Great article on terrorism over at Wired

samuelk said:
The fact is that we could make this country safer by closing the borders, putting police on every street corner and creating a mandatory 6pm curfew for all citizens.

But I don't think I want to live in that country.

When I was a kid, our playground jungle gym was built on a bed of gravel. Falling off that thing meant getting cuts and scrapes that every kid got.

Now, jungle gyms are built over soft rubber pads or sand.

Now playgrounds are safer, but kids are pussies.

100% safety isn't necessarily a good thing. A few cuts and bruises can actually be beneficial in the long run.
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Once again, look at WHY those things are in place. Liability. Fear of economic reprisal. We are our own terrorists. Lawyers and suing are far more terrifying to most than Abu Salami and his dagger of death.
 
j00d said:
the reference to hand cream and matches was just incidental and weren't the real focus of why the plane was diverted. apparently the women was just plain psychotic and the plane had to be grounded which was the usual procedure anyway before 9/11.
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What happen to it being a case claustrophobia?
 
samuelk said:
The fact is that we could make this country safer by closing the borders, putting police on every street corner and creating a mandatory 6pm curfew for all citizens.

But I don't think I want to live in that country.

When I was a kid, our playground jungle gym was built on a bed of gravel. Falling off that thing meant getting cuts and scrapes that every kid got.

Now, jungle gyms are built over soft rubber pads or sand.

Now playgrounds are safer, but kids are pussies.

100% safety isn't necessarily a good thing. A few cuts and bruises can actually be beneficial in the long run.
Click to expand...

you cannot extrapolate the security procedures in place now (which you yourself said was going to be loosened anyway soon) to what you've just described.

a plane is an enclosed space and once you're in the air, there isn't much you can do to stop someone on board that has smuggled the means to create havoc for the other passengers. so, in this instance, a whole lot of stuff has to happen pre-boarding to decrease this window of opportunity for a terrorist. that's just the way it is because it's a plane. the venue doesn't really apply in any way to our normal daily lives
 
So, what is the goal of Islamic terrorism anyways?

1) Rid the Earth of America and "the West"
2) If that's not immediately possible, then make their lives a living hell while figuring out how to accomplish the task.

So, how do we "give into terrorism"?
1) All of us commit suicide and let the new overlords have our shit
or
2) Walk around in a constant state of fear. I guess that's what they think is bad. If we are looking around all the time thinking someone might attack us and do something horrible.

Perhaps they haven't seen the crime rates in our United States. They are in direct competion with the gangs and criminals. My suggestion to the terrorists is that they first eliminate their competition over here. Then, we might be a tad more scared of them.
 
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KnightMare said:
When the story broke it was a case of claustrophobia+hand cream+matches=OMG TERRORISM
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dude but all that occured after the plane had taken off. the spokeswoman mentioned the articles in passing, but the media chose to take that out of context because they tried to force it to be more relevant, that's all.

now if the woman was strip searched and they tried to imply that her hand cream and matches were evidence of terrorist intent, i'd see how you might have a case, but the reality is that the spokeswoman was just stupid
 
Brasstax said:
So, what is the goal of Islamic terrorism anyways?

1) Rid the Earth of America and "the West"
2) If that's not immediately possible, then make their lives a living hell while figuring out how to accomplish the task.

So, how do we "give into terrorism"?
1) All of us commit suicide and let the new overlords have our shit
or
2) Walk around in a constant state of fear. I guess that's what they think is bad. If we are looking around all the time thinking someone might attack us and do something horrible.

Perhaps they haven't seen the crime rates in our United States. They are in direct competion with the gangs and criminals. My suggestion to the terrorists is that they first eliminate their competition over here. Then, we might be a tad more scared of them.
Click to expand...

There's the goal of terrorism and then there's the result. They're never one in the same. The result is to cause terror. That always happens. The intended goal is the one that the terrorists try to make happen through the universal result. Sure, they may have an ultimate goal like ridding the Earth of America (in the case of Al Quaeda) or "opening the eyes of our government" (in the case of Timothy McVeigh) but it never works. For some reason, terrorists don't realize that the universal result never achieves the intended goal.

Terrorism works in causing terror, but that's about it.

The ability of Terrorism to achieve a terrorist's goal is directly proportional to the ability of the terrorist's target to affect that goal.

In other words, crashing a plain full of lowly civilians isn't going to bring down the US government.

But it does make people paranoid and it causes the US to do things like invade countries that don't have anything to do with the original attack, thereby increasing animosity towards the US.

It'll never work 100%, but it does hurt.
 
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