I can't imagine what it would be like to be a profiled minority.
It isn't really legal to profile minorities in the US, all travelers can get "the full treatment". O'Hare has long been a busy place with a bit of a reputation; I doubt that increased security has made it any friendlier.
And it also pissed me off that I had to show my passport to buy a drink (I'm 38).
It's called political correctness - it's not discrimination if we ask everybody, is it?
It sounds very much like just taking a connecting flight through the US could allow you to end up in custody, declared as an illegal combatant, and locked away.
Are you engaged in a plot to kill large numbers of Americans? Are you giving money to Islamist extremist terrorist organizations that are plotting to kill large numbers of Americans? Are you supplying terrorists with: weapons? documents? intelligence? Have you been hanging out on any battlefields and shooting or lobbing grenades at Americans? Have you been spending long periods of time in various countries known for training terrorists after proclaiming your allegiance to Bin Laden and your steadfastness in pursuing Jihad? Are you a Muslim extremist who demands that Spain be returned to Muslim rule, Israel be destroyed, and hang around with extremists Imams while having the occasional problem with weapons that you shouldn't have?
I realize it's unlikely, it's just eerie to know they believe that they can do anything they want.
Unlikely is an understatement. No, they don't believe that they can do anything that they want. That impression might be caused by not knowing American law, history, and the extensive but still limited powers of the US President, especially in time of war. I doubt that President Bush has done much of anything that President Roosevelt didn't do in the 1940s, and in many respects, far less.
.... and short of torture (which they defined in terms or organ failure and death)
The scary thing is that half of the people in this country would seriously agree with you 100%.
I suspect that many people in this country know of at least some of the terrorism convictions on this partial list from the FBI, and recognize that the recent changes in national security laws actually serve a useful purpose while having little or no significant effect on the vast majority of Americans.
I think the truly scary thing is that a large number of people in this country will deny that there is any threat from terrorists whatsoever despite the convictions, fairly regular fresh arrests, and continuing threats. Simply averting your eyes doesn't make the problem better.
Muslims removed from airplane when passengers found praying to be suspicious
The Star Tribune article that you link to is appallingly bad. Practically speaking it is closer to disinformation about the incident and why the Imams were removed from the plane.
Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.....
Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.
"That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. "They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane.".....
According to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials, the imams displayed other suspicious behavior.
Three of the men asked for seat-belt extenders, although two flight attendants told police the men were not oversized. One flight attendant told police she "found this unsettling, as crew knew about the six [passengers] on board and where they were sitting." Rather than attach the extensions, the men placed the straps and buckles on the cabin floor, the flight attendant said.
The imams said they were not discussing politics and only spoke in English, but witnesses told law enforcement that the men spoke in Arabic and English, criticizing the war in Iraq and President Bush, and talking about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
The imams who claimed two first-class seats said their tickets were upgraded. The gate agent told police that when the imams asked to be upgraded, they were told no such seats were available. Nevertheless, the two men were seated in first class when removed.
A flight attendant said one of the men made two trips to the rear of the plane to talk to the imam during boarding, and again when the flight was delayed because of their behavior. Aviation officials, including air marshals and pilots, said these actions alone would not warrant a second look, but the combination is suspicious.
"That's like shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater. You just can't do that anymore," said Robert MacLean, a former air marshal.
"They should have been denied boarding and been investigated," Mr. MacLean said. "It looks like they are trying to create public sympathy or maybe setting someone up for a lawsuit."
The pilot with another airline who talked to The Washington Times on condition of anonymity, said he would have made the same call as the US Airways pilot.
"If any group of passengers is commingling in the terminal and didn't sit in their assigned seats or with each other, I would stop everything and investigate until they could provide me with a reason they did not sit in their assigned seats."
It sounded very suspicious -- the numbers sounded fairly low (at the time) relative to other conflicts, but all I knew about other conflicts were casualties, which are always several times higher than the number outright killed.
You've got to be kidding me, there is little or no challenge in finding the number of killed in most US wars.
Yet those numbers weren't being mentioned, making it sound like a deliberate attempt to hide the larger and thus more depressing number.
So as we cross past the 3,000 mark of dead coalition soldiers, we have 46,000 non-mortal casualties. Not all of those are crippling injuries, but nevertheless we're going to be seeing a whole lot more soldiers like the one you met.
"...we have 46,000 non-mortal casualties. Not all of those are crippling injuries"? That is an interesting formulation. Why not just give the totals? Disease accounts for a big chunk of the total casualties you list. I expect that heat injury is a noticeable percentage of that, along with diarrhea, assorted infections and illnesses, scorpion, snake, and spider bites, etc. Anyone with something interesting is probably sent to the big US hospitals in Germany. What are apparently minor wounds account for another large chunk. Accidents acount for another chunk. Of the wounded requiring air transport, there is no indication of how many of them end up having relatively minor wounds, but it will be at least some.
15,015 Wounded - No Medical Air Transport Required
6,557 Wounded - Medical Air Transport Required
6,570 Non-Hostile Injuries - Medical Air Transport Required 17,995 Diseases - Medical Air Transport Required 21,572 TOTAL - WOUNDED 31,122 TOTAL - MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTED 46,137 TOTAL - NON-MORTAL CASUALTIES
This is an administration who thinks that ignorance is the ideal foundation for decision making. Bush deliberately avoids education, preferring to get talking points from his advisors.
George W. Bush a bookworm? White House aides say it's so. The born-again president's literary interests start with the predictable, such as his daily readings from the Bible. But he also enjoys books about Abraham Lincoln, his political hero, and, of course, yarns about baseball-in a past life, he was, after all, the managing partner of the Texas Rangers. Staffers say the president is actually engaged in an informal contest with White House senior adviser Karl Rove to see who can read more books this year. The latest score card has Bush ahead 60-50.A sampling of the president's reading list so far this year, according to White House aides:
Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb) Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky (discussing how polio affected the United States in the mid-20th century) The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky The Stranger by Albert Camus
* The Places in Between, Rory Stewart
* Quick Red Fox, John D. MacDonald
* Finding Fish: A Memoir, Antwone Quenton Fisher
* Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, Gordon S. Wood
* The Bridge at Andau, James Michener
* Through a Glass, Darkly : A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, Donna Leon
* Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History , Craig L. Symonds
* Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, David Maraniss
* Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, Richard Carwardine
* Hamlet, William Shakespeare
* After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader, Brian Latell
* Flashman at the Charge, George MacDonald Fraser
* The Dreadful Lemon Sky, John D. MacDonald
* Challenger Park, Stephen Harrigan
* Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
* Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, James L. Swanson
* The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, Leigh Montville
* Polio: An American Story, David Oshinsky
I think it unlikely that Rumsfeld had ever opened a book covering military history in his entire life.
Donald H. Rumsfeld was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20, 2001. Before assuming his present post, the former Navy pilot had also served as the 13th Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, U.S. Congressman and chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies.
People like Richard Perle seem to think that Iraq is an unfolding disaster:
The neo-cons - the architects of the ideology if not the actual war - are cutting loose like no one's business. They seem to think the war is going badly, and they're blaming the chimp.
I'm afraid you've been wilfully mislead in a blatant attempt to influence the election. No surprise there.
Richard Perle Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday's election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.
I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country.
I believe it would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq, as some are demanding, before the Iraqis are able to defend their elected government. As I told Mr. Rose, the terrorist threat to our country, which is real, would be made much worse if we were to make an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq.
I told Mr. Rose that as a nation we had waited too long before dealing with Osama bin Laden. We could have destroyed his operation in Afghanistan before 9/11.
I believed we should not repeat that mistake with Saddam Hussein, that we could not responsibly ignore the threat that he might make weapons of mass destruction available to terrorists who would use them to kill Americans. I favored removing his regime. And despite the current difficulties, I believed, and told Mr. Rose, that "if we had left Saddam in place, and he had shared nerve gas with al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization, how would we compare what we're experiencing now with that?"
I believe the president is now doing what he can to help the Iraqis get to the point where we can honorably leave. We are on the right path.
-- Richard Perle is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has served as chairman of the Defense Department's Defense Policy Board during this administration.
The rest is worth reading as well.
People fleeing Iraq today can come back, as they had been doing previously.
The violence in Iraq from Baathists, sectarian factions, and Al Qaeda in Iraq has risen to its current level over a period of time, and is currently killing about as many people as Saddam would have on average. They aren't really any worse off than they were before, but now they have a chance of arriving at a peaceful settlement and freedom.
The fact that Iraqi tribes are fighting Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda in Iraq has suffered 7,000 killed or captured in Iraq, is a hopeful development, especially since Al Qaeda in Iraq has been behind much of the more spectacular violence in an attempt to goad Iraqi Shia and Sunnis into civil war.
Don't tell anyone we can't win, we Americans hate the truth.
Well, some do anyway. I guess that explains why I see so few facts or reasonably correct assertions about the US and Iraq on Slashdot. As an added bonus, I also get to see plenty of "attitude" displayed here.
You've got that whole "with an attitude" thing down great, by the way.
This is not hard to figure out. I am not being overly dramatic here, and I ask you to look at the sources I am citing and consider what I am saying seriously.
OK.
These people basically have a centralized, facist mindset.
Which people are you refering to? I guess we have to dig.
All of this tracking and surveillance they are doing has nothing to do with watching Al Qaida and terrorists. What they want to do is what all totalitarian governments -- be they communist or fascist -- want to do: track everybody.
OK, so its not about terrorism, its about tracking people. So how do we know who is behind it?
Everybody had a number, everybody had a file. The same thing happened in communist Russia and in Iraq under Hussein. It's the calling card of totalitarianism.
Ah! The key event. Giving people numbers, and establishing files is the key! After all, you can't track and control people if you don't have numbers and files on them, can you?
So who was it that established the numbers and files, and when? Googling.....
Social Security numbers were introduced by the Social Security Act of 1935. They were originally intended to be used only by the social security program. In 1943 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9397 which required federal agencies to use the number when creating new record-keeping systems. In 1961 the IRS began to use it as a taxpayer ID number.
Here I was, thinking that we simply lived in a modern, bureaucratic state with social welfare benefits, and it turns out that it is all a secret plan established and repeatedly expanded by Democrats to number, track, and control us all! Insidious! Ingenious! And they just took control of Congress with promises to further expand social welfare programs! I thought that they were just beneficail social welfare programs, but your case that they are the road to totalitarianism is worth study.
Yes, we do need to be protected from Al Qaida and other terrorists, but not at the expense of the constitution.
Yes, that is a worry. President Roosevelt did directly threaten to pack the Supreme Court by expanding the number of justices to get them to stop rulling all of the social programs he was pushing as unconstitutional. That should have been a key tip off, don't you think? Clearly, President Bush is in the junior leagues when it comes to influencing the Supreme Court even if you assume the more lurid fantasies about his designs on the court are true.
Things are not bad yet, but they could go bad. Pieces are being moved into place that would give a dictator all of the tools that he would need to exercise incredible power. We are already seeing the media bullied, silenced, and propagandized. I guess the next sign of things getting worse would probably be disappearances and prominent people flee^H^H^H^Hleaving the country.
It is hard to get good information from the media about the war against the Islamist extremist terrorists, especially when the media uses imposters as "news sources".
Since appeasement alone is not a strategy. French authorities are keeping a force of some 50,000 riot police in permanent stand-by. A ministry spokesman said it is important to find "the good balance: not overreact to the situation, but at the same time, not underestimate it either."
A local prefect (a provincial governor) added: "In case of trouble, we will have to
Would the people that determine the known list of terrorists be the same ones who were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
That is very unlikely. Terrorism and Counter-proliferation are very different disciplines, requiring different knowledge bases and skills. WMD would be mainly CIA & DIA. Terrorism would be a different part of CIA & DIA, shared with FBI.
If it makes you feel any better, they did find a number of active, banned weapons programs in Iraq though, not to mention a few other surprises. It is clear that Saddam still had an interest, and was prepared to resume WMD activities as soon as sanctions were lifted. As to the actual weapons, maybe they really were all destroyed, or maybe they were transferred to Syria. We may never really know for sure.
Getting good intelligence on weapons development and counts of deployed weapons in authoritarian countries is a very difficult problem for intelligence agencies. It is by no means uncommon for major foreign weapons systems to be missed, their capabilities misjudged, or occasionally overstated. South Africa was an undeclared nuclear power for a time, and nobody actually knew until they announced that they had dismantled their weapons. China recently displayed a new type of attack submarine that took the US by surprise.
OK, there's three degrees of separation. You want to do the math and figure out what percentage of the American populace that includes? You still OK with this?
Well, lets take a look at this, shall we?
Al Qaeda: Members - Actual members of Al Qaeda Associates - Not Al Qaeda members, but are in direct contact to provide funding, equipment, reconnaissance, or other aid. Affiliates - Members of affiliated terrorist organizations, like The Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat
Communications among this group for the purposes of conducting terrorism is one degree separation from a terrorist, which is the relevant metric here. The population in the US that this accounts for? I estimate 2-4,000, maybe as much as 10,000. Am I OK with the government monitoring their communications? You bet.
If you want to add in volunteers, people in the US who are not members, associates, or affiliates of Al Qaeda, but who support their goals and are presently willing to engage in armed combat or provide material support to them (like these recently arrested volunteers), then the number is going to jump up quite a bit. I would think it is at least 10-20,000. Should they be watched? You bet.
As to the percentages, I'll let you work that out, but I'll give you a hint. The fraction is on the order of 1/12,000. Staggering, eh?
Oh, never mind. You probably think that you have nothing to hide, therefore you have nothing to fear.
No, what I actually think is that power of the government to conduct surveillance on members of Al Qaeda or people in direct contact with them for the purposes of conducting terrorism has little or no connection with the privacy rights of practically any Americans. Personally, I enjoy my privacy at least as much as the average person. Government surveillance of Al Qaeda members isn't going to change that.
What a nice little illusion that must be.
The word you are looking for is "clue", C L U E. This isn't rocket science, but you still need a clue.
And how do you know if a person is a terrorist? Obviously, by convicting him of it in a court of law.
Conviction in a court of law determines questions of legal guilt. It isn't necessary for making administrative findings or findings of fact. It also doesn't displace simple observation.
How do you know if someone might be a bowler? By finding them on a copy of the bowling league roster, watching them attend meetings at the bowling alley, maybe observing that they get bowling league newsletters or emails, finding records of sales of bowling balls to them, getting tips from their associates about their bowling habits, maybe a series of mysterious trips to cities hosting bowling tournaments, pictures of them at bowling camp, maybe postings on bowldot.org or participating in bowling chat rooms, maybe a guest in their house notices bowling trophies, or someone overhears them proclaiming the triumph of bowling over curling and death to all bocce ball players. What do you think?
If bowling was illegal, you would need a court conviction to punish them for bowling related activities, not to determine for administrative or intelligence purposes if they were a bowler, or associated with bowlers. Figuring out that someone is a terrorist, and punishing them for terrorist acts works pretty much the same way.*
Good grief.
* For the truly obtuse, I am not suggesting in any way that bowlers are terrorists, or that bowling is or should be illegal. Bowling is a fine sport of peace, love, and brotherhood. The world would probably be much better off if more people enjoyed a beverage over a bowling match. Just be careful where you toss those balls.:)
In all these years one can count the number of terrorist convictions racked up by the DOJ on one hand.
How is it that people keep getting this so wrong? Mind you, that link is only some of the cases. Good grief.
My question is, if W knows al queda's phone number, why doesn't he go and bust them?
One end of those calls is overseas. Some are mobile phones. Some will end in countries that don't cooperate with the US. In some cases they just might want to watch to see who they keep talking to. They might be periodic calls to / from a pay phone. I have no doubt there are many other reasons.
Who the heck are they listening to...?
Al Qaeda members, associates, and their affilates.
It isn't hard, but it does take a tiny amount of effort.
Remember Vietnam. An army can win almost all the battles it is engaged in and still lose a war for non-tactical reasons.
Yes, by all means remember Vietnam, since we are considering taking a similar path in Iraq. The US political process may again hand a victory to its enemies that they could not otherwise win on the battlefield.
Del Vecchio: One that comes to mind is the frequently heard statement that the US fought a war in Vietnam and lost. People take this to mean that the full might of the US was brought to bear on a small country with comparatively little military technology, and the small country won against all odds. This has fostered great insecurity among many Americans about our ability to accomplish military goals, which again tends to paralyze us in the world today. But the fact is that the US never fought a real war against North Vietnam, nor even fought with all possible resources and tactics in the South. We fought a holding action until the South Vietnamese had a chance to stand on their own. After Vietnamization and the departure from Vietnam of all US ground units, the South was in fact able to repel a very conventional invasion from the North, one that involved 200,000 men, hundreds of tanks, and artillery pieces superior to what we'd given the South. So we had in fact achieved our major goal. Clearly the South fell and there was a loss, and a failure on our part to support the South as we'd promised; but we did not fight and lose a war in the normal sense, and such a statement is misleading. .... Del Vecchio: Well, the US did achieve victory, in that by 1972 our troops were gone, the major cities and smaller provincial capitals were pacified, traffic went up and down the length of SVN safely, the once-powerful VC were a fraction of their former strength, and only the constant injection of fresh Northern cannon fodder and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail kept the conflict going. The crowning confirmation of our success was the destruction of the Easter Invasion by the North, when several divisions of the North Vietnamese Army charged into the South, complete with tanks, excellent artillery, and SAM missiles to down the planes of the South Vietnamese. After months of bitter and very intense fighting, the NVA had to retreat, having taken 40% casualties and lost almost all their tanks and artillery. The goal of the US was to help the South be able to defend itself, and the victory they achieved in '72 demonstrated that when properly supplied and supported, they could do that.
The terrible tragedy was that after '72 the flow of supplies from the US to SVN went to a trickle while the flow of supplies to NVN from China and the Soviet Bloc swelled to a torrent. Once Congress removed the President's power to even offer air support to the South if the North invaded again, the North knew they had the edge. They prepared very carefully for almost two years and then sent 20 full divisions into the South in a blitzkrieg that would have made Rommel proud. There were some valiant stands by SVN units, but in the end, the lack of supplies and absence of US air power doomed them.
The shame of it was that all we had to do was keep up supplies to SVN and promise the North that any invasion of the South would precipitate massive US bombing both of the invading forces and critical targets in the North, and very likely today Vietnam would be like Korea, with a communist North and a free and prosperous democratic South.
.... Nixon signed a truce in Vietnam and withdrew American troops. His goal was "peace with honor," which meant denying a Communist victory in South Vietnam. The truce was an uneasy one depending on a credible American threat to resume hostilities if the Commu
* the digital camera; * the lead-acid car battery; * crocodile clips; .... * the black hood.
If you end up in an "Abu Ghraib Hidden Level", you don't want to touch those things, they are a trap to catch bored, stupid jackasses out for a sick thrill:
"They were all acting together for their own amusement," said Capt. Chris Graveline. "There was no justification for what they did that night."
Graveline said the group took pictures of what they were doing "so they could remember that night, so they could laugh again at these men.... There's nothing funny about what happened at Abu Ghraib."
Harman, 27, of Lorton, Va., was the second U.S. soldier tried and convicted in the scandal.
During Tuesday's sentencing hearing, she tearfully apologized for mistreating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
"As a soldier and military police officer, I failed my duties and failed my mission to protect and defend," Harman said, her voice cracking. "I not only let down the people in Iraq, but I let down every single soldier that serves today.
"My actions potentially caused an increased hatred and insurgency towards the United States, putting soldiers and civilians at greater risk," she continued. "I take full responsibility for my actions... The decisions I made were mine and mine alone."
Several of the worst abuses photographed took place on a single day, Nov. 8.
In one of the most striking images to surface, a detainee jokingly referred to as "Gilligan" by the MPs was forced to stand on a box of food, with wires connected to his fingers, toes and penis.
Harman said she attached the wires to "Gilligan" and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.
"Why did you do this to the detainee 'Gilligan'?" a military investigator asked.
"Just playing with him," Harman said.
Also that day, MPs punished seven detainees they said were instigating a riot in a part of the prison outside Tier 1A.
The detainees were stripped and forced to the floor of the cellblock.
"Graner was placing them into position," Harman told investigators.
"How long did the human pyramid last?" an investigator asked her.
"The pyramid lasted about 15 to 20 minutes," she said.
It isn't the theoretical aspects of Marx that are important so much as the practical. In practice, off-shoots of Marxist ideology were responsible for killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last 100 years. Pound for pound, Marx's papers may be the most toxic substance ever created by mankind. I don't think that any Communist country has lasted more than 80 years yet. They generally implode, but only after causing almost untold misery and death. If we are fortunate, in the future Marx's theories will not only be unchallenged and unchanged, but also unused.
The snake (a reptile) has legs at the start of genesis, we know this as the punishment from god is to have no legs and slither on its belly, a snake with legs is a lizard and the bit with the apple and the tree was pretty terrible, so the snake was in fact a terrible lizard. A quick translation of that is "terrible lizard" so in fact the dinosaurs didn't become extinct it was just that god turned them into snakes.
So, basically you are saying that, in your view, the Bible says that snakes took a similar path, losing their legs, that science is now saying that the dolphin took?
I'm quite sure that most of these bastards had/have a religion, so while I agree with your point that religion has been used and abused to murder in its name, that does not mean that the opposite of religion (atheism) is the true cause, nor does the above rant gives any argument why and how atheism leads to mass murder.
Communism in most countries has been militantly atheistic, engaging in harsh suppression of religion and programs for the spread of militant atheism. The Soviets even established an All-Union League of the Godless and museums of atheism in former churches. (North Korea still executes Christians.) At the same time, Communism was responsible for killing about 100,000,000 people in the last century. There were even incidents of cannibalism in the People's Republic of China to prove your loyalty to the party, literally eating the rich. The brutality of communism was one that repeated itself from country to country to country. Stalin outdid Hitler in body count, and Mao dwarfed Stalin. As a percentage of his country, Pol Pot outdid Mao. The vile regime of North Korea is still engaged in horror after horror after horror.
How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders? Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?
There's no afterlife or later judgement so they're far more likely to think about the soldiers they're sending off to die.
The militant atheism of the Communists didn't seem to be an impediment to their killing 100 million people in the last century.
Anyway if they claimed to be humanist most christians would be completely unaware that it isn't a christian sect.
Secular humanist isn't exactly a mystery label in the United States. You might get some blank stares for Christian humanist.... maybe. Garden variety humanists will be assumed to be secular humanists.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't imagine what it would be like to be a profiled minority.
It isn't really legal to profile minorities in the US, all travelers can get "the full treatment". O'Hare has long been a busy place with a bit of a reputation; I doubt that increased security has made it any friendlier.
And it also pissed me off that I had to show my passport to buy a drink (I'm 38).
It's called political correctness - it's not discrimination if we ask everybody, is it?
It sounds very much like just taking a connecting flight through the US could allow you to end up in custody, declared as an illegal combatant, and locked away.
... and short of torture (which they defined in terms or organ failure and death)
Are you engaged in a plot to kill large numbers of Americans? Are you giving money to Islamist extremist terrorist organizations that are plotting to kill large numbers of Americans? Are you supplying terrorists with: weapons? documents? intelligence? Have you been hanging out on any battlefields and shooting or lobbing grenades at Americans? Have you been spending long periods of time in various countries known for training terrorists after proclaiming your allegiance to Bin Laden and your steadfastness in pursuing Jihad? Are you a Muslim extremist who demands that Spain be returned to Muslim rule, Israel be destroyed, and hang around with extremists Imams while having the occasional problem with weapons that you shouldn't have?
No?
So, why do you think they will be interested in you? They have real threats to be concerned about.
I realize it's unlikely, it's just eerie to know they believe that they can do anything they want.
Unlikely is an understatement. No, they don't believe that they can do anything that they want. That impression might be caused by not knowing American law, history, and the extensive but still limited powers of the US President, especially in time of war. I doubt that President Bush has done much of anything that President Roosevelt didn't do in the 1940s, and in many respects, far less.
.
I very much doubt that.
The scary thing is that half of the people in this country would seriously agree with you 100%.
I suspect that many people in this country know of at least some of the terrorism convictions on this partial list from the FBI, and recognize that the recent changes in national security laws actually serve a useful purpose while having little or no significant effect on the vast majority of Americans.
I think the truly scary thing is that a large number of people in this country will deny that there is any threat from terrorists whatsoever despite the convictions, fairly regular fresh arrests, and continuing threats. Simply averting your eyes doesn't make the problem better.
There has not been an al-queda attack on american soil since 9/11, this is absolute proof...
I think this list of just some of the terrorism convictions that the FBI has obtained is more persuasive.
Muslims removed from airplane when passengers found praying to be suspicious
The Star Tribune article that you link to is appallingly bad. Practically speaking it is closer to disinformation about the incident and why the Imams were removed from the plane.
How the imams terrorized an airliner
Marshals decry imams' charges
THE FAKING IMAMS
It sounded very suspicious -- the numbers sounded fairly low (at the time) relative to other conflicts, but all I knew about other conflicts were casualties, which are always several times higher than the number outright killed.
You've got to be kidding me, there is little or no challenge in finding the number of killed in most US wars.
Yet those numbers weren't being mentioned, making it sound like a deliberate attempt to hide the larger and thus more depressing number.
So as we cross past the 3,000 mark of dead coalition soldiers, we have 46,000 non-mortal casualties. Not all of those are crippling injuries, but nevertheless we're going to be seeing a whole lot more soldiers like the one you met.
"...we have 46,000 non-mortal casualties. Not all of those are crippling injuries"? That is an interesting formulation. Why not just give the totals?
Disease accounts for a big chunk of the total casualties you list. I expect that heat injury is a noticeable percentage of that, along with diarrhea, assorted infections and illnesses, scorpion, snake, and spider bites, etc. Anyone with something interesting is probably sent to the big US hospitals in Germany.
What are apparently minor wounds account for another large chunk.
Accidents acount for another chunk.
Of the wounded requiring air transport, there is no indication of how many of them end up having relatively minor wounds, but it will be at least some.
15,015 Wounded - No Medical Air Transport Required
6,557 Wounded - Medical Air Transport Required
6,570 Non-Hostile Injuries - Medical Air Transport Required
17,995 Diseases - Medical Air Transport Required
21,572 TOTAL - WOUNDED
31,122 TOTAL - MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTED
46,137 TOTAL - NON-MORTAL CASUALTIES
Bush's reading list: heavy on bios and baseball
Also making it onto his list
* The Places in Between, Rory Stewart
* Quick Red Fox, John D. MacDonald
* Finding Fish: A Memoir, Antwone Quenton Fisher
* Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, Gordon S. Wood
* The Bridge at Andau, James Michener
* Through a Glass, Darkly : A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, Donna Leon
* Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History , Craig L. Symonds
* Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, David Maraniss
* Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, Richard Carwardine
* Hamlet, William Shakespeare
* After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader, Brian Latell
* Flashman at the Charge, George MacDonald Fraser
* The Dreadful Lemon Sky, John D. MacDonald
* Challenger Park, Stephen Harrigan
* Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
* Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, James L. Swanson
* The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, Leigh Montville
* Polio: An American Story, David Oshinsky
I think it unlikely that Rumsfeld had ever opened a book covering military history in his entire life.
Oh, I dont' know about that....
DONALD H. RUMSFELD
The neo-cons - the architects of the ideology if not the actual war - are cutting loose like no one's business. They seem to think the war is going badly, and they're blaming the chimp.
I'm afraid you've been wilfully mislead in a blatant attempt to influence the election. No surprise there.
Vanity Unfair - A response to Vanity Fair
The rest is worth reading as well.
People fleeing Iraq today can come back, as they had been doing previously.
The violence in Iraq from Baathists, sectarian factions, and Al Qaeda in Iraq has risen to its current level over a period of time, and is currently killing about as many people as Saddam would have on average. They aren't really any worse off than they were before, but now they have a chance of arriving at a peaceful settlement and freedom.
The fact that Iraqi tribes are fighting Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda in Iraq has suffered 7,000 killed or captured in Iraq, is a hopeful development, especially since Al Qaeda in Iraq has been behind much of the more spectacular violence in an attempt to goad Iraqi Shia and Sunnis into civil war.
Don't tell anyone we can't win, we Americans hate the truth.
Well, some do anyway. I guess that explains why I see so few facts or reasonably correct assertions about the US and Iraq on Slashdot. As an added bonus, I also get to see plenty of "attitude" displayed here.
You've got that whole "with an attitude" thing down great, by the way.
OK.
These people basically have a centralized, facist mindset.
Which people are you refering to? I guess we have to dig.
All of this tracking and surveillance they are doing has nothing to do with watching Al Qaida and terrorists. What they want to do is what all totalitarian governments -- be they communist or fascist -- want to do: track everybody.
OK, so its not about terrorism, its about tracking people. So how do we know who is behind it?
Everybody had a number, everybody had a file. The same thing happened in communist Russia and in Iraq under Hussein. It's the calling card of totalitarianism.
Ah! The key event. Giving people numbers, and establishing files is the key! After all, you can't track and control people if you don't have numbers and files on them, can you?
So who was it that established the numbers and files, and when? Googling.....
Ah ha! Here it is!
Here I was, thinking that we simply lived in a modern, bureaucratic state with social welfare benefits, and it turns out that it is all a secret plan established and repeatedly expanded by Democrats to number, track, and control us all! Insidious! Ingenious! And they just took control of Congress with promises to further expand social welfare programs! I thought that they were just beneficail social welfare programs, but your case that they are the road to totalitarianism is worth study.
Yes, we do need to be protected from Al Qaida and other terrorists, but not at the expense of the constitution.
Yes, that is a worry. President Roosevelt did directly threaten to pack the Supreme Court by expanding the number of justices to get them to stop rulling all of the social programs he was pushing as unconstitutional. That should have been a key tip off, don't you think? Clearly, President Bush is in the junior leagues when it comes to influencing the Supreme Court even if you assume the more lurid fantasies about his designs on the court are true.
Things are not bad yet, but they could go bad. Pieces are being moved into place that would give a dictator all of the tools that he would need to exercise incredible power. We are already seeing the media bullied, silenced, and propagandized. I guess the next sign of things getting worse would probably be disappearances and prominent people flee^H^H^H^Hleaving the country.
It is hard to get good information from the media about the war against the Islamist extremist terrorists, especially when the media uses imposters as "news sources".
Where do you think people will go? Eurabia? It looks like France is in worse trouble than the United States:
That really depends on the playlist, doesn't it?
Do you think Slim Whitman would effect "Dear Leader" like he did the Martians?
*If* this is true (and we won't know without a fair trial) he deserves the usual penalty for treason.
A Pulitzer Prize?
Would the people that determine the known list of terrorists be the same ones who were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
That is very unlikely. Terrorism and Counter-proliferation are very different disciplines, requiring different knowledge bases and skills. WMD would be mainly CIA & DIA. Terrorism would be a different part of CIA & DIA, shared with FBI.
If it makes you feel any better, they did find a number of active, banned weapons programs in Iraq though, not to mention a few other surprises. It is clear that Saddam still had an interest, and was prepared to resume WMD activities as soon as sanctions were lifted. As to the actual weapons, maybe they really were all destroyed, or maybe they were transferred to Syria. We may never really know for sure.
Getting good intelligence on weapons development and counts of deployed weapons in authoritarian countries is a very difficult problem for intelligence agencies. It is by no means uncommon for major foreign weapons systems to be missed, their capabilities misjudged, or occasionally overstated. South Africa was an undeclared nuclear power for a time, and nobody actually knew until they announced that they had dismantled their weapons. China recently displayed a new type of attack submarine that took the US by surprise.
Kudos on the rhetorical device.
OK, there's three degrees of separation. You want to do the math and figure out what percentage of the American populace that includes? You still OK with this?
Well, lets take a look at this, shall we?
Al Qaeda:
Members - Actual members of Al Qaeda
Associates - Not Al Qaeda members, but are in direct contact to provide funding, equipment, reconnaissance, or other aid.
Affiliates - Members of affiliated terrorist organizations, like The Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat
Communications among this group for the purposes of conducting terrorism is one degree separation from a terrorist, which is the relevant metric here. The population in the US that this accounts for? I estimate 2-4,000, maybe as much as 10,000. Am I OK with the government monitoring their communications? You bet.
If you want to add in volunteers, people in the US who are not members, associates, or affiliates of Al Qaeda, but who support their goals and are presently willing to engage in armed combat or provide material support to them (like these recently arrested volunteers), then the number is going to jump up quite a bit. I would think it is at least 10-20,000. Should they be watched? You bet.
As to the percentages, I'll let you work that out, but I'll give you a hint. The fraction is on the order of 1/12,000. Staggering, eh?
Oh, never mind. You probably think that you have nothing to hide, therefore you have nothing to fear.
No, what I actually think is that power of the government to conduct surveillance on members of Al Qaeda or people in direct contact with them for the purposes of conducting terrorism has little or no connection with the privacy rights of practically any Americans. Personally, I enjoy my privacy at least as much as the average person. Government surveillance of Al Qaeda members isn't going to change that.
What a nice little illusion that must be.
The word you are looking for is "clue", C L U E. This isn't rocket science, but you still need a clue.
And how do you know if a person is a terrorist? Obviously, by convicting him of it in a court of law.
:)
Conviction in a court of law determines questions of legal guilt. It isn't necessary for making administrative findings or findings of fact. It also doesn't displace simple observation.
How do you know if someone might be a bowler? By finding them on a copy of the bowling league roster, watching them attend meetings at the bowling alley, maybe observing that they get bowling league newsletters or emails, finding records of sales of bowling balls to them, getting tips from their associates about their bowling habits, maybe a series of mysterious trips to cities hosting bowling tournaments, pictures of them at bowling camp, maybe postings on bowldot.org or participating in bowling chat rooms, maybe a guest in their house notices bowling trophies, or someone overhears them proclaiming the triumph of bowling over curling and death to all bocce ball players. What do you think?
If bowling was illegal, you would need a court conviction to punish them for bowling related activities, not to determine for administrative or intelligence purposes if they were a bowler, or associated with bowlers. Figuring out that someone is a terrorist, and punishing them for terrorist acts works pretty much the same way.*
Good grief.
* For the truly obtuse, I am not suggesting in any way that bowlers are terrorists, or that bowling is or should be illegal. Bowling is a fine sport of peace, love, and brotherhood. The world would probably be much better off if more people enjoyed a beverage over a bowling match. Just be careful where you toss those balls.
In all these years one can count the number of terrorist convictions racked up by the DOJ on one hand.
How is it that people keep getting this so wrong ? Mind you, that link is only some of the cases. Good grief.
My question is, if W knows al queda's phone number, why doesn't he go and bust them?
One end of those calls is overseas. Some are mobile phones. Some will end in countries that don't cooperate with the US. In some cases they just might want to watch to see who they keep talking to. They might be periodic calls to / from a pay phone. I have no doubt there are many other reasons.
Who the heck are they listening to...?
Al Qaeda members, associates, and their affilates.
It isn't hard, but it does take a tiny amount of effort.
Buying is easy, shipping is not.
That is, unless they plan to smuggle the goods into North Korea through the invasion tunnels they dug into South Korea.
Yes, by all means remember Vietnam, since we are considering taking a similar path in Iraq. The US political process may again hand a victory to its enemies that they could not otherwise win on the battlefield.
And the architects of the outcome?
* the lead-acid car battery;
* crocodile clips;
.
* the black hood.
If you end up in an "Abu Ghraib Hidden Level", you don't want to touch those things, they are a trap to catch bored, stupid jackasses out for a sick thrill:
Plus, you might not respect yourself:
for the things that you might do for "amusement":
It isn't the theoretical aspects of Marx that are important so much as the practical. In practice, off-shoots of Marxist ideology were responsible for killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last 100 years. Pound for pound, Marx's papers may be the most toxic substance ever created by mankind. I don't think that any Communist country has lasted more than 80 years yet. They generally implode, but only after causing almost untold misery and death. If we are fortunate, in the future Marx's theories will not only be unchallenged and unchanged, but also unused.
The snake (a reptile) has legs at the start of genesis, we know this as the punishment from god is to have no legs and slither on its belly, a snake with legs is a lizard and the bit with the apple and the tree was pretty terrible, so the snake was in fact a terrible lizard. A quick translation of that is "terrible lizard" so in fact the dinosaurs didn't become extinct it was just that god turned them into snakes.
So, basically you are saying that, in your view, the Bible says that snakes took a similar path, losing their legs, that science is now saying that the dolphin took?
Interesting.
I'm quite sure that most of these bastards had/have a religion, so while I agree with your point that religion has been used and abused to murder in its name, that does not mean that the opposite of religion (atheism) is the true cause, nor does the above rant gives any argument why and how atheism leads to mass murder.
Communism in most countries has been militantly atheistic, engaging in harsh suppression of religion and programs for the spread of militant atheism. The Soviets even established an All-Union League of the Godless and museums of atheism in former churches. (North Korea still executes Christians.) At the same time, Communism was responsible for killing about 100,000,000 people in the last century. There were even incidents of cannibalism in the People's Republic of China to prove your loyalty to the party, literally eating the rich. The brutality of communism was one that repeated itself from country to country to country. Stalin outdid Hitler in body count, and Mao dwarfed Stalin. As a percentage of his country, Pol Pot outdid Mao. The vile regime of North Korea is still engaged in horror after horror after horror.
How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders? Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?
This may also set new precedents for libel in print. Newspapers and publishers can now simply claim a piece was submitted by a third-party...
I doubt it, the role of freelance reporters and news services (e.g. Reuters) is well established.
The whole idea is that you know it's illegal, and choose to risk arrest and/or punishment anyway, because you believe the cause is just.
I wonder what cause he thinks he was fighting... if any?
There's no afterlife or later judgement so they're far more likely to think about the soldiers they're sending off to die.
The militant atheism of the Communists didn't seem to be an impediment to their killing 100 million people in the last century.
Anyway if they claimed to be humanist most christians would be completely unaware that it isn't a christian sect.
Secular humanist isn't exactly a mystery label in the United States. You might get some blank stares for Christian humanist.... maybe. Garden variety humanists will be assumed to be secular humanists.