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?"
Re:Possibly. (Score:3, Informative)
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."
Re:Obviously (Score:3, Informative)
Of course we are (Score:3, Informative)
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]
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
Re:Machiavelli (Score:2, Informative)
Welcome to one of the key reasons why some of the founding fathers thought political parties would erode democracy. And in a way it has. It's inevitable that people will organize for varied causes, and eventually band together to consolidate power, however what we have here in the US is sort of cycling monopoly, or a shifting duopoly, that has grown to stifle variety in political leaders and ideas. With out that variety, a Democracy's greatest strength is taken away, the ability to adapt to any situationally to any environment. And anyone who has studied how selfish evolution works knows what happens when any entity it is unable to adapt.
The ability for the government to adapt is the key asset that's seen us through every major obstacle in our nation's history. I'll refrain myself from going into detail here, but the most telling era where this advantage was tested was the Cold War. It was the Soviet Union's inability to change policies and adapt that was it's undoing. What's most frightening isn't terrorism from abroad, but political awareness from within, because we are currently headed down that very same path.
Long story short, Jefferson's and Hamilton's feud lead to the current Democratic and Republican parties via the current of our nation's history. Over the course of that history, those parties essentially invented their current stances of "left and right" to consolidate their constituencies and keep power. This is where the problem comes in, over the course of the 20th century, all other possible competition is weeded out, and after a relative period of peace after the Vietnam conflict, the meme of "left" or "right" views entrenched themselves into the American Psyche. That means that there's essentially only two answers to any given problem, the "left" one, or the "right" one.
We ether pull out of Iraq, or stay the course, you're pro-life, or pro-choice, for state run health care, or corporate run health care. This is the core problem with politics and policy today. The middle east crisis is an issue born out of policies that shaped both of these political memes, and there's no way to solve it by applying the same meme. But ballot laws designed to shut independent parties out, coupled with the successful proliferation of the left/right meme, have made it difficult to push any other view forward into policy.
I'm currently working on a thesis studying this phenomenon and possible alternative policies that can really fix issues with this. A good start is decentralizing political power in Washington. Anyone who has studied politics, social science, or selfish evolution's effect on social evolution should contact me to further discuss the issue.
It's a bit late for the current mid-term elections, however I hope to have this finished by the time of the next Presidential race and effect its outcome.
War on Cars, Nature, Whatever! (Score:2, Informative)
I'm unable to find a reliable source on terrorist-attack related deaths, but I think guestimating it at a couple thousand a year is (2001 excepted) more than high enough.
Each year 1.2M people get killed in automobile accidents, generally because either party isn't paying enough attention. A fair number of these deaths are caused by driving under influence. What do we need to wage war on? Alcohol? Carmanufacturers? Causes for sleep deprevation? (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_accident) [wikipedia.org]
Why aren't we waging war against certain factions in Sudan? And estimated 70K+ people have been killed there in the 'recent' (read 3 years) past of genocidal behaviour. Nothing gets done about that, either. (Source: http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/fs/2005/45105.htm [state.gov])
In 2005 due to natural disasters, more than 70,000 people lost their lives, so where is our War on Nature! (Oh hang on... We've already been doing that for centuries haven't we?) (Source: http://www.unisdr.org/disaster-statistics/introdu
The War on Terror doesn't exist. What does exist is random reactions to events that seem to shock people. What does exist is the ability to find excuses to spend more money. What does exist is the instillment of fear amongst a population (what you should really be scared of is crossing the road).
The War on Terror is played out in the media, not on a battlefield, and so far, as far as I'm concerned, the terrorists are winning. Even if it were just for the fact they've managed to seriously disturb people's lives (gotten into a plane recently?), managed to give politicians a way to curtail even more of 'our' freedom and cause considerable economic damages. Compare this to the actual amount of people directly impacted by terrorist attacks, and they've managed to score great result with fairly minimal use of force.
Splut.
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: Luke Woodham [wikipedia.org]:
And that's just the first two I found in three minutes of googling. Note that I didn't take a position here. I just thought we should have the facts straight before drawing conclusions.
Democracy NOW! (Score:1, Informative)
It's phenomenal growth can really only be explained by one thing: there are a LOT of people out there thinking exactly as Schneier is. We're sick of the mainstream media's obvious complicity, outright lies, and inherent idiocy. There is an alternative press that has been covering the real stories since before 9/11, and even moreso since. The alternative press, the "exception to the rulers", is doing what the media *should* be doing: pushing back, resisting, and showing the people what is really happening to their country.
I saw the host, Amy Goodman, speak last night, and she is really something. She brought up an interesting point: everyone remembers the terrible images of Katrina, everyone saw that disaster from the People's perspective. Why? Because the federal government wasn't even there. They were so negligent that they didn't even bother to send troops, and the side effect was that there were no embedded reporters! Goodman's point last night: imagine what would happen if we the People were to see the same level of uncensored images and raw, real new stories coming from Baghdad. Imagine if it were even for a week.
The mainstream media is not just failing us, it is a complete failure. It is a branch of the government now. The alternatives are out there. Let's defend our alternative news sources, whether it be fighting for Net Neutrality, or supporting local radio.
Re:This whole Buttle/Tuttle confusion was planned (Score:3, Informative)