So, the police and security services have foiled a major terrorist attack, have they?
I read yesterday that John Reid (that’s the Home Secretary, people) was saying that “we may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term” in order to counter the threat from terrorists. This sounds almost too convenient. Given that an annoucement of a foiled terrorist attack could fairly easily be fabricated, it’s quite possible that this is all a hoax. OK, maybe it’s not, but there’s absolutely no way for The Average Person to tell the difference. And let’s face it, the current government don’t have a great record where it coming to being honest about this kind of thing.
Look forward to many more “we’re doing this to protect your from the terrorists” stuff in the next few days and weeks, “it’s for your own good”, “ID cards will stop terrorist attacks” etc. Today’s events are also probably a good way to divert attention away from Israel/Lebanon too.
Not convinced.
You speak the truth. While they almost certainly didn’t invent the entire thing, I can’t help but question the usefulness of closing airports and placing restrictions on carry-on items on the scale they have.
Our government (and the government of the US) likes to take every opourtunity into scaring the public into allowing legislation to increase the government’s power.
PermalinkSchneier has written in the past about air attacks – how the administration must throw huge resources against them because they’d be such bad PR, but how any terrorist worth their salt would pick a target which they can’t concentrate on because of the air issue.
This is why I’m immensely suspicious of today’s events.
PermalinkWhen I first heard of this plot being foiled, I KNEW there would be people who would doubt the truth of this event. Im sorry but yours was the first random site that google came up with. I think your mind has a short circuit in it some where. In Israel and Iraq and India and Pakistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Malasia and the Phillipines and England and Afganistan and yes, even in the United States Islamists have proven their desire to kill people indiscriminently. Man, any government would be insane not to try to stop their people from being killed. So what if you have to stand in line for a few hours. It’s like you people are living in some kind of alternate reality. OK Alice,it’s time to wake up now.
PermalinkToo bad that you think so, Dave.
Just came by to say ‘thank you’ to you and everyone in Great Britain.
PermalinkStuart said:
> Too bad that you think so, Dave.
Well, my point is that I’m deeply suspicious of our government’s behaviour towards terrorist threats: as astopy says, it’s unlikely the whole thing is completely fabricated (although we’d have no way to tell the difference), there’s likely to be a degree of exaggeration and “making the most of a convenient situation” to push forward ID cards and so on. Stuart, the ID card issue is *huge* in the UK at the moment and given that there were announcements from officials *before* this story broke about “we must be willing to give up [liberties to fight the terrorist threat]” you can understand a degree of healthy scepticism. “If we give up all our liberties, then the terrorists have already won.” (quote attributed to someone I can’t remember off-hand)
PermalinkHeadScrewedOnRight: You’re clearly from the US (the fact that you refer to “England” gives this away). Seeing these matters from a UK point-of-view is important here.
You are correct: terrorists have proven willing to kill people in a variety of locations around the world.
You are correct: governments should help protect their people.
You are incorrect however in assuming that governments are completely honourable in this situation. If a government wishes to introduce controversial legislation which has liberties issues, then they are perfectly capable of exaggeration and lying (yes, lying) about it.
As I wrote in the above comment to Stuart, the ID card issue is very hot at the moment and this and other related issues are reasons why the UK government may be considered to have less than 100% honourable intentions.
And I’m curious to know what you mean by “you people” in your last sentence. If by “you people” you mean intelligent individuals with a healthy degree of well-justified sceptism based on the recent events, then Yes, I’m happy to be one of “you people”.
PermalinkThanks for the context. People (like HeadScrewedOnRight) may easily assume that you doubt the threat of terrorist attacks, you can’t not notice people that insist that various events are actually great conspiracies (World Trade Center was blown up by CIA or ‘Jews’ knew about it or that we never really landed on the moon).
Your history of posts don’t support that sort of opinion but for someone that stumbles across this post… well he can’t be expected to read through the archives.
Cheers
Permalinkhttp://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html
That is all 🙂
-Dx
PermalinkThis is going to be my place to leave all the funky bomb-related links I find on IRC now, you know this, right?
http://www.wondermark.com/d/220.html
PermalinkFeel free 😉
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