We’ve spent almost 300 billion dollars waging a war on (at most) 100 terrorists in Afghanistan. We’ve spent more than double that fighting terrorists in Iraq that didn’t even exist until we created them. That’s over a trillion dollars pissed away on practically nothing. And don’t get me started on the absurd cost of security theater right here in the US. Fuck it already. Just fuck it. Some planes crashed into some buildings a decade ago. A few common-sense improvements to airline security have long since insured that it can never happen again. Eerybody involved is either dead, captured, or vanished. Get over it. Stop sending good money after bad and move the fuck on.
One jackass sticks an M80s worth of low-grade explosives in his underpants, and everybody loses their shit about the horrible threat of terrorism. Then the TSA ups the overreaction ante by enacting rules so infuriatingly pointless that even the recently exhumed and reanimated corpse of Niccolò Machiavelli suggested “They may be taking this whole ineffective bureaucracy thing a bit too far”.
Thankfully, someone who isn’t a complete fuckwit decided to crunch the numbers and see what sort of threat terrorism actually poses. The answer is, of course, almost none. Your chances of dying in a terrorist attack are so infinitesimally small, you would need to fly to the moon and back twenty four thousand times before you were likely to see someone blow up their own crotch in the name of Allah.
So here we are, pissing away half a trillion dollars a year on “homeland security”, while the actual risk posed by terrorism practically zero. Meanwhile, when the first guy in 8 years actually does try to sneak a bomb onto a plane, none of the security theater at the airports manages to catch him until after he detonates his skivvies.
Man, those two unnecessary wars may have been expensive, and we may have lost the good faith of the world by torturing and killing people for no particular reason, and sure, we’ve given up most of our constitutional rights for the illusion of security, but at least the system works, right?
For fuck’s sake.
(infographic via Gizmodo, but you can’t blame them for the rant)
This probably won’t come as much of a shock to anybody with half a brain in their head, but blanketing a city in surveiliance gear doesn’t actually do much to fight crime. London has about one million CCTV cameras watching its citizens, yet last year London law enforcement was only able to use those cameras to help solve about one crime per thousand cameras.
Not a great return on a £500 million investment that is abused more often than it is used. (via Boingboing)
While I’d love for ninja looters and PvP griefers to be sent to Gitmo, I don’t see how this could possibly help the war or common sense terror. It’s a toss up over which part of this plan is more insulting - the stupidity or the invasiveness.
I’ve been incredibly lazy about my tumblr postings lately, but this seemed worth the minimal effort.
Every day I become more infuriated reading about all the false-positives the “war of terr” produces. Bruce sums up why the system isn’t working far more eloquently (and far less profanely) than I ever could.
Spy Squirrel Update!
Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman has uncovered the secret pentagon plot to spy on terrorists with cuddly creatures. Follow the link for more details on Project A.C.O.R.N.
This great op-ed piece from Memepunks lays out just how absurd the restrictions on DIY science have become. It is really disgusting how far the government has gone in order to “protect” us from imaginary terrorists and drug dealers. It is already illegal to blow up buildings and manufacture crystal meth. Where is the sense in making simple chemicals and lab equipment illegal also and preventing their legitimate scientific use? You only hurt people who obey the law.
Exactly how holding up a sign reading “Equal rights for robots” equates to “Disorderly conduct” eludes me, but it is Pennsylvania after all. (via Boingboing)
FTA - “There are people there responding to hysteria, I think. But from an engineering point of view, if someone is successful in blowing a hole into a tank, they will just have a fire from one tank.
There is no way for the fire to go from tank to tank, that is nonsense. It just won’t happen.”
I would also point out that this “terror plot” was foiled by an accused drug dealer who only ratted out the terrorists in order to get out of jail time. Despite all the illegal wiretaps, the NTSB’s war on moisture, the erosion of personal liberty, and the nearly two trillion dollars spent to combat international terrorism, the would-be terrorists may well have succeeded with their questionably effective plan had it not been for a good old-fashioned snitch.
