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Anti-Missile Defenses For Commercial Jets
The AP reports that the first anti-missile defense system has been installed for testing on a commercial jet, a FedEx cargo carrier. The system is intended to detect the launch of a shoulder-fired missile at takeoff or landing, and disable the missile with a laser beam. Sen. Barbara Baxter (D-California) is one of the supporters of the system. She and other members of Congress are hoping to equip all US commercial passenger liners with this system in 20 years, at a cost of billions of dollars. Is this good common sense or the costly future of a society hobbled by fear of terrorism?
When the last time this system would have saved an aircraft?
A shoulder fired rocket can not shoot that high. The plane is much more vulnerable when it is taking off or landing. So ... they should just install them at big airports to protect all jets coming in or out.
An absolute waste of money. The only thing it's good for is making defense contractors richer.
Why not just let airlines install the devices as the market demands, a portion of the market will want protection and a portion will not. The added cost will allow consumers to decide whether the protection is "worth it".
The system is intended to detect the launch of a shoulder-fired missile at takeoff or landing, and disable the missile with a laser beam.
What a great idea! Now when the terrorists eventually take over another round of planes, they can effectively block missiles intended to shoot them down before reaching sensitive targets.
How about if next, we equip subway cars with nuclear self-destruct devices so terrorists can't use them to make their speedy getaways?
I'd assume you can get a few chaffs and flares for cheap these days. No need for all this fancy and probably expensive laser stuff.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Just out of curiosity, how many commercial airliners in the US have been shot down with shoulder fired missiles? I haven't had any luck trying to find an instance in Google.
I could see a system like this for a plane that has to fly over Iraq or South Africa, but inside of the US/Canada/Europe/Australia/Asia it doesn't seem to be necessary, worse, a system like this is probably going to require massive power and have considerable complexity. Highly complex pieces of equipment are liable to malfunction at some point and possibly even cause a crash.
No, installing something like this in every airplane in the US fleet is just not realistic. Having it as an option for people who have to fly near areas where terrorists have shoulder fired missiles and a grudge against the west is good though.
I read the internet for the articles.
That'd be Barbara Boxer. WTG, crack editing staff!
"I do not regret the things I have done, but those that I did not do."
Is it a bird? Is it an airplane? Is it Superman? No, it's a missile crashing into the airport terminal!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Sen. Barbara Baxter (D-California) is one of the supporters of the system.
These expensive new anti-missile systems wouldn't happen to be made in Senator Boxer's home state of California, would they?
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Wow. Running in debt, passenger cabins that aren't clean, meals that have been cut from shorter flights, and all on top of *higher ticket prices*. Now they want to install frickin' laser beams? That'll do wonders for affordability. Maybe a nice fat Government subsidy is in order?
Fantastic. Just fantastic.
Sony ha
Because by selling both the cause and the remedy, you get to profit twice! Happy days.
Billions of dollars. Big deal. How about we discuss the real costly future of a society hobbled by fear of terrorism and (for some reason) Muslims? Yes, I'm talking about the $1 trillion that the Iraq war is costing us. Then there's the human lives being lost. You can't really put a price tag on those, as you would have to do so your own in the process.
These defense systems for passenger jets are a drop in the bucket compared to the war in Iraq. And, as far as human lives go, you can't even compare the two.
In the end, this movement doesn't even need to be common sense. It just has to be something that counteracts the fear that some Americans live with. I myself am not one of them--but if these politicians that the country elected believe they'll do the trick, then go ahead. I'd much rather see legislation like this being passed than to have our fearless leader attack Iran or North Korea.
To recap, it's not about if it would ever have saved a passenger jet, it's more so that people will think that the security on planes have become impervious to the types of attacks that terrorists have the means to execute.
I suppose now I'll be called an isolationist.
My work here is dung.
There is no such thing as security. Whatever one person can put together, another person can take apart. Virus scanners, the locks on my house and home, and the passwords on my bank accounts are all meant for one thing: To keep honest people honest. If someone really wants to, any security I could encumber some part of my life with can be undone by someone of focused malicious intent.
The more society spends on 'security' the harder it is to undo that security. Build a Great Wall of China and it keeps the invaders out. Build a Great Wall of the Rio Grande and it keeps the Mexican immigrants out. But given time or motivation, invaders and immegrants find ways around the walls.
The more society relies on 'security' the more devestating it is when that security fails. These planes will have protection against missles (how many times have planes been shot down by missles anyhow?!). I am sure some motivated criminal will determine that using a high powered large caliber rifle or remote controlled airplane with C4 attached works just as well for bringing down a plane; or something else we haven't even considered.
In my view, the only way to minimize acts of terror, keep illegal immigrants at home, and make the world 'safe' is with economic development. If a person has a full stomach and something to do with their hands so they can avoid hunger tomorrow, then that person is too happy and busy to 'terrorize' or risk life and limb crossing the dessert.
Money spent on walls, airline bomb closets and anti-air to air missle lazers, and even super cool rail guns are all poor investments, in my view. Better to spend the money on starting businesses, funding schools, and giving incentives to entrapeneurs. If everyone is fed and busy, the world is as safe as it could be (though still not perfectly safe).
While MADPADS (MAn Portable Air Defense Systems) are a threat, albeit a very small one, the real threat to aviation is CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) and ground accidents. It seems like a rather misdirected use of fund to require airliners to carry anti-MADPADS defenses. What if the ComAir flight was required to have a system that allowed either the flight crew or tower operator to monitor their position at the airport? They would have easily seen that the hadn't lined up on an active runway. These systems DO exist, aren't as costly and save real lives. System also exist that allow an air crew to see a profile of upcoming terrain and give them advanced warning if they are on a collision course with unseen terrain. While this doesn't frequently occur in the US, it *do* occur overseas to US airlines.
It's amusing, in a morbid way, that Congress continually cuts FAA funding while pronouncing they're deeply worried about people dying in aviation accidents. If anyone thinks that MADPADS are a real and serious threat, just go read a couple months' worth of NTSB accident reports and tell me that aviation safety is hinged on anti-MADPADS defenses.
How can I get one for my cubicle? A few mods, and it could be my APHBM. If you can't figure out what the acronym is, you probably are a PHB.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I would say a rash measure for international flights, but domestic as well? Did we develop a problem with shoulder fired missles in the US recently? At billions of dollars, we are simply proving that terrorists are right. We really do just cower before them. They knock down a couple buildings and we'll change our entire culture and bankrupt our country in fear.
They are aiming at 20 years in the future. This is a test release on a single aircraft. They want the system to be feasible and cheap in 20 years, when they feel it will probably be needed (and yea, saleable to the middle east / Africa / etc)
if you were close enough to hit an airplane with a shoulder fired rocket, couldn't you instead use explosives to damage the runway enough to cause a crash? The aftermath of a failed landing or even a failed takeoff is probably enough to serve the terrorists purpose. Anyone remember the failed takeoff of the Air France plane at Pearson international? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_358
Not to mention the fact that I can't find a single instance of a commercial aircraft being hit by a shoulder fired rocket.
This is a stupid waste of money. Of course, it will earn some weapons manufacturers some cash, and it will make some people feel safer -at least until they realize that the next commercial hijackers now control a high-powered laser, but hey, who am I to mock attempts at the "war on terror"? Who'd have thought that waging a war against an abstract noun could have been so tricky?
I say we let the MythBusters team test this one out, before the congress votes on it.
Adam: On this episode of MythBusters, we test if terrorists can use the signal from a missile-jamming laser system to actually track the plane more accurately than would otherwise be possible.
Jamie: Yes, this is one of those stories we've been getting a lot of email about, and we've gotten special support from the folks at Northrop Grumman. I'm really looking forward to trying this one out.
[20 minutes of footage of tinkering with rocket guidance systems and guest rocket scientists advice, with several shots of rockets missing a watermelon with a simple modulated laser on it, and at last some splattered fruit.]
Adam: This is so cool - I think we're ready for the real test.
Jamie: Yeah, I'm really happy with how this came out. I'm surprised how easy it was to change the laser guidance on these missiles to track towards our laser masking system. We'll just have to see how the real system pans out.
Announcer: Coming up next: Will the airplane defense work against the modified missile? [Video of a missile heading towards an airplane] See what happens, after this break!...
Hey - at least it would be better standards than the folks who currently test our voting equipment, and likely many of our governmentally-mandated military expenditures.
Ryan Fenton
Thank god that FedEx is finally protected against those UPS militia death-squads.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
How about a cost/benefit analysis of such a system before we knee jerk expensive solution to a low risk problem.
The problem here is that people equate one 450 person aircraft with more value that of 40,000 fatalities due to automobile accidents.
Air travel is one of the safest forms of travel, bar none. We don't need to spend BILLIONS of dollars making it safer, mainly because it isn't going to make it much safer.
It all sounds good, but really, it is a waste.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Barbara Boxer is a Senator from California.
Northrup Grumman makes this system, and it's a potential multi-billion dollar contract.
Northrup Grumman is headquartered in Los Angelas, CA.
I just wanted to point that out. Every other highly modded comment is pointing out how there are better ideas than this.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Can I get one installed on my Chevy Malibu to protect it from aggressive SUVs?
Frankly, that would be a better use of the money.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Would more lives be saved inventing and installing an in-cabin fire suppression system instead of an anti-missile system?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
If for planes, why not trains? If I was a terrorist, I'd skip airports entirely, far too many cameras and police. I'd target a high speed intercity train. If I time it right, I should be able to blast a 125mph train into pieces on a high speed track, in time to cause major derailments from other trains. Given that during commuter times, there could easily be 200-300 people on each train, I'd easily rack up the same body count as I would by hitting an airliner (assuming the airliner didn't crash into a tower block).
And I can hit the train from pretty much anywhere along it's route.
Trying to make us all immune to terrorist attacks is just impractical. We are treating the symptom, not the disease.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Why are we such pussies? Look around, in the US, something like:
40,000 people die/year in car accidents
20,000 murders/year
And we get all worked up because some people managed to hijack 4 airplanes and killed 3,000 people? It really sucks, and I understand the pain that the people left behind had to face (as well as the people who died that day). But because of that one attack, we've completely gone bonkers and blown an entirely disproportionate amount of money on making sure it doesn't happen again compared to larger social ills.
Ugh, it just burns me.
-Bucky
What if the US spends less money on defense , and instead behaves less like a dick. Instead we should concentrate on being a little less arrogant, and be more world friendly. Foreign relations has really taken a turn or the worse in the last 6 years or so. Or we can continue the current trend, and then just travel everywhere in personal sized mini tanks, with anti missile/IUD technology.
People keep on trying to put bandages on the problem, instead of addressing what is actually wrong, kind of like treating a fever with some aspirin, instead of treating the infection.
..........FULL STOP.
Has a range of around 3km straight up, slant range of around 8 km. So you can fire from well outside the airport perimeter.
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This is the sort of ridiculous, slippery-slope argument that the government loves to throw in our faces when trying to justify the erosion of our civil rights and the wanton military spending that are ostensibly necessary "because of the terrorists."
There are not going to be actual "gangs" of Islamic fundamentalists running around in your neighborhood, killing people in front of your kids. First, there are not actually enough fundamentalists to make this happen. Second, we do have a police force, you know -- it's their job to deal with gangs. You could argue that they don't do a particularly good job of that in some parts of LA, but to be honest, even there is nothing like it is in the movies. People with families live in Compton. There are gangs, to be sure, but even there, people killing others in front of your kids is an uncommon occurence, not an everyday affair.
Let's talk about a "reasoned" response: 3000 people died on 9/11, that's all. It's tragic, but come on. How many people die in car crashes every year? The reason people keep bringing it up is because, every year, nearly 40 thousand people do!
Here's the reality of the situation: 6 years later, we've accomplished nothing that is actually relevant to 9/11. Osama Bin Laden is still at large, as much as the government tries to understate his importance. No replacement for the WTC is on the horizon, despite much in the way of planning.
However, we have used the event to justify tremendous, unreasonable spending on cockamamy schemes like this one that will do exactly nothing to help prevent terrorism. Seriously, the people that came up with the 9/11 plan and executed it were brilliant, from a logistical, strategic, and creativity perspective. Do you really think they're a one-trick pony? That now that they've done 9/11, the only possible terrorist attack they can think of involves running a plane into a building? Because that seems to be the way our administration thinks.
We've gone to the ends of the earth to make flying a pain, hurting our economy and annoying our passengers. And for what? To prevent another 9/11? Why not just blow up a building? Why bother with the plane? We're expecting it, it would be stupid.
Maybe George Bush was right, after all -- maybe they did attack us because they "hate our freedom." Lamentably, our response seems to be to throw our freedom away to appease them.
Here's a wild thought: how about just ignoring them?
The cold war was an ever-escalating chain of threats, the actual execution of which was always extremely improbable (as both sides knew the end result)... For decades the threat of nuclear war was carted out as an excuse for giving away billions upon billions to defense contractors.
Shortly after the cold war ended, various skirmishes and, then, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom became the new dog-and-pony by which Congress to appease their constituencies and lobbyists in states where defense contractors represented significant employment. But now it's blossoming into another Vietnam and is beginning to blow up in Congress' face.
So, what's the answer? Give the defense contractors a new mission: Counterterrorism! Since the supply of irrational fear is virtually limitless, the demand for solutions to calm these irrational fears is equally unbounded. Naturally, this could go on for decades, just like the cold war...
How can they convince the people to buy into it? Remember Lisa Simpson and the tiger-repellent rock? You don't see any terrorists around do you? That's the beauty of irrational fears... you don't need to use a rational argument to soothe them.
This is not to say that counterterrorism is bunk... No, it's necessary. But there's a pragmatic approach to identifying real threats and determining the cost of real solutions to them, and then there's the Chicken Little approach. The sky is falling. Watch out for terrorists in Fargo, North Dakota. Attack them before they attack us.
The big problem with this mania that has been exploited by the Bush administration and Republicans in particular is this: While they are quick to point out that no terrorist attacks have occurred on Bush's watch since September 11, 2001... I am equally quick to point out that the worst terrorist attack in US history did, in fact, occur on Bush's watch.
Unproven speculation.
They could install flare launchers on the planes, like military jets.
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
Oh, this is absolutely a good idea! Finally, a way to prevent all those passenger aircraft from being shot down by shoulder fired rockets here in the U.S. every year. At last, a viable solution to a problem that has plagued this great nation for so long!
x newstellsmetohatetoday pulled a shoulder-fired rocket out from under his trenchcoat. If it hadn't been for the quick, decisive, unilateral action of some texan knocking the guy down (then trying to raise support for knocking the guy's neighbors down, which I didn't really understand but support wholeheartedly anyway), he might have shot down YET ANOTHER passenger aircraft right here in the land of the free.
Just the other day, I was at the airport, waiting at the security checkpoint like a good citizen, when some muslim/iranian/videogamer/teenager/goth/whoeverfo
In other news, a man was killed by perforation at Los Angeles Intl., when he foolishly fired up a welding torch on the airfield.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
...the considerably unlikely chain of events that has to properly line up in order to result in a downed aircraft.
1) First you have to get ahold of a missile. Hollywood notwithstanding, shoulder-launched SAMs are relatively rare, even in mainstream standing armies. The scales of issue just aren't all that large. They are expensive and fragile units, much more so than any other weapon, so they don't get handed out to just anyone.
Probably the largest concentration was in North Vietnam during the 60's, but North Vietnam had tons of time to accumulate them, and a direct threat (daily US bombing raids) to counter.
There just aren't a lot of them out there to be had.
2) Then, if you can find one, it has to be operational. Explosives and electronics have shelf-lives, and as mentioned, these things are fragile. If it hasn't been well treated, there's a nontrivial chance that some critical component will fail to function, and it won't fire, guide, or explode.
3) If you've got one and it is operational, then you have to find a trained operator. Even "fire and forget" missiles require some skill to operate, and even if the weapon is American-proof simple to use, the operator still needs to be familiar with the ideal operating envelope - what aspect should the target be engaged with (head-on? tailchaser? deflection?) Does the position of the sun matter? Do you aim at an engine, or centre of mass? Lead or lag?
4) Assuming an operational missile and a trained operator who takes a good shot, the accuracy rate of these devices is not high. I'd imagine a commercial jet would be an easier target (although with cooler running turbofan engines, maybe not) but even so, there is a high statistical percentage of these missiles that will fail to impact even when fired in perfect conditions - they work best in volleys.
5) Assuming a hit, the odds on downing the aircraft are not good. Airliners are big, solid aircraft, and shoulder-fired missiles by design cannot have very large warheads - you have to package propulsion, guidance, and warhead into something light enough to be carried by a single person. Being struck by a missile is certainly unpleasant, but I'd expect any modern airliner to be able to suffer catastrophic failure of a single engine and still be able to fly (long enough to get back down at least). That's not to say that the missile *couldn't* bring down a liner (sever the controls to a control surface and I think you've got a crash) but neither are you looking at a Hollywood style giant fireball.
While it is certainly *possible* that one could experience a terrorist organization bringing together a fresh missile, a trained operator, and a lucky shot, it's not very *likely* - to the point where I think the defensive device is just silly.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Here's a CNN articlefrom 2004 about how the Israeli airline, El/Al, is equipping all its planes with a ground-air missle defense system using flares. They have already installed it... the technology has been around for years.
Why did't we just borrow it? Why did they spend $90 million already and lose years of opportunity to secure our planes to develop a new system?
--Aaron Greenberg
quotes from t0rkm3 (666910)
"Sure... acquiesce to the world's body politic and cease to become a sovereign nation. Sounds like a plan."
He didn't say that he said "be less of a dick" to me that means not getting invlolved where we have no business and stop playing world police, one in the same I suppose. I and many other Americans agree with this. We need to fix the problems here before we go galavanting around the globe playing cop.
"Perhaps, nations should keep their own house in order and worry less about what the US is up to and how they could politically extort more money out of the US."
Perhaps the US should do the same thing minus the money part. although I sure feel like I have been Extorted when I see the amount taken out of my check for "taxes" but that's another subject.
"Or the almighty UN might actually try doing something... like rectifying the Darfur situation"
If the US is going to play world cop then why haven't we fixed it. I don't agree with policing the planet but if it's going to go on why not actually help instead of just taking over places that have lucrative natural resources.
", or addressing the fact that Hezbollah attacked Israel as a de facto representative of the Lebanese govt."
They didn't attack our country or our people so what does it matter. The Israelis are far from saints themselves and have done a lot to provoke attacks. I'm not saying the any attacks were warranted just that some were provoked.
" Or perhaps just prosecuting, and investigating aggressively the previous Secretary General for violations of the oil for food program... Considering both his son and brother-in-law have had shady dealings therein."
Good question and I agree with them but the US has enough of it's own shady financial dealings to look into. Haliburton(sp?) is the first one that comes to mind. How many people in our governement have friends and family making a ton off the "war on terror".
"None of this is likely, even as the smug people that complain about USA policy still come to the teat at supper time."
I for one am not coming. I am actively seeking employment outsdide the US because I can no longer live in a place where my rights are slowly being stripped despite having a constitution that is supposed to always protect them. I have gotten invlovled in politics and tried to make changes that way but unless you have a few billion to throw around change is not going to happen. Enough ranting for now hopefully I don't lose karma but I did reframe from using the term ass hat even though I really wanted to.
WTF?
By the same logic, I should wear a bullet proof (okay, knife proof as I'm in the UK, and they're subtly different) vest at all times, incase someone decides randomly to try killing me.
Okay, here's another one; why aren't we equipping trains with these? Why are people still allowed on trains with significant amounts of liquid. Is it because trains are actually less at risk, or because everyone's running around panicking about planes?
The US needs to sort out its foreign policy, stop worrying about planes all the time, and maybe, just maybe, think about things that kill people more. Like, disease, car crashes, natural disasters...
What if the US spends less money on defense , and instead behaves less like a dick. Instead we should concentrate on being a little less arrogant, and be more world friendly. Foreign relations has really taken a turn or the worse in the last 6 years or so.
Actually, isolationism was Bush's plan for about the 9 months ranging from January-Sept 11, 2001 (remember that whole "We are not into nation-building" stuff?). It didn't work out to well.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Not sure how this is flamebait, it's dead on.
Saying the US behaves like a dick is flamebait. What you call "behaving like a dick" others call "giving the populace the chance to vote", "allowing women to go to school" and "preventing children from being killed or starved to death because their parents are part of the wrong religious sect".
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
He didn't say that he said "be less of a dick" to me that means not getting invlolved where we have no business and stop playing world police, one in the same I suppose. I and many other Americans agree with this. We need to fix the problems here before we go galavanting around the globe playing cop.
I find it sad that mass graves filled with mothers and their children is filed under "not our problem". Would you say the same of tsunami or earthquake victims overseas? How about at a state level? Was Texas wrong for taking hundreds of thousands Katrina evacuees? After all, it was Louisiana's problem, not Texas'.
It's nice to say "we should fix our own problems first", but compared to others around the world, we don't have any problems.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Great system. Can it deal with simultaneous attacks? It seems to me that it's a lot of money to spend which someone with a modicum of military knowledge can probably circumvent. If I am a terrorist, and I know that all the US airliners have anti-missile devices, I a) abandon my plans for mayhem? b) shoot down a non-US Airliner? c) exploit one of the weaknesses that any such system is bound to have or d) fire my spare missiles at a boat...or a building...or a train...or a stadium. I'm thinking not a). But...reality aside, I'm sure we'll continue to try to spend our way out of terrorism.
Strangely enough, there are a number of countries where the populace is able to vote, women are required to go to school just like everyone else, and there aren't mass killings of children of the "wrong religion". Many of these countries are able to conduct their foreign policy in such a way that they don't get accused of being a dick.
Some of them even manage to enter into free trade agreements with each other without requiring that the smaller country implement something like the DMCA.
Etc, etc.
Disclaimer: I may live in such a country.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
Funny... GP was talking about foreign policy. I don't know about anyone else, but if the US was telling MY country how to vote, who can go to school, and whether children are allowed to stay with their parents based on religious belief, I'd call it "behaving like a dick" too. What the US does inside its own borders is its own business, however.
What you call "giving the populace the chance to vote", others call "giving the populace of another country the chance to die" and "underfunding the schools in our country to pay for a war somewhere else" and "causing children to die because their parents are part of the wrong religious sect". Or was the civil war in Iraq worse before we invaded?
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
And as far as your examples, what? Do you actually think that women in Iraq weren't allowed to go to school?
See Afghanistan.
My advice, meet someone from Iraq.
I have. I spent 6 months over there.
As for the "religious sect" bullshit, that stuff for some reason was never a problem before we lead the insurrection into Iraq.
So you agree that it was a problem. Funny how that slavery stuff was never a problem before the civil war! Just because something wasn't considered a problem before X happened, doesn't mean that it wasn't a problem.
The voting thing, yes true, but it's a shame that now that they voted we've decided we don't like their choices and are still fucking with them.
We've overthrown their new government? When did this happen?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The op wasn't advocating isolationism, he/she was advocating diplomacy and multilateralism. If you'll remember, the months following 9/11 Bush stated that we would move unilaterally, regardless of what the UN thought "because they don't run this country," and that we'd pretty much do what we damn well please.
Also, nixxing the ABM Treaty and giving an emphatic middle finger to the Kyoto Treaty pretty much pissed off everyone, harming our relations further and scaring the hell out of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The US being less of a dick would help things a lot, but you don't do that by locking yourself in your room, you do it by working together with other countries towards common goals and through diplomatic channels.
if the US was telling MY country how to vote, who can go to school, and whether children are allowed to stay with their parents based on religious belief, I'd call it "behaving like a dick" too.
Not if you were one of the people who were not allowed to attend school, vote or leave the house unattended.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Because those countries aren't, by and large, contributing to the environmental problem? They have nothing to contribute one way or the other (no offense to Tonga Tonga). And what does it matter what other countries do? There's a problem, we're a leading contributor to that problem, we're a leading nation in the world, and instead we decide that our economy is more important. Ironically, countries that have agreed to better environmental practices, particularly concerning the auto industry, are stomping American corporations on efficiency, productivity, and value.
And yeah, Bush broke a treaty Clinton had established with NK when he came into office. We were giving them food/medicine and light water nuclear reactors for energy so long as NK stopped its nuclear program (which they did). Bush decided not to and set up a blockade instead, prompting them to begin their nuclear program once again.
>Foreign relations has really taken a turn or the worse in the last 6 years or so.
What had bin Laden's gang cheesed off was the US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, something which went back to 1990. And which might not even have been arrogant, except for the complete failure to realize how humiliating it was to the Saudi people to be reminded that they were incapable of defending themselves.
Since there are people in the Middle East who are still stoked on outrage over the outcome of World War I, it would take a very long stint of being less arrogant before the violence slowed down.
>most of the security efforts I've seen in place do comparatively little to make anyone safer
If the government had public safety as a goal, then it wouldn't have dropped security standards for chemical plants. If there's a manmade Bhopal in New Jersey, it's because the government chose not to prevent it.
If the government had public safety as a goal, there would have been screening for port personnel sometime in the five years after 9/11, and ABC news wouldn't have been able to put a steel cylinder with a uranium slug in it into a cargo container shipped from an area of al-Qaeda activity. Twice.
If the government had public safety as a goal, the intolerably dangerous liquids confiscated from passengers wouldn't have been poured into barrels in the middle of crowds.
Remember, the next time another chunk of Constitution is violated and the government says it's to protect public safety, that public safety is not the government's goal.
Is it because trains are actually less at risk, or because everyone's running around panicking about planes?
Both.
Physical security is sort of like DRM -- expensive, inconvenient, and largely ineffective against a determined attacker. You can clamor for train station security if you like, but I'd prefer the government stop wasting exorbitant amounts of cash soothing our irrational fear of terrorist attacks.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Afghanistan-During the time of the drafting, nobody but Pakistan recognized Afghanistan's government, so they were not invited.
Andorra-They are really really small, with no industry whatsoever, I don't see why they would join.
Angola - They have had a civil war to worry about for the last 30 years.
Bosnia and Herzegovina- They were still occupied by NATO during the drafting.
Brunei-They are a large oil exporter, no surprises here.
Central African Republic- Civil War
Chad - Civil War
Comoros - Really, Really, small.
São Tomé and Príncipe Sao- Really small islands off the coast of Africa.
Montenegro - Did not even exist until 7 months ago
Saint Kitts and Nevis - Really really small tourist based island economy.
San Marino- They are one fucking city! They are not even in the UN!
Côte d'Ivoire - Really bad civil war
Republic of the Congo- Civil War
Iraq - Sanctions would have conflicted with most of the Kyoto Protocol(The parts on carbon trading)
Serbia- Did not exist until 7 months ago
Somalia- Has not had a central government since 1991
East Timor Timor-Leste - They control about half of a tiny island, was part of Indonesia at the time of drafting.
Zimbabwe - has a evil dictator too busy destroying his citizen's homes to bother with it.
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Sahrawi Republic - They are claimed by Morocco, not recognized by... anyone.
Palestinian National Authority - Not a country, Not recognized by... anyone.
Republic of China(Taiwan) - Would not have been allowed to join even if they wanted to. Not diplomatically recognized by UN or the developed world.
Holy See - Granted Observer Status in the UN, about the same status as the Knights Hospitallers