4 ms·

Oh, please. Airports have turned to shit because of the groups you quoted. Right? And the beheadings, that's those crazy Buddhists right? No, it's the NRA gu

Oh, please. Airports have turned to shit because of the groups you quoted. Right? And the beheadings, that's those crazy Buddhists right? No, it's the NRA guys with their ridiculous guns. Yeah, it's them. Dammit. Please. Let's get real. We know the elephant in the room. It's not "Mother Theresa Gone Wild". You and everyone else fully understand the problem. Let's stop pretending it's something else.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Airports turned to shit because of a particular group of people - namely, politicians of the United States of America. This is an example of totally uncalled for overreaction that by itself probably did more economic damage than all the terrorist attacks in the US combined.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  How would you propose to protect the millions of passengers who fly every day from terrorists? I am not challenging you. I simply want to know what you are thinking because it sounds like you may have thought this through to some depth. You obviously think politicians made the wrong decision (which isn't hard to believe) and might have a better solution than the crap we've had to deal with since 9/11. What alternatives did these politicians have and ignored? What else could they have done? I don't think anyone, including myself, likes what air travel has become. Yet, I am not sure I could have come up with a better solution. If terrorism disappeared for ten years perhaps we could go back to the kind of hassle free experience air travel used to be. What's your idea?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > What alternatives did these politicians have and ignored? What else could they have done? They've ignored the most important alternative that is unfortunately often forgotten or seen as weeknes - that you can also do nothing. Or at least do only things that make some sense. Airports aren't really more secure than they were before 9/11. I'd argue they're even less secure against terrorist attack, because if you wanted to maximize the damage to people, you just go and bomb the security line. You've got hundreds of people tightly packed in a closed space there. The reality is, terrorism (or generally, politically-motivated murder of civilians) simply doesn't happen often enough that we should care. It's also by definition pretty much completely unpredictable, because the attacker has freedom to pick their target and spend as much time on preparations as they want. Arm the population? Terrorists will use remote-detonated bombs or suicide vests. Turn all airports into high-security facilities? Terrorists will attack at security checkpoints, or just switch to bombing buses instead. If they wanted, they'd murdered us by the thousands already. The reason it doesn't happen is that humans generally just don't go blowing themselves up and/or killing random people. Also, keep in mind that causalties in terror attacks are only collateral damage, and not the goal. The reason for such attacks is to push the harmed society into the state of panic, at which point they'll start overreacting and doing stupid things to themselves and others. So in the hypothetical more rational world, what could have politicians done? - Leave the airports be vs. starting the security theatre industry. Not to say all air travel security is bad; pilot cabin doors are an improvement, though after that last catastrophe in Europe you could say it's an double-edged... shield. - Don't start two wars vs. starting two wars. This definitely made more terrorists, not to mention it killed about three orders of magnitude more innocent people than 9/11 itself. - Don't terrorize Pakistan vs. drone-strinking the living shit out of civilians there. This definitely created more potential terrorists. - Shut the fuck up about it in media. Ok, so the towers fell, it's a tragedy. We should mourn the dead, clean up the mess, redirect funds to investigate and bring to justice people responsible, but otherwise there's nothing to see here. - Redirect the saved money to other programs. 'gnaritas posted a helpful CDC "top 10 causes of death in the US" list. Any money spent towards fixing any of the items on this list is much better spent than directing it towards "war on terror".
    - rebootthesystem 11y ago
      Nonsense. If we didn't have greater security for air travel aircraft would rain from the skies. And the sheer devastation to global economies would have no imaginable measure. Is security perfect? Far from it. But it is far better than doing nothing. I think you might be blind to a whole layer of the infrastructure because you never have visibility into it. I do. I own a company that conducts business internationally. Passenger aircraft don't just carry passengers. Before the extensive security measures implemented progressively after 9-11 taking down a plane with cargo would have almost been child's play. Today, not so. I don't know how much you travel. If you do, be thankful there are people who did their best to ensure someone isn't shipping an incendiary device on the same plane you and your family happen to be on. The business of attempting to create equivalency between deaths due to smoking or heat disease and terrorism is simply laughable at best. There is no equivalence and nothing prevents anyone from addressing them as the separate and unrelated problems they are.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > If we didn't have greater security for air travel aircraft would rain from the skies. Did something changed fundamentally about human condition after 9/11? Planes didn't generally get attacked before, and they didn't generally get attacked after. There were a few incidents on both sides of 9/11. I don't see any reason to attribute things going as they always have been to security theatre erected around the 9/11 events. > I think you might be blind to a whole layer of the infrastructure because you never have visibility into it. I might be. Please share some details then, I'm always eager to learn something new and reevaluate my opinions. > Today, not so. I don't know how much you travel. If you do, be thankful there are people who did their best to ensure someone isn't shipping an incendiary device on the same plane you and your family happen to be on. I do travel enough, mostly on business. I am very thankful to all people ensuring my safety in air and on the ground. But I do question a lot of the efforts that were introduced as a reaction to events of 9/11.
        rebootthesystem 11y ago
        Well, I'll just say there are at least two kinds of people in this world, those who tend to see things for what they are (not 100% of the time but often enough) and those we need reality to really hit them hard before they finally understand. I see a lot of people on HN, you and @gnaritas included, living in that second camp. Refusing to see reality for what it is and insisting the emperor has beautiful clothes. I imagine you and @gnaritas as people who would dismiss all the mounting evidence as the Nazi's prepared to kill millions of Jews, including openly stating they were going to perfect the techniques used by the Turks to kill a couple million Armenians during the first world war. Report after report came out of these regions for both Genocides. Images, telegraphs all all sorts of evidence of what was coming and what was happening. There were those who screamed bloody murder and saw the mounting evidence for what it was: A path to genocide. And, of course, there were those who said shit like "Oh, never mind the Armenians" or "Never mind the Jews", "more people die in car accidents every year, what they hell are you people crying about". And millions died. I am not going to continue going back and forth with people who refuse to see reality for what it is. We --the World-- are not headed for a good place. We could be headed for something truly horrific. Creating equivalence with car accidents and cancer and arguing from a position of insanely ridiculous minutiae in the face of attacks, threats videos, beheading, suicide bombers, mass killings and the terrorists themselves getting on the internet and social media to tell all of us EXACTLY what their intentions ares. Well, my friend, this is just insisting to be blind to a reality that is out there in plain sight for all to see. I fear people like you simply refuse to understand even after six million people perish in a Genocide. I would love to be able to interview some of the people who dismissed the mounting evidence for the first and second genocides of the 20th century. I wonder what the people who ignored the images and telegraphs thought of themselves years later as they realized what happened and how they refused to accept reality. So, that's it. I don't know where this is headed but it looks worst with ever turn. I hope world leaders take action and stop this snowball from hell from leading us in a direction none of us wants to even consider. I am not going to argue with you any more because we obviously don't see eye to eye. I truly hope you never get the evidence you need to convince you that you are being blind and you are looking at this the wrong way. And I say that sincerely because that day will not be a good day for humanity.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Airports turned to shit because of a particular group of people - namely, politicians of the United States of America. This is an example of totally uncalled for overreaction that by itself probably did more economic damage than all the terrorist attacks in the US combined.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
How would you propose to protect the millions of passengers who fly every day from terrorists? I am not challenging you. I simply want to know what you are thinking because it sounds like you may have thought this through to some depth. You obviously think politicians made the wrong decision (which isn't hard to believe) and might have a better solution than the crap we've had to deal with since 9/11. What alternatives did these politicians have and ignored? What else could they have done? I don't think anyone, including myself, likes what air travel has become. Yet, I am not sure I could have come up with a better solution. If terrorism disappeared for ten years perhaps we could go back to the kind of hassle free experience air travel used to be. What's your idea?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > What alternatives did these politicians have and ignored? What else could they have done? They've ignored the most important alternative that is unfortunately often forgotten or seen as weeknes - that you can also do nothing. Or at least do only things that make some sense. Airports aren't really more secure than they were before 9/11. I'd argue they're even less secure against terrorist attack, because if you wanted to maximize the damage to people, you just go and bomb the security line. You've got hundreds of people tightly packed in a closed space there. The reality is, terrorism (or generally, politically-motivated murder of civilians) simply doesn't happen often enough that we should care. It's also by definition pretty much completely unpredictable, because the attacker has freedom to pick their target and spend as much time on preparations as they want. Arm the population? Terrorists will use remote-detonated bombs or suicide vests. Turn all airports into high-security facilities? Terrorists will attack at security checkpoints, or just switch to bombing buses instead. If they wanted, they'd murdered us by the thousands already. The reason it doesn't happen is that humans generally just don't go blowing themselves up and/or killing random people. Also, keep in mind that causalties in terror attacks are only collateral damage, and not the goal. The reason for such attacks is to push the harmed society into the state of panic, at which point they'll start overreacting and doing stupid things to themselves and others. So in the hypothetical more rational world, what could have politicians done? - Leave the airports be vs. starting the security theatre industry. Not to say all air travel security is bad; pilot cabin doors are an improvement, though after that last catastrophe in Europe you could say it's an double-edged... shield. - Don't start two wars vs. starting two wars. This definitely made more terrorists, not to mention it killed about three orders of magnitude more innocent people than 9/11 itself. - Don't terrorize Pakistan vs. drone-strinking the living shit out of civilians there. This definitely created more potential terrorists. - Shut the fuck up about it in media. Ok, so the towers fell, it's a tragedy. We should mourn the dead, clean up the mess, redirect funds to investigate and bring to justice people responsible, but otherwise there's nothing to see here. - Redirect the saved money to other programs. 'gnaritas posted a helpful CDC "top 10 causes of death in the US" list. Any money spent towards fixing any of the items on this list is much better spent than directing it towards "war on terror".
  - rebootthesystem 11y ago
    Nonsense. If we didn't have greater security for air travel aircraft would rain from the skies. And the sheer devastation to global economies would have no imaginable measure. Is security perfect? Far from it. But it is far better than doing nothing. I think you might be blind to a whole layer of the infrastructure because you never have visibility into it. I do. I own a company that conducts business internationally. Passenger aircraft don't just carry passengers. Before the extensive security measures implemented progressively after 9-11 taking down a plane with cargo would have almost been child's play. Today, not so. I don't know how much you travel. If you do, be thankful there are people who did their best to ensure someone isn't shipping an incendiary device on the same plane you and your family happen to be on. The business of attempting to create equivalency between deaths due to smoking or heat disease and terrorism is simply laughable at best. There is no equivalence and nothing prevents anyone from addressing them as the separate and unrelated problems they are.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      > If we didn't have greater security for air travel aircraft would rain from the skies. Did something changed fundamentally about human condition after 9/11? Planes didn't generally get attacked before, and they didn't generally get attacked after. There were a few incidents on both sides of 9/11. I don't see any reason to attribute things going as they always have been to security theatre erected around the 9/11 events. > I think you might be blind to a whole layer of the infrastructure because you never have visibility into it. I might be. Please share some details then, I'm always eager to learn something new and reevaluate my opinions. > Today, not so. I don't know how much you travel. If you do, be thankful there are people who did their best to ensure someone isn't shipping an incendiary device on the same plane you and your family happen to be on. I do travel enough, mostly on business. I am very thankful to all people ensuring my safety in air and on the ground. But I do question a lot of the efforts that were introduced as a reaction to events of 9/11.
      - rebootthesystem 11y ago
        Well, I'll just say there are at least two kinds of people in this world, those who tend to see things for what they are (not 100% of the time but often enough) and those we need reality to really hit them hard before they finally understand. I see a lot of people on HN, you and @gnaritas included, living in that second camp. Refusing to see reality for what it is and insisting the emperor has beautiful clothes. I imagine you and @gnaritas as people who would dismiss all the mounting evidence as the Nazi's prepared to kill millions of Jews, including openly stating they were going to perfect the techniques used by the Turks to kill a couple million Armenians during the first world war. Report after report came out of these regions for both Genocides. Images, telegraphs all all sorts of evidence of what was coming and what was happening. There were those who screamed bloody murder and saw the mounting evidence for what it was: A path to genocide. And, of course, there were those who said shit like "Oh, never mind the Armenians" or "Never mind the Jews", "more people die in car accidents every year, what they hell are you people crying about". And millions died. I am not going to continue going back and forth with people who refuse to see reality for what it is. We --the World-- are not headed for a good place. We could be headed for something truly horrific. Creating equivalence with car accidents and cancer and arguing from a position of insanely ridiculous minutiae in the face of attacks, threats videos, beheading, suicide bombers, mass killings and the terrorists themselves getting on the internet and social media to tell all of us EXACTLY what their intentions ares. Well, my friend, this is just insisting to be blind to a reality that is out there in plain sight for all to see. I fear people like you simply refuse to understand even after six million people perish in a Genocide. I would love to be able to interview some of the people who dismissed the mounting evidence for the first and second genocides of the 20th century. I wonder what the people who ignored the images and telegraphs thought of themselves years later as they realized what happened and how they refused to accept reality. So, that's it. I don't know where this is headed but it looks worst with ever turn. I hope world leaders take action and stop this snowball from hell from leading us in a direction none of us wants to even consider. I am not going to argue with you any more because we obviously don't see eye to eye. I truly hope you never get the evidence you need to convince you that you are being blind and you are looking at this the wrong way. And I say that sincerely because that day will not be a good day for humanity.