Slashdot Mirror
Liquid Terror Charges Dropped
A Pakistani judge has decided to drop terrorism charges against the man described as a "key figure" in the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London using liquid explosives. Instead of facing charges of terrorism for the plot, which forced many travelers to follow strict guidelines with respect to liquids, Rashid Raud now faces charges such as forgery. From the article: "Several commentators said the threat was deliberately exaggerated to bolster the anti-terror credentials of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and that it helped to demonise British Muslims of Pakistani origin. The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK said the dropping of charges against Mr Rauf in Pakistan would "make no difference" to the case against the men charged in Britain."
Britain in 2006: a democratic state where people enjoy freedoms that most of the world can only dream of, and where the worst thing you can think of to complain about is that your coke might be confiscated at an airport.
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!
If such a leading luminary of non-violent daydreams as John Carmack says it's possible, then hey, it has to be real, right?
Thank-you again, Mr. Carmack, for stepping in at the appropriate moment to provide the world with yet another on-ramp toward hostility, and this time while claiming the high ground. I don't know what's worse, that you sound earnest and convincing, or that you are well-respected enough among the circles of geekdom to actually have an effect upon the status quo. Ugh, either way. Just go back to making your, 'de-sensitize-the-hot-young-bucks-in-time-for-war
Whatever the case. . .
Dudes with bombs and box-cutters working independently is still the false reality which needs to be understood here. The myth of terrorists is the preferred tool for building the fascist state. Luckily, this is increasingly well understood. It's the 'How' which seems to be causing some hiccups.
I've heard every well-meaning argument in the book. --One of the main contenders being, "Well, if you continue to oppress a people, eventually they will rise up! It's the only way left to them."
Semi-true on one level, but still. . . Fascist empire builders have agendas to keep and can't really be expected to wait around for angry oppressed individuals from far away to blow up airliners on schedule. So how does the war machine kick it into gear?
How about a little mind control?
--It would certainly go a distance in explaining the actions of some of the supposedly fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in the prelude to the grand 9-11 performance acting in ways most un-Islamic. (Booze and Cocaine and Women won't win the devout many points with Allah.) So what's the story here? Were they fundamentalist terrorists, or were they dupe mercenaries who didn't know what they were signing up for, and who were allowed to bring off their clutzy plan while the US secret services conveniently looked the other way, while the secret/shadow government provided access to the remote controlled jets actually capable of performing the precision flying which badly-trained mercenary goof-balls could not have been asked to manage, and while the Israeli-owned security companies which held contracts at each of the airports involved during 9-11, gave them fast-lane service at the boarding check points?
Well, I can't say pardner, but I do know that when you're calling those kinds of shots, you're in the High Country!
-FL
I don't disagree that the U.S. is flirting with the loss of its global dominance, in no small measure because of the Bush administration having one of the most incompetent foreign policies ever, but characterising its current position as being purely military-based is a severe oversimplification. Its dominance comes from a whole range of things, including leadership positions of various kinds in science, technology, finance, higher education, media, etc.
Even if its military were somehow de-emphasised as a source of power, none of those other things would change automatically. Certainly, all of those things are potentially under threat by other countries in various ways, but the space of future possibilities is huge. For example, China is still a third-world nation in many ways, and it's far from clear that it can sustain a rise of the kind you suggest, particularly in just, say, a few decades.
Back in the '70s, many thought that Japan was going to take over from the U.S., or even that it already had, but that turned out to be a temporary thing. Which brings me to your other point, about the U.S. becoming powerful by a fluke: again, that's an oversimplification which misses some important real sources of U.S. dominance. One of those is the way in which immigrants have affected the demographics of the country. A large part of the U.S. population is self-selected for risk-taking and competitiveness. It attracts some of the best and the brightest from around the world (which again, is admittedly under threat now that obtaining a visa virtually requires an anal probe).
I think it's far more likely that U.S. dominance will not be destroyed by China or by events in the Middle East, but rather by the increasing incompetence of its political leaders and damage to its political system via the undue influence of corporate lobbying and campaign finance, etc. That has resulted in a myriad of poor policy decisions in many different areas, which attacks the source of U.S. advantage on multiple fronts in a way that no other single nation could. But even this could be corrected with some halfway-decent leadership, and one might hope (for the sake of humanity) that there's nowhere to go from Bush but up. I wouldn't count the U.S. out just yet.
I don't think anyone doubts the existence of terrorists. Reasonable people, without an ideological horse in the race, have generally concluded that the terrorists are, at a command and organizational level, financed by and controlled by the intelligence communities of the major players in the black ops world, such as the U.S., Russia, and Israel. The program advanced by the fabrication of ludicrous straw terror groups such as the supposed liquid bombers is obvious.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-