[LINK] What price might democracy have to pay?

[Adam Todd]

>    What price might democracy have to pay?

No price.

>The terrorist attacks are a terrible violation - comparable to the
>largest attacks and battles in war.

I have a different feeling.  This was carried out with simplicity.  Knives 
and a handful of men.  TO be honest, ity's not making a lot of sense.

>I hope there are no more such attacks - and no rash, unwise, responses.

I don't think there will be unwise responses from Western Government, 
however there are military exchanges in the Middle East which are 
reportedly growing.    What is curious is that the efforts aren't from US 
supporting countries.

Could this be the Apocalypse predicted by Nostradamus?

>The challenge now is to stop our governments from using these events as
>a reason for reducing democracy, freedom, privacy etc.

/me laughs

Interesting thoughts.  Democracy won't change, those societies won't wear 
it.  Freedoms and privacy are a separate issue.

>No level of surveillance can protect, with 100% certainty, against

Yes, don't you find that curious.

Three absolutely ENORMOUS commercial aircraft, visible on any radar system 
like spots on a Dalmatian, fly into no fly zones, even tracked flying INTO 
no fly zones and no one blinked?

Why weren't Air Controllers jumping up and down the moment the planes 
diverted their flight paths?  Flying into the WTC isn't exactly like a 
direct route.  Especially at that height.  It's a no fly zone without a lot 
of clearances.

Directing a plane at the Pentagon might have been a little easier, knowing 
the fly zones there, but again the reality is, a plane coming in a low 
levels for quite some time, and on a very unusual flight path?  Actually i 
understand they evacuated the Pentagon the moment they noticed that 
aircraft move from it's flight path, which probably explains why nearly all 
24,000 staff were out before the plane hit.

But it doesn't explain the WTC incident.  After the first plane hit, there 
was 18 minutes.  A whole lifetime for evacuation, which would already be in 
progress, but I'm told by a person I know who works in the second building 
(WTC2 was hit first I understand followed by WTC1 so don't get confused by 
the numbers) that they didn't actually start evacuations before 9AM, at 
least not in her office.

So was it total confusion?  Again, how do the radar operators explain 
it?  It's not a flight path, it would have stood out like a sore thumb.

I'm just watching flight path data from the two aircraft that took off from 
Boston and they were so dramatically off course, that there was heaps of 
time for evacuation, especially with the second plane itself.  Seems th 
pilot might have been trying to diddle the hijackers.

>people.   Since a kilo or so of plutonium can probably be purchased in
>the former USSR, and since it is trivial to build a suitcase-sized bomb
>with it, motivated people could cause far worse devastation than this.

The instructions are on many a web site :)

>The only reliable solution is for countries such as the US to ensure
>that they are not involved in any oppression which drives people to
>these lengths.

There is a lot of call for calm.  Thank goodness.  We don't need to 
retaliate.  We need to increase financial growth.  Just like Japan did when 
it signed it's Military Defence rights away.

We need to learn from that and action the same plan.

>and too vulnerable.  Brute force calls to eradicate terrorism are
>dangerously wrong - you can't forcibly get rid of all such aggrieved
>people, without creating many, many more.  But we can't succumb to the
>demands of every aggrieved party either.

The problem is, whomever is responsible, and they haven't put their hand up 
yet, which if you ask me is weird, or very carefully planned media 
marketing for impact, doesn't care about human life, doesn't care about 
retaliation.  Probably doesn't care if they are killed or start a global war.

>I hope that it will be widely understood that no country can fight or
>force its way out of this sort of situation.  They must find ways of
>getting along with other people which doesn't drive them to such lengths
>as these.

That's just too much to talk about.

>The US has done, or been involved in, terrible things to
>some peoples.  To me, the most obvious instances were in Vietnam, Laos
>and Cambodia where (to my understanding) several million people were
>killed.

Yes.  Funny isn't it.  But I doubt we'll ever have all the details of those 
incidents in history.  It will be rewritten hundreds of times.

>This is an attack on civilisation.  But people don't do this on a whim.

It's a weird attack.  Why take out the world trade buildings?  Casualty 
numbers?  Do they feel it's better to take innocent lives, probably even 
many of their own country men?  Why attack targets that aren't actually 
beneficial in a military respect.

Taking out the top five floors of the Pentagon is a waste of time.  It's 
just office staff.  They'd have been better taking out installations in 
Nervada!

Just watching Palestinians cheering about the loss of life.  Why don't 
people like that get the picture?  They mourn their own loss of life, yet 
cheer about someone else's.  It's a sad case of incorrectly directed humanity.

>I think they only do it - murdering countless civilians - because they
>are desperate about their own civilisation, including their God or
>Gods.

That's a complex issue isn't it.

>I am not trying to justify these vicious, vast, crimes.

Justify them, no.  Explain them?  But does it?

>But these attacks show that countries have no choice but to get along with
>other countries and peoples so as to make sure that no-one gets so
>desperate as the people who made this attacks.

But we do!  This is just it.  It's such a select few people who incite 
aggression and anger.  Maybe it's time to bring back the assassin?

What scares me most is that in Sydney alone, we have pockets of every 
culture.  There will be Palestinians running around Sydney today cheering 
most likely.  And Iraqis and Iranians, and Americans ....

>I wish language, culture, race and religion did not - in some instances
>- cause such friction, estrangement, fanaticism and cruelty.

But it doesn't need to.  It's not so much these things that incite 
aggression.  It's the "leaders" who promote fighting, rather than learning.

When has it ever hurt someone to learn about another culture or thing?  You 
don't have to like it, belive in it or accept it, but you can learn about 
it and respect that everyone is different.  Even within the cultures that 
are causing (possibly) these problems, they have differences they accept.

Perhaps it's a primal instinct that hasn't developed and evolved like much 
of the world?  Perhaps these people are like animals that need to be 
trained and evolved into new generations of intelligence?

It seems the like some of these people are children or monkey's being given 
weapons of destruction.

But I do feel they understand that they are in the path of self destruction.

>The Internet has a role to play in bringing people together despite these
>barriers.

It does, in some ways, but Governments are spending a lot of time trying to 
control it, and certain corporate's are trying to own it.