Showing posts with label Foreign Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreign Policy. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The TSA's Panic Searches & PETN: Quite Simply There Are More Ways To Blow Things Up Than You Could Ever Possibly Prevent
Quite simply there are more ways to blow things up than you could ever possibly prevent.Just in case anyone was wondering what the TSA's panic mode search procedures are all about...
Your government doesn't want you to know that.
Further, there only seem to be two solutions to the dilemma of non-state actor terrorism.
A: Learn to live in a totalitarian police state.
B: Do something (anything!) to ameliorate the reasons WHY someone from that region of (or anyplace in) the world would want to blow up airliners with civilians on board or commit other terror acts.
I fear most Americans will opt-in to the do-nothing method... "A", than sacrifice an inch, a second, of affluent lifestyle...
...a lifestyle BTW that could not possibly last very long under a totalitarian regime and an economy necessary to prevent terror attacks.
Your government doesn't want you to be aware of that last little detail either.
Something ELSE their friends in the Homeland-Security-Industrial Complex don't want you to be aware of...
The scanner companies have DRAMATICALLY increased their spending on convincing your elected representatives that THEIR vision of a police state is a safer state:
"As the national debate over airport screening practices intensifies, little attention has been paid to the increasing lobbying power the manufacturers of full-body scanning machines have in Washington.
USA Today reports L3 Communications has spent $4.3 million on lobbying, up from $2.1 million in 2005. L3 has sold nearly $40 million worth of machines to the federal government. Lobbyists for L3 have included Linda Daschle, the wife of former US Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
Meanwhile, Rapiscan Systems has spent more than $270,000 on lobbying so far this year, compared with $80,000 five years earlier. The company made headlines last year when it hired former US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has become a prominent proponent of body scanners. The CEO of Rapiscan's parent company, Deepak Chopra, recently traveled with President Obama on his three-day trip to India."
(And, no, not that Deepak Chopra. The New Age guru would determine your terrorist potential by evaluating your aura, no machines or strip-searches necessary.) [Source]
Let me state this ANOTHER way..
From a comment I made to the professor on his post:
JC: Al-Qaeda is about using small numbers of men and low-tech techniques to paralyze a whole civilization...
Auntie Imp: Sort of like the CIA, right?
Because THEY WERE CIA.
Right?
AFAICT, they're doing a GREAT job of supplying our Foreign Policy rationale for Central Asia, "where the Gas Pipes are", and the Middle East, "Where the Oil Wells are" and perhaps should STILL be on the CIA's payroll for doing that yeoman's work if they were ever actually relieved of duty.
(Removing tongue from cheek now)
Looking for PETN, Scanning Grandma at the Airport, and the Future of Air TravelPosted on November 22, 2010 by Juan
In all the furor about the new TSA scanners and pat-downs at airports, what surprises me is that there is very little discussion of what exactly the inspectors are now looking for and why they are shifting tactics.
The old scanners and procedures designed to discover metal (guns, knives, bombs with timers or detonators) are helpless before a relatively low-tech alternative kind of explosive that is favored by al-Qaeda and similar groups.
The inspectors are looking for forms of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, which is from the same family of explosives as nitroglycerin and which is used to make plastic explosives such as Semtex.
Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, used PETN, as did Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the crotch bomber, last year this time over Detroit. PETN was in the HP cartridges sent by a Yemeni terrorist in cargo planes recently. And, a suicide bomber put some up his anus and used it in an attempt to assassinate the son of the Saudi minister of the interior (which does counter-terrorism). Yes, he was the first ass bomber, and he missed his target, though he no longer cares about that, what with being dead and all.
The problem with PETN is that it cannot be detected by sniffing dogs or by ordinary scanners. But if you had a pouch of it on your person, the new scanners could see the pouch, and likewise a thorough pat-down would lead to its discovery.
The TSA guys are trying to look more systematically for PETN. That is why they have adopted these more intrusive methods. And, there has been chatter among the terrorist groups abroad about launching attacks on American airliners with this relatively undetectable explosive.
None of us likes the result, which is a significant invasion of privacy.
But if al-Qaeda and its sympathizers could manage to blow up only a few airliners with PETN, they could have a significant negative effect on the economy and could very possibly drive some American airlines into bankruptcy. Al-Qaeda is about using small numbers of men and low-tech techniques to paralyze a whole civilization, which was the point of the September 11 attacks.
Since the Bush administration hyped the ‘war on terror’ trope half to death, many in the American public no longer want to hear about this danger. But it is part of my business in life to deliver the horrific news that the threat is real.
The question is really what level of risk Americans are willing to live with. On the one hand, studies suggest that the crotch bomber could not really have brought down the airliner over Detroit last year, even if he had been able to detonate his payload. And, 500 million Europeans decline to take off their shoes when they travel by air, but there haven’t been any successful shoe bombings over there, nevertheless.
On the other hand... [In full...]
(The comments are well worth reading as well)
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Lookit ALL Those "Injuns"! - The Comanche and the Taliban... What The Indian Wars Tell Us About The Taliban, Stephen M. Walt
"...it is a sobering fact to realize that despite its clear interest in victory and its clear advantages in numbers, wealth, and technology, it took the United States nearly four decades to finally defeat the Comanche. If you are seeking a similarly decisive victory in Central Asia, therefore, you'd better be prepared to stay there in strength for a long, long time."(Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University and co-wrote The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy (2007) with John J. Mearsheimer)
(The Comanche courtesy of Wikipedia)
The Comanche and the TalibanBy Stephen M. Walt
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
One of the most enjoyable books I've read in the past year was S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches. It's a terrific, gripping story, and I learned a great deal about aspects of U.S. history of which I was only partly aware.
In brief, the book tells the story of the U.S. effort to subdue the Comanche, the most powerful Native American tribe on the Great Plains. It was a bloody and fascinating struggle, in part because the Comanche proved so hard for the far more numerous and technologically superior Anglos to defeat. If you grew up with a John Ford/John Wayne/Randolph Scott view of the Old West, this book will be something of a revelation. And the saga of Quanah Parker himself, a Comanche war chief whose mother was a white woman kidnapped in 1836 at the age of nine, and "rescued" many years later (when her son Quanah was twelve years old), is itself a heart-rending tale of cultural conflict and personal tragedy.
As much as I enjoyed the book, I couldn't help but read it with the current war in Afghanistan in mind. In both cases, a numerically superior, wealthier, and more technologically advanced United States confronts a tribal adversary fighting on its home ground. And in both cases, the U.S. government faces an adversary that is cunning, ruthless, and by our standards even backward or barbaric.But as my late colleague Ernest May used to warn, when you make a historical analogy, it is a good idea to make a list of the ways the two situations differ, instead of just invoking the similarities.
So lest you think that the ultimate victory of the U.S. government over the Comanche heralds a similar victory over the Taliban, consider the following differences between the two situations...
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Just In: Iraq elections assessment from bitterlemons-international.org
A victory for Iran?
Sadegh Zibakalam
In the short term, anti-western forces both inside and outside Iraq can smile.
The game is not over
Safa A. Hussein
If all four blocs form a government, this could ease tensions with Saudi Arabia.
Turbulence at the exits
Greg Bruno
The political turbulence following the March 7 vote--and the wave of violence that punctuated it--illustrates just how long the road for Iraq truly is.
Building a state on a sectarian, ethnic and quota basis
Sawsan al-Assaf
Sectarianism will almost certainly ensure that Iraq's major cities again witness an increase in violence.
Read them @ bitterlemons-international.org
Be sure to browse bitterlemons-international archives too.
Recent roundtable topics:
The Arab League and Palestinian-Israeli proximity talks Ed. 7 Vol. 8 - March 11, 2010
* "All that is needed at this time is public Arab support" - Daoud Kuttab
* "High probability of failure" - Shlomo Brom
* "Reverse engagement" - Rime Allaf
The Mabhouh assassination in Dubai Ed. 6 Vol. 8 - March 01, 2010
* "Israel must be held accountable" - Ghassan Khatib
* "A brilliant blunder" - Josef Joffe
* "Hypocrisy" - Yossi Alpher
* "A scandal for Israeli intelligence" - an interview with Mustafa Alani
Labels:
Bitterlemons,
Elections,
Foreign Policy,
Iraq,
Iraq Elections,
Israel,
Middle East,
Palestinians
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