Bruce Schneier Blasts Politicians, Media 562
An anonymous reader writes, "In his latest newsletter, security author Bruce Schneier delivered a scathing critique of politicians and the media for promoting fear and ultimately doing exactly what the terrorists want. Citing several cases of false alarms, Schneier writes: 'Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat... Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance
political careers or increase a television show's viewership.' Are the terrorists laughing at us?"
Machiavelli (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Machiavelli (Score:4, Insightful)
Where's the frontier where one can escape the thumb of large business and large government?
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy an island. Or maybe move to SeaLand.
As long as there is money, there will be greed and corruption. As long as there are humans, there will be a desire for power and control. Since the human race currently reigns the planet, and international cooperation is almost entirely based on money, all four (greed, corruption, power, and control) exist.
They also all feed off of eachother. Greed breeds a desire for power and money. Greedy desire for money breeds corruption. Corrupt people with reems of money can buy control and power.
What's interesting is that despite greed, and the desire for ultimate control, said corrupt greedy controling individuals DO ban together - if pushing forward the collective enhances the individual. So as corruption grows inside of a large group, it's bound to effect (often in a positive money sense) the individual seeking said money and power. As a group becomes more powerful, the individual gains more power inside the group, which gives the group and individual more control.
It's vicious, rampant, and all-too-difficult to keep in check.
So the idealism held by a few true blue men (the founding fathers) was bound to fail, as is any new government set up today. (Although, I should point out, or at least not pretend to deny, that almost all the important founding fathers were all men who held positions of power and control in said new government, and were all pretty well off financially too. Best way to gain control of a country? Make one up.)
It's the crux of why all governments fail - and the crux of why, despite how perfect it looks on paper, communism is a dismal failure as well.
The democracy... sorry... republic... in which we live (US) is, to many, the best that we have come up with as a species thus far. To which side it leans can be debated forever, and whether or not more socialism is a good thing is also debatable. But we're far from a perfect society, and I dare say that we won't see one... ever.
Or, at least not as long as greed, power, corruption, and money are in the equation.
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Insightful)
The important thing to remember is that things aren't the way there are simply because humanity willed it so. Our true blue, slave owning, whore fucking founding fathers didn't just get to draw up a consitution and the country birthed out of that and everybody went around respecting everyone. They ordered thousands and thousands of common people to march face first into the outstretched bayonets of our enemies. When all the boides were finally piled up and counted, more of their guys were killed than our guys, so we could call this place our own and go back to being eaten alive by bears and half starving to death until we recuperated enough strength to go on a murderous genocidal rampage against the people who were here when we arrived.
So no, buying an island won't do. You'll need a massive economy to produce airplanes and rifles and metal hats to ward off all your bloodthirsty neighbors. You'll then need to develop a culture that resists encroachment, otherwise you'll wake up one day and there will be shops on every corner selling shitty hamburgers and piping your money back across your borders, so that the hamburger vendor's homeland can pay for more machine guns to open up more markets to peddle hamburgers in so they can pay for more machine guns.
And if you discover gold or copper or oil or anything else of any conceivable value on your island, even sand, shoot yourself in the face in preemptive capitulation because someone will have already developed a cleverly named campaign, "Operation Friendly Help" or the like, that involves a boat the size of Rhode Island parking 15 miles off your shore and hurling bombs at you continuously for months on end.
Thing are looking pretty bleak for sovereignity in general.
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. does have the largest christian population [aneki.com], one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates [aneki.com], one of the highest divorce rates [aneki.com], one of the highest prison population rates [aneki.com], but that's nothing to be proud of.
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One surprise, USA is not #1 in TV watching. I was floored to discover we need 3.5 more hours a week to catch up with Thailand. Come on people, step up! USA #1! We're behind Egypt, damnit!
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There are balances to be stuck everywhere, and the US does as well as anyone else, better in most cases.
What is the criteria for success here? Happiness of the people is about as close as I can come to providing a real criteria, and the US is mediocre in that regard. There are certainly countries where the people are happier, maybe we should look at the balances they chose?
Re:Machiavelli (Score:4, Insightful)
So what? As long as there are humans, there will be love, gratitude, kindness, and self-sacrifice. You don't even need the humans; you can observe all of these behaviours in animals too. Any philosophy that tries to pretend that humans have no "good" attributes is just as nutty as a philosophy such as communism that tries to pretend they have no bad ones.
Well, of course not! But that's hardly the point. Making things worse is easy, making them perfect is impossible. But just making them better is not impossible, even if it's hard work. At this point, it would be progress just to stop making things worse.
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Informative)
Let's set the record straight.
Social Darwinism is a concept popularized in the late 19th century after Darwin published the Origin of Species.
It has no basis in Darwin's writing or theories, although it remained popular until after the Second World War.
Why is that? Because it was used as a scientific basis for racism.
So please, think of a better phrase for what you mean, or better yet, do some research in sociology before spouting about what was essentially science twisted for evil.
Refernece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism [wikipedia.org]
This whole Buttle/Tuttle confusion was planned (Score:5, Interesting)
by Robert Blumen [lewrockwell.com]
[amazon.com]We are living in Brazil. The future as foretold by Terry Gilliam's 1985 rich and multi-layered film masterpiece Brazil [amazon.com] is upon us. First released fifteen years ago, Terry Gilliam's Brazil was astonishingly accurate in forecasting political trends. In a previous essay [lewrockwell.com], I examined the film as a critique of socialist central planning. In this piece, I will discuss how Brazil portends Bush's War on Terror.
The world of Brazil shows a totalitarian society in which freedom has been forfeited for a false promise of protection from terrorist attacks. Gilliam shows how the threat of terrorism is manipulated by the state as a means of political control over the population. The threat of terror is created by the internal security police in order to generate public acceptance of totalitarian police powers.
Gilliam's exposition raises some important questions: Is the terror created by the power of the state in the alleged pursuit of terrorism worse than the terrorism itself? And are they really any different?
The ministers of state in Brazil have succeeded in creating a society organized around a continuous response to the threat of terrorism. Random bombings occur regularly. The protagonist Sam and his mother must go through a security check in order to enter a restaurant. And then during their meal a large explosion blows out the back of the dining room; they continue eating while bodies are dragged away.
As in modern America, there is some doubt about whether Brazil's "War on Terrorism" is really working. At the opening of the film Minister Helpmann, the Deputy Minister of information (the internal security agency), appears on TV immediately after a bombing takes place:
INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?
HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.
INTERVIEWER: But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year.
HELPMANN: Beginner's luck.
Now in the US, we are told by the Bush administration that the war on terrorism will become a more or less permanent state of affairs.
U.S. war may last decades [chron.com]
Military pushed to think broadly
By KAREN MASTERSON
WASHINGTON - The U.S. war on terrorism may rage for decades and has forced Pentagon strategists to think more broadly than they've had to since World War II, a top military official said Sunday.
"The fact that it could last several years, or many years, or maybe our lifetimes would not surprise me," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday on ABC's This Week.
The film has been reissued on DVD with commentary by the director in which he states that it was his intention to convey that there were so many government plants, double agents, agents provocateurs, moles, infiltrators, etc. that at some point even the government did not know for sure whether there were any real terrorists or whether all of the terror was fabricated by the police as part of their anti-terror campaign.
In a conversation between Sam and Ministry of Information office Jack Lint, Lint reveals how he - as a key member of the internal security department - understands the events that are taking place:
SAM: You don't really think Tuttle and the g
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I'm 100% with Bruce on this one, well said that man. For an appropriate response to terror tactics, see London during the blitz.
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Re:Machiavelli (Score:4, Interesting)
The only down side is that being stuck on a plane for 7 hours with the lavatory out of operation would have been quite far away from fun; particularly if there were small children on board.
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Are you saying politicians and terrorists are somehow... cooperating?
Surely you jest.
Not necessarily (Score:3, Insightful)
Politicians get the agreement on otherwise unpopular restrictions on civil liberties and freedom, in other words, control.
It'
Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Funny)
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Seriously, when I'd do a terrorist stunt, I'd do something small. And, for crying out loud, I would NOT attack military sites, and certainly not the Pentagon! The towers on the other hand were too big for a terrorist target. Hell, that thing is a landmark! Not some embassy. But let's imagine I want to hit a landmark, a symbol of America's freedom. Why the towers? Know what I'd blow up? The Statue of Liberty. THE key symbol that almost every
Winning Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians NEED the terrorist threats to push through legislation giving themselves more power. (If there was no threat, there would be no Patriot Act). They politicians may not like them, but it is the terrorists that enable the politicians. (Here is the redundant bit, but it proves the point:) When the politicians use the terrorist threats to gain said power, they are spreading the word of the terrorist, giving them more power..... thus fueling the terrorists ability to enable fear, and so on....
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The thing about terrorism is we didn't like it, but based on our reactions from the early eighties up until the Bush administration, we simply ignored it.
Everybody complains about the government taking too much power; but if it wasn't taking power one way, it'd be taking power another way (universal hea
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing illustrates this better than George W. Bush's citing Osama bin Laden's belief that "we are engaged in a third world war" to bolster his (Bush's) claims that the U.S. government needs to be able to ride roughshod over the fundamental liberties Americans have fought and died for over centuries.
When I heard Bush say that it suddenly made perfect sense: two sides, both of whom have an interest in a war that is by definition practically unwinnable. And the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth claiming the blitherings of a man hiding in a cave constitute a creditable attack on our world-spanning civilization. Neither is interested in victory. Both are interested in pervasive warfare and fear. That is what secures their own power-base.
It is time for the rest of us to say we are tired of this make-believe war that is only in the interests of the nutters who want to lead it. Ordinary police work has been and continues to be an effective tool for fighting the minor threat that terrorism presents. We know terrorism is a minor threat because major threats actually kill people, whereas death by terrorism was negligable in 2001, much less 2006.
Ordinary police work, within the strong framework of rights and liberties that is fundamental to Anglo-American law, and not "security theatre", is what has kept us safe for decades. And even depending on ordinary police work did mean we were a little less safe, I personally am willing to trade a little bit of security in favour of liberty for myself, my compatriots, and my children.
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> definition practically unwinnable. And the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth claiming the blitherings of a man
> hiding in a cave constitute a creditable attack on our world-spanning civilization. Neither is interested in victory.
> Both are interested in pervasive warfare and fear. That is what secures their own power-base.
This is well-described in the book 1984, by
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I'm not trying to invalidate your feelings or those of anyone else who was directly affect
Re:Machiavelli (Score:5, Interesting)
You obviously don't live in New York.
The USA can never kill all the terrorists without creating more, the terrorists can never seriously damage the USA, and neither side is likely to back down any time soon.
You can shove your little NYC victim mentality right up your arse. It's exactly that mentality that has allowed Bush and his cronies to drag the world into a "war" that's unwinnable by either side and results in wars, hatred, and an authoritarian wet dream.
Re:Machiavelli (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Machiavelli (Score:4, Insightful)
if (gotfirstpost == true)
makestupidfristpostjoke()
else
Case (topic = terrorism)
Bush is evil! America is evil! Terrorism is just an excuse to take our rights!
Case (topic = MS)
Down with the evil empire! M$ is the great, white Satan!
Case (topic = linux)
end else
Having actually read the article, I thought I'd talk about that. And I find that the contention that terrorist attacks are simply a means to an end, and that the end is terrorism, is outright stupid. You'd think someone concentrating on separating means from ends would be smart enough to follow the chain all the way. Terrorism itself is a means to an end. Let's keep this discussion in perspective. The ultimate goal is not to make airline passengers wet themselves, it's to bring down the American/Western Empire and instate a medieval religious empire founded on some perverse version of Islam.
If you focus on the corruption of US politics to the exclusion of that real threat, you're ignoring the rock. If you focus on so-called "islamo-fascism" and ignore the very real blights in US/Western politics and culture, you're ignoring the hard place. You have to keep your eye on both (a skill radicals from either side are notoriously deficient with.)
In addition, if you treat "terror" as the ultimate measure of the success of terrorism, then why not simply instate severe censorship? If the ultimate goal is to prevent terror - then just ban any reporting about terrorism. That's pretty simple isn't? Saying that the main objective of this fight is to not get scared is like saying that if you have to fight a grizzly bear, the only thing to worry about is not getting eaten. Not panicking is a great idea, but you might want to also figure out how to avoid getting eaten.
Obviously terror isn't the ultimate measure of this conflict. I don't want to be a US citizen living in safety without any fear if that means I've lost the liberties that made America America. And that's exactly what this article - implicitly - advocates.
The reason radicals like to fixate on one end of the spectrum or the other is simple: it makes the problem easy. Trying to figure out how to balance safety concerns and civil liberties, idealism and realism, is difficult. It doesn't lend itself to grand rhetoric, dramatic action, and so on. It's easy to die for a cause if you really believe in that cause, it's harder to actually find a cause that you can rationally support and continue to muddle through your life supporting that cause without the convenience of a world view that bestows black-and-white contours to your environment.
If you ask me, the real danger isn't terror. It's not civil liberties either. It's becoming what we face. And I don't mean we're all in danger of becoming radical Islamic fundamentalists. I mean there is a very real danger that the stressfulness and ambiguity of the present conflict will lead increasingly large numbers of Americans to radicilize. To seek emotional and mental respite from complexity by turning a blind eye to either the rock, or to the hard place.
That is the danger that we face. Because in reality we are between a rock and a hard place, and the only way to see this true is to keep one eye on both.
-stormin
there is no rock (Score:3, Insightful)
what threat from the actions of terrorists?? there is no real threat.
I dont have the exact statistics at hand but the chances of you or anyone else suffering from the actions of 'terrorists' are vanishingly small. You know this and I know this, ie more chance of dying driving to work in the morning,etc.
Al qaeda is nothing in the scheme of real threats that you face in your day to day life
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World War two was initially between nation states of roughly equal size and power.
Global Terrorism is the conflict between small dispersed groups of poorly equipped Islamists and the world's SUPER power. Clearly this is absurd.
Ok you say, at the moment the threat is small but it is growing (you have evidence of this??) and that if we dont stomp it out it'll rise up and destroy us just when our backs are turned.
Again, absur
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First, you say "dripping with dissent and nonsense", which trivializes the conversation. Second, the "regular demonstrations" you speak of are "regularly" removed [amconmag.com] (occasionally forcibly) so as to negate their impact. The right to free speech and redress of grievances apparently isn't as important as protecting your agenda.
Possibly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they're probably laughing. As we slowly give up our freedoms and rights bit by bit for some safety that nobody can prove we actually have.
I can quantify the infringements on my rights and freedom...can you quantify how much safer we are?
Re:Possibly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Every infringement you can quantify is another warm fuzzy feeling among the masses. Since fear is about the only thing they're in danger of from terrorism, they're safer.
Re:Possibly. (Score:5, Interesting)
And here is the irony of Franklin's dictum; it cannot be proved that we actually have some more saftey as a result of giving up rights, since giving up rights merely transfers the source of the threat from one party to another.
I have many friends and acquaintences who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, a few of them even cited for contempt of Congress. I have lived through the hottest phase of the cold war and the social termoil of the 60s; and for the first time in my life I find myself actually afraid on a day to day basis , not of the external terrorists, who are no more a real threat to me than they ever have been (and I'm a native New Yorker) , but from the internal terrorists.
KFG
Patriotism (Score:3, Insightful)
Forgive me if I seem obtuse, but what is so patriotic about voicing an opinion? I thought that patriotism was definined by a love and support of one's country/culture. If an opinion could conceivably be a contempt and disdain for one's country/culture (which many people certainly display), then how can that
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Remember? Why, yes, I had to deal with it just last weekend. I went on a one-day trip for a meeting and decided to only take my one carryon bag. I didn't take any toothpaste or deodorant with me since it would be confiscated anyways (I relied on the hotel for soap/shampoo). After getting to my hotel I spent an hour wandering around trying to find a place that even had any toothpaste or deodorant left. I sure am glad the TSA is keeping me "safe."
More than just aircraft (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a Canadian who works in the US. I'm also a former Regular Force soldier who is now a Reservist. Part of my baliwick at one point was unit Chemical Warfare Officer.
So I come to work the day after that particular announcement was made, and I find a group of my co-workers discussing a plan for the one guy who owns a pickup truck to stop off at Home Depot and stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape. The plan was to buy in bulk, and they were working out the details for how much to buy, how to deliver it, etc etc.
I wound up delivering a little ad-hoc class on the properties of chemical weapons to about 30 people, the high points of which were:
1) Yes, modern chemical weapons are ludicrously lethal. Exposure to as little as a pinhead-sized drop of certain nerve agents can kill you, which means that a litre of agent has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people.
2) The *reason* that these agents are so stupidly toxic is that **DELIVERY** of agent is really serious problem. It is so difficult to arrange exposure of soldiers to agent AT ALL that you need tiny exposures to be incapacitiating or the stuff just doesn't work. If you have (say) 300,000 lethal doses in a litre of agent, try getting a lethal dose of that agent to 300,000 people - it's a nontrivial problem.
3) The people who invested most heavily in this equipment (the USSR and the USA) had access to MONSTER delivery systems, and the targets were expected to be densely packed. We're talking hundreds of tubes of artillery, and aircraft-based delivery systems that for all intents and purposes were giant crop dusters. We're not talking a couple of litres of agent here; we're talking about tanker-truck quantities.
4) The primary military objective of chemical weapons isn't to kill the enemy; they are a nucience and area denial weapon. As soon as you deliver a chemical strike, you force everybody in the area to get into their protective gear - bunny suit, gas mask, "Boots, Rubber, Clumsy" which is a serious pain in the ass and interferes with combat effectiveness. A chemical strike can channel the enemy, slow him down, induce fatigue and stress, forces him to take time to decomtaminate - but it rarely inflicts serious casulties.
5) The golden example of this is the Sarin attack on the Japanese subway a few years ago. Of all the places in the world to do a chemical strike, that's the best - stupid high population density maximizes the exposure pur unit volume of agent, limited ventallation reduces the amount of agent burned off, few exits maximizes the time the target is spent exposed to agent, and the agent itself was reasonably modern.
It SHOULD have been a slaughterhouse, according to conventional wisdom. But in reality, the amount of casulties due to agent was tiny; they inflicted more casulties through panic and stampeding than due to agent exposure.
Chemical weapons JUST DON'T WORK unless delivered in huge volumes - and the ability to deliver in huge volumes is limited to large, well-equipped state armies. A chemical strike is well down the list of potential threats to the civillian populace.
A skilled and motivated sniper is far, far more dangerous than a dozen nutballs with a litre of VX.
The fact that the Department of Homeland Security was advising people to buy plastic sheeting to protect themselves against chemical attack is completely ludicrous... and while I have a hard time buying into anybodies' tinfoil-hat conspriracy theories (never assume malevolance where stupidity will serve) that sure looks like fear-mongering to me.
DG
Yes. Let's talk Pearl Harbor (Score:3, Insightful)
In 1941 our national leader was someone who had already declared that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. His message was not to be afraid and turn over our lives to him, his message was to enlist, to build Liberty ships, and to conserve gasoline.
We won that war, fighting suicide bombers (kamikazes) who had an entire nation behind them, in three years and eight months. We turned military victories into stable, free, and friendly societies. That's what Americans can do when yo
refused to be terrorized (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more afraid of the politicians than I am of the terrorists. I can't refuse to be terrorized by them, however.
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"We must remember that we have more power than our enemies to worsen our fate." From "It's Not Another World War [cato.org]" by Ted Galen Carpenter.
You can refuse to be terrorized by them. Get them out of power. Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo. If you care about your country you'll use them.
Are the terrorists laughing at us? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the problem is: (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, hearing about plots and arrests and suspects every week doesn't scare me. Just the opposite. It makes me feel like at least somebody's still doing their goddamned job. Maybe that's false security, bu
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Umm, didn't we just recognize the fifth anniversary of not catching those guys?
Re:But the problem is: (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, even though those guys did not have a way to make a workable bomb, they did manage to get my three year old daughter frisked and her lip gloss confiscated when we flew recently.
Did we win this one?
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Who did?
``When the bad guys don't pull off such an attack for a few years and all we have is warnings, we demand that the government "stop trying to scare us."''
Who demands that?
I think you will find that these are different groups of people. I, Bruce Schneier, and others have been warning against blowing the threat out of proportions since the get go. We've also been warning aga
Naive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just other we had Bill Frist, TN helping getting the wire tap laws to mean nothing.
Media.. (Score:2)
The article has alot of good information and seems to use alot of fact to back up what it is saying. I've only read the first porton of it, off to read the rest, hopefully it won't
The terrorists don't care about that (Score:5, Insightful)
1) they don't want the US to have such economic and political power over their countries
2) they are pretty miffed that the US supports Israel
3) some of them want Islam to be the dominant religion all over the world
4) they don't like the US propping up regimes that suppress their brand of religion
5) they don't like the US propping up regimes that treat their citizens inhumanely
6) they want to be taken seriously
7) they want to act on equal terms with the West
They don't care whether or not we are squandering our freedoms. That is a cop-out and jingoism that makes it seem like there are all these external forces that are causing us to give up our freedoms. It's a way of appealing to our nationalist nature instead of our patriotic nature.
We are losing our freedoms because we are letting it happen. Period. This has nothing to do with terrorism or terrorist wishes except that politicians on both sides use appeals to our emotions to take those freedoms away on the one hand and to lamely protest their usurpation on the other.
I have no analogy for this. It doesn't need one. So why do all these pundits keep spouting these hackneyed bad analogies? Because they don't think you're any smarter than that.
I think you're smart enough to see through it. It is my fervent hope that we (the true intellectual elite) can move this country forward without jingoism and without nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance.
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Good luck - without nationalism, you don't have a country to move forward anymore.
Re:The terrorists don't care about that (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, you have a world to move forward.
Then again, who cares about the filthy foreigners, right?
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I really don't see that changing anytime soon. Destroying nationalism is most likely just going to shift the loyalty hierarchy downwards, back to clan and family - entities that are notoriously difficult to "move forward". Why? Well, loyalty to everyone is loyalty to no-one. And that tends to be kind of a hard
Re:The terrorists don't care about that (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, sorry, I may be a moron, but I see no substantial difference between a clan and a nation.
Or a football[1] club, for that matter.
Nationalism cannot be "destroyed" - but it can be grown out of. Just as soon as people realise that many conflicts would be resolved more quickly if people weren't bickering like kindergarten kids about who started it.
Given the history of religions... no, nationalism will almost certainly never be destroyed. Or grown out of.
Except by the enlightened few.
</idealistic rambling>
[1] Soccer for you Americans.
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You are talking about 20% of the terrorist (Score:3, Insightful)
All those could not care less shit about "islam", "US support to Israel" and a few of your other points.
What I want to say is that because in the last 5 years the US was only attacked once by some ismlamist, you f
obviously (Score:2)
Re:obviously [AFTERTHOUGHT] (Score:2)
Are the terrorists laughing at us? (Score:4, Interesting)
Have they bothered attacking us in the last 5 years or so? Not really. They attacked some airplanes in other countries that were headed here, but that's about it.
I think that in itself tells us something. Either they are Running Scared, or Pleased As Punch.
They believe it is their duty to terrorize us, so I seriously doubt they are scared at all.
No, I think they are probably tremendously happy at how they've made us all cower in fear and totally redirected the majority of our President's efforts towards a completely unfruitful campaign against them and a huge backlash on us denying us the very freedoms we are supposed to be fighting for.
Go us! Whoo! -sigh-
parcel post (Score:3, Interesting)
Just the other day I went to Ausatralia Post to send a small packet. The postal folk wanted me to show them some photo id before they couold sent it. No, they didn't copy it or anything, just looked at it.
How absurd is this? Do they seriouosly beleiove any self respecting terrorist would not have some sort of photo id - even, just possibly, fake? And what in heck was mildly annoying millions of people sending parcels going to achieve?
The mind boggles.
I'm flying to London next week. Let me see
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Yeah they refused cash, because credit card allows them to legitimize me.
In 2000, in Australia all i needed to show to the Post office to collect a parcel from Amazon was the pink letter left by postman and some other mail addressed to me.
Prepare for Dental Scans and cavity searches if you want to board public tran
Wha...whaaaaat? (Score:4, Insightful)
what rock has this guy been under? I have never EVER met a journalist that was not out to further themselves at the expense of others. Every interview I have given or was with a friend or co-worker that was interviewed had their words rearranged and mis-quoted to "crank up" the drama.
Journalism has been pretty scummy for a long time, I guess that comes from the fact that if it's not sensational it does not get published.
Bruce is our canary (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't feed the spark, it goes out.
If you doubt this, look at other, more important issues (affecting much more than a few thousand people) that routinely die out in the press because they're ignored.
Not to hijack the thread, I'll give a tiny sample, and ask politely that you don't reply to the examples, just to the general principle
* Voting machine irregularities and bad faith at Diebold
* Retraction of whistleblower protections in the US Federal Government
* Increasing exemptions to the US FOIA
* FCC regulation changes making it possible for 2 media giants to completely control any given local market.
The impact of these little stories is far more interesting than which 10 or 100 people will be killed by a terrorist attack someday. As someone just recently put it, more people are killed every year by peanut allergies than by global terrorism.
The War on Peanuts awaits.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in America we just seem to roll over now and give up every bit of freedom we have. I mean, the airport screening officials even tr
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are the terrorists laughing at us? (Score:2, Insightful)
As a liberal (no, not the redefined american meaning*) I cry a little every day. People call for harsher punishment, more control and less freedom for the individual. So yes, the terrorists and the gorvernment are laughing at us, in unison. They use and need each other to control us, and they are succeeding at it.
(*) Redefined as americans redefined football to mean a game where you use your hands to play with a ball.
He has a point...perhaps everyone is missing it. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason the fear tactic keeps getting brought up is because there is something to be gained by keeping everyone fearful. The trick is to follow that intent and then maybe we can clearly see where we're being taken.
Security grandstanding (Score:4, Interesting)
No kidding. 6 months after 9/11, I accidentally left a box cutter in my jacket pocket on a flight to LA. Jacket went through the airport X-Ray scanners - it had nothing else at all in it. I left the airport, reached in think I had may wallet in that pocket, and found my box cutter. But, then again, I'm white.
The more you panic, the less effective you are. Thanks to fear-mongering politicians, our society is in a state of constant muted panic.
That whole "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" is actually right.
Don't feed the troll (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does Schneier Hate America? (Score:2)
Praise the Lord! If not for our great wise President, we'd all be speaking Islamofascist German!
Terrorism no longer needs to be physical... (Score:3, Insightful)
The best way the terrorists can win, is to simply not show up ever again. As long as there is no closure... no justification for our own irrational behavior, we'll continue to degrade ourselves until there is nothing left to defend.
People just need to get over it and accept that they can be wrong. The terrorists got the best of us, and our instinct is to take on a "never again" attitude. Until we lose this mindset, we'll just continue to scare ourselves into submission.
I'm laughing (Score:3, Interesting)
If they're not, I am. As others have said, every time we go apoplectic whenever someone leaves their briefcase lying around an airport or someone gets antsy because because the guy next to them doesn't have white skin and looks funny, I just shake my head.
It's one thing to be vigilant and try to prevent attacks. But when you force herds of people into lines waiting to pass through the metal detectors, you're just giving anyone whow wants to cause havoc a juicy target to hit. Forget the planes. I'd be worried about someone around Thanksgiving strapping themselves with explosives and standing in line with me.
Terrorists are just a replacement for the USSR (Score:4, Insightful)
I point the responsibility... (Score:5, Interesting)
I suggested to my mother that Iraq might very well be the victim of a strong power vaccuum once (or if) the US ever removes its presence completely from the region. My mother countered by saying that wont happen if we set up their democracy correctly. I asked her why we're setting up their democracy for them. She said it was because they deserved it. I said that may be well and true, but you can not lead someone who lacks their own motivation into a battle and then leave. The will and effort to change the government has to come from the people oppressed by that government, not someone else egging them on for change. That is not a true foundation for that people's government.
Also its my mothers belief that democracy will eradicate all terrorist activity. She said once all countries have a democracy that everything would be harmonic and peaceful. I countered by asking about countries with democracies that chose not to go to Iraq with the US and she countered by saying those countries didn't know any better. I then suggested that a government such as ours and a democratic but Muslim-faith-based government may never see eye-to-eye. She retracted to her previous point of democracy being able to eliminate all internal terrorism. I then name-dropped Tim McVeigh as proof of that theory.
My mom is one of many people who believe warrantless wire-tapping is fine. She says she has nothing to hide. I asked her to tell me her current checking account balance. She got angry and told me no. I asked why she would give me that information and she replied it was none of my business. Then I asked her to tell me about all the phone calls she made last month to anyone who wasn't in our family. She told me again it was none of my business. I asked her why it was none of my business yet she had no problem letting the government know all of that information?
She got this nasty look on her face and told me GWB is going to save this country.
Yay.
1 ticket to Canada, please.
Apologies for spelling and grammar.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For the first time in my 40 year life, I am proud to be a Canadian. We have a leader who doesn't spout mealy-mouthed political double-speak, and is willing to go in person to collect his citizens from danger.
However, there are still issues that you from the U.S.A. may find surprising. Such as a maniac marching up a Montreal street and into a school, shooting innocents as he goes, while the entire free public runs squealing before him.
I daresay that there are some areas of
Want to read some fantasy, then? (Score:3, Informative)
Someone should tell that to the people of El Cajon and Pearl Mississippi.
Granite Hills grads honor hero [signonsandiego.com]:
Wikipedia: L [wikipedia.org]
The view from outside (Score:3, Insightful)
From Canada, and certainly from publiations from Britain and Europe, it certainly appears that the terrorists have terrified the "United States".
That doesn't necessarily mean my american cousins, but it certainly does mean the government and press...
I fear more than the terrorist are laughing: friends and enemies both have lost respect for the US. Not a good thing.
--dave
Of course we are (Score:3, Informative)
It's called fear mongering (Score:4, Insightful)
what are y'all complaining about? (Score:3, Interesting)
American voters evidently like to be scared, and Bush is delivering. Boring politicians that merely want to take sensible defense measures, fix budget deficits, deliver health care, fit into the international community, and do not too much damage to the environment don't stand a chance in comparison.
live free or die! (Score:4, Insightful)
we americans have lost the VALUE of freedom. freedom USED to be worth dying for. that's the heart of the NH motto and also to the heart of what made america the SYMBOL of freedom across the world.
now, we are cowards who are afraid of our own shadows. and liquid substances.
we are also afraid of cameras! I am a photographer and I follow all the new 'restrictions' that the figures of authority have (decided on their own) to place on us. no more taking pictures of bridges or trains or buildings. "you could give info to the terrorists" is their reply. tell me - what can my photo give that google-earth doesn't already give?
I just don't accept the fact that taking pictures on public property (which is STILL technically legal) is 'helping the other side'.
anyway, it has to be said - a life lived in fear is no life at all. its NOT what america used to stand for.
there have always been risks in everything you do. you could get hit by a car if you cross the road. if the republicans had their way, they'd have road.nannies at every intersection "to keep us all super-safe". how much invasion in our lives do we need for the government to be a life.nanny for us all? can't we just assume the world is a very dangerous place (always has been!) and just deal with that as a fact of the modern world?
Poor reasoning (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, it starts off listing various events where planes were diverted or passengers forced to disembark. This means to imply that it is an overreaction to the bombing threat. However what it ignores is the media tendency to report on stories that have a news hook. Remember a few years back all we heard about was shark attacks, when in fact shark attacks were not any worse than at other times. In the same way, airline disruptions due to security threats are routine and happen all the time. It was just that they were being reported that week when otherwise they tend to get ignored. So right off the bat we are exposed to a false premise in this article.
Then we have his claim that by adding scrutiny at airports we are helping terrorists to win. Others here have debunked that well. The idea that a terrorist would think he is pleasing Allah by making Westerners take off their shoes unnecessarily is not only ludicrous, but actually insulting to terrorists.
This leads to this utterly bizarre claim:
Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up ten planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now.
To compare what is happening now to what would be happening if ten planes had been blown up is beyond comprehension. If that attack had happened we would see a reaction commensurate with what happened after 9/11. The disruption and effects would be 10 or 100 times worse than what we see today. People would be rounded up and arrested all over the world. New legislation would be passed that would make the Patriot act look like it was sponsored by the ACLU. President Bush would get his secret prisons, his torture laws, his secret police, his NSA surveillance. The world would be unrecognizably different from what it is today, just as much as things changed after 9/11. Suggesting that basically the same thing is happening now shows a total lack of appreciation of the magnitude of such an attack.
I'll mention one other issue. He says it's "doubtful their plan would have succeeded." But in the very next essay, he writes, "However, the threat was real. And it seems pretty clear that it would have bypassed all existing airport security systems." So which is it? Was it a real threat that would have bypassed airport security? Or is it doubtful that the plan would have succeeded? It seems that he shifts his position as needed to make his political points.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Somebody hasn't been paying attention.
KFG
Re:How Is This News For Nerds??!!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
To give a more complete answer to your rant, terrorism related, or rather "anti"-terrorism related news has become news for nerds. As technicially competant educated people, with not a small sprinkling of intellectual, Slashdotters are more likely to be aware of and engaged in the civil liberties debate, especially when it concerns technology being used to "save us".
1984 crops up in discussions a lot. That's because a lot of people on these boards have actually read the book. There's not a lot of internet forums you can say that about. Slashdotters are interested in what is happening to free society in the wake of the twin towers' collapse, even if you are not. To cap it all off, Bruce Schneier is a computer security super geek. His words carry weight.
As an aside, I'm willing to bet that a big factor in Slashdotters interest and in general opposition to anti-terrorism legislation, is the fact that many here had a hard time in secondary education and would rather not be stamped on again in the emerging neo-facist society. Once you've tasted the lash, you won't be so eager for flogging as others.
Re:How Is This News For Nerds??!!!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Animal Farm" sometimes seems more apropos. The real villains weren't the pigs, the ones who brought that society down were the sheep. What's the difference between "Four legs good, two legs baaad" and "Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on seriously????
Your analogy is flawed and not only wrong, but abhorrent.
You smoke cigars by Choice. No one is holding a box cutter to your throat and forcing you to buy a pack of Camels...
You chose death over life... then you DO deserve it.
I hate all this millions of settlements against tobacco companies now.
When the surgeons and doctors were shout
Metrics (Score:2, Funny)
Also, using military force against RJ Reynolds is unnecessary as the US already have military control of that area, and they only need to dispatch lightly armed police to shut them down. The army is for violence outside of the country, and the police for violence inside the country. Of course, if RJ Reynolds attempts an armed rebellion, that is likely to
Re:Repeat often (Score:4, Funny)
Spoken like someone who doesn't fly internationally for a living.
Re: (Score:2)
Though I don't fly for a living, I do fly around quite a lot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Repeat often (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider how many flights take off daily. Now compare that to the flights that get blown up by terrorists (include those that were allegedly foiled, to at least get more than THREE in the last 5 years).
And now answer me why you still cross the road without first making your will. Your chances to die are so incredibly higher that you should be afraid to even dare thinking of crossing roads. And we even allow our children to do that! Would someone PLEASE think of the children?
The rest of the quote: (Score:2)
Pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet it's amazing how often those of us who think this way get called "pussies" or worse by conservatives who themselves are hiding under their beds trembling in fear, begging Daddy Government to please take all of our rights and liberties if that's what it takes to keep the Boogie Man at bay for one more night.
Makes you wonder who the real "pussies" are...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Once again, most people agree on the problem, but merely have different ways to approach it. Can you tell me what essential liberties YOU have lost since 9/11?
Now, I have actually heard with my own ears some conservative pundit say something like "isn't it worth it to just give up a little bit of one of your constitutional rights if it ens
Re:Pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, in the giant scheme of things, I don't fucking care about 9/11, I don't fucking care about the two towers, and I don't fucking care about the pentagon. A few thousand people died in a country of about three hundred million. Whoopdifuckingdoo. About 460 thousand people died of heart attacks in 1998 - where the fuck is our War on Candy Bars and Whoppers, huh?
It was a rhetorical question; don't bother answering it. Obviously you try to stop terrorists, just as you try to stop anything that kills people. But we're more worried about a bomb on a subway than we are of dying in a car crash because some jackass is drunk driving. As if that bomb is going to kill you any more dead than an idiot in a pickup truck. It's fucking retarded.
We've lost any and all sense of context with this whole "War on Terror" bullshit. I'm not saying Democrats have the answer, but I know for sure that Republicans don't. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure anyone in a government position does. All-in-all, I find them uniquely suited to be completely incapable of figuring out how best to deal with this. But when given a choice between an asshole dropping bombs and an asshole banging an intern and not doing much of anything else, I'd rather have the latter.
The real sad thing is all I really want is a viable choice. You know, someone who isn't a complete tool. (Note: Don't even bother babbling about the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. I've scoped both of them out. They're just as bad - just in different ways. Think of the differences between giant logs of poop and green mushy piles of poop. No matter how you look at it, you're still shit.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have the biggest government in the world, that is the most in debt, and violating more of the constitution than ever before.
How's that 'conservative', or Republican?
It sounds like you're hiding your head in the sand, blaming the problems of your party on anything that disagrees with what's actually happening in your effort to deny that Republicans in office have completly lost their ideals.
In regard
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps for the politicians. But not for security analysts like Bruce, or for the many people with security-related jobs inside the government.
And it shouldn't be for a gang of high-tech "nerds" like us. Instead of the usual political flameage, we should be behaving like the geeks we claim to be. We should be discussing how we can use our high tech to expose and interfere with both the terrorists and the politicians who are trying to take advantage of it and push us back into authoritarian societies with them in charge.
With the Internet, we have the best tool yet for tracking and exposing the people like bin Laden, Bush and Blair (and Cheney and Rumsfeld and
The growing importance of the political blogs is a good sign. But they're mostly journalist types; they really could use the help of us techie nerd types to develop tools for exposing the political and religious types, and for blocking their attempts to control our communications.
So get to work out there. For a few fun reads on the topic, google for "sousveillance".
Three questions for you (Score:5, Insightful)
- How many Americans died from terrorist attacks in 2001?
- How many Americans died from natural disasters in 2001?
- Where did the government spend more money keeping us safe?
If you want some help answering these questions, see this article [ieee.org].I'm not trying to lessen the seriousness of 9/11. It was a very serious attack that demanded our attention. However, there are lots of other serious issues that also demand our attention.