#terrorism

The reason we don’t see exploding battery attacks more often is not because it’s technically hard, it’s because the erosion of public trust in everyday things isn’t worth it. The current discourse around the potential reach of such explosive devices is clouded by the assumption that it’s technically difficult to implement and thus unlikely to find its way to our front door.That assumption is wrong. It is both surprisingly easy to do, and could be nearly impossible to detect. After I read about the attack, it took half an hour to combine fairly common supply chain knowledge with Wikipedia queries to propose the mechanism detailed below.

Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times dig deeper into yesterday's news of a new would-be Al Qaeda underwear bomber, "dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner." He was a double agent for the CIA who infiltrated Al Qaeda, and "volunteered for the suicide mission." He also provided intelligence that led to Sunday's drone strike killing a USS Cole bombing suspect. Snip:

The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

A ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation of how this decision was made shows that in post-9/11 America, security issues can trump even long-established medical conventions. The final call to deploy the X-ray machines was made not by the FDA, which regulates drugs and medical devices, but by the TSA, an agency whose primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks.

Yes, yes. All these plots are "unrelated." We can't possibly blame them on a right-wing ideology that revels in paranoid claims about the future of the country and how extraordinary measures are required to save it from whatever the latest bogeyman is (usually, revolving around some not-conservative figure being the ideological equivalent of Stalin, for reasons that are, shall we say, never well explained), because that would be mean. We can't blame the authors and promoters of far-right fantasias (the men in this story were inspired by a fictional novel about murdering government workers fer freedomz, etc) because that would be "persecuting" them or some such, and heaven knows the right wing feels "persecuted" enough already. And heaven forfend anyone point out how very, very often these stories have a Fox News connection or find that the alleged terrorist had written long, rambling messages on some well-known conservative blog.

"No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardice—the cynical exploitation of fear for political gain. ... It's a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate."

"This now familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public's antiterrorism capability — above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof. By definition, terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless. It is more often a psychological threat than an existential one"

""Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable"

"President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."

"Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough."

"Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer? Because it's a movie-plot threat."

"I have (I think) a strong intellectual grasp of the roots of suicide terrorism, something about playing the game gave me an "aha" moment that I'd never had before: an ability to feel, in whatever tiny fashion, the strategic logic and emotional calculus b

"Collectively, we need to start thinking about what the post-post-9/11 world looks like, a world where terrorism will certainly still exist. It can either be a world of arm-waving fear, or a world of informed resolve"

"If you spot terrorism, blow your anti-terrorism whistle. If you are bald, yell really loud."

"We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet" I'm radicalizing right now, in fact. The tubes are chock full of radicalizing agents.

"Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, but she just didn't get it in time, Tenet thought."

"Our goal in this report is to rise to Mr. Clinton’s challenge, and assess the record of Mr. Bush’s efforts against al Qaeda in his first eight months in office."

"A memo received by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters yesterday, RAW STORY has learned."

"But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures."

"The claim that Clinton paid insufficient attention to terrorism was one that virtually no Republicans made during the Clinton presidency."

"This is a surreal story about a guy who accidentally drops his iPod into an airplane toilet, prompting a full-scale terror alert. Overreaction at its worst."

"Whenever Ann is faced with the reality that Osama hasn’t been caught yet by this administration–well–Poor Ann. Kirsten Powers actually responds to Coulter’s ridiculous line that Afghanistan is going swimmingly and brings up the fact that Osama is

"The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act."

"Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable -- but rarely heard -- explanation is that there are no terrorists withi

"This is a victory for terrorists."

"I am sick of living under the shadow of media-driven fear of terrorism."

"You must decide for yourself that you will not let them deter you from your path. If they rise against you, you must be prepared to meet them. Prepared to be ruthless in defense of what you love. It may mean that you will die. We all do someday."

"But how afraid should Americans be of terrorist attacks? Not very, as some quick comparisons with other risks that we regularly run in our daily lives indicate."

"To exploit a very real terror threat that could have led to major casualties, and to even indirectly implicate Americans who were exercising their democratic right by going to the polls and making a choice borders on the criminal, to say nothing of the i

"Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!"

"The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified."

"Terrorism has always been rare, and for all we've heard about 9/11 changing the world, it's still rare."

"Hopefully, that will keep religious radicals from coming near the structure."

"It is a metaphor for the scared, the dishonest, and the weak."

"I have spoken to about a dozen agents, and they all roll their eyes and indicate disgust with the man-years of wasted effort being put into physically examining NSA "leads." "

"Federal prosecutors said the owner of the La Shish restaurant chain has ties to top officials of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah."

"Agents misinterpret costume from University of Georgia Methodist event"

"Because I trust Fox News, and if Fox News is insinuating that somehow the terrorists have enlisted the help of alien space ships to attack the United States of America, I believe them."

"In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship. Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law."

"Federal workers under suspicion of smaller lapses have had access to classified data yanked."

"This gradual erosion of our fundamental liberties should be of concern to us all."

"Both have issued apologies Fox in a one-line statement to the Los Angeles Times and Loftus in an e-mail to the family after being contacted by the newspaper. The Voricks say they have yet to see or hear a correction."

And so, we make an enemy of the entire Islamic culture for a few thousand years.

"There is a massive failure of leadership in the U.S. and U.K. When our people die, what we get from blowhards Bush and Blair is nothing but therapy..."

"The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of such atrocities"

"Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wils

' "Well, sir, that's a switchblade style, and that's a prohibited item,'' Mr. Rau said he was told. ''We're going to have to confiscate that.'' ' The terrorists have succeeded in making us look like morons, yet again.

"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'." All for a blunt bread knife. Yeah, I feel safer.

"Agreeing to a request from the Homeland Security Department, the State Department refuses to issue a visa to a Muslim European professor hired by Notre Dame." Score one for the good guys.

"John Young, a 69-year-old architect, was contacted a few weeks ago by Department of Homeland Security officials, who expressed concern about what he was posting on his Web site." Wow, I wondered if he'd get some attention from the spooks.

"The Justice Department's triumphant victory over the Constitution."

"Yes, the band that played on the deck of the Titanic was quite talented and a good distraction from the matter at hand, but there may yet be a few ways to prevent this boat from sinking and if we don't tend to it, no one will."

"Revolting millions around the world, the video footage of an American citizen's execution has also raised numerous questions concerning its authenticity."

"Now we know how many holes it takes to fill a moral void."

'"If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in 1984," Cravens said.'

"Three times tonight Bush was asked if he could accept responsibility for his mistakes and failings. Three times he couldn't even begin to answer the question put to him. The American people deserve better."

Funny if it weren't scary.

"She was run over, twice. What kind of people ridicule the violent death of someone they didn’t know and at worst only disagree with?"

"Quickly identifying new biological agents used in terrorist attacks could become possible with a new device that monitors the metabolism of living cells in near real time."

Yeah, because things like this make me feel so great about greater gov't power to "protect" us