TERROR ERROR

So the guy the London police shot "to kill" was an unassuming Brazilian electrician. Hoo boy...pre-emptive strikes are just looking better and better all the time, aren't they?












Meanwhile, the "terror expert" on MSNBC tonight was all like--yeah, but think if they hadn't killed him and he'd blown up a bus, then what would you be saying?" If this jackass is such an "expert," how come he can't help stop any terrorist attacks? This guy basically said that what should be done to "stop terrorism" is to keep waving guns around and shooting people with the intent of killing them and hope that the police might get it right more often than not, because bless their hearts, they're only doing the best they can.

I can help, I think, but I make no claims to be an expert on the subject. Here's my advice on how to stop terrorism--leave these people alone! Stop antagonizing the world! We cannot rule the world by force, by commerce, or by any method! The suicide bombers always tell us what they want, or at least why they blow themselves up, and it's almost always along the lines of "Pull out of our sacred land/give us our homeland" or some variation thereof. Why wouldn't we do that? Because of our "strategic interests"? By which is meant "oil?"

The oil supply is peaking, yo--we're gonna have to come up with some other energy source pretty soon anyway, so let's leave these people alone and create billions of dollars for domestic companies and providing jobs for Americans by working on renewable energy sources, popularizing them, making them convenient and affordable, and then no more worries about terrorists (except the homegrown kind).

If we really wanted to "remake" the Middle East, that's exactly what we'd do. Because then the oil they're sitting on would be about as valuable as all the sand it's under, and then we'd be selling whatever shit we came up to them and we'd be on friendly terms and we could each pursue our own crazy religions and leave each other the fuck alone.

It's like those BP commercials--"what do you want an oil company to do?" How about getting out of the business of pushing around the people of other cultures for profit so they don't get pissed off and blow themselves up in crowded metropolitan areas? That would be nice.



Those "security" cameras worked great

The CCTV installed in London sure were a big help in the terror attacks, weren't they? I mean, they really helped stop the terrorist attack...I mean, well...they didn't stop it, but...you know, they kind of help maybe now...

I don't claim to know a whole lot about the security cameras in Britain, but I know they have them in a lot of places and I know that they are installed to help curb crime. Or are they?

Because they weren't able to stop the bombings. They are, however, quite capable of intruding on British citizen's civil liberties. Just like the cameras in Chicago (notice how they're in housing developments and the mayor says in the transcript "they're the next best thing to having a police officer stationed at every potential trouble spot in our city" as though every trouble spot in Chicago is in housing developments) and other places are capable of doing.

This kind of thing frustrates me so much. Why do we allow our "leaders" to convince us to allow this kind of surveillance and so forth instead of taking the most obvious step to prevent these kinds of attacks? Why do we allow our leaders to say, in essence, "By God, the U.S. fuckin' military is going to occupy Iraq no matter if we have to install security cameras on every corner, in every home, check every bag coming in and out of every public facility, encode every citizen with a digital tattoo that contains all their pertinent info and can be scanned at the whim of law enforcement, if we have to throw out the Bill of Rights and write it out the history books, and declare the entire populations of the "blue states" to be enemy combatants, and bankrupt the country (but enrich its tax-sheltered corporations), we'll bloody well do it because Iraq had no WMD, had no ties to al Qaeda, never attacked us and never could have even if they had wanted to!"

Does that scenario--that we're living out minus the hyperbole--make a bit of fucking sense? Of course not. But that is the underlying assumption of practically every news report and every terrorism/military/corporate shill-expert that comes on television to talk about such things, that is, that we're the goddamn U. S. of A. and we can do anything we damn well please to anybody at any time. And that anyone who objects to that on rational grounds (i.e., get out of country, leave us alone, your policies are hurting us, etc.) "hates our freedom" or is a "terrorist," or some other kind of hogwash. Why are we standing for this?