I read that as Adams advocating that the US should not attempt export its revolution to other countries, undermining the existing political order in much the same way as the Communists have attempted to do. I don't necessarily read that as an argument against the US establishing a democratic government in places where it has gone to war for reasons other than to spread its revolution.
My other reaction is that democracy seems to be showing some life in the former fascist nations of Italy, German, and Japan, where it was imposed. Former Communist nations like Poland, East Germany, and the Baltic states seem to be doing well also. Arab citizens in Israel vote and hold office. Increasingly large numbers of Iraqis have turned out at the polls in each election; there is yet hope there. The fact that the Iraqi security forces are just reaching their full strength now, their training is almost complete, and some of the bad apple units are being weeded out, means that the coming months will see significantly greater pressure against the insurgents. There is a good chance that their fate will be the same as that of the Nazi Werewolves who terrorized Germany for a time following the surrender of Nazi Germany.
We probably still have invasion plans for Canada left over from 1812...
My recollection is that the US dropped all plans for war against Canada in the 1920s or 1930s.
Up until recently, the DoD still maintained battle plans for a potential war against Britain...... so the fact that they had invasion plans for Britain left-over from WWII and updated once-in-a-while doesn't really mean much.
I would love to see a source on this as I highly doubt that the US has had any actual plans for a war against the UK since the 1920-30s, if not before then. I would be willing to believe that the US had plans to invade the UK to liberate it in the event that a German invasion plan, such as Operation Sea Lion, had been successful, but that is war against Germans in the UK, not against the UK. I could possibly see there being a similar plan in the event that the former Soviet Union had dropped all six of its airborne divisions and added its couple of division equivalents of naval infantry regiments against the UK in a sort of super Red Storm Rising, but once again, this is war against enemy forces in the UK, not against the UK. I doubt that any plans against a German or Soviet occupation of the UK got past the formative stage, unless they were purely for exercises since the German threat passed and the Soviet threat was very unlikely. Or, have I been trolled?
When Great Britain and Argentina clashed over the Falkland Islands, off the southern coast of Argentina, Weinberger early on involved himself strongly on the British side..... Weinberger supported Thatcher's decision-he saw Argentina as the aggressor, and Great Britain as a principal U.S. ally.... Reagan agreed with Weinberger on the need to assist Britain; the United States provided missiles, aircraft fuel, military equipment, and intelligence information to the British government. In a little over two months, British forces defeated the Argentines, who surrendered on 14 June 1982. A new Argentine government, not hostile to the United States, came to power. Proud of U.S. aid to Great Britain in this crisis, Weinberger felt it brought beneficial results.
Most of the Argentine settlers were expelled by a US warship in 1831 and a British expedition took control of the territory in 1832. British sovereignty was declared in 1833, although Argentina has always disputed this.
April 8 US Secretary of State Alexander Haig begins shuttle mediation. Two days later the EEC issues trade sanctions against Argentina while Mr Haig holds talks with Argentine junta. After further meetings the talks break down on April 17.
April 26 Mrs Thatcher says time for diplomacy is running out. President Ronald Reagan declares US support for Britain and economic sanctions against Argentina.
29th May Argentines surrender Goose Green, British take 1,400 prisoners, and the Islanders imprisoned at Goose Green by the Argentines are released; Organisation of American States condemns Britain's military action and calls on the US to stop helping Britain - only the US, Chile, Columbia and Trinidad & Tobago abstain
4th June Britain and US veto Panamanian-Spanish immediate ceasefire resolution in UN Security Council; Spain criticises Britain's military action, becoming the only NATO country not to support Britain
12th July USA ends trade sanctions against Argentina
Your treatment of the Suez Crisis is facile. While you pan the United States, I don't see that the Commonwealth was particularly warm to the UK action in the Suez Crisis either. In fact, a Canadian won a Nobel prize for inventing the peacekeeping force to help put an end to the crisis. Politically, Suez came at about as awkward of a time as it could have. The Soviets were intervening in Hungary, and the US was trying to garner support against that. Opposing the Soviet invasion while backing the UK/France/Israel invasion was at best a very awkward political problem. The US Presidential elections were a week away. You also neglect to mention that the Soviets threatened intervene on behalf of Egypt, and to attack London and Paris with rockets over Suez. The US's actions probably kept the Suez Crisis from spiraling out of control into WW3.
The entire US/UK Special relationship is pretty much a myth anyway
That is indeed a silly statement. To how many countries do you think the US sells Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, specifically Trident missiles? One: The United Kingdom. Who does the US share nuclear weapons secrets with? The UK. Who did the United Kingdom share the greatest breakthrough in armor technology in the last century, the Chobham armor that made the M1 and Challenger tanks practically invulnerable to most shaped charge attacks for a generation? The United States. Who did the US pic
When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home.
Or make them wear burkas. Might as well. That's where the EU will be in 10 years time anyway. The lovely streetwalkers of Paris will become a thing of the past.:-(
For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab. This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque.
But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups. A series in the newspaper Libération in 2003 documented how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected, and often physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead, but there are looks and words that do kill."
Last night probably another hundred cars were set ablaze - as will be the case tonight, tomorrow night, and the following ones. Before large-scale rioting started on 27 October the police had already registered 30,000 car-becues this year - an average of, indeed, 100 a day. What a boost this must be to the French automobile industry. In the same period there were 3,800 attacks on police officers - a "normal" non-riot average of almost 13 a day.
They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are convienently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations.
What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not control. They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassone to twelve in the heavily Muslim town of Marseilles, with hardly a town in France lacking in its ZUS. The ZUS came into existence in late 1996 and according to a 2004 estimate, nearly 5 million people live in them.
Comment: A more precise name for these zones would be Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule. (November 14, 2006)
Nov. 28, 2006 update: For an insight into how bad things are, the police in Lyons demonstrated on Nov. 9, denouncing "violence against the forces of order." Things have reached a pretty sad state when the police have to demonstrate in the streets against the criminals.
They rule gangland style, combined with the male-dominated traditions of the Arab countries they came from. It's gotten so bad that, today, most of the young women only feel safe if they are covered up, or if they stay at home. Girls who want to look just like other French girls are considered provocative, asking for trouble......
"I was gang raped by three people I knew, and I couldn't say anything, because in my culture, your family is dishonored if you lose your virginity," says Bellil. "So I kept quiet, and the rapes continued. The next time, I was pulled off a commuter train and no one lifted a finger to help me....Everybody turned their head awa
First, Didn't the neo-nazi youths have this title all wrapped up before there were violent games?
Back then, they weren't "neo-nazi", they were actual Nazis, or Hitler Youth.
There is some interesting original footage of various fascist (German, Italian, Japanese) youth activities in Capra's Prelude to War. It's eye opening stuff.
If you try to redress your grievances in any peaceful way and are told "no", then your right to do it is being infringed.
No, it doesn't. You have a right to organize, write letters, books and newsletters, build websites, make and distribute movies, hold meetings, make speeches, hold up signs, play music, march in public places, conduct various political theatre, and other related activities. You don't have a right to trespass, vandalism, sabotage, theft, arson, or a lot of other things that are done in the name of protest, even if nobody stops you and nobody uses violence against another person.
You don't have a right to break into nuclear weapons storage facilities and paint the warheads red, for example. You don't have a right to break into a jail and release the prisoners, even if nobody stops you. You don't have a right to take over the office of a public official and refuse to leave. You can try, or actually do, any of these things, but there will be consequences that aren't a result of simply protesting government policy or law.
I had pretty much decided that SUSE would be the distribution we would base all our new web/db/mail servers on owing to its combination of corporate support and ease of use.....
Now I'm back on the fence considering Red Hat or another distro.
So how did the corporate support and ease of use change? If you don't feel any FUD, then SUSE should be just as viable as before. Or is this just FUD of a different color?
Given the successes they are listing, I'd be a little worried. Jose Padilla struck me as sort of a failed terrorist wanna-be, and the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge was a non-starter
I get a strong impression that you didn't look at the first two links I provided. There are plenty of other incidents and convictions listed that are up and down the scale besides the Padilla case. Anyway, I generally prefer that we find terrorists while they are still "wanna-bes" and not after they have killed a lot of people, don't you? Padilla's plan to blow up an apartment building was both dangerous and required relatively little skill.
I'm all for nonlethal weapons when the other choice is killing people en masse. But in the current Iraq situation, all I can see in a device that causes pain without killing is a lot of hurt people wanting payback big time.
If that device was used to disperse them, then they should have left when they were warned. If they want "pay back", then they will have a choice to make, won't they? "Am I pissed of enough to die over this?" That does seem to be where you are going, and I doubt if many people will be.
Something like this could be perverted into a horrible torture device. To ever use something like this against a civilian population would be dubious at best. Doesn't the world hate the U.S. enough already?
You car could easily be turned into a weapon of mass murder. To even drive it near a crowd would be dubious at best, and to actually turn it into the crowd..... Doesn't your neighborhood hate you enough already?!? Why are you running over people!!!?..... Oh, you weren't planning to do that?.... Never mind.
Since there have been 30-40 countries helping in Iraq with troops, the US probably isn't as hated as you think... at least outside of the circles I'm guessing you care about.
Lets trust the military! Because they have never mislead us before.
It is funny the way people think, isn't it? When Saddam was using the money from the Oil for Food program to buy weapons and build palaces instead of buying food, and ordinary Iraqis suffered, the so-called "Peace movement" blamed the United States for the suffering of the Iraqi people, and not Saddam for misspending the money. There seems to be a lot of that sort of thinking out there, kind of like the claim that Saddam didn't have ties to terrorists, even though he did, lots of them. Maybe they are just well meaning but badly informed, and only occasionally avert their eyes from uncomfortable truths. As to the military, I can't help but wonder if some of the problem comes from the people doing the reporting.
... If the army opens fire on a bunch of protestors...
The power to simply inflict torture-level pain on people who have no broken any law without oversight or evidence is one of the most horrifying things I can thing of.
It it is being done to disperse an unlawful assembly (which is illegal = broken laws), it will be almost certainly be after one or more warnings, time to disperse, oversight by senior police officers, and I doubt there won't be any evidence. The right to seek a redress of grievances from the government does not translate into an unlimited legal right to protest anywhere, anytime, anyhow, and by any method you see fit.
The famous link between Saddam and Bin Laden shown to the world - ravings of a drowing man who knew barely anything about the organisation he hadn't been in for long.
Saddam had well established ties to a number of different terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. An officer in Saddam's secret police was even an Al Qaeda cell leader. You are dispensing disinformation.
Abdul Rahman Yasin, was also a Baghdad resident. He was one of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who had fled there after being detained briefly by the FBI. Recent document finds in Tikrit show that Iraq supplied Yasin with both money and sanctuary. The 1993 WTC attack was masterminded by Yasin's associate Ramzi Yousef, who received financial support from al Qaeda through Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key 9/11 planner.
There is also the case of Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco. He attended the September 5, 2001 meeting in Spain with other al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, the 9/11 financial chief. Abu Zubayr was apprehended in May, 2002, while putting together a plot to mount suicide attacks on U.S. ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar. He has allegedly since stated that Iraq trained and supplied chemical weapons to al Qaeda. In the fall of 2001 al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan took refuge in northern Iraq until they were driven out by Coalition forces, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda terrorist active in Europe and North Africa, fled from Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has reportedly been sent back to Iraq to coordinate al Qaeda activities there.
Iraq made direct payments to the Philippine-based al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf group. Hamsiraji Sali, an Abu Sayyaf leader on the U.S. most-wanted terrorist list, stated that his gang received about one million pesos (around $20,000) each year from Iraq, for chemicals to make bombs. The link was substantiated immediately after a bombing in Zamboanga City in October 2002 (in which three people were killed including an American Green Beret), when Abu Sayyaf leaders called up the deputy secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Husham Hussain. Six days later, the cell phone used to call Hussain was employed as the timer on a bomb set to go off near the Philippine military's Southern Command headquarters. Fortunately, the bomb failed to detonate, and the phone yielded various contact numbers, including Hussain's and Sali's. This evidence, coupled with other intelligence the Philippine government would not release, led to Hussain's expulsion in February 2003. In March, ten Iraqi nationals, some with direct links to al Qaeda, were rounded up in the Philippines and deported as undesirable aliens. In addition, two more consulate officials were expelled for spying.
There is plenty more for those interested in even just scratching the surface.
They will be sharing internally
on
Open Source Spying
·
· Score: 1, Informative
I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that."
They will be sharing more internally, cutting across organizational boundaries and through previous barriers, and not necessarily with the outside world.
We will often never hear of their successes, even when some of them are readily available. I'm astonished how often you read comments denying that there have been any terrorism arrests or convictions, and acting as if it was all made up*.
* And this doesn't even get into the fringe ideas worthy of debunking.
Put down your Heinleins and spend a little time trying to make the planet we will all live and die on a better place.
The world is much better off due to all of the technologies that were developed for the early space programs and the unexpected uses that have been found for them. I would expect that trend to continue with the new space effort.
Plenty of people already are donating time and money to make the world a better place, of course it would be even better if more were involved.
Some problems won't really get better unless we are persistent. The US occupied Japan for 7 years (and still has a presence there, not to mention Germany and Italy) and people want the US to withdraw from Iraq after only 3 years. They call for this despite the problems that would cause, and just when Iraq's internal security forces are reaching full strength, completing their training, and can start having a real effect on the situation. That makes as much sense as removing a cast from a broken limb when it is only half healed.
....just hope they're not gonna be bean-counted to death on this one... those auditors are already sharpening up their knives to trim the budget.
I would worry more about the new and future Congresses, and future presidents. After all, this is in response to President Bush's initiative to go to Mars, it will require a long term commitment to accomplish it, and some people prefer President Bush to be a "miserable failure".
FTA:
"We're going to go after a lunar base," said Scott Horowitz, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The lunar base will be the central theme in NASA's going back to the Moon effort, he said, in preparation to go to Mars and beyond.
There will always be pressure to spend the money elsewhere, especially since the budgets for social welfare programs (social security, medicare, medicaid) are going to start ballooning* due to the retiring baby boomers. The politics on this will be brutal: "If you aren't for moving $5 billion from the moon base to put into social security, you are for tossing grandma out on the street to die." You should expect the media to perform to existing standards on this issue, and Washington is a place where simply reducing the planned growth rate in future year's budgets is decried as a cut in budget. President Reagan used to be regularly excoriated in the media over budget games like this, and the pressure on future administrations is likely to be worse.
Some things, like a space program, require long term commitments as it can take years to get anything useful done. During that entire time you are subject to accusations of waste and failure since you don't have anything shiny to show for all of the time and treasure being expended. Over time, a disaster like Apollo 1 or Challenger is almost inevitable given the technically challenging and inherently dangerous nature of space exploration. The time and treasure required, and the practically inevitable lost lives, will all challenge to our commitment to go the moon and Mars. Will we remain committed? Almost everyone will celebrate the victory of establishing a moon base, and ultimately planting a flag on Mars; relatively few will support the long term effort it will take to get there.
I am hopeful that we can accomplish it. The fact that other nations are heading into space and toward the moon will probably serve to increase support for it since the US won't want to be left out.
* The combined total of social welfare spending already dwarfs military spending, including for the war against extremist Islamist terrorists. Let us hope that moderate Islam starts racking up some victories - even if it takes some time.
This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.
I wish I could say that I've seen it in person, although from the pictures it doesn't look like anything I would go out of my way to see. It does look rather ugly.:)
I also won't argue that the situation isn't a pain. I hope that improvements in design, materials, engineering, and the security situation will eliminate the need for those measures. I will say that the US has, regrettably, accrued a certain amount of experience with what happens to poorly protected buildings when targeted by truck bombs. I will also say that if the US embassy is an unappealing target due to the protective measures, the people in all of the buildings around it will probably benefit in the long run. (Al Qaeda has called off attacks before when they had doubts about killing enough people for it to be worthwhile to them. They prefer for both the attacks and body count to be rather spectacular. The simultaneous bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 258 and wounded more than 5,000. I would hate for a similar attack to occur in Canada.) I hope Canada will not find it necessary to take such measures, but it may be coming.
What also got to me while trying to get through downtown is how the embassy is allowed to eat up a lane of traffic for their precious concrete walls, as if there was ever a real danger in Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
I read that as Adams advocating that the US should not attempt export its revolution to other countries, undermining the existing political order in much the same way as the Communists have attempted to do. I don't necessarily read that as an argument against the US establishing a democratic government in places where it has gone to war for reasons other than to spread its revolution.
My other reaction is that democracy seems to be showing some life in the former fascist nations of Italy, German, and Japan, where it was imposed. Former Communist nations like Poland, East Germany, and the Baltic states seem to be doing well also. Arab citizens in Israel vote and hold office. Increasingly large numbers of Iraqis have turned out at the polls in each election; there is yet hope there. The fact that the Iraqi security forces are just reaching their full strength now, their training is almost complete, and some of the bad apple units are being weeded out, means that the coming months will see significantly greater pressure against the insurgents. There is a good chance that their fate will be the same as that of the Nazi Werewolves who terrorized Germany for a time following the surrender of Nazi Germany.
We probably still have invasion plans for Canada left over from 1812...
..... so the fact that they had invasion plans for Britain left-over from WWII and updated once-in-a-while doesn't really mean much.
My recollection is that the US dropped all plans for war against Canada in the 1920s or 1930s.
Up until recently, the DoD still maintained battle plans for a potential war against Britain.
I would love to see a source on this as I highly doubt that the US has had any actual plans for a war against the UK since the 1920-30s, if not before then. I would be willing to believe that the US had plans to invade the UK to liberate it in the event that a German invasion plan, such as Operation Sea Lion, had been successful, but that is war against Germans in the UK, not against the UK. I could possibly see there being a similar plan in the event that the former Soviet Union had dropped all six of its airborne divisions and added its couple of division equivalents of naval infantry regiments against the UK in a sort of super Red Storm Rising, but once again, this is war against enemy forces in the UK, not against the UK. I doubt that any plans against a German or Soviet occupation of the UK got past the formative stage, unless they were purely for exercises since the German threat passed and the Soviet threat was very unlikely. Or, have I been trolled?
Caspar W. Weinberger
UK The battle over the Falklands
1982 FALKLANDS WAR TIMELINE
Your treatment of the Suez Crisis is facile. While you pan the United States, I don't see that the Commonwealth was particularly warm to the UK action in the Suez Crisis either. In fact, a Canadian won a Nobel prize for inventing the peacekeeping force to help put an end to the crisis. Politically, Suez came at about as awkward of a time as it could have. The Soviets were intervening in Hungary, and the US was trying to garner support against that. Opposing the Soviet invasion while backing the UK/France/Israel invasion was at best a very awkward political problem. The US Presidential elections were a week away. You also neglect to mention that the Soviets threatened intervene on behalf of Egypt, and to attack London and Paris with rockets over Suez. The US's actions probably kept the Suez Crisis from spiraling out of control into WW3.
The entire US/UK Special relationship is pretty much a myth anyway
That is indeed a silly statement. To how many countries do you think the US sells Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, specifically Trident missiles? One: The United Kingdom. Who does the US share nuclear weapons secrets with? The UK. Who did the United Kingdom share the greatest breakthrough in armor technology in the last century, the Chobham armor that made the M1 and Challenger tanks practically invulnerable to most shaped charge attacks for a generation? The United States. Who did the US pic
TARGET SWITZERLAND
The Veil Controversy
France's Toll of Destruction
The 751 No-Go Zones of France
The New French Revolution
First, Didn't the neo-nazi youths have this title all wrapped up before there were violent games?
Back then, they weren't "neo-nazi", they were actual Nazis, or Hitler Youth.
There is some interesting original footage of various fascist (German, Italian, Japanese) youth activities in Capra's Prelude to War. It's eye opening stuff.
Actually, that's exactly what it means.
If you try to redress your grievances in any peaceful way and are told "no", then your right to do it is being infringed.
No, it doesn't. You have a right to organize, write letters, books and newsletters, build websites, make and distribute movies, hold meetings, make speeches, hold up signs, play music, march in public places, conduct various political theatre, and other related activities. You don't have a right to trespass, vandalism, sabotage, theft, arson, or a lot of other things that are done in the name of protest, even if nobody stops you and nobody uses violence against another person.
You don't have a right to break into nuclear weapons storage facilities and paint the warheads red, for example. You don't have a right to break into a jail and release the prisoners, even if nobody stops you. You don't have a right to take over the office of a public official and refuse to leave. You can try, or actually do, any of these things, but there will be consequences that aren't a result of simply protesting government policy or law.
Sure ...Come into my country and torture me with experimental technology, I'll be forgiving.
I'll bet you think that Iraqis preferred Saddam's methods of dealing with dissent, and even the way he ran Abu Ghraib, don't you?
When you give people a hand, they tend to be grateful.
I had pretty much decided that SUSE would be the distribution we would base all our new web/db/mail servers on owing to its combination of corporate support and ease of use.....
Now I'm back on the fence considering Red Hat or another distro.
So how did the corporate support and ease of use change? If you don't feel any FUD, then SUSE should be just as viable as before. Or is this just FUD of a different color?
Given the successes they are listing, I'd be a little worried. Jose Padilla struck me as sort of a failed terrorist wanna-be, and the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge was a non-starter
I get a strong impression that you didn't look at the first two links I provided. There are plenty of other incidents and convictions listed that are up and down the scale besides the Padilla case. Anyway, I generally prefer that we find terrorists while they are still "wanna-bes" and not after they have killed a lot of people, don't you? Padilla's plan to blow up an apartment building was both dangerous and required relatively little skill.
Also, the first time it is used at a US political protest, such as a GOP convention, there's going to be hell to pay......
This thing is, basically, a weapon of mass torture.
I guess you're right, so its back to the old standbys: riot sticks, tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets, and shotguns.
Is everybody happy?
....there is no non-agressive alternate use for this.
Sort of like the sidearms, clubs, chemical mace, tasers, and shotguns that the police already carry.
I'm all for nonlethal weapons when the other choice is killing people en masse. But in the current Iraq situation, all I can see in a device that causes pain without killing is a lot of hurt people wanting payback big time.
..... Oh, you weren't planning to do that? .... Never mind.
If that device was used to disperse them, then they should have left when they were warned. If they want "pay back", then they will have a choice to make, won't they? "Am I pissed of enough to die over this?" That does seem to be where you are going, and I doubt if many people will be.
Something like this could be perverted into a horrible torture device. To ever use something like this against a civilian population would be dubious at best. Doesn't the world hate the U.S. enough already?
You car could easily be turned into a weapon of mass murder. To even drive it near a crowd would be dubious at best, and to actually turn it into the crowd..... Doesn't your neighborhood hate you enough already?!? Why are you running over people!!!?
Since there have been 30-40 countries helping in Iraq with troops, the US probably isn't as hated as you think... at least outside of the circles I'm guessing you care about.
Lets trust the military! Because they have never mislead us before.
It is funny the way people think, isn't it? When Saddam was using the money from the Oil for Food program to buy weapons and build palaces instead of buying food, and ordinary Iraqis suffered, the so-called "Peace movement" blamed the United States for the suffering of the Iraqi people, and not Saddam for misspending the money. There seems to be a lot of that sort of thinking out there, kind of like the claim that Saddam didn't have ties to terrorists, even though he did, lots of them. Maybe they are just well meaning but badly informed, and only occasionally avert their eyes from uncomfortable truths. As to the military, I can't help but wonder if some of the problem comes from the people doing the reporting.
... If the army opens fire on a bunch of protestors ...
The power to simply inflict torture-level pain on people who have no broken any law without oversight or evidence is one of the most horrifying things I can thing of.
It it is being done to disperse an unlawful assembly (which is illegal = broken laws), it will be almost certainly be after one or more warnings, time to disperse, oversight by senior police officers, and I doubt there won't be any evidence. The right to seek a redress of grievances from the government does not translate into an unlimited legal right to protest anywhere, anytime, anyhow, and by any method you see fit.
Saddam had well established ties to a number of different terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. An officer in Saddam's secret police was even an Al Qaeda cell leader. You are dispensing disinformation.
There is plenty more for those interested in even just scratching the surface.
I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that."
They will be sharing more internally, cutting across organizational boundaries and through previous barriers, and not necessarily with the outside world.
We will often never hear of their successes, even when some of them are readily available. I'm astonished how often you read comments denying that there have been any terrorism arrests or convictions, and acting as if it was all made up*.
* And this doesn't even get into the fringe ideas worthy of debunking.
Put down your Heinleins and spend a little time trying to make the planet we will all live and die on a better place.
The world is much better off due to all of the technologies that were developed for the early space programs and the unexpected uses that have been found for them. I would expect that trend to continue with the new space effort.
Plenty of people already are donating time and money to make the world a better place, of course it would be even better if more were involved.
Some problems won't really get better unless we are persistent. The US occupied Japan for 7 years (and still has a presence there, not to mention Germany and Italy) and people want the US to withdraw from Iraq after only 3 years. They call for this despite the problems that would cause, and just when Iraq's internal security forces are reaching full strength, completing their training, and can start having a real effect on the situation. That makes as much sense as removing a cast from a broken limb when it is only half healed.
I would worry more about the new and future Congresses, and future presidents. After all, this is in response to President Bush's initiative to go to Mars, it will require a long term commitment to accomplish it, and some people prefer President Bush to be a "miserable failure".
FTA:
There will always be pressure to spend the money elsewhere, especially since the budgets for social welfare programs (social security, medicare, medicaid) are going to start ballooning* due to the retiring baby boomers. The politics on this will be brutal: "If you aren't for moving $5 billion from the moon base to put into social security, you are for tossing grandma out on the street to die." You should expect the media to perform to existing standards on this issue, and Washington is a place where simply reducing the planned growth rate in future year's budgets is decried as a cut in budget. President Reagan used to be regularly excoriated in the media over budget games like this, and the pressure on future administrations is likely to be worse.
Some things, like a space program, require long term commitments as it can take years to get anything useful done. During that entire time you are subject to accusations of waste and failure since you don't have anything shiny to show for all of the time and treasure being expended. Over time, a disaster like Apollo 1 or Challenger is almost inevitable given the technically challenging and inherently dangerous nature of space exploration. The time and treasure required, and the practically inevitable lost lives, will all challenge to our commitment to go the moon and Mars. Will we remain committed? Almost everyone will celebrate the victory of establishing a moon base, and ultimately planting a flag on Mars; relatively few will support the long term effort it will take to get there.
I am hopeful that we can accomplish it. The fact that other nations are heading into space and toward the moon will probably serve to increase support for it since the US won't want to be left out.
* The combined total of social welfare spending already dwarfs military spending, including for the war against extremist Islamist terrorists. Let us hope that moderate Islam starts racking up some victories - even if it takes some time.
... I suddenly remembered that mainstream journalists have been doing this for awhile now, so no worries. Falsify away.
Why not? It will make it easier to get pictures to go with their fake news.
"Reporting" hasn't been about "facts" in a long time. No one cares about "facts" any more. You're out of step with the times.
A timely observation.
Bush's War
Canadian Suicide Car Bombers??
This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.
I wish I could say that I've seen it in person, although from the pictures it doesn't look like anything I would go out of my way to see. It does look rather ugly. :)
I also won't argue that the situation isn't a pain. I hope that improvements in design, materials, engineering, and the security situation will eliminate the need for those measures. I will say that the US has, regrettably, accrued a certain amount of experience with what happens to poorly protected buildings when targeted by truck bombs. I will also say that if the US embassy is an unappealing target due to the protective measures, the people in all of the buildings around it will probably benefit in the long run. (Al Qaeda has called off attacks before when they had doubts about killing enough people for it to be worthwhile to them. They prefer for both the attacks and body count to be rather spectacular. The simultaneous bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 258 and wounded more than 5,000. I would hate for a similar attack to occur in Canada.) I hope Canada will not find it necessary to take such measures, but it may be coming.
Cheers
What also got to me while trying to get through downtown is how the embassy is allowed to eat up a lane of traffic for their precious concrete walls, as if there was ever a real danger in Canada.
... assuming the Canadian people are committed to arms and action. The Germans of yesteryear would not make that mistake.
Real danger? You mean like these fine Canadian Al Qaeda supporters? I doubt they will be the only ones to pop up given Al Qaeda's recent warnings and references to Canada. Al Qaeda underestimates Canada