DescentBB

just giving something a try here... sitting in front of the tv with a laptop in my lap . airing whatever concern comes to mind as i watch lateline...

just heard on the telle that Tony Blair was pretty much saying that he would "approve anything" to give intelligence agencys more power.

havn't we learnt our lessons with the USA here?

god damn, you don't just approve anything. who knows what else will be snuck in to the legislation. especially with such a lax attitude... approve anything? wtf


to give a brief summary, the london bombers seem to be harmless to the naked eye. either way they slipped under the radar.

personally i don't think the radar can EVER be tight enough to catch these kinds of incidents without sacrificing freedoms we deem nessesary for our civilisations' wellbeing and inherent ideology. we can tighten and tighten, give up more and more freedoms. by the time we get to the point where we are feeling safe from these kindof attacks - we will no longer be who we were. we will no longer have the freedoms nessesary to DEFINE US AS CIVILISATION.

now note this: i'm not accusing anyone of WANTING to restrict freedoms for nefarious purposes, that's becides the point of this. i'd like to just talk about cause-effect of the laws being brought in all too easily, how this effects things on the big scale. you restict freedoms too much, and people feel restricted. i could go further, but it's easier to just refer to the capitalised words above referring to what "defines us as a civilisation". as in, what do we want, where do we want to go. you have to be able to think towards the future and for every step you take AWAY from your ideal of where you'd like to be: you need to know howto get back on track, it has to be a subplan all along the way. basically you need to never loose track of the big picture. and the big picture is civilisation and how we can be constantly improving.

these little events get in teh way, we need to deal with them. yes. we can't just let ourselves be blown up with our heads in the sand. but these current times are small when you think about all we've accomplished to get us to where we are now. when i say US, i mean the human race. perhaps moreso i'm referring to the first world since we beleive ourselves to be on top of things and therefore at the forfront of moving things uh... forward. (you don't get the mapping of the human genome and space travel from impoverished wartorn non-1st world nations)

yes the current spat of civilian targetting, including but not resticted to "terrorism", i'm calling it all just a hiccup. a little event. on the scale of things, of human existance, it's a flash in the pan. unfortunately we live in the global age and everyone with an adgenda thesedays is always thinking globally. islamic fundamentalism has it's sights on large goals, frankly i think they are a bit greedy. although they essentially target nation by nation, party by party... you DO hear sometimes verball spillage of "we want large nation X to be an islamic state". and that is frightening to me, us.

ok i got a bit away from the main point.
the main point is that we need to see Islamic Extremist Militantism (i'll call it ISM) as merely a flash in the pan, and only a small threat to the greater adgenda of the first world. it may seem like i'm not as scared as i should be, but it's because when you essentially look at it, ISM has no hope of attaining their goals. are you going to convert to becomming a Muslim? not just an ordinary muslim, but one who is so fucked up to condone this kindof militaristic religious foaming of the mouth... no! all we are doing is defending ourselves. also it's obvious that anyone can pull off an attack like this, you can't stop it. you can't win a war on terror, since there is no real target to attack (terror?), all it accomplishes is self defence.

also, this kindof thing isn't only from militant islamists. it can also come from groups within our culture who feel disenfranchised. extreme greens: the ELF. whitehat hackers. basically all activists in one form or another (ie: ppl who want activity, the opposite of ideological pacifists) who feel disenfranchised. you just can't defend yourself from this kindof thing.

didn't we have a bit of a golden age happening in the times when we wern't having worldwars? what happened to "gentlemen"? were people back then feeling more ENfranchised? they felt their world was essentially GOOD, and were proud to be a part of it?

don't have much of that thesedays, but i'm sure we'll eventually get back to that ideology... one day.
in the meantime lets not loose track of what we're doing here. we are fighting a small problem, lets not get carried away.
i want to see an exit plan for EVERY ONE of these draconian laws. do we have an exit plan? i ask.
or are we loosing sight of the bigger picture, just leglislating reactionary laws, with no scope of how we will ever get these freedoms BACK.
are we essentially legislating ourselves (as civilisations) into an evolutionary corner.

ok lets see how that takes you

I think you are trying to diminish the threat and danger so you can rationalize ignoring it as a better course of action than reacting.
If you need an exit plan, at least in america, any law can be unwritten just as it was written so if any of them do prove to be draconian I'm pretty confident that we will drop it from the books.

And if we ever do find the threat of jihad from islamofascists to be as minor as you portray it we will probably just take it as business as usual as you suggest...but that's one big ★■◆●ing smoking crater of *if* in lower mannhattan.

perhaps perhaps.

i don't want to ignore it, as you say that will likely cause a "crater in lower manhatin". but i'd like an exit strategy, PUBLICLY, to ease the minds of the... uh, progressives? the left?
(unless that's too big an assumption, but it seems the left is the political side who's complaining about the loss of freedoms.)

i'm not sure i've ever heard anyone talking about terrorism like we will ever get through it. it seems to be here to stay and everyone's just accepting that with very little questioning.

i never hear: "once we've got this terrorism thing outof the way". no-one ever says it.

is it because we are all keen on the idea of an enemy? i mean... what were we all doing BEFORE all of this? didn't we have goals? i guess other global problems like hunger and disease were higher up the list.
they were all things on the list of "things we need to fix before we can relax", with the ultimate goal at the end of that being something good, a global golden age perhaps.
terrorism i see as a smaller problem than global hunger or disease. it just hits us where it can hurt us, so we take it personal.

I think the 'golden age' was merely a time when there was no world war being fought and we didn't pay attention to the machinations in certain regions that created some of the problems we face today. Ignorance is bliss...and it was a golden moment that came with a time delayed payment.

Will Robinson wrote:I think the 'golden age' was merely a time when there was no world war being fought and we didn't pay attention to the machinations in certain regions that created some of the problems we face today. Ignorance is bliss...and it was a golden moment that came with a time delayed payment.

I agree totally