Who's The Security Risk?-Part 2

(EDIT 1/20/2010-See below)

This article ("Another Reason America Is At War") from the Chicago Sun-Times pretty much says it all. It's consistent with the notion that the only reason why the U.S. hasn't suffered a catastrophic terrorist attack since 2001 is because al Qaeda keeps sending incompetent mopes to attack us (i.e., Richard Reid and the latest chuckle-head).

For some years after 9/11, passengers were forbidden to get up to use the lavatory on the Washington-New York shuttle. Zero tolerance! I suppose it must eventually have occurred to somebody that this ban would not deter a person who was willing to die, so the rule was scrapped. But now the principle has been revisited for international flights, and fresh idiocies are in store. Nothing in your lap during final approach. Do you feel safer? If you were a suicide-killer, would you feel thwarted or deterred?


Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't -- or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to ''feel safe.'' The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens' toothpaste.

The full column can be found here.

Edit 1/20/2010:   Steve Dahl's 1/13/10 column in the Chicago Tribune, Feeling naked and alone in the security line, repeats the question: are our reactive security measures making us more secure?

Who's The Security Risk?

So another dim bulb supposedly sent by al Qaeda has tried to blow up an American jet preparing to land in Detroit. Predictably, Homeland Security has "tightened" security rules in the aftermath. So far, we don't know much beyond the flight started in Nigeria, flew to Amsterdam, and then to Detroit. How this mope managed to get explosive materials on the flight remains to be seen, but the new rules we're likely to see will mostly make travel for the rest of us more difficult.

Am I missing something, or should we be doing things to make life difficult for al Qaeda and its hangers-on, rather than the vast majority of travelers? Some reports indicate this guy smuggled his explosives in his underwear from Nigeria. Now, everyone flying is going to be restricted to their seats for the last hour of their flight and won't be allowed to have anything on their laps during that time (including laptops and pillows). Presumably this would be to prevent the rest of us from setting fire to our pants (as this clown apparently did) while hidden by a blanket (or a laptop?). Wouldn't it make more sense to ensure that these jerks can't carry on explosives in their pants while the rest of us are carrying on laptops?

There's already been a report that U.S. officials were aware for two years that this particular Nigerian "could have terrorist ties." Despite that, he wasn't on any lists preventing him from taking commercial flights into the U.S. What's the point in knowing of potential terrorists if you don't think it's worth keeping them out of the U.S.?

What's wrong with this picture? If the Nigerian airport is unable or unwilling to adequately screen passengers leaving the country, wouldn't it make sense to prohibit flights originating there to land here? And if the passengers on this flight were also screened at the Amsterdam airport (which supposedly has a "good reputation for security"), what on earth happened?

In the meantime, the rest of the traveling public will be subject to more ineffective inconvenience and discomfort while flying. Bring on high speed rail service.

EDIT (12/29/09): As usual, Andy Borowitz gets to the heart of the matter with his "Department of Homeland Security Issues Terrorist ID Cards" article.

Anti-rape Amendment Signed Into Law

Back in October, I wrote about Jon Stewart's lampooning of Republican Senators who had voted against a Defense Dept. bill to ban contractors from restricting employee rights to go to court over workplace discrimination, including workplace rape.

Well, the legislation introduced by freshman Senator Al Franken was eventually passed and has now been signed into law by the President. You can read about it at ThinkProgress.org. There are also links to articles about how the Republicans were startled that Americans were unhappy with their votes against the measure.

Go figure.

Welcome To The New Dark Age

Two newspaper articles this week highlight a growing problem: lots of people with opinions, but not necessarily much information. One is a local story and the other is a global one. And underlying this issue is the fact that a growing number of organizations, both mass media outlets (newspapers, television, and their web presences) and what I'll call non-media (everything else), feel compelled to give voice to every "Tom, Dick, and Harry" out there. And some are way out there.

The AP article starts by talking about the shouting going on at the climate change conference in Denmark this week. The author points out that there is little of traditional debate left in the mix, with both sides largely shouting at each other, beating each other with opinions. Facts, and science, are left in the dust. "And public debate shifts from the provable and the empirical toward the spectacle of argument."

There has long been a bias on the part of the public against intellectuals and science, and some feel this was because the public simply didn't trust intellectuals and scientists. This carries over to public perception of intelligence in general, and spawned those bumper stickers that read "My kid can beat up your honor role student." The pursuit of mediocrity at best.

The spawn of the Internet has made things even worse. Our electronic communications encourage the expression of opinions, whether or not the opinions are based even a little bit on fact. Facts and information are kicked to the curb in favor of "beliefs" and judgments, and truth is irrelevant.

"What you have is the (presumption) of expertise by ordinary people who feel their opinions are as valuable as anybody else's. And at the same time, you have experts behaving like gods beyond what they know," says Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent and author of "Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?"

The second article is a story about a library in the Chicago suburbs that implemented a new online catalog of its holdings. Part of the new software provided for patrons to "tag" books "with terms they think other readers might find useful." All patrons have to do is sign up with a user name and email address and they can tag to their heart's content. The "news" in this case is that someone tagged the library's collection of Anne Coulter's books with the term "hate speech." This in turn, made another patron very upset. The upset patron felt that the library was letting people make "political statements" on the library's site and felt that was wrong. The library doesn't closely monitor the tagging and will only remove tags that are "explicit materials or racial slurs."

My question is why does the library feel it's a good idea to have patron tagging of books in their online catalog? Just because the new software enables this, what point is served? Does the library really thing it's a good idea for patrons to peruse one or two word "tags" in order to decide if they want to read a particular book? Not only is this not encouraging critical thinking skills, it's pandering to the lowest denominator. Other libraries allow tagging, but require the submitter to also provide a book review, which might at least be an indication the commenter actually read the book.

What makes a patron qualified to recommend or criticize a book or author with word tags? What makes a newspaper article reader qualified to expound about why the article is all wrong? What qualifications do either bring to the table?

My 11/22/09 post also dealt with this issue of ignorant opinions and news outlets.

The ignorant comments of the public after news articles (about ignorant comments of politicians) are even more worrisome than the politicians' statements. The anonymous public vitriol tends to discourage rational discussion, and is little more than online bullying. For an excellent post on what's wrong with the public comment sections of news related web sites, read Steve Dahl's excellent 11/11/09 article "Everybody is a know-it-all these days."

This issue is not going away and I remain convinced that society needs to find a way back to the process of debate based on facts. We need to abandon our apparently growing penchant for encouraging ignorant shouting by people unconcerned with knowing anything about the topic at hand. I'm not very hopeful.

Greil Marcus, an American cultural historian and co-author of "A New Literary History of America," remembers watching TV in the 1950s, "when there were all these TV dramas about science vs. religion." And, he says, "science always won."

No more, Marcus says. Instead, cacophony now prevails and the right to be heard trumps what is being said. "Welcome to the new Dark Ages," he says.