You may be right because it doesn't take too many terrorists to start a war. And I think the more it happens, the less public resistance there would be to war. But states are getting their own bonuses from technology, such as UAVs and robotics. I'm looking forward to a world where we can seal off a country that harbors terrorists and impose curfews, trade sanctions, etc, all without sending any troops anywhere. In the right environment, duties could be outsourced to non-military civilians even. If we establish a no-man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and make it legal to kill anybody entering it, why not let regular people help patrol it from the skies? Especially in the future you're talking about where terrorism has become more common.
Really, so you would be totally fine with a teacher in America who made assignments related to brainstorming about how to achieve negative social outcomes like killing Obama, inciting racism and hate crimes against Muslims, etc?
"Class, what's the best way to kill a black person to make other black people scared?"
"Class, if you owned a bank, what tactics would you use to deny black people loans while evading government regulations about discrimination?"
I mean come on. Schools are not parents. If you want to make those decisions for your own child, okay you have the freedom to be weird on your own, but schools need to take a moral and social middle ground that is acceptable to the mainstream.
I was thinking along the same lines about Afghanistan. What do you think of the idea of arming the entire population? Most polls show high opposition to the Taliban, but the Taliban have bombs, RPGs, AK-47s, etc. The typical Afghan farmer might have an old rifle. The Afghan army doesn't really get the concept of fighting for others, so why don't we try arming everyone and letting them fight for themselves?
I ask because plenty of people do identify what they see as the real underlying problem, and the answer is something like a culture war. So to solve the underlying problem, you have to eliminate the other culture, or their willingness to fight. It amounts to the same thing as treating the symptoms from your perspective. Therefore you obviously don't see that as the underlying problem or you wouldn't have made that comment. So what is the underlying problem to you? And how do you address what you must see as the underlying problem in our own society, namely the beliefs of the people I referenced?
you really have to be rational about this if 2 blocks is too near how far away should it be 10, 50, blocks away?
There are already other mosques in the area, but they are more than 2 blocks away. Your argument boils down to a slippery slope argument. If we prevent it at X, then X+N is virtually guaranteed to have resistance too. But it won't. It's quite obvious that if you said you're building a mosque 50 blocks from Ground Zero, then most people would not consider it to be the Ground Zero Mosque anymore. Some would, and some would oppose all mosque construction in the entire country. Those are not the 70% of the public who oppose the mosque in reality.
The real problem is that Americans are blaming other Americans for something they had nothing to do with.
Why is that the real problem? That happens all the time. It's almost like saying "the real problem is human nature."
About your Mad Mickey example.. do you really think almost every person would turn suicidal after their community was attacked?
When people from your community are killed, collectively punished, or whatever, there's no reason to think that it will go on until you are wiped out in a modern conflict. If you understand that they killed Mad Mickey and 50 innocent people because he did X, even if X was justified, you don't necessarily think "screw it all, we're done, I'm going out in a blaze of glory."
If your enemy has plans to destroy you, then by all means be a terrorist. Otherwise, swallow your pride and give up. Plenty of civilizations have risen from defeat -- France, Germany, USA's South, India, Pakistan... really, almost every culture alive today has been defeated and subjugated at some point in the past. Some of them have spent years fighting pride wars as you are suggesting. All it does is delay their return. If Japan had waged a 50 year pride war instead of just giving up, where would they be today? "Free" but living in a scorched earth land with suicide bombers going off every few days? Why would any rational person make that choice?
There's a difference between connecting the dots on your own and being directed to for an assignment. You know all about gassing people, fine. You could design your own gas chamber. But did you teacher ever say, "Class, how would you improve the design of gas chambers to make them more efficient?" I mean what's the point? What would you learn from that that is socially useful that you didn't learn already (gas chambers are bad)?
The wrong way is to teach that the violance is answer for your problems
You can call it what you want but in all your examples, violence *is* the answer for your problems. When you use your enemy's force against him, that's still violence. You're certainly not helping or healing him. Bruce Lee's "intercepting fist" thing is fighting fire with fire.
If we don't get kids thinking realistically about how one could attack, they're never going to be able to anticipate and defend against real threats as adults.
The assignment wasn't realistic though, because it presumed access to chemical weapons and sufficient motivation to use them. There IS no way to defend against motivated terrorists who already have advanced military grade weapons.
why we don't see destruction on that scale regularly if it would be easy.
The rational answer is of course that terrorists aren't such a great threat as they're made out to be.
That's rational based on the assumptions of the assignment. The danger with teaching this lesson to children is that they may not see the flaws in the assignment itself, and the teacher didn't seem likely to point them out either. For instance, in reality, terrorist hopefuls don't have easy access to military grade chemical weapons. A big way domestic terrorists are caught is when they start networking with other terrorists to get supplies of advanced weapons (not homemade fertilizer bombs). It's probably also a huge barrier to entry. If everybody just automatically had WMDs, then you probably *would* see destruction on that scale regularly.
Another big flaw is that the assignment presumes motivation on the students' behalf. It doesn't ever ask, how would you *become* convinced that you need to make a terrorist attack to make a political statement. It just says, you *are* convinced, so how would you do it. Is that realistic?
The lesson learned after asking those questions is about how to fight terrorism. The answer isn't "don't worry about it" as you imply. It's "we need to watch people who seem motivated, such as religious extremists, before they take the first physical step to an attack" and "if we miss that, we need to catch them at the networking/supplying stage where they are most exposed" and "people like me probably won't be terrorists because we lack the motivation, and it's actually quite difficult to acquire that motivation without some obvious signs, so we need to watch 'others'."
That's not a bad idea but it would be cumbersome and potentially have loopholes. If I own a large theme park and want to put cameras in the bathrooms, do I need to inform you about that before you enter the park at all? Or just right before you enter the bathroom, when you have no chance of holding it long enough to leave my property and drive somewhere else?
Higher costs on the order of $50/ton. Compare that to a $100 fine for throwing away a few ounces of recyclable material. Government should be working FOR us, not against us! If people think that $50/ton is worth less than the value of the time it takes every person to separate their trash, that's their decision and the government should honor it.
Then let the aluminum company pay to outfit the trash company's plant with an aluminum separator. It's completely unfair to get the government to subsidize the aluminum maker by forcing citizens to perform labor for free on their behalf, prodded by the threat of a $100 fine.
Sounds more like the kid needs to be congratulated and helped. Rather than shut the girl's "business" down, why didn't the government do something like help her come up to code? It would have been a much better public relations maneuver.
Yeah I've heard the alternate translation. Sounds like extreme optimism and wishful thinking. If I say, we are going to Iran, raping their women, and burning down every mosque... and then the next day my colleague says "that's an allegory for causing problems for the *regime* of Iran..." how much credibility does that have?
I don't know.. I was talking with my German grandmother about the US occupation of Germany after WWII. It seemed to be pretty effective. The big difference between then and now was the rules of engagement. Civilians had zero rights and soldiers didn't give a shit about cultural sensitivity. People were forced to submit. She told about how the first group of soldiers came to her farm. They said, are there any guns on the farm? If there were any guns, her father would be shot. They said no, they had gotten rid of them. They searched the entire house and the barns and found no guns. They made the father drink from the well to see that it wasn't poisoned. They made him stay in the basement for the night while they wife and daughters cooked for the soldiers. Then they moved on.
I agree that the size of the invading force makes a huge difference but I don't think enough attention has been given to the effectiveness of the rules the soldiers are subjected to.
Not all the fault can be attributed to the colonial powers. Why didn't the people redraw their own maps when the colonizers left? Because they wanted to keep all the power they could.
And is the terrorist threat of today imaginary or real? Is it worth doing things to confront terrorism? I can totally understand the presumed need to meddle in other countries to combat something very serious and very scary.
Downside - the usual bitching from the usual people that either hate the idea that they might be helping out their fellow man or vested interests like bottlers that think it will impact sales.
Don't forget the small group of people who have the crazy idea that the government should serve the public, not act to punish a large percentage of the public or try to socially engineer their behavior.
You stick it to the "slimy city council" by recycling, which is what they wanted you to do anyway. Why not just vote them out?? From your perspective they should actually be good guys, not slimy.
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You may be right because it doesn't take too many terrorists to start a war. And I think the more it happens, the less public resistance there would be to war. But states are getting their own bonuses from technology, such as UAVs and robotics. I'm looking forward to a world where we can seal off a country that harbors terrorists and impose curfews, trade sanctions, etc, all without sending any troops anywhere. In the right environment, duties could be outsourced to non-military civilians even. If we establish a no-man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and make it legal to kill anybody entering it, why not let regular people help patrol it from the skies? Especially in the future you're talking about where terrorism has become more common.
Really, so you would be totally fine with a teacher in America who made assignments related to brainstorming about how to achieve negative social outcomes like killing Obama, inciting racism and hate crimes against Muslims, etc?
"Class, what's the best way to kill a black person to make other black people scared?"
"Class, if you owned a bank, what tactics would you use to deny black people loans while evading government regulations about discrimination?"
I mean come on. Schools are not parents. If you want to make those decisions for your own child, okay you have the freedom to be weird on your own, but schools need to take a moral and social middle ground that is acceptable to the mainstream.
I was thinking along the same lines about Afghanistan. What do you think of the idea of arming the entire population? Most polls show high opposition to the Taliban, but the Taliban have bombs, RPGs, AK-47s, etc. The typical Afghan farmer might have an old rifle. The Afghan army doesn't really get the concept of fighting for others, so why don't we try arming everyone and letting them fight for themselves?
How do you identify the real underlying problems?
I ask because plenty of people do identify what they see as the real underlying problem, and the answer is something like a culture war. So to solve the underlying problem, you have to eliminate the other culture, or their willingness to fight. It amounts to the same thing as treating the symptoms from your perspective. Therefore you obviously don't see that as the underlying problem or you wouldn't have made that comment. So what is the underlying problem to you? And how do you address what you must see as the underlying problem in our own society, namely the beliefs of the people I referenced?
It would also be interesting to not tell the students who is who. Just tell each one which team he is on. The teams have to find each other.
you really have to be rational about this if 2 blocks is too near how far away should it be 10, 50, blocks away?
There are already other mosques in the area, but they are more than 2 blocks away. Your argument boils down to a slippery slope argument. If we prevent it at X, then X+N is virtually guaranteed to have resistance too. But it won't. It's quite obvious that if you said you're building a mosque 50 blocks from Ground Zero, then most people would not consider it to be the Ground Zero Mosque anymore. Some would, and some would oppose all mosque construction in the entire country. Those are not the 70% of the public who oppose the mosque in reality.
The real problem is that Americans are blaming other Americans for something they had nothing to do with.
Why is that the real problem? That happens all the time. It's almost like saying "the real problem is human nature."
About your Mad Mickey example.. do you really think almost every person would turn suicidal after their community was attacked?
When people from your community are killed, collectively punished, or whatever, there's no reason to think that it will go on until you are wiped out in a modern conflict. If you understand that they killed Mad Mickey and 50 innocent people because he did X, even if X was justified, you don't necessarily think "screw it all, we're done, I'm going out in a blaze of glory."
If your enemy has plans to destroy you, then by all means be a terrorist. Otherwise, swallow your pride and give up. Plenty of civilizations have risen from defeat -- France, Germany, USA's South, India, Pakistan... really, almost every culture alive today has been defeated and subjugated at some point in the past. Some of them have spent years fighting pride wars as you are suggesting. All it does is delay their return. If Japan had waged a 50 year pride war instead of just giving up, where would they be today? "Free" but living in a scorched earth land with suicide bombers going off every few days? Why would any rational person make that choice?
There's a difference between connecting the dots on your own and being directed to for an assignment. You know all about gassing people, fine. You could design your own gas chamber. But did you teacher ever say, "Class, how would you improve the design of gas chambers to make them more efficient?" I mean what's the point? What would you learn from that that is socially useful that you didn't learn already (gas chambers are bad)?
The wrong way is to teach that the violance is answer for your problems
You can call it what you want but in all your examples, violence *is* the answer for your problems. When you use your enemy's force against him, that's still violence. You're certainly not helping or healing him. Bruce Lee's "intercepting fist" thing is fighting fire with fire.
If we don't get kids thinking realistically about how one could attack, they're never going to be able to anticipate and defend against real threats as adults.
The assignment wasn't realistic though, because it presumed access to chemical weapons and sufficient motivation to use them. There IS no way to defend against motivated terrorists who already have advanced military grade weapons.
why we don't see destruction on that scale regularly if it would be easy.
The rational answer is of course that terrorists aren't such a great threat as they're made out to be.
That's rational based on the assumptions of the assignment. The danger with teaching this lesson to children is that they may not see the flaws in the assignment itself, and the teacher didn't seem likely to point them out either. For instance, in reality, terrorist hopefuls don't have easy access to military grade chemical weapons. A big way domestic terrorists are caught is when they start networking with other terrorists to get supplies of advanced weapons (not homemade fertilizer bombs). It's probably also a huge barrier to entry. If everybody just automatically had WMDs, then you probably *would* see destruction on that scale regularly.
Another big flaw is that the assignment presumes motivation on the students' behalf. It doesn't ever ask, how would you *become* convinced that you need to make a terrorist attack to make a political statement. It just says, you *are* convinced, so how would you do it. Is that realistic?
The lesson learned after asking those questions is about how to fight terrorism. The answer isn't "don't worry about it" as you imply. It's "we need to watch people who seem motivated, such as religious extremists, before they take the first physical step to an attack" and "if we miss that, we need to catch them at the networking/supplying stage where they are most exposed" and "people like me probably won't be terrorists because we lack the motivation, and it's actually quite difficult to acquire that motivation without some obvious signs, so we need to watch 'others'."
Eh, let a future generation fix Oracle's code.
That's not a bad idea but it would be cumbersome and potentially have loopholes. If I own a large theme park and want to put cameras in the bathrooms, do I need to inform you about that before you enter the park at all? Or just right before you enter the bathroom, when you have no chance of holding it long enough to leave my property and drive somewhere else?
Higher costs on the order of $50/ton. Compare that to a $100 fine for throwing away a few ounces of recyclable material. Government should be working FOR us, not against us! If people think that $50/ton is worth less than the value of the time it takes every person to separate their trash, that's their decision and the government should honor it.
Then let the aluminum company pay to outfit the trash company's plant with an aluminum separator. It's completely unfair to get the government to subsidize the aluminum maker by forcing citizens to perform labor for free on their behalf, prodded by the threat of a $100 fine.
Sounds more like the kid needs to be congratulated and helped. Rather than shut the girl's "business" down, why didn't the government do something like help her come up to code? It would have been a much better public relations maneuver.
Exactly! So who do you want in charge of regime change? Iran?
Yeah I've heard the alternate translation. Sounds like extreme optimism and wishful thinking. If I say, we are going to Iran, raping their women, and burning down every mosque... and then the next day my colleague says "that's an allegory for causing problems for the *regime* of Iran..." how much credibility does that have?
Why does it have to be a war? Why not just harass them with bombing raids until they agree to terms?
I don't know.. I was talking with my German grandmother about the US occupation of Germany after WWII. It seemed to be pretty effective. The big difference between then and now was the rules of engagement. Civilians had zero rights and soldiers didn't give a shit about cultural sensitivity. People were forced to submit. She told about how the first group of soldiers came to her farm. They said, are there any guns on the farm? If there were any guns, her father would be shot. They said no, they had gotten rid of them. They searched the entire house and the barns and found no guns. They made the father drink from the well to see that it wasn't poisoned. They made him stay in the basement for the night while they wife and daughters cooked for the soldiers. Then they moved on.
I agree that the size of the invading force makes a huge difference but I don't think enough attention has been given to the effectiveness of the rules the soldiers are subjected to.
Not all the fault can be attributed to the colonial powers. Why didn't the people redraw their own maps when the colonizers left? Because they wanted to keep all the power they could.
And is the terrorist threat of today imaginary or real? Is it worth doing things to confront terrorism? I can totally understand the presumed need to meddle in other countries to combat something very serious and very scary.
Downside - the usual bitching from the usual people that either hate the idea that they might be helping out their fellow man or vested interests like bottlers that think it will impact sales.
Don't forget the small group of people who have the crazy idea that the government should serve the public, not act to punish a large percentage of the public or try to socially engineer their behavior.
And tell us, how do you decide what the true cost of things is to society? It's totally subjective.
You stick it to the "slimy city council" by recycling, which is what they wanted you to do anyway. Why not just vote them out?? From your perspective they should actually be good guys, not slimy.