War On Terror

What he said:

And to finish:

Jim Downey

Man, I love the UK, particularly Wales. Have been there half a dozen times, and enjoyed it every time.

But I have to admit, the whole creeping and creepy 1984 mindset about CCTV there drives me nuts. The Brits are well on their way to being a true surveillance society. As I have written recently:

I am constantly dismayed by just how much Great Britain has become a surveillance society, to the point where it is a dis-incentive to want to travel there. In almost all towns of any real size, you are constantly within sight of multiple CCTV cameras, and there is increasing use of biometrics (such as fingerprint ID) as a general practice for even routine domestic travel.

Brilliant:

Man, it'd been awesome if the Pope had said, in that "Fuck, Josef Mengele is about to inject my eyeball" voice of his, "Shit, that really contradicts my image of a nation of bloated, reality show-watching materialists who don't give a rat fuck that their government tortures and murders, who would rather suck a horse's dick than actually help the poor, and who toast their TVs whenever they hear about the latest execution, but, hey, sure, George, we'll go with your description for the next coupla days."

Read the whole thing.

Bush & the Pope deserve one another.

Jim Downey

Man, I don't know which aspect of this news report is worse, the religious nuttiness or the authoritarian response:

Praying passenger removed from flight

Orthodox Jewish man ignored flight crew instructions during religious ritual

NEW YORK - A passenger who left his seat to pray in the back of a plane before it took off, ignoring flight attendants' orders to return, was removed by an airport security guard, a witness and the airline said.

The Orthodox Jewish man, who wore a full beard, a black hat and a long black coat, stood near the lavatories and began saying his prayers while the United Airlines jet was being boarded at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday night, fellow passenger Ori Brafman said.

* * *

When the man finally stopped praying, he explained that he couldn't interrupt his religious ritual and wasn't trying to be rude. But the attendants summoned a guard to remove him, said Brafman, a writer who had been visiting New York to talk to publishers.

If you know me at all, from personal experience or just from my writings, you might be a bit surprised to know that when I was a kid I was considered bookish, uninterested in athletics, a bit nerdy. I distinctly remember being pushed to close whatever book I was quietly reading, and to go outside and play 'like a real boy'.

Ah, great - the military has a new techno gizmo to use in the Global War on Terror: a hand-held lie detector! From the article:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

Oh my, it's worse than I thought. All I can say is... ew!

And please boycott Nike.

Hello, I'm reeling with a lot of new ideas gathered from you people, and this is a rewrite of my first blog entry which basically sucked.

Here's one of the main reasons I came here.

My brain was altered by the Methodists' "dogmagicians" starting when I was almost 6 years old.

Before then, my agnostic dad kept religion out of my life and off my back, but my mother couldn't live with herself, let alone anyone else, so she split and I got moved into her parents' home and church.

Something has to give, when the people you love and trust tell you with a straight face that a guy was killed and then a few days later, he woke up and walked out of the tomb and flew up to heaven where he's been hanging out ever since, waiting for the big day.

So what exactly is it that gives?

Kids in the cult I was forced into get the dogma drill around 5 or 6, by which time they've begun to feel good about their ability to figure things out for themselves.

Teen Says TSA Screener Opened Sterile Equipment, Put Life In Danger

James Hoyne, 14, has a feeding tube in his stomach and carries a back-up in a sealed clear plastic bag. Hoyne said two weeks ago a TSA officer insisted on opening the sterile equipment, contaminating his back-up feeding up tube which he later needed.

"I said 'Please don't open it' and she said 'I have to open it whether you like it or not. If I can't open it, I can't let you on the plane,'" Hoyne said of his conversation with the TSA screener.

TSA officials apologized to James and said they're looking into the incident to see what corrective steps need to be taken.

I'm a big fan of the TV series Foyle's War, with its excellent acting and attention to historical details. It provides a brilliant insight into what it must have been like in the United Kingdom during World War II, and shows both the bravery and the cowardice of a population under real threat from a superior enemy. In particular, those episodes set early in the war (during the Battle of Britain) show how the possibility of invasion by Nazi Germany pushed people to do both inspiring and dispiriting things, but mostly how the entire population just 'got on with it', coping with the threat and their fears pretty damned well.

Which is why when I read things like this, I just cringe:

Hundreds Evacuated from North Sea oil platform after 'dream' sparks bomb alert.

Sure you do. And now you can post those comments on the TSA's own blog: Evolution of Security - with the motto "Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part."

Well, at least some part of our government still believes in evolution.

So, what's the deal with this blog? From the 'about':

This blog is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process.

They promise that they'll allow any comments that aren't profane, abusive or political. Depending on how they want to define those terms, that would keep out about 97% of what I would want to post there. But maybe that's just me.

And of course keep in mind that anything you say may be used against you. (Well, OF COURSE I'm kidding about that. I'm sure the fine people at the TSA would never abuse their power in any way, shape or form, and have nothing but our best interests and happiness at heart. Seriously.)

Check it out, if you're brave enough.

Jim Downey

Try to wrap your head around this:

NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers

Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.

In what is no doubt more FUD about the War on Terror, an honor student at a Chicago-area high school was suspended and issued a citation for "reckless conduct" by the local police. Why?

For bringing his multi-tool containing a 2" blade to school:

CHICAGO, Illinois, Jan. 17, 2008 (NBC) -- Christopher Berger is an honor student at Grayslake Central High School.

He's also a choir singer, as well as a former football player who spends half the day training to be a firefighter.

"I've never even had a detention," Berger said.

His exemplary record now includes something new: A police ticket for reckless conduct given last week after school officials discovered a multi-tool flashlight in a jacket he left in the cafeteria. The tools include a 2-inch blade, screwdriver, pliers and other gadgets prohibited under school policy.

Let's start with a rhetorical question. Why don't we ever hear about Christian Terrorism on the news? Yes, I already know the answer but I would love to hear what everyone else thinks.

What I am referring to is a number of abortion clinic attacks in Albuquerque last month.

Two attacks occurred early Tuesday at two buildings belonging to Planned Parenthood of New Mexico, according to Albuquerque police and fire officials. An arson fire damaged a surgery center the organization uses for abortions, and the windows of a Planned Parenthood family planning clinic 12 blocks away were smashed, the officials said.

And-

The attacks came just weeks after the Albuquerque clinic run by a nationally known abortion provider, Dr. Curtis Boyd, was destroyed by arsonists on Dec. 6.

Intrusive governmental surveillance is a staple of Science Fiction, and was part of the horror of Communism during the Cold War. Just about every spy movie set behind the Iron Curtain showed it, and of course the fictional world of George Orwell's 1984 was predicated on a complete lack of privacy.

We do not live in a totalitarian society. I was behind the Iron Curtain during the 1970s for a brief period, and saw what it was like first hand. And say what you will, 1984 did not become a reality.

But we are living in an "endemic surveillance society". And it is as bad here in the US as it is in China and Russia. That is the conclusion of Privacy International's 2007 International Privacy Ranking. From the report:

That's the description applied to most of the Security Theater (Bruce Schneier's excellent term) nonsense at our airports by a commercial airline pilot writing at the NYT Blog Jet Lagged. From the piece by Patrick Smith titled "The Airport Security Follies", in which he discusses the fact that current security procedures are nothing but a sham:

No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings.

And:

. . . you have, you know, any doubts that waterboarding is torture, I direct you to this fairly amazing first-hand account of it. From the account:

Here's what happened:

The water fills the hole in the saran wrap so that there is either water or vaccum in your mouth. The water pours into your sinuses and throat. You struggle to expel water periodically by building enough pressure in your lungs. With the saran wrap though each time I expelled water, I was able to draw in less air. Finally the lungs can no longer expel water and you begin to draw it up into your respiratory tract.

It seems that there is a point that is hardwired in us. When we draw water into our respiratory tract to this point we are no longer in control. All hell breaks loose. Instinct tells us we are dying.

I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You [b]know[b] you are dead and it's too late. Involuntary and total panic.

On Monday nights for the last couple of months I've been taking a beer brewing class. That part has been going well. This past Monday we had an interesting discussion about the United States policies surrounding torture. Out of 6 people I was the only one who flatly denounced the practice.

My reasons for denouncing the practice are mainly practical. If the United States uses torture or condones others using torture we can't be outraged when it's done to our citizens and military personnel. We also can't wholly rely on the information gained because the person being tortured will say anything you want them to in order to stop being tortured. You also have to wonder where the torture train stops...If it's OK to torture "terrorists" will it someday be OK to torture criminals? Will we be outraged if a possible criminal suspected of kidnapping is tortured in order to recover a missing child?

The responses I got in class weren't, in my opinion, morally sufficient. What I heard most was, "Well, 'they' are cutting the heads off of our soldiers". I don't follow the logic and if that logic were applied more widely a whole range of behaviors becomes possible based merely on the fact that other people are doing worse things.

What do you think?

Man, you can't make this shit up:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking.

I notice that I've been writing a fair amount on civil liberties and the encroachment on them by the government thanks to the "War on Terror". I'm not really that obsessed with this stuff, but I just keep stumbling across things which should make anyone concerned.

The latest is an item I saw on Yahoo! this morning, from the AP:

AP: Firefighters help in war on terror

WASHINGTON - Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as American icons and infringing on people's privacy.

Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel don't need warrants to access hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, putting them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.