The terrorists have already won

[Avvocato Effetti]

Question?

What is the safest flight on the planet to fly?

The flight that Avvocato Effetti is flying or is a passenger on.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Question?

What is the safest flight on the planet to fly?

The flight that Avvocato Effetti is flying or is a passenger on.

 

[Zebo]

The US had a brutal war killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, held the Phillippines for a period of time until, realizing it had no reason to hold it, said 'oops' and got rid of it. What a fine example of justified killing.

So we confirm you too are approving of terrorism.

Now, you say the Holocaust was wrong when then was ok, why again?

There is nothing 'justified' about killing in mass (other than practical certainly no moral justification), I'm speaking purely of tactics. You want USA to end what you think is colonialism Kill about half of em and they will stop, convert to Islam or whatever else you want.

 

[Avvocato Effetti]

That's really clever, Hayinthebusa!


:biggrin:

 

[Zebo]

Her arms look like they'd provide decent lift.

 

[Avvocato Effetti]

Her arms look like they'd provide decent.

Decent what?

(will the PC crowd here allow us to laugh a a fat ugly broad?)

 

[Nemesis 1]

There is nothing 'justified' about killing in mass (other than practical certainly no moral justification), I'm speaking purely of tactics. You want USA to end what you think is colonialism Kill about half of em and they will stop, convert to Islam or whatever else you want.

Outside looking In watching the machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVNQM5jBhUc&feature=related

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Why stop at red lights? Is it fear of being t-boned?

Why lock your house? Is it a fear of someone invading your home and/or stealing your things?

Why wear clothes? Is it a fear of people laughing at your small weenie?

See. People constantly live in fear and it's too late. The cross-traffic, burglars, and weenie oglers have already won.

 

[Zebo]

Outside looking In watching the machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVNQM5jBhUc&feature=related

Hardy crazy. You just don't understand dialectics - one can think war is worst thing ever but still understand how brutal one has to be to win them. Sherman and just about any other successful warrior was like this. Were totally brutal and hated war.

 

[Zorkorist]

Of course, they may be crazy. Like El Lawrence.

-John

 

[Zorkorist]

It's outrageous what we let our Government do today.

Someone up there said that Dogs on a leash, sniffing his body. would be better than these pictures.

It's not which is better nor worse, it's only that you and I can be stopped on the streets and asked "paper's please."

-John

 

[Nemesis 1]

You mistake Fear for honoring other peoples rights. If you stop at a traffic light . Is it fear of being clipped . Hardly its common sense. Maybe one doesn't have any desire to be the reason for someone else sufferring.

I know many many people who don't lock their doors We are such people. If you steal from me I will track you down . Its happened once and the whole of my town knew it. I didn't need a cop. If You steal from my property I will track you down . That to happened once . and all new I did . No cops.

I wear cloths not because I ashame of my nakedness . But out of respect for others midguided beliefs. Not only that its -10 below outside.

 

[Vic]

The OP is absolutely correct.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Hardy crazy. You just don't understand dialectics - one can think war is worst thing ever but still understand how brutal one has to be to win them. Sherman and just about any other successful warrior was like this. Were totally brutal and hated war.

If your going to lead a people into war . Have the guts to be at the front or be the true coward they are.

 

[Zebo]

If your going to lead a people into war . Have the guts to be at the front or be the true coward they are.

I don't work for creampuffs. If anything I'd prefer the other side as I appreciate their tactics more.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

You mistake Fear for honoring other peoples rights. If you stop at a traffic light . Is it fear of being clipped . Hardly its common sense. Maybe one doesn't have any desire to be the reason for someone else sufferring.

I know many many people who don't lock their doors We are such people. If you steal from me I will track you down . Its happened once and the whole of my town knew it. I didn't need a cop. If You steal from my property I will track you down . That to happened once . and all new I did . No cops.

I wear cloths not because I ashame of my nakedness . But out of respect for others midguided beliefs. Not only that its -10 below outside.

/whoosh

 

[Vic]

Why stop at red lights? Is it fear of being t-boned?

Why lock your house? Is it a fear of someone invading your home and/or stealing your things?

Why wear clothes? Is it a fear of people laughing at your small weenie?

See. People constantly live in fear and it's too late. The cross-traffic, burglars, and weenie oglers have already won.

There's a difference between rational and irrational fear.

 

[OrByte]

Why stop at red lights? Is it fear of being t-boned?

Why lock your house? Is it a fear of someone invading your home and/or stealing your things?

Why wear clothes? Is it a fear of people laughing at your small weenie?

See. People constantly live in fear and it's too late. The cross-traffic, burglars, and weenie oglers have already won.

you weenie-ogler!!!

I lock my house because I don't want to let the monster that lives in the basement out to terrorize the city.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

There's a difference between rational and irrational fear.

Believing that there are terrorists who might want to blow up aircraft and kill innocent civilians is some kind of fantasy? How is being cautious irrational?

Besides, airport security is not about "fear." It's way more complicated than that. The statement that it's all about fear and therefore "The terrorists have already won." is ridiculous. It's simpleton logic used to utter a moronic soundbyte and nothing more, which is why I made up equally moronic statements to demonstrate how stupid it is in the first place.

If there's any "fear" involved it's fear of lawsuits and loss of political power. That's why airport security is the way it is and things surely haven't improved under the new administration. In fact, the latest incident will only likely make it worse.

 

[Vic]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/07/schneier.security/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Stop the panic on air security

By Bruce Schneier
(CNN) -- The Underwear Bomber failed. And our reaction to the failed plot is failing as well, by focusing on the specifics of this made-for-a-movie plot rather than the broad threat. While our reaction is predictable, it's not going to make us safer.

We're going to beef up airport security, because Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab allegedly snuck a bomb through a security checkpoint. We're going to intensively screen Nigerians, because he is Nigerian. We're going to field full body scanners, because they might have noticed the PETN that authorities say was hidden in his underwear. And so on.

We're doing these things even though security worked. The security checkpoints, even at their pre-9/11 levels, forced whoever made the bomb to construct a much worse bomb than he would have otherwise. Instead of using a timer or a plunger or another reliable detonation mechanism, as would any commercial user of PETN, he had to resort to an ad hoc homebrew -- and a much more inefficient one, involving a syringe, and 20 minutes in the lavatory, and we don't know exactly what else -- that didn't explode.

At that point, AbdulMutallab's fellow passengers quickly subdued him. Yes, the screeners didn't notice any PETN in his underwear, but the system was never intended to catch that particular tactic. There probably were intelligence failures -- why wasn't his father's tip followed up on, and why wasn't his visa revoked? -- but it's always easy to connect the dots in hindsight.

We're doing these things even though this particular plot was chosen precisely because we weren't screening for it; future al Qaeda attacks rarely look like past attacks; and the terrorist threat is far broader than attacks against airplanes.

We're doing these things even though airplane terrorism is incredibly rare, the risk is no greater today than it was in previous decades, the taxi to the airport is still more dangerous than the flight, and ten times as many Americans are killed by lightning as by terrorists.

In fact, we're focusing on the specifics of the plot, not despite these facts, but because of them.

The Underwear Bomber is precisely the sort of story we humans tend to overreact to. Our brains aren't very good at probability and risk analysis, especially when it comes to rare events. Our brains are much better at processing the simple risks we've had to deal with throughout most of our species' existence, and much poorer at evaluating the complex risks modern society forces us to face. We exaggerate spectacular rare events, and downplay familiar and common ones.

We can see the effects of this all the time. We fear being murdered, kidnapped, raped and assaulted by strangers, when it's far more likely that the perpetrator of such offenses is a relative or a friend. We fear school shootings, even though a school is almost always the safest place a child can be. We worry about shark attacks instead of fatal dog or pig attacks -- both far more common. In the U.S., over 38,000 people die each year in car crashes; that's as many deaths as 9/11 each and every month, year after year.

Overreacting to the rare and spectacular is natural. We tend to base risk analysis on personal story rather than on data. If a friend gets mugged in a foreign country, that story is more likely to affect how safe you feel in that country than abstract crime statistics.

We give storytellers we have a relationship with more credibility than we give strangers, and stories that are close to us more weight than stories from foreign lands. And who is everyone's major storyteller these days? Television.

I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying.

But that's not the way we think. The more an event is talked about, the more probable we think it is. The more vivid our thoughts about the event are -- again, think television -- the more easily we remember it and the more convincing it is. So when faced with a very available and highly vivid event like the Underwear Bomber, 9/11, or a child kidnapping in a playground, we overreact. We get scared.

And once we're scared, we need to "do something" -- even if that something doesn't make sense and is ineffective. We need to do something directly related to the story that's making us scared. We implement full body scanners at airports. We pass the Patriot Act. We don't let our children go to playgrounds unsupervised. Instead of implementing effective, but more general, security measures to reduce the overall risk, we concentrate on making the fearful story go away. Yes, it's security theater, but it makes us feel safer.

As circular as it sounds, rare events are rare primarily because they don't occur very often, and not because of any preventive security measures. If you want to do something that makes security sense, figure out what's common among a bunch of rare events, and concentrate your countermeasures there.

Focus on the general risk of terrorism, and not the specific threat of airplane bombings using PETN-filled underwear. Focus on the general risk of troubled teens, and not the specific threat of a lone gunman wandering around a school. Ignore the movie-plot threats, and concentrate on the real risks.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Fine. Let's bring it all back to how it was before 9/11. Then, when there is a failure the usual partisans can blame it all on the uncaring attitude of the current admin (psst, they'll doing that already) and everyone involved can sue the airports for not properly checking for shady characters.

After all, going back to lax standards won't stop those complaining from flying, will it? They'll happily jump on planes and won't utter a word of disdain, will they.

Of course, you know it won't happen that way. The very same people saying it's all fear and in our minds will be the first to make bombastic claims about how everything could have been prevented if we'd just have been a bit more vigilant.

You can't win arguing against those. They'll take whatever side is convenient to them. They are the real fearmongerers.

 

[Vic]

There's no going back to before 9/11. You miss the point and then some, buddy. This isn't about going back to lax standards, this is about the fearmongerers who want even more security even though our present security just succeeded. Do you get that?

 

[Vic]

dp

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

There's no going back to before 9/11. You miss the point and then some, buddy. This isn't about going back to lax standards, this is about the fearmongerers who want even more security even though our present security just succeeded. Do you get that?

Just one problem. I don't see any huge cry for even stricter standards from the public in general. What we are seeing is:

1) The usual over-hyping from the media.

2) The standard dog and pony show from the corporate interests and politicians who are reacting to that same media. How are they supposed to respond to media prompts? 'We aren't going to do anything about trying to prevent such further attempts?'

Let's face it. The plan failed. He had to jump through hoops in the first place to try to sneak his bomb through and when he tried to ignite it he was taken down by nearby passengers. That doesn't scream "FEAR" to me. The terrorists didn't fucking win. The douchebags lost this one.

 

[blackangst1]

Question?

What is the safest flight on the planet to fly?

The flight that Avvocato Effetti is flying or is a passenger on.

I would submit its the flight this guy is on: