The best protection in NYC involves clearing streets of vehicles in threatened areas

9/11 Threat Suspects Could Be Americans - The Daily Beast: "Two of the three people suspected to be behind Thursday’s “credible” terror threat against New York could be Americans, sources told NBC News Friday. But intelligence officials were quick to say that the information about the suspects was vague. They said they believe that two of the suspects were Americans who flew in through Dubai while the other suspect flew in through Europe, or all three might have been smuggled into Pakistan so their travel records wouldn’t be public."

NYC is a sea of vehicles and there are not enough bomb-sniffing dogs in the world to detect a catastrophic payload. I am against vehicles of any sort in the cyber-communities. See my Beyond Pattern Language blog.


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When suicide killers are predictable best be elsewhere

19 dead in attack on Afghan governor's compound - CBS News: "(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan -- A team of six suicide bombers launched a coordinated assault on a provincial governor's compound in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing 19 people in the latest high-profile attack to target prominent Afghan government officials, authorities said."

This is why freedom of movement is a good idea on the human rights front and why we should never have fought a ground war here or in Iraq. There are also salient arguments why we should have engaged in no wars whatsoever.

Did I mention that Iraq is now supporting Syria. Good call W.

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Terror tactics of the House Republicans

There is nothing worse than  a true believer with powerWe confer that power by our votesWe have conferred that power on persons who wish to hold the whole world hostageWe need persons of courage in the Congress to step up as civil right movement folk did andNonviolently prevent these true believers fromExecuting their intent
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Al-Qaida cost us trillions and suckered us into a war on terror as useless as our war on drugs

U.S. intelligence: Al-Qaida near collapse - Topix

And I think this is not a radical but a centrist view. So the idea that we have won much by collapsing the Bin Laden piece of global terror is ironical. The minute George Bush opted for a military solution on the ground, he won. And he will continue to win beyond the grave until we use our minds instead of our precious lifeblood.



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Is this a time when we can have some common sense about terror?

Al Qaeda’s Days Numbered - The Daily Beast: "U.S. counterterrorism officials said Tuesday that al Qaeda may not last much longer, pushed to the brink of collapse by seven years of CIA drone strikes and the death of Osama bin Laden. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared during a recent visit to Afghanistan that “we’re within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda,” and other senior counterterrorism officials at the CIA have expressed similar views"

It would be exciting to have some common sense about terror. Sadly this is countered by the idea that it is mainly Islamic and that the only way to win is by throwing overwhelming military force against it. (The deaths we and others have suffered, the trillions spent).

Common sense would lead to a smarter, experimental approach which would show terrorists that we are not afraid, not letting them wag us and that they will be defeated over time.

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Breivik and McVeigh White Peas in A Pod

Glenn Greenwald: Why Do We Harass Muslims But Not White, Nordic Males? | World | AlterNet: "The response to the Norway attacks shows that the world 'terrorism' has no meaning -- aside from when it's used to bash Muslims."

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Norway killer is not apparently more than a casual Christian

n+1: Rebellion Against Pluralism: "Nor is Breivik, as media reports at first suggested, a religious fundamentalist. Though he at times donned the cloak of Christianity as an easy way to explain why Muslims should be driven out of Europe, he has also admitted to not being a very religious man"

This is a good example of a "fact" which becomes its own story and then becomes hard to dislodge. It shows the difficulty of believing what you first read. (Cap tip 3Quarks)


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I remember when Norway was sardines, not terror

Explosion damages Norwegian government building in Oslo - CSMonitor.com: "The blast comes as the Scandinavian country has grappled with a series of homegrown terror plots linked to al-Qaida, and six years after an uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in neighboring Denmark. Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country."


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This is not what Syria's genocidal terror wave looks like but it's the only window we have (Video)

The most potent weapon of dictatorship is control of information.

Are we revving up for a third world war (axis of terror)

If I were on the terror side I would tell myself. This drone business is the last straw. It's time for us to get a nation of our own. Pakistan! Doable. Then I would escalate things with the goal of fomenting a World War Three with China and Iran if not as allies not as enemies. End of fantasy. The moral of this is that as the US uses drones all over the map, the backlash may exceed any advantage we may surmise. Is anybody thinking about this?  
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