Of all the offenses betwixt the USA and Iran, I'd posit that the balance isn't even close to parity. The Iranians have a lot of IOU's due against the US. [Like enough to use one every day for a century.]
This has little to do with payback, there are no external gains for revenge against the US. These episodes serve only to serve as a distractiong for the horrible mismanagement of Iran's resources and infrastructure by the current Iranian government.
The Iranian government must wave the flag and strive for nationalistic sentiment otherwise the Iranian people would start to realize that if they actually had a job to go to they wouldn't be standing around at 11am watching this all play out on their neighbor's TV set.
When this is all declassified in 50 years, it will be amusing to learn this was a Trojan horse used to probe Iran's electronic warfare capacities and testing locations as a prelued to more focused intelligence gathering.
What intelligence agency wouldn't be interested in knowing where Iran does its secret device testing?
You are totally correct. If you cut a top US banker's salary or compensation, he'll just go to Singapore or Hong Kong and get paid what the global market allows.
You are all trying to pass this off as captalism, but it would be more accurate to describe this as simple supply and demand for valuable sales and client managment staffing.
Where was this businessman you were talking to from anyway? Nigeria? Do you know how many millions of consumers would have sustained direct losses by the bank failures in the last 3 years absent that protection?
Most industrial states provide some kind of deposit backing for the general population. Primarily because it does an effective job of protecting the population from risks taken by bankers and it does so by making all banks responsible for the failures in an indirect way. Removing that insurance isn't going to make the banks stop taking risks, it will only pass the risk to general population in a very direct manner.
The FDIC gets its pool of cash, which it uses to cover the losses for the banks it takes over, largely through fees extracted per dollar, per month, per bank. That's right, your bank pays a monthly insurance premium for holding your money. The bank then passes it directly or indirectly back to their consumer or business.
And the system has worked well for what it does, the last 3 years have proved this repeatedly. Even with the major increase in bank failures over the last 3 years, I didn't lose any money when the credit union across the street from my house became insolvant.
Some people have been concerned about the FDIC becoming insolvant (running out of cash to pay the depository losses of the failed banks), but so far that has not materialized as a real issue. And even if it did, the Fed would just give the FDIC a loan which they would quickly pay back with the fees they get each month.
But how would I find legal representation to start? Wouldn't my Robotic Lawyer have to recues itself from my lawsuit since he himself displaced a human worker?
Having there just be one Metaverse (as Snow Crash seems to imply) is totally unrealistic, because there will (obviously?!) be so many different visions and agendas for what a metaverse should be. (And even if you limit the discussion to commercial exploitation, that includes deeply incompatible agendas, such as "my profit" vs "your profit.") Not that some won't be very popular, but there will never be one-size-fits-all. It's just human nature that no matter what you have, even if it gets a large userbase, there must be people who say, "This MUD is lame" or "This cabal is comprised of lamers" followed by "I'm going to make my own which fixes some problems."
Stephenson actually deals with these aspect pretty early on in the novel. Differences in access quality as well as conflicts between implementing agencies are all discussed in detail. They even become central to some of the plot movements in the last part of the book in the Metaverse-embodied conflict with a nuclear-laden Raven.
I suggest you read Snow Crash again and when you do consider the historical context in which it was written. The man is quite visionary.
In the 1980s the Federal Parole system was abolished for exactly the sentiment you expressed in your post. I found this explanation that might help contextualize it a bit.
Previously, the U.S. Parole Commission could, and often did, authorize the early release of Federal prisoners. The Sentencing Reform Act limited this authority by abolishing Federal parole. As a result, defendants serve their court-imposed sentences, minus approximately 15 percent for good behavior, if applicable. Such sentence reductions may not exceed 54 days per year. Other types of early release are prohibited.
In short, if he was in fact sentenced to 640 years he would remain in prison until his life naturally expired. Or at least as naturally as one's life can expire in a concrete cage.
"This isn't about child pornography or porn in general. This is about taxing the internet."
I totally agree. And this isn't really supprising coming from Sen. Carper because the Democratic party has been trying to get the internet taxed for some time now. And it isn't all that sinister or unrealistic - let me explain.
Most capitalists don't want to see it happen because the internet has lowered barriers to market entry for the entire global economy. Which basically means that when you are looking for the most value in a product, you now have access to the entire planet rather than your local community. This effects every level of the global economy, on the whole in a positive way.
Most social-policy makers realize that allowing the entire globe to connect to the global economy helps to lower the global poverty rate (assuming that local state policies do not hinder participation in global markets). This in turn drives up systemic stability and drives down systemic violence as the rule sets which govern independent states become more stable and interconnected because of the need to participate in global markets and the need to attract foreign direct investment. Global commerce is a large part of achieving global stability.
Yet eventually - as more and more commerce moves to the internet - governments will have to find a way to tax goods and services in order to continue to provide the local social programs for which capitalism has been inefficient in providing to date. If the vast majority of goods are sold in the ether, then that is where governments will eventually have to go to get tax revenue.
Basically I think internet taxation is a matter not of "if" but of "when" - a matter of timing and method rather than a question of whether or not it should be allowed. Do it too soon or too ineffectively, and you won't accomplish much and potentially damage your gains.
Right now is too soon IMHO. We don't have the global rule sets in place to allow a nation state to effectively tax the national consumption of a globally market (read: we don't have the means or authority to tax non-US, internet-delivered products in a meaningful way). And if you try without such rule sets in place, all you will do is drive affected businesses outside of your jurisdiction and control. The same goes for trying to segregate yourself from non-taxable content, it just doesn't work right now.
Why do I always get the anonymous spelling nazis? It's the same guy isn't it? Come on now, you can admit it. I don't mind having a stalker.
Whoever you are, please reread my post because you are so enamered with correcting spelling and grammer that you forgot there was actually a message in there... And you missed it totally. It's been a while since I've been so throughly misread and my point so widely misunderstood. You are reading things into my post that simply aren't there.
Tell us when you locate this mystical land of erudites - I'm sure the rest of us would like to join you there. But seriously, it isn't any different anywhere else. At least we live in a country where a silver-spoon like Barton can ask for this, and where we remain free enough to laugh at him for it without fear of reprisal. You won't fair so well in most other countries.
"By using such despicable harassment techniques against these scientists, all Joe Barton has managed to accomplish here is to certify their findings."
As with every investigation of a phenomenon, be it natural or political, don't you think the evaluation should be based on the contents? It is a relatively common occurance to have the question asked "Who funded your research?" when considering the context of that reports contents.
"After all, if their results could be disputed rationally, there would be no need for such underhanded tactics."
And likewise, if the scientists which produced the study were above board this investigation will likely prove as much. If Barton's investigation itself is flawed, that too will provide us a public service - allowing us to remove a flawed congressman from office.
Welcome this investigation. This type of investigation is one of the few ways to remove some of those tin foil hats. How much stronger will their study be when it is revealed that they conducted their research in an ethical and responsible manner? And if they didn't the public is likeways served by exposing their study's short comings.
"Except that the foreign languages we speak are other European languages, not that of immigrants. Usually it's mother tongue + English and for those with more education one or two additional languages (French, German or Spanish)."
You didn't fully address my analysis. Actually you have both. You have fractured state level markets within the greater EU, and then further you have fractured intrastate level markets. All with linquistical patterns as I outline previously.
The state level markets are more frequently and more effectively working together than ever, and as a result a single language for commerce is developing (English for whatever reason - German would have been less confusing in the long run, but that is a different argument). That you are unwilling to speak the language of immigrants within your country, as you observe, and secondly unwilling to allow them to fully integrate economically was part of the point of my previous post - and an accurate example of why economic integration does not occur for immigrants within Europe as quickly or as frequently as it should.
"Secondly, many immigrants in US speaks only Spanish, even in 2nd and 3rd generation."
Many immigrants? Sure, we probably have more immigration into the U.S. than Europe does in aggregate. But proportionally, the last numbers I saw showed the U.S. was way ahead as far as integrating immigrants linquistically and economically. The last numbers I saw on this were along the lines of the following for immigrants to the U.S. (a majority of which are Latino):
First Gen = 50% English as primary language at home and work. Second Gen = 75% English as primary language at home and work. Third Gen = 97% English as primary language at home and work.
Also remember that generations are temporally shorter for immigrant groups than for established groups in U.S. society. This holds true across most waves of immigration within the U.S. regardless of continental origination (Europian, Latino, etc).
"Funny how the government chose to prioritize piracy over adequate healthcare."
All the creation of a new cabinet post means is this. The other members on the cabinet were getting sufficiently distracted by the dull drone of single-issue, intellectual-property proponents, and asked the President to name someone to take the load off them. In a political sense, without some statement saying that this new post has some "special priority", it says nothing about a some kind of reprioritization.
And as a side note, no matter which healthcare system you live under - only the rich have adequate healthcare.
You have it slightly wrong. Most French people at least know a couple other languages. The vast, vast majority of Americans simply do not have any ability in any language other than English. Blame the crappy setup of the school system.
That isn't all that true. I would imagine if you counted the numbers of both legal and illegal immigrants, and the numbers of college educated individuals in the U.S. you would have a fairly sizable portion of the U.S. that speaks two or more languages.
One of the main reasons why you don't find high levels of foreign language capacity in the U.S. is due to relatively successful economic integration. By the third generation, 97% of immigrants to the U.S. are speaking (americanized) English as their primary language.
Singling out a specific country as an example would denegrate the analysis, but a number of countries in Europe have large 2nd and 3rd generation cultural enclaves which have not integrated economically. The result of which is an economic need to support multiple languages within their society. Basic economic utility dictates that the language of commerce will become your most common language. When you have segmented economic markets within your society you will naturally have segmented language markets as well.
"I hate this aspect of American contract law. If two people are in a contract that I know about and I encourage one to break it, I am guilty of a tort. How the hell am I guilty of a tort; I wasn't a frickin party to the contract. Contracts are just agreements between two people, if I had no part in agreeing I shouldn't have any responsibility under it."
If you didn't know about the contract then I would agree with you. But if you knew about the contract between the two parties and then intentionally helped one of the parties break that contract that is where you have the tort violation. Because you acted in bad faith to sever a legally recognized relationship.
This does not mean "displacement" is always useless, but I suggest that it is not practical in case of the subway system.
No, I would say it is especially practical in the case of subways. Subways as you suggest are extremely large structures. But due to their subterainial nature they funnel traffic through a select and limited number of locations. This makes them inherently susceptible to crime prevention strategies including displacement - much more so than many other structures.
In fact this is one of the few public structures for which target hardening strategies are extremely efficient. Your technological solution isn't diffused over a large spacial expanse, but rather is limited to those relatively few human concentration points.
We need to make sure, when we discuss these things, that we avoid redefining every word in our writings. Freedom is simply the ability to act as your mind desires - nothing more, nothing less.
I'm not sure what word there is to label or describe the idea you are positing here as "freedom", but you need to pick another word because the word freedom already has a good definition. Call it "IamLarryboy Freedom (TM)" if you must, but redefining all the terms only muddies the discussion.
Ya, that is where Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) comes in. Basically designing structures and facilities such that they are not easy targets.
To give an example, Timothy McVay had originally intended to bomb the Courthouse in Wichita, Ks. But when he got there he couldn't park the truck close enough to the building because of how it was landscaped and designed. No parking at all within ~200' of the building, just a bunch of open grass and sidewalks.
When that didn't work he got back on I-35 and head for OKC.
To offer some further support for your argument, the truth is that the promise to pull Spain out of Iraq was more of a political move than anything concrete.
Speaking from the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Italy would start withdrawing 300 troops from Iraq in September.
But he underlined that the partial pullout had already been announced and that Italy's presence in the region would continue until the Iraqi authorities will be able to replace it with their own security forces.
In other words, the same thing the U.S. was planning to do with its own troops. In essense they aren't removing support in any real sense at all.
"NO! Foster an attitude of freedom. I understand that many people believe that Democracy == freedom. This is absolutely false! I would even go as far as to say democracy is incompatible with freedom but that is an argument for another time. My point is this: If any nation really wants to be free the will find a way. In fact for people to WANT to be free is the only way for them to be free. This has always been true and always will be. The early US was largely free because those who lived there and then wanted to be. The Swiss are very free because the Swiss people guard their freedom jealously. The rest of the western world is rapidly ceasing to be free because WE NO LONGER WANT TO BE FREE!"
Everyone wants the freedom to act as they wish within their own personal lives. What we don't want is for other people to have enough freedom that they can interfere detrimentally in our own lives. This is the basic calculus most of us go through.
Now when an Osama bin Laden, unrestrained by the laws, mores and culture of the society he chooses to interact with, desides to exercise total freedom of action at the expenses of other's lives we start to see the problem.
I agree 100% with your erudite opinion that democracy != freedom. Democracy does provide freedom for some but it does so only by providing the opposite for others. Democracy offers restrictions, though hopefully equally, on the freedom to act within your community. The hope is to reach a point where both sides of every issue have just enough freedom to obtain their own personal goals while being restricted just enough not to be able to do so at the expense of others.
In summary, I want to be free, but I don't want my neighbor to have more freedom than I do.
"One of the things that the air force teaches is "everyone's a detector"."
That's exactly the type of stuff they are starting to teach municiple and state law enforcment officers now. Couple that with increases in "Broken Windows" style community-policing action (producing a cleaner, more stable street environments), and the chances of "detecting" this type of "out of the ordinary" behavior goes up considerably. Especially since community-policing extends the "detector" population from just sworn officers to active citizenry as well (at least in a successful program).
"Last I checked, North Korea started making bombs after George Bush refused to negotiate because you just "can't negotiate" with people like that. I don't know if that's true, but it's hard to imagine how it could have gotten anything worse than it became without negotiating (ie, them now having some nuclear weapons). Nor do I see wholescale military invasion of North Korea feasible at the current time."
It's a little more complicated than that. Clinton signed several agreements via Sec State Albright that essentually gave North Korea money and goods in exchange for promising to abort a nuclear-arms race in southeast Asia. But he did so without consulting with the Republicans in the Senate, and as a result couldn't get it ratified (remember Congress controls all the money in government). This is almost identical to the failed situation whereby the U.S. Senate refused to pass the treaty concluded after World War I (here again the executive failed to allow minority government to participate in the treaty making process and as a result was unable to get it ratified after it was signed).
Shortly there after Bush comes on the scene. North Korea makes the same offer ("buy us off or we make nukes"), but when Bush refused unilateral negotiations of this type they "suddenly" began developing nuclear weapons.
The reality more likely is that these weapons had existed in some form the entire time. As a number of analysists have pointed out, nuclear development in North Korea is a "fuzzy" matter to timeline. Especially since the U.S. is so heavily dependent on signal intelligence through the monitoring of internal communications - this type of intelligence is faulty if uncorroberated by human intelligence (/insert line blaming CIA Director Deutche). Just like in Iraq, we were hearing all the crosstalk, but the communicating agents are often lying to each other as is frequently the case in countries like Iraq and North Korea where each element is trying to bilk money out of the country and protect their position ("Comrade, we have increased boot production by 100,000 units this month, this memo proves it!").
At any rate, Christopher Hill and our other excellent public servents over at the State Department have as of this week re-engaged North Korea in multilateral talks. Unilateral negotiations can never work because the problem of nuclear proliferation within southeast Asia is not a unilateral one, and Bush was correct in accepting the State Department's advice in rejecting North Korea's request for such.
What you are describing is called "displacement". Motivated attackers are deterred from attacking a hardened target, and as a result settle for a softer target.
The hope of course is that the increased activity needed to shift a coordinated attack from one target to another will also increase the opportunity of security personnel to detect the plot. It doesn't always work this way, but most public security successes revolve around this very model.
As you suggest, due to the limited nature of governmental spending some targets will always be softer than others. It also exacerbates the mistaken impression that security is for perception only, while in actuality the purpose is to project to potential threats that "this is a hardened target, please move on."
Slashdot Mirror
This has little to do with payback, there are no external gains for revenge against the US. These episodes serve only to serve as a distractiong for the horrible mismanagement of Iran's resources and infrastructure by the current Iranian government.
The Iranian government must wave the flag and strive for nationalistic sentiment otherwise the Iranian people would start to realize that if they actually had a job to go to they wouldn't be standing around at 11am watching this all play out on their neighbor's TV set.
When this is all declassified in 50 years, it will be amusing to learn this was a Trojan horse used to probe Iran's electronic warfare capacities and testing locations as a prelued to more focused intelligence gathering.
What intelligence agency wouldn't be interested in knowing where Iran does its secret device testing?
You are totally correct. If you cut a top US banker's salary or compensation, he'll just go to Singapore or Hong Kong and get paid what the global market allows.
You are all trying to pass this off as captalism, but it would be more accurate to describe this as simple supply and demand for valuable sales and client managment staffing.
Where was this businessman you were talking to from anyway? Nigeria? Do you know how many millions of consumers would have sustained direct losses by the bank failures in the last 3 years absent that protection?
Most industrial states provide some kind of deposit backing for the general population. Primarily because it does an effective job of protecting the population from risks taken by bankers and it does so by making all banks responsible for the failures in an indirect way. Removing that insurance isn't going to make the banks stop taking risks, it will only pass the risk to general population in a very direct manner.
The FDIC gets its pool of cash, which it uses to cover the losses for the banks it takes over, largely through fees extracted per dollar, per month, per bank. That's right, your bank pays a monthly insurance premium for holding your money. The bank then passes it directly or indirectly back to their consumer or business.
And the system has worked well for what it does, the last 3 years have proved this repeatedly. Even with the major increase in bank failures over the last 3 years, I didn't lose any money when the credit union across the street from my house became insolvant.
Some people have been concerned about the FDIC becoming insolvant (running out of cash to pay the depository losses of the failed banks), but so far that has not materialized as a real issue. And even if it did, the Fed would just give the FDIC a loan which they would quickly pay back with the fees they get each month.
But how would I find legal representation to start? Wouldn't my Robotic Lawyer have to recues itself from my lawsuit since he himself displaced a human worker?
Stephenson actually deals with these aspect pretty early on in the novel. Differences in access quality as well as conflicts between implementing agencies are all discussed in detail. They even become central to some of the plot movements in the last part of the book in the Metaverse-embodied conflict with a nuclear-laden Raven.
I suggest you read Snow Crash again and when you do consider the historical context in which it was written. The man is quite visionary.
From LectLaw URL (emphasis added):
In short, if he was in fact sentenced to 640 years he would remain in prison until his life naturally expired. Or at least as naturally as one's life can expire in a concrete cage.
"This isn't about child pornography or porn in general. This is about taxing the internet."
I totally agree. And this isn't really supprising coming from Sen. Carper because the Democratic party has been trying to get the internet taxed for some time now. And it isn't all that sinister or unrealistic - let me explain.
Most capitalists don't want to see it happen because the internet has lowered barriers to market entry for the entire global economy. Which basically means that when you are looking for the most value in a product, you now have access to the entire planet rather than your local community. This effects every level of the global economy, on the whole in a positive way.
Most social-policy makers realize that allowing the entire globe to connect to the global economy helps to lower the global poverty rate (assuming that local state policies do not hinder participation in global markets). This in turn drives up systemic stability and drives down systemic violence as the rule sets which govern independent states become more stable and interconnected because of the need to participate in global markets and the need to attract foreign direct investment. Global commerce is a large part of achieving global stability.
Yet eventually - as more and more commerce moves to the internet - governments will have to find a way to tax goods and services in order to continue to provide the local social programs for which capitalism has been inefficient in providing to date. If the vast majority of goods are sold in the ether, then that is where governments will eventually have to go to get tax revenue.
Basically I think internet taxation is a matter not of "if" but of "when" - a matter of timing and method rather than a question of whether or not it should be allowed. Do it too soon or too ineffectively, and you won't accomplish much and potentially damage your gains.
Right now is too soon IMHO. We don't have the global rule sets in place to allow a nation state to effectively tax the national consumption of a globally market (read: we don't have the means or authority to tax non-US, internet-delivered products in a meaningful way). And if you try without such rule sets in place, all you will do is drive affected businesses outside of your jurisdiction and control. The same goes for trying to segregate yourself from non-taxable content, it just doesn't work right now.
Why do I always get the anonymous spelling nazis? It's the same guy isn't it? Come on now, you can admit it. I don't mind having a stalker.
Whoever you are, please reread my post because you are so enamered with correcting spelling and grammer that you forgot there was actually a message in there... And you missed it totally. It's been a while since I've been so throughly misread and my point so widely misunderstood. You are reading things into my post that simply aren't there.
"I need to emmigrate. Enough is enough."
Tell us when you locate this mystical land of erudites - I'm sure the rest of us would like to join you there. But seriously, it isn't any different anywhere else. At least we live in a country where a silver-spoon like Barton can ask for this, and where we remain free enough to laugh at him for it without fear of reprisal. You won't fair so well in most other countries.
"By using such despicable harassment techniques against these scientists, all Joe Barton has managed to accomplish here is to certify their findings."
As with every investigation of a phenomenon, be it natural or political, don't you think the evaluation should be based on the contents? It is a relatively common occurance to have the question asked "Who funded your research?" when considering the context of that reports contents.
"After all, if their results could be disputed rationally, there would be no need for such underhanded tactics."
And likewise, if the scientists which produced the study were above board this investigation will likely prove as much. If Barton's investigation itself is flawed, that too will provide us a public service - allowing us to remove a flawed congressman from office.
Welcome this investigation. This type of investigation is one of the few ways to remove some of those tin foil hats. How much stronger will their study be when it is revealed that they conducted their research in an ethical and responsible manner? And if they didn't the public is likeways served by exposing their study's short comings.
In a word, yes.
"Except that the foreign languages we speak are other European languages, not that of immigrants. Usually it's mother tongue + English and for those with more education one or two additional languages (French, German or Spanish)."
You didn't fully address my analysis. Actually you have both. You have fractured state level markets within the greater EU, and then further you have fractured intrastate level markets. All with linquistical patterns as I outline previously.
The state level markets are more frequently and more effectively working together than ever, and as a result a single language for commerce is developing (English for whatever reason - German would have been less confusing in the long run, but that is a different argument). That you are unwilling to speak the language of immigrants within your country, as you observe, and secondly unwilling to allow them to fully integrate economically was part of the point of my previous post - and an accurate example of why economic integration does not occur for immigrants within Europe as quickly or as frequently as it should.
"Secondly, many immigrants in US speaks only Spanish, even in 2nd and 3rd generation."
Many immigrants? Sure, we probably have more immigration into the U.S. than Europe does in aggregate. But proportionally, the last numbers I saw showed the U.S. was way ahead as far as integrating immigrants linquistically and economically. The last numbers I saw on this were along the lines of the following for immigrants to the U.S. (a majority of which are Latino):
First Gen = 50% English as primary language at home and work.
Second Gen = 75% English as primary language at home and work.
Third Gen = 97% English as primary language at home and work.
Also remember that generations are temporally shorter for immigrant groups than for established groups in U.S. society. This holds true across most waves of immigration within the U.S. regardless of continental origination (Europian, Latino, etc).
"Funny how the government chose to prioritize piracy over adequate healthcare."
All the creation of a new cabinet post means is this. The other members on the cabinet were getting sufficiently distracted by the dull drone of single-issue, intellectual-property proponents, and asked the President to name someone to take the load off them. In a political sense, without some statement saying that this new post has some "special priority", it says nothing about a some kind of reprioritization.
And as a side note, no matter which healthcare system you live under - only the rich have adequate healthcare.
You have it slightly wrong. Most French people at least know a couple other languages. The vast, vast majority of Americans simply do not have any ability in any language other than English. Blame the crappy setup of the school system.
That isn't all that true. I would imagine if you counted the numbers of both legal and illegal immigrants, and the numbers of college educated individuals in the U.S. you would have a fairly sizable portion of the U.S. that speaks two or more languages.
One of the main reasons why you don't find high levels of foreign language capacity in the U.S. is due to relatively successful economic integration. By the third generation, 97% of immigrants to the U.S. are speaking (americanized) English as their primary language.
Singling out a specific country as an example would denegrate the analysis, but a number of countries in Europe have large 2nd and 3rd generation cultural enclaves which have not integrated economically. The result of which is an economic need to support multiple languages within their society. Basic economic utility dictates that the language of commerce will become your most common language. When you have segmented economic markets within your society you will naturally have segmented language markets as well.
"I hate this aspect of American contract law. If two people are in a contract that I know about and I encourage one to break it, I am guilty of a tort. How the hell am I guilty of a tort; I wasn't a frickin party to the contract. Contracts are just agreements between two people, if I had no part in agreeing I shouldn't have any responsibility under it."
If you didn't know about the contract then I would agree with you. But if you knew about the contract between the two parties and then intentionally helped one of the parties break that contract that is where you have the tort violation. Because you acted in bad faith to sever a legally recognized relationship.
This does not mean "displacement" is always useless, but I suggest that it is not practical in case of the subway system.
No, I would say it is especially practical in the case of subways. Subways as you suggest are extremely large structures. But due to their subterainial nature they funnel traffic through a select and limited number of locations. This makes them inherently susceptible to crime prevention strategies including displacement - much more so than many other structures.
In fact this is one of the few public structures for which target hardening strategies are extremely efficient. Your technological solution isn't diffused over a large spacial expanse, but rather is limited to those relatively few human concentration points.
We need to make sure, when we discuss these things, that we avoid redefining every word in our writings. Freedom is simply the ability to act as your mind desires - nothing more, nothing less.
I'm not sure what word there is to label or describe the idea you are positing here as "freedom", but you need to pick another word because the word freedom already has a good definition. Call it "IamLarryboy Freedom (TM)" if you must, but redefining all the terms only muddies the discussion.
It had everything to do with site admins not updating their CMS software after a 10 day old critical bug had been patched.
Ya, that is where Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) comes in. Basically designing structures and facilities such that they are not easy targets.
To give an example, Timothy McVay had originally intended to bomb the Courthouse in Wichita, Ks. But when he got there he couldn't park the truck close enough to the building because of how it was landscaped and designed. No parking at all within ~200' of the building, just a bunch of open grass and sidewalks.
When that didn't work he got back on I-35 and head for OKC.
To offer some further support for your argument, the truth is that the promise to pull Spain out of Iraq was more of a political move than anything concrete.
From the BBC:
In other words, the same thing the U.S. was planning to do with its own troops. In essense they aren't removing support in any real sense at all.
"NO! Foster an attitude of freedom. I understand that many people believe that Democracy == freedom. This is absolutely false! I would even go as far as to say democracy is incompatible with freedom but that is an argument for another time. My point is this: If any nation really wants to be free the will find a way. In fact for people to WANT to be free is the only way for them to be free. This has always been true and always will be. The early US was largely free because those who lived there and then wanted to be. The Swiss are very free because the Swiss people guard their freedom jealously. The rest of the western world is rapidly ceasing to be free because WE NO LONGER WANT TO BE FREE!"
Everyone wants the freedom to act as they wish within their own personal lives. What we don't want is for other people to have enough freedom that they can interfere detrimentally in our own lives. This is the basic calculus most of us go through.
Now when an Osama bin Laden, unrestrained by the laws, mores and culture of the society he chooses to interact with, desides to exercise total freedom of action at the expenses of other's lives we start to see the problem.
I agree 100% with your erudite opinion that democracy != freedom. Democracy does provide freedom for some but it does so only by providing the opposite for others. Democracy offers restrictions, though hopefully equally, on the freedom to act within your community. The hope is to reach a point where both sides of every issue have just enough freedom to obtain their own personal goals while being restricted just enough not to be able to do so at the expense of others.
In summary, I want to be free, but I don't want my neighbor to have more freedom than I do.
"One of the things that the air force teaches is "everyone's a detector"."
That's exactly the type of stuff they are starting to teach municiple and state law enforcment officers now. Couple that with increases in "Broken Windows" style community-policing action (producing a cleaner, more stable street environments), and the chances of "detecting" this type of "out of the ordinary" behavior goes up considerably. Especially since community-policing extends the "detector" population from just sworn officers to active citizenry as well (at least in a successful program).
"Last I checked, North Korea started making bombs after George Bush refused to negotiate because you just "can't negotiate" with people like that. I don't know if that's true, but it's hard to imagine how it could have gotten anything worse than it became without negotiating (ie, them now having some nuclear weapons). Nor do I see wholescale military invasion of North Korea feasible at the current time."
It's a little more complicated than that. Clinton signed several agreements via Sec State Albright that essentually gave North Korea money and goods in exchange for promising to abort a nuclear-arms race in southeast Asia. But he did so without consulting with the Republicans in the Senate, and as a result couldn't get it ratified (remember Congress controls all the money in government). This is almost identical to the failed situation whereby the U.S. Senate refused to pass the treaty concluded after World War I (here again the executive failed to allow minority government to participate in the treaty making process and as a result was unable to get it ratified after it was signed).
Shortly there after Bush comes on the scene. North Korea makes the same offer ("buy us off or we make nukes"), but when Bush refused unilateral negotiations of this type they "suddenly" began developing nuclear weapons.
The reality more likely is that these weapons had existed in some form the entire time. As a number of analysists have pointed out, nuclear development in North Korea is a "fuzzy" matter to timeline. Especially since the U.S. is so heavily dependent on signal intelligence through the monitoring of internal communications - this type of intelligence is faulty if uncorroberated by human intelligence (/insert line blaming CIA Director Deutche). Just like in Iraq, we were hearing all the crosstalk, but the communicating agents are often lying to each other as is frequently the case in countries like Iraq and North Korea where each element is trying to bilk money out of the country and protect their position ("Comrade, we have increased boot production by 100,000 units this month, this memo proves it!").
At any rate, Christopher Hill and our other excellent public servents over at the State Department have as of this week re-engaged North Korea in multilateral talks. Unilateral negotiations can never work because the problem of nuclear proliferation within southeast Asia is not a unilateral one, and Bush was correct in accepting the State Department's advice in rejecting North Korea's request for such.
What you are describing is called "displacement". Motivated attackers are deterred from attacking a hardened target, and as a result settle for a softer target.
The hope of course is that the increased activity needed to shift a coordinated attack from one target to another will also increase the opportunity of security personnel to detect the plot. It doesn't always work this way, but most public security successes revolve around this very model.
As you suggest, due to the limited nature of governmental spending some targets will always be softer than others. It also exacerbates the mistaken impression that security is for perception only, while in actuality the purpose is to project to potential threats that "this is a hardened target, please move on."