Sci-fi Writers Join War on Terror 793
yoyoq writes "Homeland Security is looking for suggestions from sci-fi writers. "Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described "deviant" thinkers: science-fiction writers."
Here's a suggestion: 9-11 could have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door."
Idea!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Leaving aside the Terminator suggestion, the SF writer involvement in suggesting government policy isn't actually quite as crazy (or as unprecedented) as it sounds.
One of the requirements for this group is that the individual has to have a PhD in a technical area (physics, engineering, etc.). These aren't just random writers off the street.
As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.
As for precedent, both Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (coauthors of Footfall, and the Mote in God's Eye amongst other works) were a significant part of the push in the 80's to develop what is now National Missile Defense.
(Of course, that may or may not be a good program, but it's certainly an example of educated SF writers influencing public policy).
Holmwood
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that comment very often gets taken out of context in order to justify exotic anti-terrorism schemes. It wasn't a "failure of imagination" in the sense that nobody in their wildest dreams thought that it could happen. I mean, let's face it, there's nothing far fetched about smuggling weapons onto a plane. That's why they have metal detectors at the gates. There's nothing far fetched about hijacking a plane. That's happened dozens, if not hundreds of times, in the past 30-40 years. There's nothing far-fetched about suicide bombers. They blow themselves up on a daily basis in the middle east. There's nothing far fetched about attacking the WTC. That had already happened once. The only "failure in imagination" is the failure to believe that terrorists would combine their most effective and well-known tactics into a single act.
But the worst part is that the "failure of imagination" wasn't the reason that 9/11 happened. It was the failure to prevent people from smuggling weapons onto planes and hijacking them that allowed 9/11 to happen, and those are threats that have been around for a very long time.
It's like Bruce Schneier has said many times, if you're spending time and effort in trying to prevent hollywood movie-style terrorist attacks instead of the routine, more effective (and much more likely) types of attacks, then you're probably wasting your time and resources. We're far more likely to end up with car bombs blowing up bridges or suicide bombers blowing themselves up at shopping malls than we are to end up with some exotic antrhax-infected mutant sharks with laserbeams. Hell, a handful of Beslan-style school attacks executed simultaneously across the US would probably have as big of an impact as 9/11 (look what happened with the relatively minor Virginia Tech incident), and it would probably be easier to implement too.
We need a change of philosophy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even the police had been infected with this - during Columbine they secured a perimeter and waited for SWAT. This cost lives. Now standard procedure for many departments is that police go in when they get there. Officer Dan might not be SWAT, but he has a gun he should be competent with, and he's what's there, not what's going to take another 15 minutes(and possibly another 60 dead).
We saw the ultimate failure at Viginia Tech - Students hid under desks and tried to flee - from a single assailant. Far fewer lives would have been lost if they'd done the same thing flight 93 had done - attacked back.
I think that a cultural change to one of resistance, one that venerates the 'one who stood first' would be a good thing, in many ways.
I believe there's a lot of truth to the saying: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
As for using scifi authers, I figure it's brainstorming, and a scifi author is generally both inventive and cheap. I can think of far worse things to spend ~30k on.
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My own less positive and less politically correct take on things is that we have become a nation of cowards. That was my first impression after the VT shootings and I found myself using exactly those words in more than one conversation.
I can speculate many reasons behind the shift toward cowardice in the U.S. but all that does is create a lot of argument and derision from the people I'd lump in as cowards. I think absentee fathers, a dea
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As for precedent, both Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote actual scenes into some of their books (including Footfall), where the hapless government rounded up a bunch of balding geek-a-zoid sci-fi writers as non-traditional "technical experts" to help strategy and intel efforts against an unusual threat.
Re:Idea!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I liked The Mote In God's Eye, but I wish he'd write more SF and less political analysis.
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Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, to put it another way (for those who still think the US is doing well in Iraq): Think of terrorism like a vicious, unpredictable animal that wants to attack you. That's easy enough. But there's a twist: it gets stronger every time you shoot at it, bomb it or do anything violent towards it. Why are you still shooting at it?
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Very simple! Our jobs depend on there being a vicious animal that wants to attack us. This was fine during the 60s, 70s and 80s, and we had good job prospects. We got lots of established government funds.
Then, in the 90s, our vicious animal suddenly died on us. We were stuck. We weren't just going to quietly retire. We tried to invent drug barons, organised crime, and minor foreign countries as a new vicious animal, but it wasn't the same.
Now we have Islam! If we had been clever, we could have encouraged this ourselves, and paid Osama to crash those planes. We probably didn't, not because we wouldn't, but because we didn't have the foresight. But now it's happened, we're back in clover.
And we're damn well not going to mess this one up. It's going to last a long time, just like the Russian animal. Have you noticed how we insist that speeches are made stressing that this willl be a 'long haul'? Too right. We're not stupid. Everyone told us that invading Iraq would make things worse. Why do you think we did it?
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Put more simply: The president may be a tool, but that doesn't mean that the people he's railing against aren't also tools, or even much worse than he is. That's the biggest problem I have with "progressives" in this country -- they think evil or incompetence is a kind of zero sum game. If the president of the US is bad, his enemies can't *really* be all that bad, which is totally untrue.
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And lets not get into Indonesia and all the problems there that we could have helped with, or Tibet, or Nepal. You do know there was essentially a civil war in Nepal for the last 10 years right? Oh, and the monarch disolved the parliament and basically imposed martial law on the place. What about Thailand, and the military coup that just occured?
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a bad man doing bad things. The point is, however, he was an "evil" we understood how to deal with. He was essentially no threat to anyone but himself and his own people. Yes that's bad, but his conflict wasn't causing issues any different than the others that have been going on at the same time. We did however decide to put on our big boy shoes and step in his playground to pick a fight with him as opposed to others. Why? Because it was a name people recognized (so even if it was the wrong choice at least some people would support it on name recognition alone), it was a profitable place to pick a fight, and it was during a period of economic "recession", which always calls for war. It's the great economic provider for the USA, and has been for a very long time. I won't even speculate at the personal economic gains of the administration, which others probably have far more information about.
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The people that orchestrated the war in Iraq were not doing it out of any fear of job security.
That all depends on your definition of "job security." After reading many of the position papers at www.newamericancentury.org - homebase of the neo-cons - I've come to the conclusion that these guys have a very simple philosophy. They think that with the rise of china and other world powers, the USA will be in decline for most of the rest of this century. Believing that decline to be inevitable, they want to "get while the getting is good." They don't really seem to care how screwed up they leave thin
Money Money Money (Score:5, Insightful)
They did win easily. Saddam was toppled in a matter of minutes. But it's becoming blatantly apparent that they were more interested in a prolonged conflict, so they can deluge money on all the defense contractors and other direct supporters of the current administration. Once the money reaches Iraq, there is no legal accountability for anything. If you receive money to build a school, and don't, there's nothing illegal about it as long as you put up a half-assed attempt at trying to build one. (Meaning if you rented a bulldozer and claimed the security for it bankrupted you, you're off the hook.) Heck, 360 tons of cash [bbc.co.uk] went missing and the public did nothing about it.
After reading up on how the Department of Homeland Security was basically turned into the equivalent of a government contractor eBay, it seemed to confirm it. I've been told that the standing orders from the people who work there are that the department is not allowed to do anything themselves, they must contract everything out. So again the main focus seems to be funneling money to the contractors.
Contrary to the national media image (which by the way is controlled by their supporters) this administration is not dumb. This administration is quite adept at funneling money from the taxpayers to the contractors. All the rest of what they're doing just seems to support and protect this goal of theirs. As for Gitmo and "getting tough" on terrorists, they just know what show their base wants to see.
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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The representative form of government is the best solution for the problem; the sticking point in Iraq is the implementation, because the vast majority of the locals have to really want it--and want it at almost any cost--if it's never been in place before. Look at every nation, from the birth of the United States to former Soviet republics now trying a representative government that is mo
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Re:Idea!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The simple fact is that life for the lower classes in most of the world varies from difficult to an insane hell. This includes presumably advanced nations like the U.S. where it may be merely difficult compared to Saudi Arabia, but its still not something people would choose on its own merits. People have been looking for solutions for a long time, and some of those solutions have had mitigating effects on poverty and oppression, but certainly have not eliminated the deep problems that come with being on the bottom. The worse life on the bottom of the food chain becomes, the more desparate people get, and the more they want to lash out - moreover, the worse things get, the less they have to lose.
There's a passage in the movie Syriana that sums up what I think is going on for a lot of lower and middle class youths in the most oppressive nations - I'm just paraphrasing because I have a horrible memory for detailed quotations:
Communism has failed, capitalism and liberalism have failed. None of the ideologies have lived up to their promises that they would make a better life for us and our families. Things continue to get worse. We must understand we have always had the solution - the Koran tells us what to do, how to live in such a way as to make life better. But we have abandoned our faith. Only by going back to the old ways, the ways of faith, will things improve.
This is (again paraphrased) spoken by a terrorist recruiter roping in teenage boys. ObL, Bush or any other leader can scream all they want, and no one will go fight if the people themselves are convinced that the external threat is threatening them or keeping them from a better life in some way. Most of the terrorist/insurgent/what have you foot soldiers, I suspect, are not engaged in high-level thought about caliphates and theocratic political models. What they are is pissed off that they and their friends are oppressed and dying because of the local tyrant or his foreign allies, and someone has offered them an answer. When the U.S. comes along (whatever the leaders intentions) and bombs the hell out of their town, or soldiers kick their doors in an treat them like criminals, that answer starts to look increasingly correct - at least, its an option that gives them something they can do.
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How much would it cost to eradicate poverty?
How much would it cost to feed and give health care to every human being that is starving? To educate every child? To nurture healthy economies where there are none or where corrupt governments ruined it?
Compare that with the cost of one week of Iraq occupation. How much money is being wasted in a war that gives nothing in return but a general feeling Americans are evil?
My grand mother went to tears every time she told me the story of how American troops sh
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this is certainly a good brute-force approach. The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of vulnerable places. Schools, shopping malls, stadia, airplanes, hospitals, large buildings, bridges, factories, food processing plants, ports, power plants, electrical grid, network control centers... and the list goes on. So that means millions of guards. Possibly tens of millions. Assuming you're actually going to protect vulnerable places with well-trained guards. In a modern technological densely-populated society, that's a lot of places to protect.
Now if you want well-trained, highly competent guards, you're going to have to pay them more than the typical rent-a-cop rates. That'll be expensive. You'll have to arm them (with at least non-lethal weapons).
Let's say you only need 2.5 million guards in North America. (well under 1% of the population). Of course, they only work 40 hours a week, so you're looking at just over 4 shifts. OK, 10 million guards. Well-trained, highly competent, so you'll probably have salaries of around 50k, and support infrastructure and overhead that doubles that. 100k/year. That's a trillion dollars a year.
Is that really the best way to improve security? I can think of a lot of ways other than spending a trillion dollars on 'well trained guards in [all] vulnerable places'.
And you'll have something much closer to a police state -- either they'll be government guards or corporate guards.
And if you miss just one vulnerable place, then the approach fails. No, I'd rather apply intellect and thought to the problem rather than try and brute force it. I'm not sure the SF writers are the way to go, but I think it's a lot better than going the police state road and spending a trillion a year for the privilege.
-Holmwood
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The only way to stop this is to not be a target. Don't do stuff to others you wouldn't like done to you. Listen. Talk to folks so they don'
Re:Ever heard of Conceal and Carry? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are armed, it makes it harder to declare martial law. Also a generation of unarmed citizens are far more easy to control as the children never had exposure to guns and therefore are frightened of them and have a higher likeliness to not pick one up to defend themselves.
Re:Ever heard of Conceal and Carry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes they can. Just use an imaginary or real external threat, tell them that any measures are just for their own security, and denounce anyone who doesn't agree with that as "unpatriotic".
Or just bring bigger guns.
Re:Ever heard of Conceal and Carry? (Score:4, Insightful)
And I don't see martial law in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, or Canada where there is much stricter regulation of handguns.
Re:Ever heard of Conceal and Carry? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You must not be familiar with Niven and Pournelle!
As for "a bunch of wild directions" both are grounded in their science. SCIENCE, not wild ideas. Both are adept at looking at on-the-edge break throughs and figuring out the impact it could have on society. For instance, there has been increasing news reports about the sale of the organs of political prisoners in China. Rich people can get whatever they need for a few tens of thousands of dollars. Of course it's all ill
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Did you ever see Terminator 3?
Besides, having your security device being confused with the Govenator of California isn't exactly the most ideal situation in the world.
Personally, I think it would be better to put a Dalek on every plane. Cold. Efficient. Deadly accurate with their gun and sucker. Not able to be reprogrammed by the terrorists. Hell, they can even be considered multi-functional, as they can even use their built-in plunger to fix a stoppage in the lav.
Re:Idea!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Idea!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Surah Al-An`aam (6:151) says: "Do not even go near lewdness - whether overt or covert"
Therefore, simply hang hard-core porn on the cockpit door. Unfortunately, this might be an issue with pilots of Emirates Airline, and it doesn't stop atheist terrorists either. Damn those uncontrollable atheists!
</politically anticorrect>
Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone's a snide little clever genius after the fact.
Here's a suggestion: no, it could not have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door. It would have likely been a somewhat different attack, but it still would have happened.
Meanwhile, people still catch colds despite having a supply of tissue in the house.
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Not SDI again (Score:3, Insightful)
It worked in Footfall but the world was being attacked by aliens in that book. Saudi terrorists are not aliens and I don't think Larry and Jerry are the best people to call on unless you want to be told to strike back with an Orion pulse rocket.
Given a more real world scenario [quiller.net] I suggest the Homeland Security Department look to people who really were thinking ahead during the 70's and 80's and ask them to think ahead from now.
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
People worldwide had been saying for year that US airport security was worthless - paticularly when stuck in line behind a US tourist abroad complaining long and loud that as an American they never should have to put up with having their bag searched. Now it has swung to another extreme with security theatre that is often mindless, inflexible and carried out by the pooorly trained due to the need to take on a lot of staff suddenly (I would really hate to be old or disabled and have to deal with a random bit of security theatre).
If you don't like locks... (Score:5, Insightful)
The sci-fi angle is just silliness, in my opinion.
Re:If you don't like locks... (Score:4, Insightful)
You realise the Iranians are probably perfectly well aware of how many nuclear warheads the US has and what would happen to them if they even thought about launching anything towards America.
No, the Iranians are doing their best to build nuclear weapons because once they have them the US is far less likely to invade them - which is something they the US has been making low level threats to do for quite a while now. If I was Iran I'd want a nuclear capability too.
This isn't too say I'm happy to see the spread of nuclear weapons to somewhat less than well balanced countries, in fact it's really worrying, but perhaps if people weren't afraid they were facing the imminent invasion by US "Freedom Fighters" they wouldn't be so desperate to develop them.
"It WILL happen again" (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking "whether the next 9/11 can be prevented" is a dumb question to try to answer. It's like "how do we prevent the next car accident?" The sort of questions we should be asking sound cold and calculating, which is unfortunate because it keeps us from asking them:
- Is it possible to reduce the number of terrorist attacks?
- Is it possible to reduce the number of terrorist attacks to zero?
- What is the probability per year that a terrorist act might affect you?
- What is the probability per year that our self-flagellating counterterrorism efforts might affect you?
- Since 9/11, how many additional hours of your life have been spent in airports?
- How many years of your life have been spent as a soldier overseas?
- How many years of your life have been lost as a soldier overseas?
- Is terrorism even something most of us worry about personally anymore?
It's unfortunate that we have created security monsters like TSA that simultaneously don't work and would be political suicide to get rid of.
My own idea for "preventing the next VT tragedy" was to crack down on the manufacturers of doors, not the sellers of handguns. If it were illegal to manufacture doors with closed loops in their handles, the guy wouldn't have been able to chain the door shut.
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I have been on no less than 20 round trip flights, 2 international, since 9/11. There is nothing unreasonable and rediculous about them at all. In fact, the only place I ever really waited in line for long was in Denver, and that was situational.
In fact, having flown many times, I actually am concerned about the lack of time many airports spend on security. I was coming back from Tokyo in the San Francisco and due to a malfu
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"Take your shoes off please."
What did the Swiss do : tell everybody to fly armed !
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Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
After 9/11, hijacking = you crash into a building. So, sitting there flying the plane while they execute passengers is the smartest thing you can do.
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Funny)
1. Hijacker is arrested the moment they get off the plane and spends a nice long time in prison.
2. Hijacker is shot the moment they get off the plane and spends a nice long time dead.
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Because, ignorant one, before 9/11 the threat was different. Prior to 9/11 every single instance where control was violently seized from the pilots it was to hijack the plane & take the passengers hostage. Pilots were trained to go along with any threat that they judged placed the life of one of their passengers in jeopardy because in the long run even if they blew up the plane as they did in Beirut, passenger safety was primordial. When the 9/11 terrorists
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Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And then, both pilots die from food poisoning and a whole plane full of retired pilots crashes since no once could actually get into the cockpit to land the darn thing.
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In the event of a hijacking or loss of the flight crew the plane would just revert automatically to autopilot and only take commands from the ground. The autopilot can easily be made to land a jumbo jet these days, it's just cocky pilots don't want to sit around and do nothing while the plane flies itself.
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Informative)
It's also good enough to fly the plane into the nearest skyscraper, once you disable/disrupt/jam/take over the legitimate transmitter and know the protocol and encryption keys.
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> minute until the door was opened?
Who cares? There weren't 3000 people in the plane.
Re:Genius yoyoq!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let us now think about those executions of passengers. We may not prevent them, but we can reduce the casualties. Assume that there are approx. 6 bad guys armed with improvised cold weapons, therefore effective attack range of each member is cca 1 meter. What are tactical options of passengers?
As long as the cockpit is not penetrated, the pilots may help with another effective countermeasures (but they would require a tactically skilled flight attendant coordinating the actions, or some kind of CCTV in the cabin):
In this mental exercise are some assumptions as well. The foremost is that only cold weapons are available to terrorists. Here we have to rely on the integrity and skill of airport personnel, but even with handguns I believe passengers with improvised shields would stand a chance. When it comes to bombs, well, bad luck, BUT: the bad guys can destroy the plane, but they will not control it.
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
If Homeland Security really are trying to think of more innovative solutions they might consider putting a stop to some of the activities the US is or has been involved in which tend to increase the number of available terrorists wanting to attack it. This might involve stopping the CIA kidnapping people and taking them off to be tortured, stop starting pointless wars and stop interfering in other countries in order to install regimes that suit your own purposes.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll never be a good politician, stay with your honest daytime job.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Your latest war on Iraq has guaranteed that no sane country will as much as *think* of switching to the PetrolEuro ever again. HUGE economic advantage for you. 2. It has also set the grounds for convenient exploitation of oil wells in Southern Iraq. Considerable economic advantage. 3. It also managed to get a few terrorists killed. Smallish morale gain. 4. It allowed your gov't to gain more power. Again, huge advantage (ok, this only benefits them and not you).
So in what way was that all POINTLESS again? You can claim it's good/bad/expensive/whathaveyou but there is no way in hell is was pointless.
They're going about this wrong (Score:5, Funny)
am I the only one who is tired of terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our sense of risk is so badly out of whack that we're just being ridiculous--it isn't even hysteria anymore, not after this many years. We're being suckered by a sensationalistic media working in cohorts with government, which always, always wants more power. I'd say it was shocking if I could even muster any surprize at how stupid we're being over this.
You're missing the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:am I the only one who is tired of terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but which one do you think works best when you want to restrict civic liberties?
- We declare war on terrorism, so we need to tap everyone's phone in case they're terrorists.
or
- We declare war on flu, so we need to tap everyone's phone in case they've got the flu.
Re:am I the only one who is tired of terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't go all the way to gulags, not right away, at least not on US soil, because people won't stand for it--yet. But once something else happens--and it always does, eventually, with or without an agent provocateur--the current level of freedom will seem excessive, and we get a few more clicks towards totalitarianism.
There are already feelers out investigating exactly what conditions would have to exist for elections to be suspended and the current President to be just "in charge." Will it happen? No, I don't think it will, even in my most paranoid moods. The population won't stand for it--yet. But if there is a big attack, at least by someone with brown/olive skin, it would be easy to temporarily "put off" the election. An attack by a white supremacist or Christian Identity group wouldn't cut it (and probably would barely make the news), but one by Muslims would be center stage on all the networks, around the clock.
Would we see death camps and Stalinesque tactics? No, I don't think so. Michael Moore and Rosie wouldn't be rounded up and imprisoned, much less shot, Ann Coulter's book sales notwithstanding. But a "unitary Executive" or whatever his lawyers are calling him this week, in charge of the entire federal government, exempted (de facto, if not de jure) from oversight or checks/balances by the legislative and judicial branches, who can suspend elections at will--what else do you really need? As long as there wasn't any slaughter or mass imprisonment, which there wouldn't be, would people really take to the streets for democracy? I wonder.
Re:am I the only one who is tired of terrorism? (Score:4, Interesting)
That trend makes me uncomfortable with the recent directive that Bush issued on May 9 signed that grants near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president. I am surprised that directive has not yet received much discussion in the press or by Congress.
National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 [worldnetdaily.com]
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But it gets better. The craze went over to countries that haven't EVER been the target for any kind of organised terrorism whatsoever (aside of domestic terrorism, when some nut decided it's fun to blow up a few pipes). How the heck can you explain that?
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And, quite frankly, if I wanted to conduct a terrorist attack on the US, it would be far from impossible. Maybe a stunt like 9/11 is incredibly hard to pull through today, but small scale attacks akin to those in Israel would be no biggie. If an outsider really wanted to, h
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The dilution of habeus corpus, the normalization of torture, the normalization of warrantless surveillance, an open-ended war that is making the world more dangerous, the fact that we as a nation are represented by George Bush and the
Then attack would be carried out differently (Score:4, Insightful)
Lemme see... (Score:5, Funny)
- train your stormtroopers so they can hit a man sized target at 100 ft distance
- don't have your war droids depend on a centralized node that, when destroyed, would disable the whole army
- make sure there are no vents leading directly to your death star's reactor, no matter how hard or unlikely to hit they are
- fun as it may be, and sure as you may be that he's a complete bastard, don't send a father to torture his daughter and duel his son. They might end up working together against you. Also, if you've decided to replace him with his son, don't tell it to his face.
- don't make yourself hated by whole populations in the first place. Destroying whole planets just to show you can, is actually pretty bad PR. It's bad for your tax income too. Noone will rise in rebellion or send suicide bombers against you for just treating them right and creating employment.
- make sure the doors, especially prison doors or doors to critical command rooms, can't be opened by shooting the control panel. And generally, security means everything should fail in the way that is the least of a security problem. Losing electricity should cause the door bolts to lock the door (e.g., they're on springs that push them to the locked state, and you need current to pull them open), not unlock it.
- for that matter, and according to the same principle, a damaged reactor should tend to shut down, not blow up. There's a reason 20'th century nuclear reactors need current to keep the moderator rods out, and get to shut down if they lose that current
- control consoles don't have much of a reason to explode when the ship takes a hit in some point half a mile away. You may need that console again, and trained specialist officers that operate them are expensive to replace too
- invest in some shielding technology, or at least armour. The Mitsubishi A6M Zero fared poorer than you'd think with only speed and maneuverability as its only defenses, and got shot by airplanes which could take a whole clip and keep flying. The TIE fighter is just repeating an existing mistake. Don't do it.
And generally, read the evil overlord's list already.
Re:Lemme see... (Score:5, Funny)
- davevr
Forget the safe-bet experts (Score:5, Insightful)
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More ideas to be ignored. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather, its apparent that the suggestions were ignored. Whether they were ignored because Bush wanted to focus on other things or that the nature of the ideas somehow rendered them ignorable is unclear. What is clear is that they were, in fact, present and had been suggested.
Post 9-11 a great deal of effort has been spent on garnering "ideas" for attack styles on the grounds that "we didn't know". While it is nice to see people expanding their minds it is a little worrisome that they have not done so before. It is also a little worrisome because the new ideas seem to fall into two categories, those that get ignored and those that are overreacted upon.
In the former class we have things such as not throwing children year olds into Guantanamo Bay, and adding armor to protect our troops against IEDs (something that was so badly rejected that the solders were ordered by the White House to remove armor that they had added in the field). A great example of the latter comes from one of Bob Woodward's books on Bush. Some of you may remember that point about a year or so ago when the terror alert levels jumped and new, ominous, warnings came out about Al-Quaeda hijacking trains and filling them with chemicals. It turns out a bunch of guys were sitting around a meeting and one of them said: "You know it would suck if Al-Qaueda stole a train and loaded it with chemicals..." A few days later they lock down all the train stations.
So with all due respect to DHS's desire for new info but I'd like to see them make better use of what they've already got.
Re:More ideas to be ignored. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not trying to add more fuel to some oddball conspiracy theories, but seriously: Who benefited the most from the attacks?
So let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Funny)
They might as well just post the discussion here.
Here's my list:
Heres a suggestion. (Score:5, Insightful)
You could come up with a standardised "AQ" (Asshole Quotent) score and refuse exit to anyone scoring more than 100.
Answering "Yes" to questions like "Do you believe there should be Starbucks outlet in every culturaly important site" gets you five points.
Aswering "Yes" to a question like "Do you believe it is acceptable to shout out 'Does anyone in this joint speak English' when visting a foriegn art gallery" get you ten points.
Answering "Yes" to a question like "Do you believe its wrong to provide condoms to people who are HIV positive" gets you 50 points.
By screening people leaving your country in this way you could promote the illusion that USAians are polite considerate respectfull people and you hatred and bombs would be better directed at Candadians or Swedes.
Also candidates for high office could boast about thier high scores come lection time.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Heres a suggestion. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is even funnier because of the trip last summer.
The family went to Canada for vacation. So we are up in the Quebec area and standing in line at a restaurant and the people in front of us are speaking French. My brother then says, loud enough for them to here, "They should speak the language before they come to this country." (Add a southern accent. We are from the south.)
I slapped him up side the head and said "You are in there country, now apologize to them in French!"
He just turned red and walked away. I then, in French, asked them to excuse l'idiot and apologized for his behavior. My French is bad but they understood and responded in English.
I will never forget it! I can only hope that it sticks in his mind and he NEVER does it again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We brits have no need to attract terrorists are we are self sufficient in this area
although we don't export that many.
As for the goods thing we do, well, its much the same as your list:-
Invade Afganistan.
Invade Iraq.
Murdoch dominated media.
etc. etc.
Plus a few extras like:-
Inflicting cricket on half the world (technically only the English are culpable for this).
We dont have a national dress anymore as all the world is stuffed into suits and ties -- this surely cou
It's been done before.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Depending on your interpretation of history, it could be argued that this was one of the things that let to the collapse of the Soviet Union as they couldn't compete with the proposed SDI technologies.
Yeah, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that locks on the doors on 9/11 could have been useful, but really some blue sky thinking will do no harm.
Scare Tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
We're flat out of fanciful terrorist ideas to scare the public with and need some new ones. Have you got any? Don't worry if they sound totally implausible, once we're finished sprucing them up only the unpatriotic will be laughing at them.
Yours,
Authorities
I've got two words for you: (Score:3, Funny)
Dude must have a hell of time flying. He's a lethal weapon.
One roundhouse kick and the plane will fall out of the sky.
Not to mention the effect he has on the female cab crew.
Hey Homeland Security! (Score:5, Interesting)
it's not a crazy idea to aks writers (Score:3, Funny)
which leads one to conclude 2 things:
1. if terrorists get their ideas from steven seagal/ jean-claude van damme scripts, then homeland security can do two things:
a. watch a lot of old bruce willis/ sylvester stallone movies, and compile a list of possible attack vectors
b. actively feed hollywood retarded movie scripts featuring attack vectors that would never work, and wait for the terrorists to try them
2. screw sci-fi writers. elicit the help of b-grade hollywood action movie writers. who wrote "true lies" with sylvester stallone? who wrote "the pacifier" starring vin diesel? sci-fi writers? ha! tom clancey is our go to man to simulate the imagination of terrorists
Wow, this happens in a scifi book (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got mixed feelings on this.. (Score:5, Funny)
On the the other hand though, if the writers really pushed the boat out and highlighted the - ever so real - danger of space based terrorism, who knows, NASA may get funding to build decent spacecraft (maybe even a Star Destroyer). Wouldn't want one of them little rascals redirecting an asteroid to hit N.Y. now would we?
Diplomacy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a Sci-fi writer but here is what I suggest:
Hello! We are not in a movie or a video game. We live in The Real World. People realy die, people realy suffer. We can't just rewind the movie or restart the game.
If you don't want someone to hurt you, don't be his enemy.
Lock the cockpit doors? (Score:4, Interesting)
In hindsight, we also should have trained pilots not to so easily relinquish control of the plane. Instead it was generally thought that hijackers should be allowed to take over the plane because they normally just landed somewhere and made demands.
Experience had taught us to expect completely different circumstances than we had on 9/11.
SciFi writers don't always paint positive futures (Score:3, Funny)
1) Implanted identification chip for every person, worldwide at birth. This (if engineered correctly) would make administering a no-fly list much easier. It would also make it easier to track all fertilizer and ammonia purchases, because the chip would be required for commerce, too.
2) Remote control of the plane, so some RC hobbyist can fly it to the ground. Or, better yet, some child who is playing a flight simulator game (oops, I read Ender's Game recently).
3) Rig all planes for remote auto-destruct. Wait! There's a suspected terrorist on that plane? Blow it up now, so they cannot kill additional people. Then there are public service announcements lauding the innocent passengers who were heros to the motherland.
4) Require all passengers to be put into stasis before flying. Then you can load them in cargo tubes and eliminate the first-class/coach price disparity.
5) Use amusement park style restraints that are locked before take-off and unlocked only when approaching the destination terminal. Built-in porta-pottys would be a must.
6) Clear vast areas of ground as designated fly-way corridors. These would lead to massive airports away form major metropolitan areas and would have massive ground transport hubs. If any plane veers out of the approved flight corridors, they are shot down.
7) Permanently ground domestic flights and force people to take the train. We know terrorists would never successfully pull off an attack on a train, because people might actually converse. It would be relatively easy to spot the non-conversant-I'm-ready-to-die crowd among the other social riders [OK. Inside joke here.]
8) Revisit that implanted chip. It now includes circuitry that can be remotely triggered to induce a major coronary event. Wait! That guy in 16b is acting suspicious! I'm going to trip his chip.
9) Nuke the entire planet. With no people around, there are no terrorists.
10) Make Sesame Street mandatory in-flight viewing for all flights. The colorful, friendly characters and their message of sharing and caring will re-program the minds of all passengers toward a life of increased harmony and peace (especially after the government adds subluminal anti-terror messages every few frames)!
Here's an idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a thought.
Message from the Real World (Score:3, Interesting)
Now. I used the term "real world" from Asimov and Greenberg's "Best of [fill in year]" SF short story collections. Asimov's opening essay would sum up what was happening in the world, that Mel Brooks was Melvin Kaminski still. Then he would list what was happening in the Real World of science fiction that year.
We, the children of Asimov, the Real World of SF, respondeth:
In 2007, fearmongers were still pumping the handle on the "terrorist" shibboleth. No one had attacked the US in over six years, yet the citizenry was still being told that an attack was imminent, could come from anywhere (yet still somehow was related to planes), and that the enemy was Islam, though that meme was heavily cloaked in buzz words. Homeland Security, named seemingly by George Orwell himself, was rolling up the country's police and intelligence forces into one incoherent and unmanageable mess. The rightist militias, one member of which had actually blown up a federal building in Oklahoma City, were still marching and conducting drills to take down the government, yet were curiously untouched by the new American police force. We were still attempting to occupy a country that we had been assured was about to attack us at any moment, and we were losing.
Mel Brooks was Mel Brooks.
In the real world, the collected writers of science fiction, addressed as "sci-fi" writers, were asked to come up with ideas to block the immiment attacks against our helpless country. Jerry Pournelle probably leapt to the the defense, while the others in more or less said: There are no terrorists, and there is no such enemy as terrorism. If you are trying to find a way to fend off attacks, first, you cannot. The preeminent architects of the future, we scruffy bunch, will tell you there is no way to prevent an intelligent attacker from finding a way to hurt you, if he or she is willing to die to strike a blow. We spend our lives imagining ways to do the impossible. Yes, in five minutes we can give you a dozen ways around any security protocol you can come up with. If you block those, we will find another dozen. The same attacks can be achieved in any place that is not a military prison. If you wish perfect safety, make your nation into such. And you still will be afraid, for it is not a matter of security, but of perception of security. You grow fear in your people like mold, and you devour that mold as your sustenance. You are making yourselves an army of George Hearsts through selling fear and the antidote for the fear, so assuaging the fear is increasingly out of the question, is it not?
Try instead not to manufacture enemies. You created bin Laden to strike at the Soviets in Afghanistan in the seventies, who claimed they were there to stem the rise of militant Islam. They were right and you were wrong. You invaded Afghanistan to strike at al Queda, even though they left long before you bombed the country. You annihilated Iraq, then turned it into a occupied prison state. You are now surrounding Iran with two carrier groups and tried to add a third, but the Navy refused to cooperate. If you bomb them, 90 million people will take up arms against you, and yes, all the attacks you tell your people to fear will then become very real. Mission Accompished, indeed.
We can't help you. You are your own enemy, and you will never defeat yourself. Try shattering the mirror.
Sample suggestions: (Score:3, Funny)
2. Seduce the beautiful but deadly female terrorist leader and turn her to your cause
3. Send the beautiful but tough female noncom to blow them all up without needing one of those stupid 'men' to help (but she does get the sensitive, understanding, but also handsome guy she wants, of course, she just doesn't NEED him)
4. Upload a virus into the terrorists' mothership and bring it down
5. Expose the terrorists to simple bacteria, which their alien metabolisms can't handle
6. Ask for the Big Gun instead of the Good Package
Re:here's a crazy idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
From my European perspective this is a Bad Idea. More innocent people are shot in the US than anywhere else in the world.
might as well arm the pilots too while we are at it.
Not as crazy as you think. Some people need to carry guns for their occupations (cops, for instance). What might happen is demonstrated by the case of an armed pilot of Garuda, Indonesian airways. Things more or less evolved in the following manner:
Hijacker (as he enters the cockpit): "This plane is hijacked!"
Pilot (shoots the hijacker) : "Not anymore."
Not a single passenger got injured.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am simply astonished at the flat wrongness of this assertion:
Murders with firearms (98-2000):
South Africa: 31,918
Colombia: 21,898
Thailand: 20,032
United States: 8,259
When you count murders with firearms per capita, the US falls to #8. When you count all murders, with and without firearms, the US falls to #24.
Re:here's a crazy idea... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you need to read up on what makes explosives (including gunpowder) go boom, actually. Hint: They do contain their own oxidizer.
Re:here's a crazy idea... (Score:5, Informative)
An explosion is the result of a solid (or sometimes liquid) material being converted into a gas in a confinded volume. In most cases, the conversion has to happen faster than the gas can leak out of an enclosure. Most explosives are comnustable material that's been mixed with an oxidizer so it burn really, really fast. Without the oxidizer, oxygen can't get to the combustion fast enough and the gas escapes, turning the BOOM into a POP. Since there's an oxidizer present, these types of explosives work quite well in total vacumns, and yes, gunpowder falls into that group.
In other words, your gun will fucking work without oxygen, you moron.