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Bogus Company Obtains Nuclear License
i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NY Times, undercover investigators from the Government Accountability Office set up a bogus company and received a license to purchase dirty-bomb nuclear materials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people." From the article: "Given that terrorists have expressed an interest in obtaining nuclear material, the Congress and the American people expect licensing programs for these materials to be secure, said Gregory D. Kutz, an investigator at the accountability office, in testimony prepared for the hearing."
Name: Fakey McNukesTheWhales
Organization: The Organization Against Liberal Rags (TOALR)
Use (check all that apply):
- X Academic
- X Business
- _ Terrorism
Intended goals (from above use):Section Two: Behavioral
Question One: You are walking down the street and you see a box of puppies. Do you
- _ Take the puppies home and sell them for profit.
- X Hug the puppies and love them until you can find their owner.
- _ Curb stomp the puppies
Question Two: You are approached by a man claiming to be from Nigeria offering you nuclear warheads with green, white & red striped flags on them. Do you- X Ask the man for his name and inform the NRC of his proposition.
- _ Buy his warheads and forget he ever said anything about his nationality.
- _ Curb stomp the man
Question Three: You enter a voting booth on election day but don't know any of the candidates. Do you- _ Vote Democrat.
- X Vote Republican.
- _ You're too busy to vote.
--For Internal Office Use Only:
X Approved _ Rejected
See, they only answered one question wrong (the correct answer for Question Two in Section Two was the third option), the system works!
The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people.
When are people going to get this. The laws existing before (insert grand public hysteria event here) were sufficient. There is a difference between needing to increase the strength of the laws, thereby weakening civil liberties, and properly and thoroughly enforcing the laws which are already in place.
I don't think this administration is worried about terrorism at all. Terrorism is just a useful justification for what they do, and keeping the people scared.
The thing that really convinced me of this was how they handled the Iraq war. Leaving aside for a moment that bombing the crap out of people is probably a pretty good way to make new terrorists, they did the following:
1) Failed to secure nuclear facilities in Iraq. (They did however make a big effort to secure the oil wells).
2) Distributed in Iraq, without care or record, twelve billions dollars of Iraqs money in cash.
Are those the actions of an administration that is worried about terrorism? To me, they are the actions of an administration that wants to create them...
Apparently someone doesn't watch 24, there are atleast 2 to 10 terrorist attack attempts every hour, and we are always only seconds away from stopping them. Yes, some of them are dirty bombs. Maybe someone should educate themselves before posting...
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
doesn't matter if they plug this particular loophole. there a few others: radioactive waste and medical equipment. doesn't have to be from this country, ship it in in a lead lined cargo container. oh, we inspect all of those, right?
take a white van, pack it with TNT and strontium-90 from radiotherapy equipment or nuclear waste/ nuclear plant parts and set it off in times square. doesn't have to cause a lot of damage. the real "bomb" is the psychological and economic bomb: no one will want to go to midtown manhattan anymore
after the explosion which would kill a half dozen people and shatter some windows (nothing, right?), you'd have reporters walking around with geiger counters, and talking about the half-life of strontium-90 (28 years). 5.5 years after 9/11, we are still talking about the air quality issue of the particles of concrete and steel and diesel fuel and aluminum and asbestos. that's all washed away by now. but radioactive contamination doesn't work that way. it sticks around for decades
in other words, you can kill a bunch of people. ok, they are gone, done for. case closed. people grieve, people move on. psychologically, it's cut and dry. but you can do another kind of bomb, something more sinister and insidious: you can damage a society more by introducing a permanent nagging environmental degradation in the form of low level radiation. this is far more damaging economically and psychologically. it's scandalous, it's a permanent nag in your head, not something you get over. and that's the whole point of terrorism: the instilling of terror. terrorists can't kill us all, but they can influence our thinking. to paraphrase stalin ("a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"): the endless fretting over a nonquantifiable and continuous degradation to your health for years is perhaps more terrorizing than outright killing someone
that's why a dirty bomb is so nasty a concept, and why we should worry about it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>not sufficient for protecting the American people.
Nooooo! Poor widdle Americans! Awwww. *Hugs Americans*
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
fear isn't a neocon invention. setting off a dirty bomb doesn't have to kill a lot of people. in fact, if a dirty bomb killed one person, it would be more terrifying than a regular bomb that killed 1,000 people. a regular bomb: the dead people are gone. it's over. history. you can grive and put it behind you. but a dirty bomb causes a permanent nagging psychological degradation for decades, a permanent worry about nonquantifiable health effects. in other words, it terrorizes more effectively. set one off in midtown manhattan, and you would have reporters walking around with geiger counters talking about the half life of strontium 90 (30 years)
...in january 2007. this is 5.5 years later
6 years after 9/11 we still have front page news stories about the air quality degradation of downtown manhattan in the weeks after 9/11. then epa chief whitman testifying last month, michale moore taking 9/11 rescue workers to cuba. a son of one of the workers who died from that went to the state of the union address
catch my drift yet?
the people killed on 9/11 are dead and buried. almost 3,000 of them. even the dust from the event is all washed away. and yet the air quality issue lives on, and continues to involve us 6 years later. how many died from the dust? definitely or not? a dozen? a dirty bomb wouldn't have to kill a single person. at the moment of the explosion or ever from the radioactivity
it's all psychological, which is the whole point of terrorism in the first place
now imagine the ongoing media and societal handwringing that would go on with radioactive contamination. no matter how minimal. even if no one died. this is called terrorism. this is called fear. to paraphrase stalin ("a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"): the endless fretting over a nebulous, low grade continuous degradation to your health, for years, is a more effective terrorist tool than outright killing thousands of people in one sudden event that is then permanently over. radioactive contaimination is not uddenly over. even if the contamination is tiny and insignificant scientifically, you are not thinking about human psychology and how fear works
furthermore, i would like to add that if you are a liberal, and you downplay the effects of terrorism and hype the effects of government abuses, you fail. and if you are a conservative, and you downplay the effects of government abuses, and hype the effects of terrorism, you fail
the only intellectual and morally honest position is to worry about BOTH terrorism and government abuses. to downplay one or the other is intellectually dishonest, and means you are just another lousy biased partisan. terrorism is real and dangerous. government abuses are real and dangerous. anyone who sits there and tries to argue against simple human fear of either government abuses or terrorism has instantly achieved a state of losing the argument and missing the point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Additionally, the following highlights the difference between American and Glasweigan responses to terrorism.
America:"Oh my God! there was a man on fire, he was running about, i just
ran for my life..i thought i was gonna die,he got so close to me"
Glasgow: "C*nt wis running aboot on fire,so a ran up 'n gave him a good
boot,then decked him"
America:"I just wanna get home,away from here..i just wanna get home,i
thought i was gonna die"
Glasgow:"here shug, am no leaving here till am oan a f*ckin' plane!"
America:"there was pandemonium,people were running in all directions, we
didn't know what was happening, I thought i was gonna die"
Glasgow:"F*ck this fir a kerry oan,moan we ll get a pint in"
America:"We thought he was gonna blow us all up he had a gas canister,and
was trying to get into his trunk,i thought we were gonna die,i just ran for
my life" Glasgow:"a swaggered by the motor that wis on fire,and the dafty
couldnae even open his boot,he wis in fire annaw so a ran up n gave him a
good boot to the baws"
America:there was this huge explosion,it sounded like war,i thought i was
gonna die"
Glasgow:"There wis a bang,yi know when yi throw B.O basher intae a fire it
wis like that"
America:"i'm too traumatised even to speak,i thought i was gonna die"
Glasgow "here mate,gies 2 minutes till a phone ma auld dear,if am gonna be
oan the telly a want her tae tape it"