And today I discovered the same sort of shit in the comments over at Making Light. *grinds teeth*
If the Brits found something worth shutting down airports over
Yeah. Heathrow is London's - Britain's - number one passenger airport, I think. So if they could have got away without grounding planes/cancelling flights, they would have.
Not that the pols aren't going to exaggerate the extent of the threat in the aftermath. And the US... well, let's just say I never thought any government in the world could make me glad to have our lot of chancers and liars and scoundrels. Because while Fianna Fáil might make hay while the sun shines, I cannot imagine them indulging in the kinds of shenanigans that the current US government is getting clean away with.
It helps, I suppose, that even the richest of them is at least an order of magnitude poorer than any US Senator.
The new security protocols? Sound and thunder, signifying nothing. karentraviss and grrm make good points. In fact, they've pretty much got it covered, between them.
I think the 'terrorists' are plain stupid, if their goal is fear and deaths, to be honest. Planes are big and flashy, with easily monitored points of contact along the landside/airside boundary. Why are they not targeting trains and shipping? Motorway overpasses, tunnels, shopping centres, universities. Make people afraid to go anywhere.
Though I've come to expect overreaction from the US government, and a method of thought that appears to approach fascism ('Here is our big bundle of rods. If you're very good, and very careful, and stay out of our way, you probably won't get hit. Or at least not too badly.').
The willingness to accept grossly inconveniant 'security measures' and a society that approaches the panopticon simply because some people might want to kill some of you, sometime (I suspect that firearms accidents have killed more people in the last six years in the continental US than terrorism, and the voices screaming for gun control seem to be either very few or very quiet) is... mad. That's the only word I have for it. I suspect the security measures on flights out of Britain will calm down once they start feeling an economic impact (irate businesspeople on the transAtlantic? Not so pleasant. Worse, no businesspeople, and a serious downward turn in the airline sector), but wrt the US, sometimes it seems to me as though your government wants its people to be afraid of everything outside their front door. I realise my view of the US is coloured by the news media and the blogosphere, but still. This is a very disturbing impression to be getting from the world's premier military and nuclear power.
But then, most of Europe has been living with the threat of terrorism for decades. The IRA, ETA, homegrown German neoNazis, similar problems though of a lesser extent in Italy and Greece, (and no one mention Cyprus, okay?) the French with their little Algerian problem... There are sensible precautions to take, and then there are precautions where the inconvenience does really outweigh the threat. Very rarely will a bomb threat be foiled at the point of delivery. If the explosives reach the airport, you've already lost. The old-fashioned way works best: policework, policework, more policework, and still more police and intelligence work in developing contacts, touts, and the human networks to stay on touch with what's going on wrt organisations, communities, and individuals.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 11:11 pm (UTC)If the Brits found something worth shutting down airports over
Yeah. Heathrow is London's - Britain's - number one passenger airport, I think. So if they could have got away without grounding planes/cancelling flights, they would have.
Not that the pols aren't going to exaggerate the extent of the threat in the aftermath. And the US... well, let's just say I never thought any government in the world could make me glad to have our lot of chancers and liars and scoundrels. Because while Fianna Fáil might make hay while the sun shines, I cannot imagine them indulging in the kinds of shenanigans that the current US government is getting clean away with.
It helps, I suppose, that even the richest of them is at least an order of magnitude poorer than any US Senator.
The new security protocols? Sound and thunder, signifying nothing.
I think the 'terrorists' are plain stupid, if their goal is fear and deaths, to be honest. Planes are big and flashy, with easily monitored points of contact along the landside/airside boundary. Why are they not targeting trains and shipping? Motorway overpasses, tunnels, shopping centres, universities. Make people afraid to go anywhere.
Though I've come to expect overreaction from the US government, and a method of thought that appears to approach fascism ('Here is our big bundle of rods. If you're very good, and very careful, and stay out of our way, you probably won't get hit. Or at least not too badly.').
The willingness to accept grossly inconveniant 'security measures' and a society that approaches the panopticon simply because some people might want to kill some of you, sometime (I suspect that firearms accidents have killed more people in the last six years in the continental US than terrorism, and the voices screaming for gun control seem to be either very few or very quiet) is... mad. That's the only word I have for it. I suspect the security measures on flights out of Britain will calm down once they start feeling an economic impact (irate businesspeople on the transAtlantic? Not so pleasant. Worse, no businesspeople, and a serious downward turn in the airline sector), but wrt the US, sometimes it seems to me as though your government wants its people to be afraid of everything outside their front door. I realise my view of the US is coloured by the news media and the blogosphere, but still. This is a very disturbing impression to be getting from the world's premier military and nuclear power.
But then, most of Europe has been living with the threat of terrorism for decades. The IRA, ETA, homegrown German neoNazis, similar problems though of a lesser extent in Italy and Greece, (and no one mention Cyprus, okay?) the French with their little Algerian problem... There are sensible precautions to take, and then there are precautions where the inconvenience does really outweigh the threat. Very rarely will a bomb threat be foiled at the point of delivery. If the explosives reach the airport, you've already lost. The old-fashioned way works best: policework, policework, more policework, and still more police and intelligence work in developing contacts, touts, and the human networks to stay on touch with what's going on wrt organisations, communities, and individuals.
And I rant. Apologies.