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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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God damn it. 9/11 was 10 years ago. A once great nation. |
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Reggie
Joined: 21 Sep 2009
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2010 11:09 pm Post subject: |
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When citizens traveling domestically on buses (a vehicle which only carries a small number of passengers, and is not especially dangerous if hijacked when considered on a societal scale) are being patted down by police officers, we've gone beyond the even remotely justifiable and into the absurd. No reasonable person can watch this buffoon talk about, "Inventing the wheel in advance," in order to justify harassing American citizens by referencing terrorist attacks that haven't even happened yet. And when the news reporter talks about travelers feeling these measures are a, "Comfort in troubled times," and interviewed some random guy whose credential is listed as "rides the bus," who says he's happy that now he doesn't have to worry about blowing up next time he gets on the bus, I felt my face twitch a bit.
Space Bar, we had a conversation some time back, wherein you tried to convince me America was a police state, while I remained doubtful. Well, you win. America is a police state. Maybe not as extreme a case as certain other nations, but it's indisputably gotten there. I tried to remain agnostic as long as I could; I felt like as long as this crap was restricted to airplanes -- an expensive mode of travel for which there are plenty of alternatives for the average citizen -- things could still be okay, and the trend could still be reversed. Clearly, I was wrong; this is just going to keep going and going, and my optimistic hope on the matter was simply foolishness. |
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conrad2
Joined: 05 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2010 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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| If I want to blow up a Greyhound bus, Im not buying a ticket and going through the boarding process. I will just wait until it pulls out of the station and throw the bomb in a window. And why a Greyhound bus? Many more people on a typical city bus or in a Starbucks for that matter. |
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AsiaESLbound
Joined: 07 Jan 2010
Location: Truck Stop Missouri
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 1:02 am Post subject: |
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| The bus to Miami is an important tourist route so they need security, but many other routes only see mostly ex convicts in transit home from doing time so I wouldn't expect to see many of those hole in the wall bus stations be like airports. Most of those small bus stations are already policed for drugs and nabbing travelers with outstanding warrants. Even though I'm not packing bombs and drugs, it's nerve wracking to travel, because the many kinds of police can be intimidating. How can it be that I'm much more fearful at home than abroad yet I've done nothing to be worried about? |
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liveinkorea316
Joined: 20 Aug 2010
Location: South Korea
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 2:54 am Post subject: |
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The video posted above was of a random check for one day only that was being done as a training exercise for the officers more than anything.
Buses in general do NOT have these checks yet. |
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Space Bar
Joined: 20 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 6:43 am Post subject: |
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| kotakji wrote: |
I sympathize with the position of most of the responders in this thread, but man, that original article really cobbles together a bunch of different quotes (and really warps some of their meanings) to support its particular narrative. I wish news agencies (and the mainstream ones linked to the original article aren't much better) would give full quotes that include the context.
Only quoting "really the last line of defense" and "determined enemy" (in the linked article) does not provide a foundation for the claim that the TSA admin was conveying "no intention of ever changing its screening policy." It's possible he was, but please, at least in the body of the article, give his exact words. Dont take away the reader's ability to draw his/her own conclusions. |
Is there anything in the full text of Pistole's remarks from which you draw conclusions in conflict with those of the OP?
Last edited by Space Bar on Wed Dec 01, 2010 7:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Space Bar
Joined: 20 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 6:52 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Space Bar, we had a conversation some time back, wherein you tried to convince me America was a police state, while I remained doubtful. Well, you win. America is a police state. Maybe not as extreme a case as certain other nations, but it's indisputably gotten there. I tried to remain agnostic as long as I could; I felt like as long as this crap was restricted to airplanes -- an expensive mode of travel for which there are plenty of alternatives for the average citizen -- things could still be okay, and the trend could still be reversed. Clearly, I was wrong; this is just going to keep going and going, and my optimistic hope on the matter was simply foolishness. |
Thanks. It is ironic to say, but while I have appreciated your skepticism, I am "glad" you have come around. So now let's join forces: how do we resist this while remaining safe? At least being expats, we are a step ahead.
Yet again, I so wish I had been wrong! |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 7:29 am Post subject: |
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Deepak Chopra is the CEO of one of the firms that produces body scanners.
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| HAWTHORNE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: OSIS), a vertically-integrated provider of specialized electronic products for critical applications in the Security and Healthcare industries, today announced that Deepak Chopra, Chairman and CEO, was selected to accompany US President, Barack Obama, to Mumbai and attended the US India Business Entrepreneurship meeting, which was held by the US India Business Council (US IBC). The goal of the meeting was to promote further trade between US and India. |
http://investors.osi-systems.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=530184
Does this mean the scanners use quantum physics?
Who else (other than Chertoff?):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/fear_pays_chertoff_n_787711.html
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| The only other company that manufactures such scanners, L-3 Systems, has spent more than $1.4 million on lobbying the government since 2004 - one of its best-connected lobbyists is Linda Daschle, wife of ex-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), earning almost $100,000 in fees for working on "matters related to advanced imaging technolog," reports The Hill. |
Soros too, though apparently he sold.
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The bodyscanners are a means with which to make some people wealthy. They do not have anything to do with security. If security was really the primary goal, we'd discriminate and profile.
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Deepak Chopra? The new age guru? The world gets weirder by the day. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 8:08 am Post subject: |
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http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/11/30/the-national-security-state-cops-a-feel/
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But here�s the thing: in our deluded state, Americans don�t tend to connect what we�re doing to others abroad and what we�re doing to ourselves at home. We refuse to see that the trillion or more dollars that continue to go into the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence community, and the national security state yearly, as well as the stalemated or losing wars Washington insists on fighting in distant lands, have anything to do with the near collapse of the American economy, job devastation at home, or any of the other disasters of our American age.
As a result, those porno-scanners and enhanced pat-downs are indignities without a cause � except, of course, for those terrorists who keep launching their bizarre plots to take down our planes. And yet whatever inconvenience, embarrassment, or humiliation you suffer in an airport shouldn�t be thought of as something the terrorists have done to us. It�s what the American national security state that we�ve quietly accepted demands of its subjects, based on the idea that no degree of danger from a terrorist attack, however infinitesimal, is acceptable. (When it comes to genuine safety, anything close to that principle is absent from other aspects of American life where � from eating to driving, to drinking, to working � genuine danger exists and genuine damage is regularly done.)
We now live not just with all the usual fears that life has to offer, but in something like a United States of Fear. |
The empire is a big problem. The way politics is funded is equally big (and contributes to the continuation of the empire). |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Space Bar wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Space Bar, we had a conversation some time back, wherein you tried to convince me America was a police state, while I remained doubtful. Well, you win. America is a police state. Maybe not as extreme a case as certain other nations, but it's indisputably gotten there. I tried to remain agnostic as long as I could; I felt like as long as this crap was restricted to airplanes -- an expensive mode of travel for which there are plenty of alternatives for the average citizen -- things could still be okay, and the trend could still be reversed. Clearly, I was wrong; this is just going to keep going and going, and my optimistic hope on the matter was simply foolishness. |
Thanks. It is ironic to say, but while I have appreciated your skepticism, I am "glad" you have come around. So now let's join forces: how do we resist this while remaining safe? At least being expats, we are a step ahead.
Yet again, I so wish I had been wrong! |
I'm just staying abroad, that's all there is to it. Being married to a Korean ensures I'll always at least have a home here if I want one, and I'm looking at other options with regards to nations I can stay in comfortably for moderately long spans of time without going as far as committing to citizenship in one.
No idea what else to do; I'd like to somehow try to help America get better, but I'm a fundamentally unpersuasive person. The way I talk makes people entrench themselves further in their positions. |
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kotakji
Joined: 23 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Space Bar wrote: |
Is there anything is the full text of Pistole's remarks from which you draw conclusions in conflict with those of the OP? |
I dont know. Neither article provided the full remarks- which is precisely the point I was getting at. News articles shouldn't be drawing conclusions, leave that to the reader. (yeah I know, is/aught fallacy and all that) |
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recessiontime
Joined: 21 Jun 2010
Location: Got avatar privileges nyahahaha
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| I'm a fundamentally unpersuasive person. The way I talk makes people entrench themselves further in their positions. |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59VT8FCA66o
this explains why. I had the same issue with people. There's nothing wrong with the way you rationally explain things. With most people though you have to think about swaying their emotions first. Don't convince, make them feel. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| recessiontime wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| I'm a fundamentally unpersuasive person. The way I talk makes people entrench themselves further in their positions. |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59VT8FCA66o
this explains why. I had the same issue with people. There's nothing wrong with the way you rationally explain things. With most people though you have to think about swaying their emotions first. Don't convince, make them feel. |
politics 101. It's sad. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 6:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
When citizens traveling domestically on buses (a vehicle which only carries a small number of passengers, and is not especially dangerous if hijacked when considered on a societal scale) are being patted down by police officers, we've gone beyond the even remotely justifiable and into the absurd. No reasonable person can watch this buffoon talk about, "Inventing the wheel in advance," in order to justify harassing American citizens by referencing terrorist attacks that haven't even happened yet. And when the news reporter talks about travelers feeling these measures are a, "Comfort in troubled times," and interviewed some random guy whose credential is listed as "rides the bus," who says he's happy that now he doesn't have to worry about blowing up next time he gets on the bus, I felt my face twitch a bit.
Space Bar, we had a conversation some time back, wherein you tried to convince me America was a police state, while I remained doubtful. Well, you win. America is a police state. Maybe not as extreme a case as certain other nations, but it's indisputably gotten there. I tried to remain agnostic as long as I could; I felt like as long as this crap was restricted to airplanes -- an expensive mode of travel for which there are plenty of alternatives for the average citizen -- things could still be okay, and the trend could still be reversed. Clearly, I was wrong; this is just going to keep going and going, and my optimistic hope on the matter was simply foolishness. |
| Quote: |
The video posted above was of a random check for one day only that was being done as a training exercise[b] for the officers more than anything.
Buses in general [b]do NOT have these checks yet. |
(bolding mine)
When America makes these checks for buses on a nation-wide scale then I will agree that it's turned into a police state.
A training exercise of one day doesn't really cut it for me though. |
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