Hmmm because I think that checking peoples bags is a simple way of preventing a disaster therefore I must advocate the creation of a police state, right, I love the logic jump there. Taking a specific example to illustrate that because of some judges fighting terrorism can be impossible to being an indigtment of the entire foundation of our society, truly that is such a good analysis of the way that I think because it is the exact opposite of what I was trying to damn well say.
I mentioned Civilized Countries because I love having an open and transparent democracy and I think that we can defend ourselves without becoming police states, I clarified my statement of civilized countries with examples of what I personally consider to be civilized and then examples that I consider to be uncivilized in terms of human rights and treatment of suspects because if I did not people would complain about using an unclarified statement of what a civilized country is and that would be a pointless argument, evidently people can see the difference between a moral and amoral government therefor my clarifier was useful.
Now the important bit, I in no way shape or form advocate the creation of an authoritarian system of government but I do have a profound sense of disgust when the judiciary removes a common sense means of saving lives on the basis that unless you have specific information relating to an attack it is unwarrented. Looking in peoples bags is not too much of a bother and it has the potential to save many innocent lives so now because I think that this is an example of how the law is failing to protect the citizens of a nation I am a deranged facist who thinks that the people must be submissive to the state and if they don't then they should all be shot.
This is a World War of the Globalisation Age and there is no way to negotiate our way out of it. People will be killed in future terrorist attacks and that is a sad fact, how we deal with the threat and retain those freedoms we hold dear is the question. I personally feel that one of the reasons that 9/11 occured was because the US did not take the threat seriously enough and the terrorists were able to exploit systematic weaknesses in the airport security and law enforcement systems to carry out their goals. That it was a fuckup of tremendous proportions that could have been averted if some reforms had taken place, this is all a coulda, woulda shoudda proposition however now in hindsight it is clear that the checks were not there. So here we are, international terrorists do have the ongoing goal to strike at the civilized world in the belief that they can trigger a chain of events which would allow them to gain power throughout the middle east. They also have the means to do so. Law enforcement should be upgraded to deal with this threat in a way that does not rob people of their rights but does , if 15 Arab Men aged between 20 and 50 board a single plane on a domestic flight then I would expect it to ring a few alarm bells, if a guantanamo bay detainee drops a name then I would expect that law enforcement would follow them up, if there is a politcal convention then I would expect that security is strong and all bags are checked upon entry in order to minimize the risk of disaster. These are very simple ways of dealing with an ongoing threat that do not make peoples lives worse, they do not create a police state and they most certainly do not hurt people or the way they live nearly as much as a terrorist attack would.
My Politics are as follows
1) Government is a necissary evil.
2) The Government must never be given the right to have blanket surveillance of its citizens and all communications. If the government or law enforcement wish to survail individuals then it must be overseen by the judiciary.
3) Islamic Terrorism is a global problem that is a representation of the same type of Authoritarian Systems that the Western World fought against in WW2 and the Cold War plus a lot of apocalyptic Islamist ideology tossed in, because we live in a globalized world its modus operandi are different than that of Nazism and Communism therefore it must be fough against on all levels in order to ensure that there never comes a time when they possess the tools to inflict massive destruction of civilian populations.
4) Governments should be responsible and take measures to protect their civilians and minimize the threat, this must be overseen by the elected representatives of the people and be subject to complete oversight, the law must be changed to take into account the mindset of the suicide terrorist to whom the standard means of detterent are not strictly applicable.
5) The War on Terror is not going to have a definitive winner, terrorism will still be used around the world and innocent people will always be used however the threat of massive attacks can be substantially reduced if much of the Islamic world can undergo the transformation from stagnant den of authoritarianism and hatred to democratic and open societies built on the concept of a free market.
6) All people on the earth deserve to live freely and if they do then there will not be nearly as much conflict and the United Nations etc. would actually work properly.
We must rise to the challenge of terrorism and overcome it by achieving the exact opposite of the terrorist, they do have genuine grievances that I would agree with however the terrorists solutions to those problems would see the destruction of the civilized world and the creation of an authoritarian Islamic superstate. I think the grievances can be solved by introducing democracy and forcing the regimes in the Middle East to modernize and democratize, once this is done the terrorists own support base will be drastically diminished and the brief heyday of global Islamist Terror will have drifted into history as quickly as it began.
Now can anybody else agree with me that checking peoples bags at a big political event that is a prime candidate for a terrorist attack is not an unwarranted interference into their lives and a violation of their rights and that this judges decision has the potential to cost lives.
EDIT
elfyx
until we address the root causes of social injustice like abject poverty, human rights, education, a broken economic system, and systemic corruption within our governments, we will never be able to eliminate terrorism. Terroristic ideas are not natural; they must be bred. We must eliminate the breeding grounds with as much love, tolerance, and wisdom as possible.
This is the precise view that Al Qaeda and Islamic Terrorists seek to create. What they have done is elevated their grievances to top priority on your list of problems a victory because it creates a lot of advocates who feel that by adressing the "root causes" (Read: Demands) they can prevent future attacks, this will not stop the Islamists they will keep coming until the free world is destroyed and the Caliphate is renewed, Ideological Motivation lies behind the Islamists own Death Cult (I am Calling Al Qaeda/Islamist world view a deathcult because it deals with a very apocalyptic clash of civilizations and end of days BS, Islam is not a Death Cult however branches from the Islamism school of thought most certainly are), the Al Qaeda terrorists themselves did not grow up in abject poverty Osama bin Laden is a well off individual and the Hijackers themselves were by no means poor, they had experience and education, it is not ignorance and poverty that breeds this terrorism it is the sucess of it as a tool to achieve their ends. The Palestinians have been extremely successful in using terrorism to gather world attention and sympathy and from this example Islamist Terrorism is able to manipulate opinion. There are millions of opressed people around the world and dozens of ethnic groups who are on the recieving end of great injustices who do not go out and muder other innocent civilians so we must ask is this the only cause of terrorism. I do not see Tibetan Bombers (Although the CIA backed insurgents did operate their success was relatively poor and it failed to gather the worlds attention as much as Arab hijackings and assassinations), these root causes you speak of are devoid of any real world application, terrorism is a form of political violence used by organizations that feel that they will gather more ground by killing innocents and making people pay attention to them than diplomacy ever can. We should disregard the demands of the terrorists and actively seek to find real and workable solutions to the problems, namely cutting the state sponsership and condeming all terrorist actions, there is absolutely no justification for this evil and by giving reciognition to murderers as we have done to Yassir Arafat we are setting the scene for a lot more trouble. There are problems with the world however the answer is not a utopian peace and love mantra, it involves taking a stand against injustice and bringing a true peace with justice to the world by wiping authoritarian governments and organisations out. People will be better off and the scourge of terrorism will not perpetuate if it never achieves anything.
Furthurmore any liberal democracy must strive to find a balance between Security and Liberties, this is what I was talking about, it must be acknowledged that the 1990's was a period of relative peace (Where it Mattered unfortunately
) and the old Cold War paradigms of Mutually Assured Destruction and calculation of the Soviets motivations were thrown out of the window, this allowed a sense of complacency to take effect and it was this thought that Large Scale Terrorism was something that happened in other places but never in the West that permeated the public conciousness, sure there were attacks but the public refused to acknowledge the gathering threat, now we know better and we should reciognize that the way that law enforcement works should be changed to deal with new threats, this is what I mean by balance. Consider you have a set of scales, in one till you have Liberties and in the Other you have Security, these are interchangeable, you can transfer some libety into security and visa versa, today there is a clear threat out there therefore it is not unwise to sacrifice a few liberties in the short term to ensure that security is not neglected and a big attack does not occur again. This shouldn't be cause for histerical cries that I am a fascist it should really be cause for a legitimate debate about the degree that law enforcement should be allowed to operate to provide maximum security for the minimum sacrifice. When I say that worse has been done in the past I am thinking of things like the treason and sedition acts, internment camps (I do not see Muslims being carted off to live in internment camps, that to me would be an action of an amoral government that would solve a problem but would be completely and utterly wrong), unlawful surveillance (the FBI in the 50's and 60's under Hoover was much more powerful than it is today, if you want an example of a police state look back to the early Cold War).
