Having lived in a few countries, I've grown accustomed to hearing in each country that "We have the strictest drugs/food/consmer protection/electrical safety/animal cruelty/.... laws in the world". Simple logic tells you that can't be true;)
It's all about artificially segmenting the market to maximise profits. Of course in healthcare, the market is hugely subsidised, both by the government and across drugs, so there may be some limited justification for this. And counterfeit drugs are a truly evil thing.
But how ensuring higher prices for Levi's or Electronics helps anyone apart from the manufacturer - well, you have to be a top notch lawyer to come up with that one.
> I'm a Mensan and I just happen to think that most jocks are complete losers. I probably don't disagree, but have you considered that that feeling is probably reciprocated?
> Everything they work so hard for means absolutely nothing to me. And it means everything to them. Different people have different values. Why are you so sure they're wrong? Being opinionated is not the same as being smart.
And there is a point to exercise...;)
> Why do I keep paying the dues? It looks great on my resume You might want to reconsider that. Making a big point about how "smart" you are is much less impressive than using the space to show your achievements - 1st class degree, PhD, speaking three languages, received two cheques from Knuth... actually, that last one would probably be a bit to show-offish, too.
At the last general election, 64.8% of votes were against labour . So while there's a nugget of truth in your polemic, there's actually huge opposition to the government - it's just hidden by the undemocratic electoral system.
I almost broke my TV when I saw Tony Blair claiming he had a popular mandate.....
> There is no sizeable opposition to any laws ever in the UK. That's not true; there's often sizeable opposition, it's just that the profoundly undemocratic electoral system makes it easy for the party in power to completely ignore it. Particularly if their core sentiments are as authoritarian as the current bunch.
> As long as Brits can get to work without "leaves on the rails delaying the trains" in autumn I've been here 15 years now, and judging by the trains we should be in a permanent state of revolution. Okay, sometimes it's "the wrong kind of rain", or "We don't have enough drivers".:(
>Just to make this clear, nobody here goes to jail for saying "nigger". You might lose your job if you'd say it to a colleague, but this would be due to company policy, not because you broke any laws. Well, if the company wasn't seen to discipline you, they could get taken to a tribunal by any of your colleagues who felt insulted. Expensive and bad publicity. So it's a little bit more complex than saying it's just company policy.
> So please take it from me, crushing race hate is worth losing some smaller liberties We could argue about that, but what makes you think that locking a lonely nutter up for three years will do anything to crush race hate?
Also, two years and 8 months seems to be a disproportionately long sentence when the average sentence for robberey is two years and 11 months (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library2/doc09/pss98-0 4.asp - admittedly that's Scotland not England, and slightly out of date, but you get my point).
... or listening in to data traffic and telephone calls for "national security reasons" and coincidentally handing over details of Airbus conversations to Boeing?
> Euros that they abandoned any claim to the moral high ground about two decades ago. I rather doubt that any government has much right to claim that. Maybe Luxembourg, or Iceland.
>The EU has a longer history, going back to the 1970s, of placing gendarmes or carabinieri with automatic rifles at airports. That's because we were way ahead of you guys onthe terrorism thing... face it, by the time you got in on it it was like so uncool in Europe.
> The US makes the mistake of being too open about their intelligence operations. No, they're just open abut the ones that they want you to know about, so you don't worry about the other ones...
> As a matter of fact, most terrorists in Europe are extreme amateurs -- 18-year-old losers with fantasies of becoming a mujahedeen. Suicide bombing, in general, is not a profession that naturally encourages experience.
> They boast to the whole world that they will carry something out, and get arrested at the stage of trying to buy weapons. I'd rather have stupid terrorists than smart ones. The last time we had smart ones (from 70s left, or the basques, or the IRA) they kept eluding capture for decades). And of course they don't get arrested for buying weapons in the US since they probably have a cupboard full of them. But you try and get a ton of fertilizer for your US garden, and you'll make some interesting acquaintances.
> The indians in the reservates will the only one's without personal data in the greasy hands of the government. Just because they walked across the Baring Straits 50,000 years ago instead of hitching a lift on the Mayflower a bit later doesn't mean they're any less immigrant;)
> That's pretty much all the rights you have at someone else's border: to go home. Agreed, as an individual that's all the rights you have.
What's irritating is that governments don't have the guts to insist on reciprocity with the US.
Brazil did - and started fingerprinting Americans coming in.
Britain, on the other hand, instead enforced a law that let's you be extradited to the US for 'crimes' that were committed in the UK and aren't even crimes here.... reciprocity?
Any policeman is free to look at me when I walk down a public road.
That's not the same as having to provide him my passport, birth certificate, credit card, telephone, email and meal prefernces just because he wants to know.
Does that answer your question?
Camereras in the UK generally come in two flavours: 1. put up by property owners to cover their property - I'm fairly sure that's commonplace all over the world. 2. put up by the (usually local) government as a way to curb / displace crime. Of somewhat dubious effectiveness, but sadly generally popular with the voters.
And they're not joined up into a nationwide surveillance network. In fact, the charming British tradition of complete and utter incompetence means that aggravated assault is usually missed because the operators are too busy zooming in on some fit blondes' ti^H^H assets.:)
> 1) There is no way to "solve" the drug problem on the demand side of things. The substances are fucking addictive. Even after rehab people struggle every day to stay away from the stuff, and if it's availible (supply) many can't. I'm talking about real drugs (crack, meth, herion) not marijuana and ecstasy mind you. There's an easy way to solve the drug problem on the demand side: Make them available legally in controlled circumstances. Not sure about crack and meth, but heroin is medically safe to take as long as a) it's not mixed with crap b) you know the dose you're taking - which is why it's used as a painkiller in hospitals. Yes, it is addictive, but it is quite safe to take, and - unlike e.g. alcohol - doesn't even cause birth defects. Giving legal access takes out a huge chunk of the profits of organised crime, and allows junkies to become productive members of society again. Idealistic claptrap, I hear you say? No, pilot studies in CH and NL show that it works.
> 2) There is no way to "solve" the terrorist problem on the home front either. Agreed.
> These are people that for the most part are religiously motivated. Disagree, to a large extent the anger is political rather than what we'd call religious in the west. Admittedly the boundaries blur.
> Ever tried arguing with someone about religion? Fun, innit?;)
> Those who buy into the extreme version of Islam will not stop until the world converts to their expectations. If the U.S. was to become a muslim nation, they would simply direct their actions towards the next target because their whole philosophy hinges on there being someone to blame and fight. Whoa. They do, quite fairly, have quite a bit to blame the west for. The installation of Shah in Iran (overthrowing a democracy, btw). Propping up the Saudi Kingdom plus associated other mini-monarchs. Supporting Saddam Hussein all the way (cheerfully ignoring the genocide he's on trial for, or the war he started against Iran, or his use of poisan gas in that war, or...) right until he invaded Kuweit. You can see why People might take some convincing that now we're actually serious about that whole democracy and human rights stuff. Guantanamo does't help. Just to point out that there's more to this than merely "evil islam wanting to conquer the world". Oh dear, that's probably earned me a fatwah now;)
> Oh wait... the article was ttitled "You have been 'Randomly' Selected"... One of the downside of anonymity is that makes it difficult to get a passport. So you'll never get to experience international travel, and perhaps realise that a) the world outside exists b) it has planes in it c) there's 'random selection' happening in other countries d) non-US citizens do exist, even on slashdot, and occasionally do travel to the US, are affected by these policies too, and may have some input.
> Uh, why could you call me a racist? Are you confusing racism with ethnocentrism? I'm not ethnocentric in any case, but the US is not a 'race' by any stretch of the imagination. 1. I'm not calling you a racist. The point I was making was that you were defending someone who clearly had racist attitudes on the grounds that he was being careless in their "thinking or wording". IMHO, people who are "careless in their thinking or wording" and make racist comments are, usually, just that: racist. People who aren't racist don't make racist statements even when they're "careless". 2. I'm well aware of the distinction, and wouldn't argue that the US is a race in any way. Believe it or not, this problem exists outside of the US, too. What's the appropriate word, then? Geocentric? Statecentric? If only I had a classical education;)
> You could call me stupid because I have an 'obvious assumption that the US is all that matters'? Uh, the original poster was referring to attackers of the United States in regards to the greater restrictions on commercial airline travel specifically in the case of the United States...? Air travel, restrictions on it, and terrorism affecting it, are international issues. Restricting a discussion of terrorism to the US alone is simply absurd.
> As for Timothy McVeigh, if you think the airline restrictions are in any way tied to that idiot's actions, then they sure waited a long time to enact them... I don't, anymore than I think banning liquids is sensible or effective. But one of the preceeding poster
>As for calling me.... GP>Ahh, but so far all the terrorists have been Muslim. P>I think that you have a reality distortion field. It's common among racist idiots. You> You should slow down on calling him a racist, the person is problem just careless in their thinking and wording. So I can call you what I like as long as I'm careless about it? IMNSHO, people that make racist statements when careless simply manage to hide their feelings when careful.
> They didn't say all muslims were terrorists, they said all of the terrorists [so far] had been muslims. Yes, but even the latter statement is patently untrue, unless you take a ridiculously myopic view of the subject.
> I certainly think they should have made their post clearer because their statement obviously led to a bunch of people over-reacting like yourself. Them, the OP, you, me - it's an emotional topic and we'd probably all benefit from trying to be clearer.
No hard feelings, I don't think we were really trying to get at each other.
Some people who are not anonymous cowards, or those blessed few American's that get a chance to see the outside world, might actually see the relevance of looking outside the US when it comes to discussing air travel and terrorism.
Ever heard of the middle east? Transatlantic air travel? Both have been in the news once or twice recently, and just might have some bearing on the topic.
> How can you look at this.. and not be a bit upset? It's a monkey, not a human being. Notwithstanding the propaganda site it's on, I'm fairly sure there was a good reason for it being in that position.
> I love science and animals and cannot condone violence against either. I love animals, too. I love people more.
My two main objections two "anti-vivisectionists" are minor) How can you care more about the animals than about the people they are helping? major) How the hell can you tell me that monkeys are important when people are being killed / starved / tortured?
There are a lot of pictures that upset me; this is not one of them.
> I don't remember who said this but some guy on the news said "If a one armed man robbed a bank, I don't think many police would be stopping to question guys with two arms." I don't remember either, but he clearly wasn't very smart. Bad analogies don't make your argument any better. Think that analogy through for a minute, I'm sure you'll eventually figure it out.
> plus Timothy McVey if you really consider that terrorism. No, blowing up a building and killing hundreds of people for a misguided political cause can't be terrorism if the perpetraror isn't muslim. Now gow and tell that the the relatives of the victims.
> So with a white, american businessman and an arabic, non-US citizen standing next to each other, it's a more fair, safe, and effective to just flip a coin and let that decide which one gets searched. Actually, yes. I'd suggest you read Schneier sometime, it it's not too taxing. But in summary, if you narrowly define the threat, your defence is easy to work around.
> As for innocent Arabs that constantly get stopped at our airports I say, **** happens and they should just live with it. I lobby my government to what the brazilians did and reciprocate on mandatory fingerprinting of US citizens. Just because shit happens and an unpleasantly large minority of them have such a f**king attitude problem. And, what's worse, they can support all kinds of shit, but can't even get themselves to spell it out: S H I T.
> If someone in any group that you belong to does something bad that makes people suspect you of something then it's not racism, it's life, deal with it.
So DWB should be a capital offence, should it? Thanks God it's 2006, not 1966 anymore.
Last time I checked, public libraries in the US didn't require any special privileges for membership. And the internet still allows reasonably free access to sites other than fox.
Clearly you'll find it more difficult to be well informed if your family has trouble finding their one book among the TV remotes than if you're parents read the NYT, Der Spiegel, Le Figaro and Pravda to you over the breakfast table (in the original, of course). But there really isn't a good excuse for ignorance left anymore. *
* Okay, stupidity is an excuse. Just not a good one.
> I wasn't aware that the Tamil Tigers had attacked the United States, or the IRA, or Aum Shinrikyo, Nazis, et cetera. The homegrown groups you list haven't ever been linked to air travel disasters as far as I know either.
> You should slow down on calling him a racist, the person is problem just careless in their thinking and wording. I could call you racist just for your obvious assumption that the U.S. is all that matters. Or stupid, or ignorant. But I agree, careless is a much nicer word.
> The homegrown groups you list haven't ever been linked to air travel disasters as far as I know either. Aye, but you don't need to blow up airliners to cause carnage. Timothy McVeigh ring any bells?
>You should slow down on calling him a racist, the person is problem just careless in their thinking and wording. So if i carelsslessly call you nigger/whitey/chink/fuckwit/idiot/imbecile/raghead /... that's okay then?
IMHO, when people talk 'carelessly' you see what they really think. In vino veritas, as the romans said.
Slashdot Mirror
Having lived in a few countries, I've grown accustomed to hearing in each country that "We have the strictest drugs/food/consmer protection/electrical safety/animal cruelty/.... laws in the world". Simple logic tells you that can't be true ;)
It's all about artificially segmenting the market to maximise profits. Of course in healthcare, the market is hugely subsidised, both by the government and across drugs, so there may be some limited justification for this. And counterfeit drugs are a truly evil thing.
But how ensuring higher prices for Levi's or Electronics helps anyone apart from the manufacturer - well, you have to be a top notch lawyer to come up with that one.
Let me make some introductions:
Takeya, meet Google. Google, meet Takeya.
> I'm a Mensan and I just happen to think that most jocks are complete losers.
I probably don't disagree, but have you considered that that feeling is probably reciprocated?
> Everything they work so hard for means absolutely nothing to me. And it means everything to them.
Different people have different values. Why are you so sure they're wrong? Being opinionated is not the same as being smart.
And there is a point to exercise...
> Why do I keep paying the dues? It looks great on my resume
You might want to reconsider that. Making a big point about how "smart" you are is much less impressive than using the space to show your achievements - 1st class degree, PhD, speaking three languages, received two cheques from Knuth... actually, that last one would probably be a bit to show-offish, too.
At the last general election, 64.8% of votes were against labour . So while there's a nugget of truth in your polemic, there's actually huge opposition to the government - it's just hidden by the undemocratic electoral system.
I almost broke my TV when I saw Tony Blair claiming he had a popular mandate.....
> There is no sizeable opposition to any laws ever in the UK.
:(
That's not true; there's often sizeable opposition, it's just that the profoundly undemocratic electoral system makes it easy for the party in power to completely ignore it. Particularly if their core sentiments are as authoritarian as the current bunch.
> As long as Brits can get to work without "leaves on the rails delaying the trains" in autumn
I've been here 15 years now, and judging by the trains we should be in a permanent state of revolution. Okay, sometimes it's "the wrong kind of rain", or "We don't have enough drivers".
>Just to make this clear, nobody here goes to jail for saying "nigger". You might lose your job if you'd say it to a colleague, but this would be due to company policy, not because you broke any laws.
Well, if the company wasn't seen to discipline you, they could get taken to a tribunal by any of your colleagues who felt insulted. Expensive and bad publicity. So it's a little bit more complex than saying it's just company policy.
> So please take it from me, crushing race hate is worth losing some smaller liberties
0 4.asp - admittedly that's Scotland not England, and slightly out of date, but you get my point).
We could argue about that, but what makes you think that locking a lonely nutter up for three years will do anything to crush race hate?
Also, two years and 8 months seems to be a disproportionately long sentence when the average sentence for robberey is two years and 11 months (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library2/doc09/pss98-
> Indeed. Nations act in their own interests, in all things.
If only. A nation's leaders act in their own interests, in all things. Well, most.
Just that we have to be careful to distinguish the actions of the government from the will of the people.
... or listening in to data traffic and telephone calls for "national security reasons" and coincidentally handing over details of Airbus conversations to Boeing?
> Euros that they abandoned any claim to the moral high ground about two decades ago.
I rather doubt that any government has much right to claim that. Maybe Luxembourg, or Iceland.
>The EU has a longer history, going back to the 1970s, of placing gendarmes or carabinieri with automatic rifles at airports.
That's because we were way ahead of you guys onthe terrorism thing... face it, by the time you got in on it it was like so uncool in Europe.
> The US makes the mistake of being too open about their intelligence operations.
No, they're just open abut the ones that they want you to know about, so you don't worry about the other ones...
> As a matter of fact, most terrorists in Europe are extreme amateurs -- 18-year-old losers with fantasies of becoming a mujahedeen.
Suicide bombing, in general, is not a profession that naturally encourages experience.
> They boast to the whole world that they will carry something out, and get arrested at the stage of trying to buy weapons.
I'd rather have stupid terrorists than smart ones. The last time we had smart ones (from 70s left, or the basques, or the IRA) they kept eluding capture for decades). And of course they don't get arrested for buying weapons in the US since they probably have a cupboard full of them. But you try and get a ton of fertilizer for your US garden, and you'll make some interesting acquaintances.
Posting that as an AC just adds to the irony...
> it is moslem in most european countries.
Aye, just not in the English-speaking ones....
> The indians in the reservates will the only one's without personal data in the greasy hands of the government. ;)
Just because they walked across the Baring Straits 50,000 years ago instead of hitching a lift on the Mayflower a bit later doesn't mean they're any less immigrant
> That's pretty much all the rights you have at someone else's border: to go home.
Agreed, as an individual that's all the rights you have.
What's irritating is that governments don't have the guts to insist on reciprocity with the US.
Brazil did - and started fingerprinting Americans coming in.
Britain, on the other hand, instead enforced a law that let's you be extradited to the US for 'crimes' that were committed in the UK and aren't even crimes here.... reciprocity?
Any policeman is free to look at me when I walk down a public road.
:)
That's not the same as having to provide him my passport, birth certificate, credit card, telephone, email and meal prefernces just because he wants to know.
Does that answer your question?
Camereras in the UK generally come in two flavours:
1. put up by property owners to cover their property - I'm fairly sure that's commonplace all over the world.
2. put up by the (usually local) government as a way to curb / displace crime. Of somewhat dubious effectiveness, but sadly generally popular with the voters.
And they're not joined up into a nationwide surveillance network. In fact, the charming British tradition of complete and utter incompetence means that aggravated assault is usually missed because the operators are too busy zooming in on some fit blondes' ti^H^H assets.
I'm in the UK, I pay taxes here, but am not a subject. Does the government taking my money give them the right to give my data to GW as well?
Thanks Tony.
> 1) There is no way to "solve" the drug problem on the demand side of things. The substances are fucking addictive. Even after rehab people struggle every day to stay away from the stuff, and if it's availible (supply) many can't. I'm talking about real drugs (crack, meth, herion) not marijuana and ecstasy mind you.
;)
...) right until he invaded Kuweit. ;)
There's an easy way to solve the drug problem on the demand side: Make them available legally in controlled circumstances. Not sure about crack and meth, but heroin is medically safe to take as long as a) it's not mixed with crap b) you know the dose you're taking - which is why it's used as a painkiller in hospitals. Yes, it is addictive, but it is quite safe to take, and - unlike e.g. alcohol - doesn't even cause birth defects. Giving legal access takes out a huge chunk of the profits of organised crime, and allows junkies to become productive members of society again. Idealistic claptrap, I hear you say? No, pilot studies in CH and NL show that it works.
> 2) There is no way to "solve" the terrorist problem on the home front either.
Agreed.
> These are people that for the most part are religiously motivated.
Disagree, to a large extent the anger is political rather than what we'd call religious in the west. Admittedly the boundaries blur.
> Ever tried arguing with someone about religion?
Fun, innit?
> Those who buy into the extreme version of Islam will not stop until the world converts to their expectations. If the U.S. was to become a muslim nation, they would simply direct their actions towards the next target because their whole philosophy hinges on there being someone to blame and fight.
Whoa. They do, quite fairly, have quite a bit to blame the west for. The installation of Shah in Iran (overthrowing a democracy, btw). Propping up the Saudi Kingdom plus associated other mini-monarchs. Supporting Saddam Hussein all the way (cheerfully ignoring the genocide he's on trial for, or the war he started against Iran, or his use of poisan gas in that war, or
You can see why People might take some convincing that now we're actually serious about that whole democracy and human rights stuff. Guantanamo does't help.
Just to point out that there's more to this than merely "evil islam wanting to conquer the world". Oh dear, that's probably earned me a fatwah now
> Oh wait... the article was ttitled "You have been 'Randomly' Selected"...
One of the downside of anonymity is that makes it difficult to get a passport. So you'll never get to experience international travel, and perhaps realise that
a) the world outside exists
b) it has planes in it
c) there's 'random selection' happening in other countries
d) non-US citizens do exist, even on slashdot, and occasionally do travel to the US, are affected by these policies too, and may have some input.
> Uh, why could you call me a racist? Are you confusing racism with ethnocentrism? I'm not ethnocentric in any case, but the US is not a 'race' by any stretch of the imagination. ;)
....
1. I'm not calling you a racist. The point I was making was that you were defending someone who clearly had racist attitudes on the grounds that he was being careless in their "thinking or wording". IMHO, people who are "careless in their thinking or wording" and make racist comments are, usually, just that: racist. People who aren't racist don't make racist statements even when they're "careless".
2. I'm well aware of the distinction, and wouldn't argue that the US is a race in any way.
Believe it or not, this problem exists outside of the US, too. What's the appropriate word, then? Geocentric? Statecentric? If only I had a classical education
> You could call me stupid because I have an 'obvious assumption that the US is all that matters'? Uh, the original poster was referring to attackers of the United States in regards to the greater restrictions on commercial airline travel specifically in the case of the United States...?
Air travel, restrictions on it, and terrorism affecting it, are international issues. Restricting a discussion of terrorism to the US alone is simply absurd.
> As for Timothy McVeigh, if you think the airline restrictions are in any way tied to that idiot's actions, then they sure waited a long time to enact them...
I don't, anymore than I think banning liquids is sensible or effective. But one of the preceeding poster
>As for calling me
GP>Ahh, but so far all the terrorists have been Muslim.
P>I think that you have a reality distortion field. It's common among racist idiots.
You> You should slow down on calling him a racist, the person is problem just careless in their thinking and wording.
So I can call you what I like as long as I'm careless about it?
IMNSHO, people that make racist statements when careless simply manage to hide their feelings when careful.
> They didn't say all muslims were terrorists, they said all of the terrorists [so far] had been muslims.
Yes, but even the latter statement is patently untrue, unless you take a ridiculously myopic view of the subject.
> I certainly think they should have made their post clearer because their statement obviously led to a bunch of people over-reacting like yourself.
Them, the OP, you, me - it's an emotional topic and we'd probably all benefit from trying to be clearer.
No hard feelings, I don't think we were really trying to get at each other.
Some people who are not anonymous cowards, or those blessed few American's that get a chance to see the outside world, might actually see the relevance of looking outside the US when it comes to discussing air travel and terrorism.
Ever heard of the middle east? Transatlantic air travel? Both have been in the news once or twice recently, and just might have some bearing on the topic.
> How can you look at this.. and not be a bit upset?
It's a monkey, not a human being.
Notwithstanding the propaganda site it's on, I'm fairly sure there was a good reason for it being in that position.
> I love science and animals and cannot condone violence against either.
I love animals, too. I love people more.
My two main objections two "anti-vivisectionists" are
minor) How can you care more about the animals than about the people they are helping?
major) How the hell can you tell me that monkeys are important when people are being killed / starved / tortured?
There are a lot of pictures that upset me; this is not one of them.
> I don't remember who said this but some guy on the news said "If a one armed man robbed a bank, I don't think many police would be stopping to question guys with two arms."
I don't remember either, but he clearly wasn't very smart. Bad analogies don't make your argument any better. Think that analogy through for a minute, I'm sure you'll eventually figure it out.
> plus Timothy McVey if you really consider that terrorism.
No, blowing up a building and killing hundreds of people for a misguided political cause can't be terrorism if the perpetraror isn't muslim. Now gow and tell that the the relatives of the victims.
> So with a white, american businessman and an arabic, non-US citizen standing next to each other, it's a more fair, safe, and effective to just flip a coin and let that decide which one gets searched.
Actually, yes. I'd suggest you read Schneier sometime, it it's not too taxing. But in summary, if you narrowly define the threat, your defence is easy to work around.
> As for innocent Arabs that constantly get stopped at our airports I say, **** happens and they should just live with it.
I lobby my government to what the brazilians did and reciprocate on mandatory fingerprinting of US citizens. Just because shit happens and an unpleasantly large minority of them have such a f**king attitude problem. And, what's worse, they can support all kinds of shit, but can't even get themselves to spell it out: S H I T.
> If someone in any group that you belong to does something bad that makes people suspect you of something then it's not racism, it's life, deal with it.
So DWB should be a capital offence, should it?
Thanks God it's 2006, not 1966 anymore.
Three weekend trips UK to LAX, carry on luggage only [flying to LAX is unpleasant enough without waiting for delayed luggage if you can help it.]
Three random searches.
Next time I'll check in a bag of stuff I want to get rid off and save myself the random search.
Plus, can someone explain to me the point of looking for a terrorist when they get OFF the plane?
Last time I checked, public libraries in the US didn't require any special privileges for membership. And the internet still allows reasonably free access to sites other than fox.
Clearly you'll find it more difficult to be well informed if your family has trouble finding their one book among the TV remotes than if you're parents read the NYT, Der Spiegel, Le Figaro and Pravda to you over the breakfast table (in the original, of course). But there really isn't a good excuse for ignorance left anymore. *
* Okay, stupidity is an excuse. Just not a good one.
> I wasn't aware that the Tamil Tigers had attacked the United States, or the IRA, or Aum Shinrikyo, Nazis, et cetera. The homegrown groups you list haven't ever been linked to air travel disasters as far as I know either.
d /... that's okay then?
> You should slow down on calling him a racist, the person is problem just careless in their thinking and wording.
I could call you racist just for your obvious assumption that the U.S. is all that matters. Or stupid, or ignorant. But I agree, careless is a much nicer word.
> The homegrown groups you list haven't ever been linked to air travel disasters as far as I know either.
Aye, but you don't need to blow up airliners to cause carnage. Timothy McVeigh ring any bells?
>You should slow down on calling him a racist, the person is problem just careless in their thinking and wording.
So if i carelsslessly call you nigger/whitey/chink/fuckwit/idiot/imbecile/raghea
IMHO, when people talk 'carelessly' you see what they really think. In vino veritas, as the romans said.