know, someone who isn't a complete tool. (Note: Don't even bother babbling about the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. I've scoped both of them out. They're just as bad - just in different ways. Think of the differences between giant logs of poop and green mushy piles of poop. No matter how you look at it, you're still shit.)

Re:Repeat often

[Opportunist]

Be reasonable.

Consider how many flights take off daily. Now compare that to the flights that get blown up by terrorists (include those that were allegedly foiled, to at least get more than THREE in the last 5 years).

And now answer me why you still cross the road without first making your will. Your chances to die are so incredibly higher that you should be afraid to even dare thinking of crossing roads. And we even allow our children to do that! Would someone PLEASE think of the children?

Re:How Is This News For Nerds??!!!!!!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

What happened to those days?

September 11th.

To give a more complete answer to your rant, terrorism related, or rather "anti"-terrorism related news has become news for nerds. As technicially competant educated people, with not a small sprinkling of intellectual, Slashdotters are more likely to be aware of and engaged in the civil liberties debate, especially when it concerns technology being used to "save us".

1984 crops up in discussions a lot. That's because a lot of people on these boards have actually read the book. There's not a lot of internet forums you can say that about. Slashdotters are interested in what is happening to free society in the wake of the twin towers' collapse, even if you are not. To cap it all off, Bruce Schneier is a computer security super geek. His words carry weight.

As an aside, I'm willing to bet that a big factor in Slashdotters interest and in general opposition to anti-terrorism legislation, is the fact that many here had a hard time in secondary education and would rather not be stamped on again in the emerging neo-facist society. Once you've tasted the lash, you won't be so eager for flogging as others.

Three questions for you

[benhocking]

1. How many Americans died from terrorist attacks in 2001?
2. How many Americans died from natural disasters in 2001?
3. Where did the government spend more money keeping us safe?

If you want some help answering these questions, see this article.

I'm not trying to lessen the seriousness of 9/11. It was a very serious attack that demanded our attention. However, there are lots of other serious issues that also demand our attention.

Terrorists are just a replacement for the USSR

[Secrity]

US politicians lost their boogey man when the Iron Curtain crumbled. They have found that terrorists make a dandy substitute.

Patriotism

[Loundry]

Anyone who is cited or charged for voiceing his or her belives in a nonviolent fashion is a bigger patriot than all those who drive around with a "Support our troops" sticker irregardles of the belives.

Forgive me if I seem obtuse, but what is so patriotic about voicing an opinion? I thought that patriotism was definined by a love and support of one's country/culture. If an opinion could conceivably be a contempt and disdain for one's country/culture (which many people certainly display), then how can that still be considered "patriotic"? I'm sorry, but I don't see the same sacred value is "voiceing his or her believes" that you do.

What if someone voiced the opinion that blacks were "mud people"? Would that person be a bigger patriot than the one who drives around with a "support our troops" sticker?

As for being afraid I agree with you - though much younger, I thank god that I do not live in America.

I don't believe in gods, but I am glad that I, a gay man, live in America opposed to living in Europe. The editor of the gay newspaper where I live (in the ultra-conservative, racist, gay-bashing South) was recently gay-bashed. No, he was NOT gay-bashed by Christian Republicans in Cobb County, Georgia. He was gay bashed by muslims in tolerant, progressive Amsterdam.

Bruce Bawer was a gay man who lived in the United States and decided to move to more tolerant, progressive Europe to escape from Christian Fundamentalists. What he found was that Europe has its own Fundamentalists, yet they are Muslims and they are worse in every way than America's Fundamentalists. He wrote a book about it called While Europe Slept. You can find out about it at http://www.brucebawer.com/. Is it safe to be gay in Europe? In many places, the answer has become not "no", but "hell no", and that is due largely to the influence of muslims who resoundingly believe that gay people are worthy of death.

While I do not support anything Bush has done (except for the tax cuts -- he's even waging the "war on terror" with a deliberately militant blind eye to the reality of jihad and Islam), I fear that the Europe that I know and love is going to be turned into an utter craphole by the regressive, anti-liberal, and fundamentliast muslim colonists who live there and are tolerated under the hideous canard of "multiculturalism". And I feel this is happening because far too many Europeans feel disdain and contempt for their own country/culture. "If Shari'a rules Europe, then who cares? Europe doesn't have a culture worth preserving anyway." I soundly disagree with that assessment, and I hope that more Europeans may find their sense of patriotism before muslims do to the beloved Mont Saint Michel what they did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Re:But the problem is:

[tclark]

You mean those British guys with no plane tickets, no passports, and no workable plan? Thank God we got those bastards!

Then again, even though those guys did not have a way to make a workable bomb, they did manage to get my three year old daughter frisked and her lip gloss confiscated when we flew recently.

Did we win this one?

It's called fear mongering

[Electric Eye]

And I hope the voters teach these low-life scumbags a lesson in November. It disgusts me every time I hear some liar like Dick Cheney saying if we pull out of Iraq, we're going to find terrorists in our supermarkets.

live free or die!

[TheGratefulNet]

again, I have to state the NH state motto (its a whole lot more serious and relevant than, say, idaho who has 'famous potatos!' as their license plate motto) ;)

we americans have lost the VALUE of freedom. freedom USED to be worth dying for. that's the heart of the NH motto and also to the heart of what made america the SYMBOL of freedom across the world.

now, we are cowards who are afraid of our own shadows. and liquid substances.

we are also afraid of cameras! I am a photographer and I follow all the new 'restrictions' that the figures of authority have (decided on their own) to place on us. no more taking pictures of bridges or trains or buildings. "you could give info to the terrorists" is their reply. tell me - what can my photo give that google-earth doesn't already give?

I just don't accept the fact that taking pictures on public property (which is STILL technically legal) is 'helping the other side'.

anyway, it has to be said - a life lived in fear is no life at all. its NOT what america used to stand for.

there have always been risks in everything you do. you could get hit by a car if you cross the road. if the republicans had their way, they'd have road.nannies at every intersection "to keep us all super-safe". how much invasion in our lives do we need for the government to be a life.nanny for us all? can't we just assume the world is a very dangerous place (always has been!) and just deal with that as a fact of the modern world?

Re:How Is This News For Nerds??!!!!!!

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>1984 crops up in discussions a lot. That's because a lot of people on these boards have actually read the book.

"Animal Farm" sometimes seems more apropos. The real villains weren't the pigs, the ones who brought that society down were the sheep. What's the difference between "Four legs good, two legs baaad" and "Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists"?

there is no rock

[DarrylKegger]

"If you focus on the corruption of US politics to the exclusion of that real threat, you're ignoring the rock "

what threat from the actions of terrorists?? there is no real threat.

I dont have the exact statistics at hand but the chances of you or anyone else suffering from the actions of 'terrorists' are vanishingly small. You know this and I know this, ie more chance of dying driving to work in the morning,etc.

Al qaeda is nothing in the scheme of real threats that you face in your day to day life. People only believe that there is a threat becos there has been systemic mass media fear-mongering.

"Saying that the main objective of this fight is to not get scared is like saying that if you have to fight a grizzly bear, the only thing to worry about is not getting eaten. Not panicking is a great idea, but you might want to also figure out how to avoid getting eaten."

Before the events of september 11 there were perfectly adequate governmental methods to "avoid getting eaten". The only thing that changed was that Bush/Cheney/Rove et al chose to ignore the advice given to them by the people/organisations who handle these threats, ie the intelligence agencies.

So in conclusion: your dichotomy is false and the problem really does lie with Bush/Cheney et al and the corporate media.

Re:there is no rock

[DarrylKegger]

You are comparing the lead-up to World War Two with the current situation.

World War two was initially between nation states of roughly equal size and power.

Global Terrorism is the conflict between small dispersed groups of poorly equipped Islamists and the world's SUPER power. Clearly this is absurd.

Ok you say, at the moment the threat is small but it is growing (you have evidence of this??) and that if we dont stomp it out it'll rise up and destroy us just when our backs are turned.

Again, absurd. You think for a second the US government would actually allow a real threat to endanger it?? Iran is a nation state run by religious fundamentalists and even the smallest attempt by them to build even the pre-cursors to serious weapons has been smacked down. (Ignore the fact that perhaps they may actually be pursuing nuclear generated electricity for their economy)

You can't seriously think for a second that if Iran actually developed 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' that this would be tolerated by the U.S?

And this is precisely the sort of centralised capabilities that Al Qaeda etc would need to become an actual real threat to the United States. That Al Qaeda is decentralised is the only thing in its favour. Once it gives that up it becomes a nice, easily picked off, centralised target.

You seem to be forgetting the slew of lies fed to the public about 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' in order to invade the 'great threat' of Iraq.

That is direct evidence of G.W/Cheney/Rove creating a completely fabricated threat (Saddam) in order to pursue their illegitimate goals and you dont even have a plausible argument as to how your belief in the 'potential' threat of radical islam could get to the point where it could pose a legitimate threat let-alone evidence that it currently is a threat. Oh and as for your 'they can just cut off the oil' argument....um what do you think one of the benefits (or potentially the main purpose) of invading Iraq was???

I note also that you failed to counter my argument that...

"Before the events of september 11 there were perfectly adequate governmental methods to "avoid getting eaten". The only thing that changed was that Bush/Cheney/Rove et al chose to ignore the advice given to them by the people/organisations who handle these threats, ie the intelligence agencies.

and you can't counter it because it is fact. The kind of threat that groups like Al Qaeda pose has not changed significantly since the 1980's and there is no evidence that the measures that were in place and used by the intelligence agencies in the 20 years preceding 9/11 were inadequate then or now. The extent to which the PATRIOT act erodes rights would have been completely unjustifiable except in a climate of manufactured fear.

Speaking of the 'patriot' act, I can't help but feel that you in some deep way buy into the jingoism of the Hawks; a feeling that is to some extent justified considering the way in which you bandy about the term 'extremist' in response to my own and other slashdotter's questioning of your logic.