But your greater point has merit. There are a lot of people who actually asked us to give up some consitutional rights in the name of safety. I forget what the issue was at the time, but some right wing guys (and I'm pretty conservative on a lot issues) were actually saying "is a temporary suspension of 'x' ammendment rights to guarantee your safety really that bad?"
The fundermental issue here is proof that giving up these rights actually provides any safety. If nothing happens maybe there wasn't a threat in the first place. If something bad happens the advocaqtes of the "trade rights for safety" tend to say "you need to give up more rights". How can you tell how much safty your rights giving up is actually buying? (It could even be "negative", e.g. if the entity you are giving up your rights to is actually in some way making you unsafe.)
Islam is no more an extremist and dangerous religion than christianity
It would be suprising if Christian "extremists" came across as very different from the Islamic variety. Given that Islam and Christianity are both variations on the same theme in the first place.
Sure, Americans go through the motions of "democratic elections" every four years or so. Of course, only a fraction of the eligible voting population actually bothers to vote. So immediately there is 40-50% of the population out of the picture.
What proportion of these people are apathetic/uninterested and what proportion do so because they conclude the exercise isn't meaningful in the first place.
There is a very, very small percentage of the population who could actually run for office, let alone get elected. This population group consists of the most wealthy in America. That's not surprising, considering the cost of partaking in an election campaign.
It probably dosn't help having complex and inconsistent nomination rules either.
-lobbyists have infiltrated our government on all levels
-because our system only allows 2 parties to exist, the current 2 parties have so locked out the potential of any third party that several candidates in the last elected were arrested
In some situations in the US claiming that there are even two political parties in the US is stretching the truth. Also having the same political parties active in many areas of government can render meaningless "separation of powers" together with any associated "checks and balancies".
Look, i'll make it plain and simple for you, some of us would rather have the occasional death due to terrorist bombing than continual fear of abuse of the patriot act (documented), rendition to places like guantanimo without due process (documented), and the continual use of the deadly threat of "terror" to further the selfish political agendas of right wing extremists (documented).
When was the last terrorist bombing in the US anyway?
In the middle east, they've been fighting wars over this on a regular basis for as far back as recorded history goes. The rest of the world occasionally gets dragged into it.
It's unclear how anyone is "dragged into it". It's more that other countries, especially the UK and US have chosen to get involved. Thus the obvious solution is to get "uninvolved". Instead we have Bush and Blair doing the exact opposite. Obviously they have never heard "if you are in a hole stop digging".
We don't see much of them because mostly they hate the people near them far more than the ones in remote western countries... but sometimes a group of them comes over here to cause trouble. There isn't much you can do about these people
If they are "coming over here" then the thing which can be done is to deport them as soon as they are found. Which means that most of those you do catch will be illegal aliens...
A good start would be to stop our corporations from going over there and enthusiastically screwing over the local people in order to get their stock to go up a quarter of a point. The big multinationals are busy making money by squeezing those people, because local laws don't stop them and our laws don't apply to their actions over there.
There's a reason that local laws don't stop them. Supporting these kind of corporations is the reason behind the toppling of many democratic goverments. Whilst democratic governments tend to have a reason to ensure that foreign companies operating in their country pay taxes and decent wages a dictatorship (especially one supported financially and militarily by foreign interests) has every reason not to.
The best answer I can come up with is simple desperation. If you are living a life where you see children beggin in the streets and starving to death, you tend to get pretty upset. Now, imagine that you are witnessing a world where poverty abounds, despite the fact that the land you're living on is incredibly rich of natural resources (ie, oil).
The most obvious exception is Venezuela, but consider how they are regarded by the US.
You want real security in the world? Try creating global equality. Don't give up freedoms, give up the notion of cheap gas, or cheap imported goods. Live a simpler life so that people in developing nations can afford the same standard of living that you can.
It may not be necessary to actually give up that much. Invading Iraq hasn't made oil products cheap, if anything it's had the opposite effect. All of the military vehicles involved are hardly known for their fuel economy either. Possibly the point is exactly who would have to do most of the giving up.
Unfortunately, I don't hear anybody saying these things. Instead, I hear how we have to be strong and clamp down, "smoke them out." What happens then? Conditions get worse for the already desperate, creating more possible terrorists, which creates more of a clampdown, which creates worse conditions, etc.
Maybe we need more politicans with engineering qualifications, who understand positive and negative feedback.
At the time of the fatwa, the only significant US military presence in the Arab world was the military base in Saudi Arabia which was responsible for making sure Saddam didn't attack Kuwait and Saudi Arabia again. It's not like the US really had a choice but to be there if you view the possibility of the annihilation of Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia to be an unacceptable risk to take.
Both of which are several thousand miles away from the US. So why not take George Washington's advice?
The main goal as far as the US is concerned is to push the US out of the middle east. Bin Laden specifically stated his goal was to get the US to stop propping up dictators in the middle east, supplying weapons to Israel, and basically, to stay out of their business.
How does doing these things benefit the average person in the US in the first place? Even without Bin Laden (assuming he is still alive) none of these things appear especially sensible.
And of course, please enjoy that bumpy ride on the way TO the airport...
Be careful getting to the plane, getting on the plane and hope the pilot keeps things nice and smooth until V1:)
Nitro is pretty difficult to handle when you just have it poured into a water/eyedrop bottle. To say it is highly unstable is an understatement.
Not something you really want to give to 20 teenagers. Alternativly you have the problem of improvising a chemistry lab on a plane and being able to create enough to do some serious damage.
I don't get it... won't the plane explode equally well if the explosive is in the hold vs. carry-on? What difference does it make forcing everything to be checked in the hold?
Apparently the "movie plot" here is that the terrorists would assemble bombs using components and ingredients brought onboard by several people.
If they are sophistocated enough to have reactionary chemical explosives, would it be any harder for them to produce a container where the seal between the chemicals dissolves or degrades at a set time period?
Or even a certain time after reaching a certain ambient preassure, which handles a delayed departure.
If they are sophistocated enough to have reactionary chemical explosives, would it be any harder for them to produce a container where the seal between the chemicals dissolves or degrades at a set time period?
Dispite there being research into blast resistant cargo containers.
There is, and always has been, more chance of a plane going down due to mechanical fatigue or pilot error than any terrorist plot.
There's also more chance of a plane going down due to an explosion in the lower part than the upper part. Blow a hole in the bottom of a plane and it will probably disintegrate, blow a hole in the top and the result might look like Aloha 243... Security often involves compromises, where the decisions are made in haste and especially politically the result can be something dangerous. e.g. Helios 243 may not have crashed had the cabin crew been able to gain quick access to the cockpit.
Personally, I'd consider "food and drink" to be pretty essential, but strangely that's not on the list. Of course that could be provided by the airline, but note that the "cheap" airlines (e.g., RyanAir) do not provide this as part of ticket, and charge highly. I would hope they'd make an exception here, rather than taking the opportunity to profit from such an event.
Because the concern is over "liquid explosives", reading between the lines this appears to be nitroglycerin. Apparently baby milk is allowed, but the passenger must act as "poison taster". Wonder how long it will be before someone gets ill because they don't trust the drinking water on an aircraft...
Including by theft. It's also not unkown for smugglers to use checked baggage. If they leave their stuff in your luggage then it could well be you who faces the consequences. Something you can now do less to defend against because you cannot securely lock your luggage or seal it in a tamper evident way.
Of course!...but which reason is it? Sure, we can abandon support of Israel and let them all get murdered in their homes, cafes, and bus stops from suicide bombers and rocket attacks.
Does it make sense for the US (or the UK) to support another country if the result is increased danger to their own citizens? (If the well being of Israelis really is so important why not just offer all of them US Citzenships...)
We can all convert to radical Islam only to suffer suicide attacks from an opposing sect. Then, we can release all the Islamic prisoners in our jails. Of course these things only focus on the threat of Islamic terrorism.
If it were that simple you'd expect these people to be targeting countries all over the place. Yet the target here has specifically claimed to be US bound flights operated by US airlines.
and whoever put anthrax in the mail (still unsolved, reasons not definitively known).
Dosn't help that the US Government appears unwilling to do anything about the most plausible suspect...
The thing about terrorists targeting aeroplanes is that the potential death counts are large, the possibilities for people escaping are slim, and it puts the fear of flying into people. But these aren't especially unique qualities. What if they target, say, a ferry? Or a cruise ship with thousands of people on it? Or a bus (see last year) or movie theater full of people. They aren't as good targets but still real possibilities. All that's happening, then, by making it near-impossible to sneak ANYTHING, let alone a bomb, onto a plane, is that planes no longer become preferred targets, and other places become more at risk instead.
Another obvious target is trains. Any exposive powerful enough to bring down a plane will be quite effective against either track or bridge supports.
Have you heard of Ramzi Yousef and the Bojinka plot which is the same plan was being implemented and hopefully stopped today.
He did exactly that, a trial run...
He was using a contact solution bottle (with liquid explosives) and a casio watch as the detonator. He did a trial run to see if it would work, it did.
It "worked" in the sense that it went bang and killed the passenger unlucky enough to be sitting in the seat where he planted the bomb. It didn't "work" because the result was plenty of forensic evidence and a plane full of witnesses.
Especially as they've arrested 21 people and no terrorist in his right mind would try to put his "sub-plot" into action with the headlines full of this news.
Depends if this "sub-plot" involves blowing up airports overstuffed with passengers and reporters.
First off , they are corrupt; some of the closest people to Tony Blair have been arrested recently and taken away in handcuffs. BTW, the British media like to reserve the word corrupt for 3rd world govts and prefer to use the term sleaze, but thats just the usual Orwellian crap.
The problem is not only does "power corrupt" it also attracts the corrupt. This is as true in Europe and North America as it is in other parts of the world. It's a hard task to both come up with a mechanism of government which keeps undesirables out and continues to do so.
In terms of these "alerts" you may not hear about them but there've been countless occasions on which the govt have taken very theatrical action against some imaginary enemy, quite often to distract from other unpleasant stuff they're engaged in. The worst example of this was our corrupt home secretary literally sending the tanks into Heathrow airport, believe it or not. It turns out there was no justification for this. Also the number of times chemical weapons have are supposed to have been manufactured by terrorists in this country and whole areas have been sealed off is almost into double figures.
Yet has there been anyone convicted for attempting to do so.
Because the police are meant to be people who don't go around killing innocent people.
More it's ment to be part of their job to protect the public from being harmed by dangerous thugs. A police force which actually employes (and protects) such people is worst than useless.
This may include data on paper, CDs, removeable storage, and laptops. The severe restrictions would make it impossible for us to travel with such data and comply with company security directives.
Or this could be a good opportunity for the charter aircraft business.
The only thing left for the terrorists will be explosive clothing. They'll find a way to weave C4 right into their shirts in a visually pleasing plaid pattern. But instead of actually carrying out their mission of martyrdom, they will simply mail a sample to CNN, have Bin Laden make a vague recording about it.
Or they just mix up Mythbusters episodes 10 and 53 with some bad Arabic dubbing.
Slashdot Mirror
But your greater point has merit. There are a lot of people who actually asked us to give up some consitutional rights in the name of safety. I forget what the issue was at the time, but some right wing guys (and I'm pretty conservative on a lot issues) were actually saying "is a temporary suspension of 'x' ammendment rights to guarantee your safety really that bad?"
The fundermental issue here is proof that giving up these rights actually provides any safety. If nothing happens maybe there wasn't a threat in the first place. If something bad happens the advocaqtes of the "trade rights for safety" tend to say "you need to give up more rights". How can you tell how much safty your rights giving up is actually buying? (It could even be "negative", e.g. if the entity you are giving up your rights to is actually in some way making you unsafe.)
Islam is no more an extremist and dangerous religion than christianity
It would be suprising if Christian "extremists" came across as very different from the Islamic variety. Given that Islam and Christianity are both variations on the same theme in the first place.
Sure, Americans go through the motions of "democratic elections" every four years or so. Of course, only a fraction of the eligible voting population actually bothers to vote. So immediately there is 40-50% of the population out of the picture.
What proportion of these people are apathetic/uninterested and what proportion do so because they conclude the exercise isn't meaningful in the first place.
There is a very, very small percentage of the population who could actually run for office, let alone get elected. This population group consists of the most wealthy in America. That's not surprising, considering the cost of partaking in an election campaign.
It probably dosn't help having complex and inconsistent nomination rules either.
-lobbyists have infiltrated our government on all levels
-because our system only allows 2 parties to exist, the current 2 parties have so locked out the potential of any third party that several candidates in the last elected were arrested
In some situations in the US claiming that there are even two political parties in the US is stretching the truth. Also having the same political parties active in many areas of government can render meaningless "separation of powers" together with any associated "checks and balancies".
Look, i'll make it plain and simple for you, some of us would rather have the occasional death due to terrorist bombing than continual fear of abuse of the patriot act (documented), rendition to places like guantanimo without due process (documented), and the continual use of the deadly threat of "terror" to further the selfish political agendas of right wing extremists (documented).
When was the last terrorist bombing in the US anyway?
In the middle east, they've been fighting wars over this on a regular basis for as far back as recorded history goes. The rest of the world occasionally gets dragged into it.
It's unclear how anyone is "dragged into it". It's more that other countries, especially the UK and US have chosen to get involved. Thus the obvious solution is to get "uninvolved". Instead we have Bush and Blair doing the exact opposite. Obviously they have never heard "if you are in a hole stop digging".
We don't see much of them because mostly they hate the people near them far more than the ones in remote western countries... but sometimes a group of them comes over here to cause trouble.
There isn't much you can do about these people
If they are "coming over here" then the thing which can be done is to deport them as soon as they are found. Which means that most of those you do catch will be illegal aliens...
A good start would be to stop our corporations from going over there and enthusiastically screwing over the local people in order to get their stock to go up a quarter of a point. The big multinationals are busy making money by squeezing those people, because local laws don't stop them and our laws don't apply to their actions over there.
There's a reason that local laws don't stop them. Supporting these kind of corporations is the reason behind the toppling of many democratic goverments. Whilst democratic governments tend to have a reason to ensure that foreign companies operating in their country pay taxes and decent wages a dictatorship (especially one supported financially and militarily by foreign interests) has every reason not to.
The best answer I can come up with is simple desperation. If you are living a life where you see children beggin in the streets and starving to death, you tend to get pretty upset. Now, imagine that you are witnessing a world where poverty abounds, despite the fact that the land you're living on is incredibly rich of natural resources (ie, oil).
The most obvious exception is Venezuela, but consider how they are regarded by the US.
You want real security in the world? Try creating global equality. Don't give up freedoms, give up the notion of cheap gas, or cheap imported goods. Live a simpler life so that people in developing nations can afford the same standard of living that you can.
It may not be necessary to actually give up that much. Invading Iraq hasn't made oil products cheap, if anything it's had the opposite effect. All of the military vehicles involved are hardly known for their fuel economy either. Possibly the point is exactly who would have to do most of the giving up.
Unfortunately, I don't hear anybody saying these things. Instead, I hear how we have to be strong and clamp down, "smoke them out."
What happens then? Conditions get worse for the already desperate, creating more possible terrorists, which creates more of a clampdown, which creates worse conditions, etc.
Maybe we need more politicans with engineering qualifications, who understand positive and negative feedback.
At the time of the fatwa, the only significant US military presence in the Arab world was the military base in Saudi Arabia which was responsible for making sure Saddam didn't attack Kuwait and Saudi Arabia again. It's not like the US really had a choice but to be there if you view the possibility of the annihilation of Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia to be an unacceptable risk to take.
Both of which are several thousand miles away from the US. So why not take George Washington's advice?
The main goal as far as the US is concerned is to push the US out of the middle east. Bin Laden specifically stated his goal was to get the US to stop propping up dictators in the middle east, supplying weapons to Israel, and basically, to stay out of their business.
How does doing these things benefit the average person in the US in the first place? Even without Bin Laden (assuming he is still alive) none of these things appear especially sensible.
And of course, please enjoy that bumpy ride on the way TO the airport...
:)
Be careful getting to the plane, getting on the plane and hope the pilot keeps things nice and smooth until V1
Nitro is pretty difficult to handle when you just have it poured into a water/eyedrop bottle. To say it is highly unstable is an understatement.
Not something you really want to give to 20 teenagers. Alternativly you have the problem of improvising a chemistry lab on a plane and being able to create enough to do some serious damage.
You refer to episodes of Mythbusters by number only, and can immediately correlate episode numbers with relevant experiments/subjects.
The episode numbers and summaries are on the official episode guide.
I don't get it... won't the plane explode equally well if the explosive is in the hold vs. carry-on? What difference does it make forcing everything to be checked in the hold?
Apparently the "movie plot" here is that the terrorists would assemble bombs using components and ingredients brought onboard by several people.
If they are sophistocated enough to have reactionary chemical explosives, would it be any harder for them to produce a container where the seal between the chemicals dissolves or degrades at a set time period?
Or even a certain time after reaching a certain ambient preassure, which handles a delayed departure.
If they are sophistocated enough to have reactionary chemical explosives, would it be any harder for them to produce a container where the seal between the chemicals dissolves or degrades at a set time period?
Dispite there being research into blast resistant cargo containers.
There is, and always has been, more chance of a plane going down due to mechanical fatigue or pilot error than any terrorist plot.
There's also more chance of a plane going down due to an explosion in the lower part than the upper part. Blow a hole in the bottom of a plane and it will probably disintegrate, blow a hole in the top and the result might look like Aloha 243...
Security often involves compromises, where the decisions are made in haste and especially politically the result can be something dangerous. e.g. Helios 243 may not have crashed had the cabin crew been able to gain quick access to the cockpit.
Personally, I'd consider "food and drink" to be pretty essential, but strangely that's not on the list. Of course that could be provided by the airline, but note that the "cheap" airlines (e.g., RyanAir) do not provide this as part of ticket, and charge highly. I would hope they'd make an exception here, rather than taking the opportunity to profit from such an event.
Because the concern is over "liquid explosives", reading between the lines this appears to be nitroglycerin. Apparently baby milk is allowed, but the passenger must act as "poison taster".
Wonder how long it will be before someone gets ill because they don't trust the drinking water on an aircraft...
Because airlines lose luggage all the time.
Including by theft. It's also not unkown for smugglers to use checked baggage. If they leave their stuff in your luggage then it could well be you who faces the consequences. Something you can now do less to defend against because you cannot securely lock your luggage or seal it in a tamper evident way.
Of course! ...but which reason is it? Sure, we can abandon support of Israel and let them all get murdered in their homes, cafes, and bus stops from suicide bombers and rocket attacks.
Does it make sense for the US (or the UK) to support another country if the result is increased danger to their own citizens? (If the well being of Israelis really is so important why not just offer all of them US Citzenships...)
We can all convert to radical Islam only to suffer suicide attacks from an opposing sect. Then, we can release all the Islamic prisoners in our jails. Of course these things only focus on the threat of Islamic terrorism.
If it were that simple you'd expect these people to be targeting countries all over the place. Yet the target here has specifically claimed to be US bound flights operated by US airlines.
and whoever put anthrax in the mail (still unsolved, reasons not definitively known).
Dosn't help that the US Government appears unwilling to do anything about the most plausible suspect...
The thing about terrorists targeting aeroplanes is that the potential death counts are large, the possibilities for people escaping are slim, and it puts the fear of flying into people. But these aren't especially unique qualities. What if they target, say, a ferry? Or a cruise ship with thousands of people on it? Or a bus (see last year) or movie theater full of people. They aren't as good targets but still real possibilities. All that's happening, then, by making it near-impossible to sneak ANYTHING, let alone a bomb, onto a plane, is that planes no longer become preferred targets, and other places become more at risk instead.
Another obvious target is trains. Any exposive powerful enough to bring down a plane will be quite effective against either track or bridge supports.
Have you heard of Ramzi Yousef and the Bojinka plot which is the same plan was being implemented and hopefully stopped today.
He did exactly that, a trial run...
He was using a contact solution bottle (with liquid explosives) and a casio watch as the detonator. He did a trial run to see if it would work, it did.
It "worked" in the sense that it went bang and killed the passenger unlucky enough to be sitting in the seat where he planted the bomb.
It didn't "work" because the result was plenty of forensic evidence and a plane full of witnesses.
In the real world, can you give any exampls of such a layered threat?
:)
Someone tell the "news" media
Especially as they've arrested 21 people and no terrorist in his right mind would try to put his "sub-plot" into action with the headlines full of this news.
Depends if this "sub-plot" involves blowing up airports overstuffed with passengers and reporters.
First off , they are corrupt; some of the closest people to Tony Blair have been arrested recently and taken away in handcuffs. BTW, the British media like to reserve the word corrupt for 3rd world govts and prefer to use the term sleaze, but thats just the usual Orwellian crap.
The problem is not only does "power corrupt" it also attracts the corrupt. This is as true in Europe and North America as it is in other parts of the world. It's a hard task to both come up with a mechanism of government which keeps undesirables out and continues to do so.
In terms of these "alerts" you may not hear about them but there've been countless occasions on which the govt have taken very theatrical action against some imaginary enemy, quite often to distract from other unpleasant stuff they're engaged in. The worst example of this was our corrupt home secretary literally sending the tanks into Heathrow airport, believe it or not. It turns out there was no justification for this. Also the number of times chemical weapons have are supposed to have been manufactured by terrorists in this country and whole areas have been sealed off is almost into double figures.
Yet has there been anyone convicted for attempting to do so.
Because the police are meant to be people who don't go around killing innocent people.
More it's ment to be part of their job to protect the public from being harmed by dangerous thugs. A police force which actually employes (and protects) such people is worst than useless.
This may include data on paper, CDs, removeable storage, and laptops. The severe restrictions would make it impossible for us to travel with such data and comply with company security directives.
Or this could be a good opportunity for the charter aircraft business.
Of course, on a trans-atlantic flight, that one book had best be a thick one!
Which will ensure passengers are able to tackle any trouble makers. Just wait for the headline of "Hijacker foiled by War and Peace".
The only thing left for the terrorists will be explosive clothing. They'll find a way to weave C4 right into their shirts in a visually pleasing plaid pattern. But instead of actually carrying out their mission of martyrdom, they will simply mail a sample to CNN, have Bin Laden make a vague recording about it.
Or they just mix up Mythbusters episodes 10 and 53 with some bad Arabic dubbing.