Are we realy this gullible?
POSTED BY: oldenglanddry
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 01:53
VIEWED: 13731
PAGE 6 of 18
I don't think 'universal' information gathering works at all - AND we all give up our freedom with it.
I can see where investigating specific 'persons of interest' is an efficient use of resources. It's much better than trying to spy on hundreds of millions of people, potentially missing that one important data bit in the chaos of uninformative data.
However, I do believe widely-deployed, specifically-focused technologies could help, if used like RFID systems at store entrances. So airport X-rays and luggage and entrance sniffer-scanners (if they would put $$ into deploying them), container scanners and the like would help. They're basically non-intrusive and very focused on specific threats.
And you have to have an actual intention to improve security, rather than just raising a cloud of smoke (to hide you real actions in). So, for example, you'd need to tighten up sloppy hiring at airports, institute physical security like locked doors (what a concept !), and so on, to make the technologies meaningful. Otherwise, they would just be by-passed.
Of course there's a limit. Look at Israel, with the tightest airport security in the world. Could any country extend that security to ports, trains, buses, subways, utility grids, stadia and malls, schools and hospitals, highways and so on? (especially in a country lacking the basic energy resources for normal function.)
At a certain point the solution will be political. You can't just build a wall and try to hide behind it to be safe. It won't protect you from VERY determined people who might have missiles.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So after Timothy McVeigh, all purchases of fertilizer over a certain amount are recorded (I kid you not). Have we actually CAUGHT anyone since by monitoring fertilizer purchases? I doubt it. What has all of this snooping, spying, and list-making really gotten us?
Actually the fertilizer monitoring played a part in the investigation of the alledged Canadian terrorist suspects.
De-lurking to stir stuff up.
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the big problem is when does this "war on terror" end? eventually the term "terrorist" will conform to encompass anyone who is breaking a law; as a matter of fact, just as the Patriot act allows!
as technology becomes more advanced and micromanagable, at what point to we draw the line and accept a certain degree of risk? if we let fear run our lives, we are likely to hang a burdensome yoke over our heads
the government is apt and prone to go overboard to an extent which will undermine all free rights and liberties. at some point we need to make a stand!..especially if these instances of terror are engineered pretexts to usurp even more authority from our lives
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No,
We're not. I've run into no one so far who bought this last terrorist attack, including a guy who's planning to campaign for Condi '08. So, I think it's down to no one. Maybe Hero. I can count the entire republican community here as not-fooled, as well as the democrats.
The thing is, it's become a buy who cried wolf. No one would believe it even if it was real. It hasn't escaped my notice that the govt. of the UK is now actively trying to give terrorists ideas, as Rummy was doing over here, and Cheney also, a couple years back with the "oh they could poison the water supply, or load explosives in the landing gear." Irresponsible comments like that.
But sadly for the world conquering nitwits, our terrorist enemies are morons. They couldn't pull off 9-11 without inside help because they couldn't pull themselves out of bed. By which I mean nothing against arabs, it's just an observation of what we see. A quarter of a billion angry arabs should have kicked our ass by now, retaken israel, and establish a theocratic empire.
I suspect what's really happening is that smart people aren't joining the suicide army, they're flying off to Dubai and making deals. The random poor are emigrating to Europe, or coming here. This already *is* world war three, it certainly bigger than any since wwii, when you take in all the ME countries involved since the 1st gulf war. WWIII in the sand. Not a lot of reason to stay. They'll be flooding into Texas pretty soon. Maybe they'll join the guest worker program, or perhaps they'll set up in pakistan and become an outsourcing destination.
I guess what I'm saying is there's no way this isn't coming back and biting us in the ass, which we so richly deserve. But I don't know that that will be a terrorist attack. If I were an Israeli, I'd be leaving just in case.
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You see, that's what worries me.
They'll sit there and cry wolf so often that when some pissed off guy who knows what the hell he's doing decides to sidestep the highly politicized and completely ineffective security, boom.
We need professionals, not political favorites leeching off the public coffers who do the most halfass job imagineable, and I can SAY this because right up to the day of the accident, security was my business, my career.
What we got now is a buncha political appointees and favor-trade buddies feeling up peoples girlfriends and hassling obvious arabic folk while paying little or no attention to even VERY suspicious behavior by others, they're incompetent to the extreme, yet another alphabet-agency that soaks up huge amounts of tax dollars to do an inadequate or counterproductive job.
It wasn't so hot before, either, I've always despised wackenhut for the piss poor job they did of securing BWI - but we've seen no substantial improvement.
And, of course, while we're hysterically shaking down airline passengers to the skin, some cunning bastard is gonna slip over the rio grande with a stinger and use it from a nearby highway, golly gee whiz, didn't see that coming, did we ?
It makes ZERO sense to go paranoic on one spot, and leave a gaping barn door hole in another, it's almost like asking for it to happen.
And our intelligence agencies are too busy spying on US, to do their fekkin job, or, like the Plame incident, when their reports don't match the desired outcome, they're ignored in favor of bullshit that does.
SOooo in essence, we've *reduced* our security for a fiction that looks good on TV and in the polls.
Again, the gravest threat to our national security...
is our National Security.
-Frem
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Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:Quote:Um, you made these people up. Do you honestly believe that OED, or I--or anyone on this board!--believe that terrorist attacks can't happen? Why would you ever think such a thing? And better yet, why would you bother even replying if that were the case?
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Naive for those who think such terrorist attacks can't happen, or that folks aren't motivated to do such destruction.Quote:And you made these people up too.
Cynical for those who think that every time a plot is discovered or that a nation tries to fight back against the terrorist, there MUST be something ulterior, sinister going on here.
This is a favorite neo-con method of misrepresenting their opposition. People don't hate the Administration for a long list of specific reasons, oh-no, they just hate Bush arbitrarily. People don't suspect the government of wrong doing because the government has in their view behaved in an untrustworthy fashion, but because they simply don't trust the government outright.Quote:
You literally can't handle the truth. And because of that, you must invent an entirely new foe, while ignoring the one which has openly vowed to kill you and destroy your culture.
AU, why do you think that is? Why do you think I can't handle the truth? And how is it that you can?
No one has to invent the idea of government corruption and no one is advocating that our govermnent simply ignore the threat of terrorism. When you argue your point like this, I don't get the impression that you're remotely interested in legitimate debate or rational discussion.
HKCavalier
I was responding to the cynicism that the foiled attack on the airlines wasn't a legitimate one. I didn't make anyone up, they're posting right on this board! Oldenglanddry didn't believe there was any real threat, that somehow Bush/Cheney control the British Gov't to such a degree that 21 + British muslims could be rounded up and a completely made up charge of trying to blow up mulitiple planes was fabricated out of thin air. WOW, those guys are good!
Fact is, I can handle the truth because I understand that the muslim radicals would rather kill as many innocent people , along with themselves, instead of living in peace. Other's have not accepted that simple, clear fact, and instead accuse 'authority' of being the bad guys, and that Islmaic terrorism is a fictional vehicle by which control the people, remove their civil liberties and clamp down on their freedoms.
When folks are so compelled to dismiss the very legitimacy of the existance of such threats in the first place, and instead accuse the Gov't of 'making up' such plots as an excuse to takee away more of our freedoms, I can't possibly make up any of these people. They need only to post on this board, as they've done, and all I'm doing is replying. How you can't see that is beyond me.
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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I think what Hero and Rap can't understand is that we DO understand the threat- we're just not running around messing our pants because of it.
Seriously, five times more people are killed by air pollution- AIR POLLUTION- every year than were killed in the WTC. Ten times or more are killed by automobiles. 30,000 people are killed by guns. And cigarettes - even just secondhand smoke- will do you in more surely than terrorists. I could prolly say the same about Big Macs or food poisoning, except I haven't looked up the stats.
So it's not the possibility of death that troubles Hero and Rap, because there are plenty of risks in our lives, even risks that we didn't "choose" to engage. I think it's the whole idea that some people hate us SO MUCH that they see us as mortal enemy. Facing naked hate just seems to cause an awful lot of sphincter action.
Cheney, Rummy and all the big guys... they're not afraid like that. But they stoke that gut-roiling fear because it serves them well. It is far more to their purpose to pull out the bogeyman once in a while and make sure it plays big in the papers. SEE? WE SAVED YOU ONCE AGAIN!
And somewhere between the relentless fear-mongering and the cynicism that this breeds we have to find our own way to address the very real problem of terrorism.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Rap- Let me answer you specifically
Quote:Say, did the WTC shock and surprise you? If it did, then you're a Johnny-come-lately as far as I'm concerned to this whole notion that people hate America. I'd been expecting a major terrorist attack for at least five years before 2001. So don't tell me that I don't "understand".
Fact is, I can handle the truth because I understand that the muslim radicals would rather kill as many innocent people , along with themselves, instead of living in peace. Other's have not accepted that simple, clear fact,
Quote:Islamic terrorism is not fictional, but is is a vehicle to remove civil liberties. The question is- can we prevent terrorist attacks and preserve civil liberties? I believe the answer is "yes"... we have a whole system and series of laws and procedures to do just that.
and instead accuse 'authority' of being the bad guys, and that Islmaic terrorism is a fictional vehicle by which control the people, remove their civil liberties and clamp down on their freedoms.
The problem is, Islamic terrorists are bad guys and so is our administration. Just because you have one set of guys against another set of guys doesn't automatically mean that one set is "good" and the other is "bad".
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
HK:You're not listening to 'Hero'! Don't you understand, are you that naive? WE NEED to phone tap everyone everywhere, we can't be allowed privacy because we can't be trusted, don't you see?
If your talking to terrorists...you really can't be trusted and you should be tapped. Nobody else has anything to worry about.
H
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Quote:The more I hear "It's only the bad guys that have to worry!" the more it makes me laugh, or weep...
Originally posted by Hero:
If your talking to terrorists...you really can't be trusted and you should be tapped. Nobody else has anything to worry about.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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