[Osx-nutters] Are you safer?

[David Cake]

At 5:05 PM -0700 13/10/06, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>On Oct 13, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Chuck Bennett wrote:
>
>>I don't think I brought it up either, but I did take issue with the 
>>Dems argument that we are not safer.
>>
>>Are we safer from the kind of Terrorists that attacked us 'here' on 
>>9/11?   I think the answer is absolutely yes.
>>
>>  We were being attacked before 9/11.  The first World Trade Center 
>>attack meant to bring them down and failed.     Bush was not 
>>president then.   Bush's response to 9/11 might have enraged even 
>>more Terrorists and I'm sure they are off in some cave seething 
>>hate but they obviously haven't been able to act on it here since 
>>9/11.  We couldn't say as much before 9/11.
>
>I actually see little reason to believe that we are safer. I  tend 
>to agree with the conservatives  that the burden of  proof is on 
>government agencies to demonstrate that they are competent and Dept. 
>of Homeland Security has not met that burden. In my case, I have a 
>close relative  who works there and I hear the inside horror 
>stories.  But the stories that have been publicly reported aren't 
>any more confidence inspiring. A lot of it is pure pork.

	The DHS appears clearly incompetent. Katrina was a disaster, 
almost every account has FEMA (which DHS has deliberately gutted, and 
changed many policies of and given less autonomy too) manifestly 
failing to be useful in its role - in particular, in its role as 
coordinator, squandering resources from other agencies, and being 
almost hostile to civilian aid.
	But thats just FEMA. The TSA is worse. Policies that verge on 
the idiotic, particularly the current liquids ban. Poor internal 
policies that result in things like luggage theft. And then there is 
the No-Fly list, which I heard described as the USAs Maginot Line 
against terrorism. But I think even that is charitable - it captures 
the futility of the enormous defence that the enemy can simply go 
around, but doesn't address the sheer stupidity of its 
implementation. And of course, its so idiotic that the agencies (like 
the CIA) that could help make it useful have no interest in it 
whatsoever.
	The DHS is enormously flawed, probably fatally so, by its 
inception as a political exercise full of political appointees from 
an incompetent administration.


>This 
><http://www.mccmedia.com/pipermail/brin-l/Week-of-Mon-20051017/033788.html> 
>seems very relevant  here.
>
	The Brin essay is interesting.
	From what I've read, most studies of crises show that the 
population is pretty sensible, and pretty helpful. Sure some stuff 
like looting occurs, but the line between looting and just making 
sensible use of what resources are available after the vendor has 
fled is pretty vague, and for the most part people  organise, help 
each other, try hard to work out what the best thing to do is, etc. 
This did, as Brin points out, seem to happen fine in NYC. Everyone 
has heard the stories of vendors starting to give away what 
merchandise they had that would be helpful (be it bottled water or 
sneakers), there are very few stories of people taking advantage of 
the crisis.
	And there are certainly plenty of stories of people in NOLA 
doing what was basically the right thing - gathering in groups, 
supporting each other, making for help or sitting tight and waiting 
for it. A lot of those stories have elements where authority, for 
whatever reason (turf protection, either notional or literal, in most 
cases) eventually turned out be their biggest problem.

	Cheers
		David