[rescue] Airport Security and Rescues...

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> I don't understand. Do you think that the only thing they can do is
> to have cleaners hide box cutters? In the late 1990's a Pakastani
> tested a binary explosive built on the airplane bomb in the Philipines.

My point is that we don't have a widespread problem with terrorism.
We've had -one- major incident involving a US airline in quite a number
of years.  We don't need Israel's level of security, and we certainly
don't need the TSA's pretend security.

> He was stopped because he pissed off the superintendent of his
> apartment building who called the police on him. He escaped out the
> window as they were banging on his door. If he had not been stopped he
> would brought U.S. flights to Asia to a stop for weeks if not months.
>
> He later resurfaced last summer with a much larger plot to blow up
> airplanes over the Atlantic ocean. He of course, was not caught and
> will do it again. He used common electronic entertainment equipment
> and binary explosives smuggled in baby bottles, etc.

So we have this horribly dangerous person who would stop at nothing to
disrupt air traffic for...some reason, who has so far managed to
do...nothing.  Yet, he manages to escape from authorities in the nick of
time who somehow reverse-engineer his plans.

> Then there were the London 7/7 bus bombings.

Ah, yes.  I'm sure coffee and mouthwash was involved.  We shouldn't
allow them on buses, either.

Look, we have crazy people in the world.  They're going to do crazy
things.  Thankfully, most people aren't crazy.  A few crazy people isn't
sufficient justification for violating the rights of an entire country.

> If there were similar plots, and I'm sure there were they were stopped
> because the U.S. government was not as lax as the English.

What are you talking about?  London has millions of cameras covering
nearly every public square inch of the city and surrounding area.  If
anything, it underlines how silly it is to think we can prevent bad
things from happening by screening and watching over everything all the
time.

> You also have the problem of 12 million illegal Mexican immegrants.
> If one in a million decides to yell "viva Pancho Villa", or something
> like that, and start shooting or blowing themselves up, the U.S. will
> be in a panic.

If one in a million white Americans decided to become a suicide bomber,
for whatever reason, we'd have a problem, too.  Thankfully, again, there
aren't that many people that are that crazy and violent.

> The problem is that you look at it through your system of values and
> ethics. The terrorists come from a sect of Islam which teaches that you
> can do anything to further the religion as long as it is against people
> outside of it. You can cheat, lie, steal, kill, etc.

No, the problem is that we have a system where people who are terrified
of bogey-men can deprive me of my rights, subject me to undue searches,
interfere with my travel, and generally spy on me because there are
crazies in the world.  I would rather die at the hands of a madman than
live under the thumb of an oppressor.

There have been Muslims in the world for a very long time.  How is it
that only recently we have this problem?  We didn't have Muslims tearing
through towns and setting them alight "for Allah" 100 years ago or
bombing stagecoaches or the like.  Rather than enslave the world in
surveillance and fear, perhaps we should try to solve the root of that
problem?

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "There is no such thing as a short of reserves...
Elgin, TX         |  one bank can have a problem...the Fed can print
USA               |  money, there is no shortage."
.                 |     --Jim Glassman, US Economist, JPMorgan Chase