And how do you plan to stop the next terror attack?
In fact the aims of terror are principally to provoke a government to introduce repressive measures and lash out, and in the process, damage itself and its credibility with citizens. I think the aims of Bin Laden were probably to induce terror, fear, and paranoia in the US, and unfortunately they have succeeded, probably beyond their wildest dreams. Huge amounts of money and numbers of lives have been squandered, and the only result has been a series of failed states half-way across the world, a casual disregard for the rule of law, and a growing surveillance state at home destroying the very ideas the US claims to represent.
It's time for the US to recognise that expanding the architecture of surveillance and engaging in an eternal war against an ill-defined enemy is not going to make anyone safer, quite the reverse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks#Domestic
"At a press conference the morning after the attacks, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Justice Minister Knut Storberget addressed the country. Stoltenberg called the attack a "national tragedy" and the worst atrocity in Norway since World War II. Stoltenberg further vowed that the attack would not hurt Norwegian democracy, and said the proper answer to the violence was "more democracy, more openness, but not naivety".
Even a repressive government can't guarantee that it will stop terror attacks.
For that I would hop into a time machine, not train Al-Quaeda, not mess with Iran, and let Saudi Arabia find someone else to buy their oil with which they sponsor what they sponsor.
Some might claim then I would have been utterly usurped by the USSR, and without a time machine, who knows. There's really only one way to find out what acting like a decent person, and in extension like a decent nation, would have lead to. Or what it might lead to starting from today.
Feels like I am in an evangelical church questioning god.
Ironically, that itself is also rhetoric. You didn't even address anything I said, can not point what makes what I said mere rhetoric either, but just dismissed it all with that statement.
So maybe even if there are solutions, even if they get posted in plain sight of you; as long as you're trying hard to not see them, you won't.
What you're really saying is "give me solutions which keep me and my current outlook intact", and I don't see a reason to automatically assume that's possible or desirable.
Solutions please.
The solution to what, exactly? To drummed up fear? To hypocrisy and double standards? That's all just in the mind, and as Bill Hicks said, I recommend sit-ups. Or do you mean the fires that in large parts don't just get fueled, but were started by the very people who claim to protect from them?
from your other post:
The lack of solutions itself is a sign that no one has anything better to offer than what the NSA is currently upto.
Does this not also apply to your comments? Why aren't you making the comments you want to see, instead of "crying" about the problems with the discussion? Because it's not that easy, is it?
Also, this is hardly an issue everybody is completely informed about, much less in the mainstream. Talking "solutions" now, instead of simply talking and see where that leads, strikes me as premature.
You can't change a century of statism and the shrinking of the individual overnight with a "solution". We need to evolve out of consumerism and passivitiy, out of confusing symbols and things, not just consume the right change or come up with the correct symbol. We need to overcome atomization and rediscover solidarity instead of better skinner boxes, and that may take more than a generation even. If it is something you or I can fully experience in our lifetime, it is not aiming high enough IMHO. If it is something that can be explained to someone without all of attention span, intellectual honesty and passion, it is not worth a second thought.
And in a process that involves all people on the planet, I would not ever hold my breath to ever have a full explanation of the full picture, or expect a full map before I even do one step. But I can get to know myself and my immediate surroundings, see how I feel about each and act on those.
To me that is infinitely better than a full, but false explanation of how the world is, which is exactly what most people operate on, stories that cease to exist the moment they're no longer told. This leads to incredibly insecure people, who go insane as soon as the jukebox who tells them who they are goes silent, which in turn leads to all sorts of nonsense. As Voltaire said, those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. Oh, the irony of complaining about "rhetoric" and then expecting a "solution, pronto".
My "solution" would be, hmmm, we all read and implement the writings of Erich Fromm and Marcus Aurelius, get to know ourselves, all 7 billion of us. Then we have a second round of discussions. If you don't like it, give me a better one.
To me in that book, he is fully credible. I can guess how he got the insights: Be a bright guy, have a good background in what was known, at least empirically, at the time about psychology and psychiatry, do a lot of clinical psychology, listen to a lot of people, and identify the main issues and forces in common. Now I can look at events A, B, and C, from Fromm find the intuitive, qualitative version of the conditional probability of event X given events A, B, and C -- P(X}A, B, C) -- when this conditional probability is high, take X as a candidate explanation, look at some more data, and often conclude that Fromm nailed it again.
for example ( from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVNR51ctdc&t=33m28s ) :
[..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did.
Nobody wants to hear that. I don't want to hear it either. If I read it in a book which otherwise is telling me many things that are obviously wise and come from a good motivation, I can ponder it. If someone just says that about me, to my face, I defend myself before I fully heard what was said. But it's true.
He goes on:
I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general.
But if you can really see that every one of us, carries all of humanity, the good and the evil, within himself, then indeed is very hard to be a fanatic, then indeed it's very hard to be a judge, then indeed would follow, a deep understanding, if not love, of your fellow man. Which is part of being truly a person.
Bam. Consider how far this is from the maturity of our so called leaders and us, how far away from even our highest standards. The fact that this stuff comes across as cheesy rhetoric so easily, is just testament to how lost we are.
Sorry for rambling, but I can't deny it, I love that dude, and I honestly think everybody should at least try to read him because they might, too.
And on India, he's right: I refuse to pay attention to India, and for essentially just the reason he said.
At the risk of overdoing it (even more), one last quote I consider a true pearl because it sums up so much, from http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ :
The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself.
In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialties, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do not hear," etc.
The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in which the idol has a socalled religious meaning.
Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act.
Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses.
The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission.
To me Erich Fromm's writings are like a holograms, they all seem to contain a rough version of the whole ^^
There are some connections with some of the content in 'The Art of Loving', especially his -- rough quote:
"The fundamental problem in life is getting security in face of the anxiety from the realization that we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society. Human intelligence enables this realization. For responding to this anxiety, only four approaches have been tried, (1) love of god, (2) love of spouse, (3) membership in groups (get praise, acceptance, approval, feeling of belonging, coalition, support), and (4) 'orgiastic' behavior (sex and drugs) to suppress the feelings of anxiety."
So, the "idolatry" can be seen as another response to the anxiety, that is, a false approach to (1)-(3).
Fromm had another one, that can regard as a 'secret scorecard'! He explained that in a good case of love, the couple gives to each other knowledge, caring, respect, and responsiveness. So, in "knowledge" they keep each other informed on their thoughts, feelings, concerns, desires, etc. In "caring", they actually, actively care about each other. In "respect" they respect the other person, e.g., don't regard them with contempt or to be manipulated or exploited. For "responsiveness", they 'respond' to each other, e.g., don't do what was long in the Sunday newspaper cartoons of the wife talking to the husband over the breakfast table and the husband behind a newspaper repeating "Yes, Dear. Of course, Dear. That's right, Dear. That's nice, Dear. Yes, Dear.".
Then take these four 'attributes' and evaluate them for couples you know. If the couple gets a bad grade on all four, try to short the stock of their marriage, if it is possible to do that! Or be very cautious about marrying one of their children!
That little scorecard can give some surprising results: Can discover that some couples are going along for decades with what externally to the community looks like a good marriage but according to the scorecard really would like to knife each other in the back! Or, people can put on some really big acts.
There's more, from Fromm, and still more if combine Fromm with some other good sources (of which I know only a few).
Here's an exercise: Watch 'Roman Holiday'. There the reporter Bradley (Gregory Peck) and Princess Anna (Audrey Hepburn) were from the beginning basically lying to each other about whom they were but slowly mutually but silently worked past the lies. Then evaluate the scorecard: They did great. On each of the four, they started off okay and then grew to a grade of A or A+. Then they were in love. Otherwise they showed it by only quite subtle means, but it was convincing and enough. The writer (Trumbo), director (Wyler), and the actors did fantastic jobs. Fromm's scorecard wins again!
People really in love will likely be doing well on Fromm's scorecard whether they have heard of the four items or not. If they are not in love, are pretending to the public to be in love, and have not heard of the four items, then there is a really good chance that their act is not working and they are showing that they are not in love by getting bad grades on the scorecard.
I doubt that Trumbo or Wyler had read Fromm, but they knew enough about love to give a really good presentation of it including on Fromm's scorecard.
Note: I call Fromm's four attributes a 'scorecard'; I doubt that Fromm ever did!
That Fromm's little four item scorecard can look like X-ray vision through the public 'presentation' of couples trying to pretend in public to have a good marriage is to me amazing and astoundingly valuable. Some of the best information about anything I ever got.
One more exercise: The first item on Fromm's scorecard is giving knowledge. Well, that is a form of 'intimacy'. If you are in a romantic relationship without intimacy, then you are in deep trouble! On the other hand, if meet a girl and soon she is telling you lots of things from between her ears, then that's intimacy and inviting a romantic relationship. I've been in 'romantic' relationships where the girl was much more open about what was between her legs than between her ears. Or in 'Roman Holiday', they started between their ears and slowly worked down to, say, a nice hug and a kiss. In real life, it can be much more common to start below the waist and maybe move up, maybe never get above the shoulders, and only rarely get between the ears.
Or, in middle school it can appear that a lot of the mothers told their daughters to stay away from boys, not to talk to them: "Don't tell them anything. If they ask 'why', just say 'because'. Say it over and over until they feel insulted and give up." So, such mothers know that this way they can throttle a path toward intimacy for their middle school daughters.
Fromm's amazing.
My point is people have to be pushed to answer the question on how to tackle terrorism to take this debate in a constructive direction. Ofcourse governments will do dumb things but the terrorism problem is a hard one.
Amazing to watch how defensive people get over a question.
So thank you, for showing everyone else who has been downvoting me into oblivion, the right way to react to questions that make one uncomfortable.
And in the end, this debate will only move forward over reasonable solutions. Not fancy speeches on privacy and freedom. Which I have had more than enough off.
What else are you upset about?
Obviously those who have chosen to deliberately kill civilians in spectacular ways are not right now a danger akin to imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. But will it really take a dirty bomb, a successful mass infection/poisoning, or god help us a nuke to stop this silly argument?
It's bizarre to me that one of the anti-anti-terror arguments of choice reflects that hilariously dystopian scene in the film Brazil, wherein the staff and patrons of a restaurant that has just been bombed attempt to paper over the incident by completely ignoring it, as innocent people suffer and die.
Obviously. Which is the point.
>But will it really take a dirty bomb, a successful mass infection/poisoning, or god help us a nuke to stop this silly argument?
These are movie theater plots. "Mass poisonings" are a very poor attack vector because as soon as they're identified they get publicized and people stop consuming the adulterated product, which minimizes the impact. Spreading infection has similar constraints, is difficult to contain (i.e. the attacker can't prevent it from spreading to his own family/country), and it is vastly more difficult to obtain weaponized infectious materials than poisons.
And dirty bombs are a media fabrication. Here's the money quote from Stratfor: "By its very nature, the RDD is contradictory. Maximizing the harmful effects of radiation involves maximizing the exposure of the victims to the highest possible concentration of a radioisotope. When dispersing the radioisotope, by definition and design the RDD dilutes the concentration of the radiation source, spreading smaller amounts of radiation over a larger area."[1]
[1] http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100421_dirty_bombs_revisite...
Which leaves The Bomb. But terrorists can't build nuclear weapons. States can barely do it. So if your concern is nuclear terrorism, the solution doesn't require you to catch the terrorists, all you have to do is limit the availability of weapons grade material. Which is a completely different problem with completely different solutions that don't involve domestic surveillance or foreign wars, is required to prevent state-level nuclear proliferation regardless of terrorism anyway, and mostly just involves being the highest bidder if weapons grade material ever becomes available on the black market.
>It's bizarre to me that one of the anti-anti-terror arguments of choice reflects that hilariously dystopian scene in the film Brazil, wherein the staff and patrons of a restaurant that has just been bombed attempt to paper over the incident by completely ignoring it, as innocent people suffer and die.
I don't think anybody is arguing that there should be no response to a terrorist act. But why can't the response be to bring the terrorists to justice as international criminals, and not to let it change the fabric of our society?
In the US, we'd probably do what they did in NYC after 9/11 WRT to the excessive claims of danger from asbestos, say "never mind" (after cleaning up hot spots). And "don't eat dirt" and the like, but who knows?
Elsewhere I've touched on how I'm not as sanguine as you over the real nuclear threat.
Why not both? I've yet to be convinced that warrant-based searches of Internet traffic by a resource-constrained agency would actually appreciably change the fabric of society. Especially if we force better transparency and accountability controls on what is now present.
But also, while we're itemizing potential terrorist activities, am I the only one who is worried about MANPADs?
It barely deserves a response. Practically nobody dies of terrorism.
>to take this debate in a constructive direction.
To derail the debate with FUD?
Right, we're clearly remiss in prosecuting gov't overreach.
In terms of deaths? No, it wouldn't.
But what about the property damage and economic disruption that came from attacking an important financial center?
Some simply recommend to just suck it up as the price of doing business, but that goes against everything America has typically done with regard to terrorism, all the way back to the Barbary Pirates: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"
What I find most annoying about the comments on hacker news over the last couple weeks, is the amount of people crying about the problems or potential problems and hardly anyone talking solutions. The lack of solutions itself is a sign that no one has anything better to offer than what the NSA is currently upto.
Not doing what the NSA is currently up to, and letting a 9/11 happen every year, would be better than what we're currently doing.
"Preventing all terrorism" is both impossible and wildly impractical: to even get close, you must eviscerate the freedoms in your society and undermine the rule of law.
The "solution" is "be an adult, and don't go in to a frenzied panic every time you get hurt".
In a democracy, you have to at least try to get people to agree with you, and given what we know about the NSA program, you're nuts if you think any politician who proposed the tradeoff you're making would get 15% of the vote.
Preventing all terrorism isn't actually the goal though.
Just like our vaccination regimes are not intended to completely eradicate disease, merely prevent epidemics and pandemics, the anti-terrorism programs are intended to increase safety and security for Americans (and by proxy, other nations who would also be targets of the groups aligned against the USA), in a way such that terrorism does not happen so often that the people demand the police state we all claim here to despise.
It is recognized that completely eradicating terrorism is probably impossible, but the U.S. can make it almost impossibly difficult to form large enough terror cells to repeat things like 9/11.
And unlike your rather defeatist attitude, I think that can be done without "eviscerating" civil liberties, as long as we employ ample doses of transparency, watchdog groups, and organizational structures designed to keep those programs directed to the mission and provide accountability and oversight. Of course it can be done; how do banks holding billions of dollars of their customers funds manage to provide strict accountability for those?
Pretty much every prior technological breakthrough has made tyranny in the U.S. more likely, and the U.S. has managed to pull through in each case (though sometimes with roadbumps...).
And, if you're really concerned about the rule of law you will do everything possible to avoid "a 9/11 every year". When the state fails to protect the people, the people (armed by the 2nd Amendment) will take matters into their own hands, and it won't be pretty for many innocents in America.
But again, if you have better ideas I'm sure the NSA is listening...
Just felt a simple up vote didn't convey enough of a thanks. You've provoked the conversation in far more interesting directions than it would otherwise have taken. Thank you sven7.
It was indeed an eye opener.
If asking a question, in what generally appears to be an open minded forum of seemingly well read people of above average intelligence, can be this complicated...its easy to imagine why Congress has a tough time doing anything.
I guess we just have to keep trying to refocus on solutions and hope for the best.
I know this sounds cheesy but I think repression is just making things worse.
What the NSA is doing, but properly implementing mandatory access control (like what they added to Linux over a decade ago with SELinux) to ensure that admins do not have more access than they should.
That said, I'm not eager to let them define the Overton window and just settle for that - I'm leaning a little further on the "radical transparency" side of the spectrum - but clearly, what the NSA is up to is not treating our data with the care it merits.
- Any data collected under a general warrant is encrypted immediately.
- Access to this data is audited to a WORM-style server.
- Decrypting the data requires 2 persons to provide a key (I believe there are crypto schemes that do this in the literature; if not I'm sure NSA could figure it out).
- The process that decrypts the data after the authentication creds are provided also notifies a random 3rd party within NSA (or even a Congressional/FBI/etc. panel setup for this purpose).
On top of this there need to be changes to how NSLs and FISA warrants are treated. They are secret only so long as needed for the law enforcement purpose.
Afterwards, if there is still an issue of sensitivity from a counter-terrorism standpoint (e.g. enemy groups would learn too much about our capabilities if fully detailed NSLs/warrants were public), then they are scrubbed as little as necessary to allow for public dissemination. This could mean aggregate reporting, sunset provisions for gag orders, etc. But having permanent gag orders is not befitting our Republic.
Finally I agree that having NSA write its own rules is not a good idea. I would require Congress to set overarching policy and limits on NSA's actions and prevent Congress from delegating that into the Executive Branch. I think even the Dems and GOP could hopefully get along long enough to ensure national security is being guarded...
This is different, this is a president who's cut from the same cloth as Nixon, in everything from being the first one since him to refer to his political enemies as "enemies" to this new model of the Plumbers ... except the establishment and media hated Nixon with a passion starting in the late '40s, 1950 at the latest. Obama hasn't been subjected to that level of feedback, e.g. note how many on the Left are happy with or at least excusing his Administration's suppression of the TEA Party et. al., which is one of the things that casts the NSA's extreme data gathering---not "collection", you must understand...---in sharp relief.
Honest question: Why not?
Obviously we don't want mass casualties, but we don't want thousands of traditional murders or automobile fatalities or cancer deaths every year either, and we don't allocate insanely disproportionate budgets or construct a surveillance state to address any of those things. If anything we under-perform in addressing them.
I mean let's even compare to other mass casualty events. There have been hurricanes that have caused more deaths than 9/11. Where is the call for a war on CO2 to reduce climate change induced mass casualties? The answer is that there is no lobby for it. Nobody is going to get paid a trillion dollars, if anything the oil and coal companies would lose money. So the mass casualties there don't get politicians, lobbyists and PR flacks whipping the media into a frenzy over it, instead it just gets swept under the rug.
We as citizens have a duty to not allow ourselves to be manipulated like this.
But, geeze, this united the nation for a very brief period, I mean, when the ruling class in their national cathedral sings The Battle Hymn of the Republic 3 days after 9/11 it does mean something (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic...).
"Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." -Edmund Burke
I am completely convinced, however, that US government, with all its enormous might, is perfectly capable of ensuring reasonable - not complete, as it is impossible, but reasonable - level of safety to US citizens without turning into a police state and shredding the Constitution. Yes, it will be harder and some important people would be forced to work a lot harder than otherwise and spend more money and stay longer hours, and be frustrated and annoyed by how they have to follow all those pesky little rules while doing their work. It is the only way to do it without turning from citizens to subjects.
You're giving us a false choice.
I have never heard a shit happens lets move on speech.
So act tough. Demand justice. Capture Osama bin Laden.
The rest of it is just defense contractors and bureaucrats capitalizing on the tragedy to engorge their budgets and claim new powers.
"And how do you plan to stop the next attack?"
Suddenly the supreme vagueness of the question becomes apparent. After all, attacks in general provoke terror (at least for me--some random guy can rush at me on the street and I'll feel terror). So what attack are you talking about? By whom? The U.S. already has a framework to prevent "attacks" in general-- the CIA, the military, the police, the NSA, etc. Like with all security systems, it's a matter of calibrating them so they don't undermine our way of life.
As a micro example -- I can prevent future (terror) attacks on myself by burying myself in a sealed metal casket. But my way of life would be seriously undermined. So how do I want to calibrate my safety vs. how I want to live?
The exercise of removing the word "terror" is useful in almost all situations, because it actually makes things a little more accurate. For example, the "War on Terror" becomes the "War on ...". Which, as it panned out, more accurately describes the outcome.
The prevention efforts should be reciprocal to the threat.
That's a pretty powerful motivation to keep this beat back, to e.g. as I noted WRT to Afghanistan post-9/11 send a strong message that if you kill thousands of us we will return the favor to the leaders and enablers.
The idea of a successful attack on US with missile is just bad B movie trope. Even USSR strategies were for massive waves of missiles that could overpower the defenses.
Non state actors cannot manufacture nuclear weapons. This thing is hard. They could obtain possibly - but the fact is that US is somewhat defended by geography alone so Israel is much better (and more hated) target.
Now I know that the majority of US ruling class act as if USA is just some territory belonging to Israel and not sovereign country.
But if any credible nuclear threat for the US is to appear - it will be from a country. And there are better ways to contain Iran or Pakistan than to become surveillance state.
We also have absolutely no defenses for anything from our east, unless an Aegis ship with SM-3s and the upgrades to fire them is near the target and properly alert. This lack of protection was, after all, one of the reasons for the Bush plan to put ABMs in Eastern Europe, they'd protect everything there to the west, including the eastern part of the US.
As for sources, IF they got enough HEU they could most certainly manufacture working gun assembly nuclear weapons; as usual the trick is getting the fissionables, but are you entirely, "You Bet Your Life" sanguine about Pakistan's control over its nukes and nuclear materials??? And how responsible Iran will be when they get "the bomb" remains to be seen.
I will note that Manhattan Project scientists were so confident in the gun-assembly nuclear bomb, that they didn't even bother testing it (in the age before computer-aided design, no less!). The first working gun-assembly bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. In other words the first atomic bomb ever dropped in anger had never been test-fired, that's how confident the designers were that it would work.
The real magic of the Manhattan Project had been the industrial-scale development required to piece together all that weapons-grade nuclear material in the first place, not the design itself.