Mooninites Pwn Boston
Feb. 2nd, 2007 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyI have no sympathy for the mayor and police command staff of the city of Boston, which managed to panic the entire city through mass hysteria. I have even less sympathy for people who think that sacrificing their freedoms on the altar of Government-Knows-Best will make them any more secure.
I believe that the War of Terror needs to stop now.
I am adopting the Mooninite as my logo for posts that involve the War Of Terror.
1/31/2007
Never Forget
I believe that the War of Terror needs to stop now.
I am adopting the Mooninite as my logo for posts that involve the War Of Terror.
1/31/2007
Never Forget
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 07:56 am (UTC)I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:11 am (UTC)Putting up black boxes that flashed.
Putting up black boxes that flashed in places where you'd put a bomb, potentially.
At any time, this would be bad. Worse, it is at a time when there are people that are seriously trying to kill us.
I'm putting it in the category of "piss-poor judgement", and that the Constitution isn't a suicide pact.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:21 am (UTC)Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:23 am (UTC)And, quite frankly, erring on the side of caution is a good thing. What if somebody nasty decided to piggy-back a bombing plot onto this...
There would have been better ways to have pulled off this kind of viral marketing. I can think of at least four.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:27 am (UTC)NYPD Intelligence saw the mess on CNN and called Turner Broadcasting, then Turner (after a legal crisis meeting, probably) faxed a letter to the city of Boston at about 1700. Apparently a Boston police analyst figured it out at about 1500 but couldn't get the city command team to believe him.
Small bombings happen. Just like car wrecks. You don't shut down a city because of a single car accident, any more than you do for a single pipe bomb.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:37 am (UTC)From some of the stories I've heard, Boston PD is lucky to get out of the rain some days. Let alone handle things competently. At least they're better than the New Orleans PD...
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:46 am (UTC)Boston screwed up and is now dedicated to over-reaction. Remember that cities run airports, and that Boston's city government probably feels some guilt about helping push the security screening down to its pre 9/11 low to shave a few pennies.
There was no attack. There was no hoax. Boston did it to themselves. What do you call a self-inflicted attack, other than stupid?
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:49 am (UTC)And that's if they were lucky. Too many laywers, we need to issue hunting licenses.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:56 am (UTC)We didn't crucify, sue or run the New York city government out of town on a rail . . . or for that matter, the Bush regime, despite its long ties to the Saudi oil regime and the soft-pedal on Bin Laden prior to 9/11. Remember that Clinton (yes, the draft dodger and womanizer) was trying to take Bin Laden out and Bush cancelled that entire effort. Also remember that 9/11 was the second Al Queda airline hijack plot as well as the second attack on the World Trade Center, and that a lot of firefighters might be alive today if the Port Authority had followed recommendations after the first bombing and installed radio repeaters to eliminate the many problems experienced with radio communications during the first and second attacks at WTC.
If it had been an attack, well, shit happens. People die. First responders do their best to be part of the solution rather than part of the casualty count. The crisis management people need to be inside the opponent's decision curve, figuring out how to outwit that second-stage attack and mobilizing both relief and reaction forces accordingly.
If someone wipes out driving a stock car on a slow, easy gentle curve at 35 MPH -- in other words, dealing with this would-be signage placement -- do you think they're a good candidate for race car driver in the Indy 500?
Boston completely and utterly blew it. And they know it. Here's hoping they have the guts to recognize it and do something about it.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 09:11 am (UTC)Remember, Clinton had at least two chances to take out OBL pre-9/11, and flubbed both of them. And, the 9/11 Commission was a white-wash of Clinton's intellegence failures, no questions.
Yes, the Bush family is close to the Saudis. How DID the Bush family make their fortune? Oil. What do the Saudi Royal Family control? Oil. What is our major energy souce (that we should be moving away from ASAP, and to nukes and solar and biodiesel)? Oil. At a certian point in certian circles, everybody knows everybody.
And, 9/11 caught all the "right" people by suprise. It was a fairly "low-tech" attack. It was done during a time when the response to a hijacking was to not resist and wait for rescue. It was expected that the terrorists would try to use their hostages to gain something.
And, in about 108 minutes, that changed...when somebody used a cell phone to call Flight 98. The next 9/11-style attack will probably see the terrorists swarmed under, because passive gets you killed.
And, yes, New York should have had the raido repeaters installed in the WTC. And a lot of other things done, too...but, like anything, the money had to be better spent somewhere else, like midnight basketball that was never used or to provide help for AIDS-infected sperm whales.
Boston had better learn from this balls-up error. Else they will deserve waht they get.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 05:56 pm (UTC)The problem with the State Department is that there is no consistent national policy for dealing with other countries, because at every election the policy changes. It is very difficult to play diplomat when not only the hand of cards but the rules of victory change so frequently.
The threat of Bin Laden and Al Queda was well known to the intelligence community since the 1990s. For Goddess' sake, the former head of CIA was Bush's father! Blaming Foggy Bottom is a red herring.
Operations fail. "Flubbed" is a harsh word. By that standard, we've flubbed at least thirty (30) post 9/11 attempts on Al Queda leadership and still haven't gotten Bin Laden. I can't blame Bush for that . . . hey, we're trying. My point is that pre 9/11, we stopped trying on orders from Bush.
The city budget of New York is not spent on that kind of corruption. It's spent on other corruption, such as open-ended civil service jobs and no-bid contracts to generous supporters of the party in power.
Not even trying is much harsher than failure. Waste when lives are in your hands is far, far worse.
I'm . . . irritated by the unnecessary loss of life in New York, but they're making up for it. In spades.
Let's see if Boston can learn from their example.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 06:25 pm (UTC)Yea, we knew that OBL was a problem, and during the '90s, Clinton wanted to gain a "legacy"-and another overseas intellegence failure a'la the Church Commission would have ruined that legacy.
I'm also convinced that we know exactly where OBL is-dead in a cave somewhere in Afganistan-and we just want to body to be sure. Having a corpse to point at make it a lot easier to say that we know he's dead.
New York gets a lot of money for the Federal Government. And, during the '90s, a lot of what had to be done in the form of repairs and upgrades to infrastructure (like, oh, the repeaters) were spent on "social" programs, like midnight baskeball and gun buy-back programs. Where the money probably would have gone better into upgrading police training (with shoot/no-shoot simulators) and providing better hardware.
The bidding corruption is, sadly, a part of anything involving civil government. The only question is how blatant it is, and if something is actually done right.
Boston should be learning, and I hope it is.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 09:45 am (UTC)I also think that if we live by that kind of paranoia, the piggy-back bombing idea, we have already let the terrorists win.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 05:38 pm (UTC)>> I also think that if we live by that kind of paranoia, the piggy-back bombing idea, we have already let the terrorists win.
Exactly my point. Yes, the emergency services have to think about some horrible and nasty things . . . but do we have to scare the children with them?
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 06:27 pm (UTC)Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:24 am (UTC)I feel no need to defend the marketers. They are guilty of poor taste and perhaps littering, if only their litter wasn't selling for $5K a pop on Ebay as we speak. Turner Broadcasting certainly is getting their money's worth.
The people who keep saying that the Mooninite signs were placed in places where you'd put a bomb . . . are idiots. They were placed for maximum visibility. They were not placed for density, for effect, at weak spots, or any place else you'd expect someone smart enough to make a bomb, to actually place that bomb.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact -- it is a guarantee of the rights of the individual vis-a-vis the enormous power of the state. The blatant and wholehearted sacrifice of Constitutional rights in pursuit of an illusory "security" that exists only on the far side of the grave . . . could be called a suicide pact, if it involved thought and not a herd of lemmings rushing off the nearest philosophical cliff.
Yeah, there are people seriously trying to kill us. They are pathetic losers. Stop showing them so much damn respect!
I don't stay up nights worrying about slipping and breaking my neck in the bathtub . . . and that is far, far more likely than my city being the target of a terrorist attack. I worry even less about being seriously injured or killed in an automobile accident, and on the numbers that is my greatest risk of death, far above enraged employee or armed robber and orders of magnitude higher than anything a tango, domestic or foreign, would be likely to come up with.
Thinking about it, I'm probably more likely to be beaten to death or shot by a cop than killed by a terrorist. Now that's scary. Especially in San Jose.
I never thought I'd have to tell a Republican to suck it up and get some courage, but that is what I find I must tell all of you.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:34 am (UTC)Poor taste, and poor placement...hell, poor choice of ad materials. Some of the video that I saw of placement included at the point of a bridge where the concrete and metal meet, and a few others that would be bad spots for a bomb.
Oh, I can agree with you about how bad the RIFs are at killing us. Once you boil it down, they tend to succeed-once. Maybe twice. Then, they get shot a lot...looking at the casualty rates of the various Arab/Israeli Wars and Iraq...I wonder seriously what exactly does most of the killing in Islamic armies...Western armies slaughter the RIFs in job lots unless the RIFs use things to keep them from being shot, like crouds.
You want a pack of lemmings? Watch the Democrats these days...the Republicans were bad enough, but it took them about twelve years to get really venal and corrupt. The Democrats are aiming for twelve months...and way too many of them have a tendency to insert their feet in their mouths up to the knees.
And, I am bucking up. And smiling. I think that the Democrats are going to make a case for a really good Regan Republican in 2008, easily...
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 08:44 am (UTC)The Democrats have a lot of house-cleaning to do to get rid of corrupt Republicans and their poisoned legacies.
It's hard to find a spot in a heavily urbanized area in which a bomb would not do at least some annoying damage. That's one of the things the bomb squad does -- figuring out where to move the bomb to that doesn't make the problem that much worse.
If one were to want to take down a bridge, one would need to know something about demolitions and about civil engineering. One would use shaped charges to destroy a structural support. A flat pancake is not a shaped charge by any stretch of the imagination.
Trusting a Democrat to defend your rights is like expecting the getaway driver to perform first aid. Trusting a Republican to defend your rights is like expecting the armed robber who shot you to perform first aid.
I'm merely . . . annoyed that my generation is selling its inalienable rights for a mass of Homeland Security porridge. In bureaucrat flavor, no less!
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 09:00 am (UTC)The Democrats are the poisoned legacy. The Republicans really just got infected by it.
And, Homeland Security sucks...my really big hope is that it gets better and less intrusive-using tech to cover where you need a guy with a wand set so he can really, really sweep the underwire bras of teenage girls (and, this guy should be fired. Out a cannon).
Honestly, I'm getting to this point where we might have to seriously look at control of the Moslem population...Google "BBC Mosque Video Camera" and there's a whole series on the BBC of "moderate" Moslem preachers that were advocating that Moslems act as if they were a fifth column in England and that the only true law a Moslem should obey is sharia. If that isn't a recipie for civil war, I don't know what is.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 05:46 pm (UTC)Running Hillary conceded 2008 to the Republicans. One reason I'm so savage on the subject . . . I don't see any hope in the situation, and this country desperately needs a moderate Presidency to stabilize what is left of the balance between Congress and the President and the Supreme Court. I don't see either Democrats or Republicans providing us the kind of moderate statesperson we need.
What exactly is so wrong with Hugo Chavez? I have my own opinions but I'd love to hear yours.
There will never be a successful third party in the USA because one of the two major parties will co-opt its platform just long enough to take over the leadership. I flog Libertarianism when I get the chance, but the game is rigged and the odds are poor.
Non-believers controlling Muslim populations . . . how do you think this is accomplished? We have two basic choices:
1) Western-style democracy in which we punish crime and co-opt a largely law-abiding citizenry of a variety of faiths
2) the apparatus of a totalitarian state in which thought-crime is ruthlessly suppressed, and the subjects are informed what they are allowed to think
Look around the Middle East. How many of our nominal allies fit category 2?
We are moving from 1) to 2) and it saddens me that I have to see this in my lifetime, and that there is little to nothing I can do about it.
Stupid people say stupid things. This shouldn't describe people whom we trust with our lives, our money and our rights . . .i.e. a government, "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
The real recipe for civil war is religious extremism. Fundamentalism scares me. The so-called Christian sort.
Re: I Disagree...
Date: 2007-02-03 06:07 pm (UTC)Hugo Chavez is one of those socialist politicians that is in the mold of Castro, Mao, Stalin, and Lennin. Hell, even Hitler (remember, Nazi has socialist in it...)-a man that wants the world to work according to his direct will and has no problems with generating as much blood as possible to get his dream to work. He's a messiah politician-one which thinks that he can save the world and everybody else is the devil if they won't march to his partcular jodie.
Liberterianism can't organize a kegger in a brewery. Between drug legalization (a non-starter for a lot of people) and their isolationism theories (which don't work when you can travel the world in less than 48 hours by plane), most of them tend to be wedded to their own political theories in a bad way.
And, the Republican base is upset-they aren't happy with their reskinned Democrats and that's one of the big reasons why the Republicans lost Congress.
Controlling Moselms...what worries me is that we might have to. A lot of studies from England-a place where you would expect the fabled "multiculturalism"-are indicating that a lot of the younger Moslems there are not integrating. They want to see England turned into a Moslem country-sharia, burquas, and all. The London tunnel bombers wern't fresh off the boat, but quite a few of them had jobs that were long-term and had been there a while.
I hate that kind of lumping. I know there are people out there that believe in Allah and honestly think that all the Osama Bin Ladens and their ilk can get stomped into the ground by a camel stampede-but they get shouted down for not being "True Moslems" if they say anything.
I have said this before, and I will say it again-there either needs to be a Reformation in the Islamic faith that allows it to play nice with the rest of us, or there is the serious question if we must consider Islam the same way as the Nazi faith-one that must be destroyed.
Woot!
Date: 2007-02-03 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 12:14 am (UTC)Good post-- I agree with you entirely.
On the further arguments... I think you're doing pretty well with those also. Personally, I think the Constitution (with Amendments) is a pretty good document-- so far, I don't see an excuse for all the violations our own gov't is trying to perpetrate upon it.
Finn