Maybe it is about shifting the blame. If something happens outside, it's the police failure but if something happens inside it is venue management failure.
Anyway, I completely agree that we have given up way too much in the name of security. If it's not the terrorist, then it is "think of the children" scare and we are about to get our personal devices scanning our personal files and report us to the authorities. For now it is CSAM material but I don't see any reason why the same devices wouldn't be scanning for other stuff once the system is in place.
I totally expect our devices to start checking on us for "betrayal" patterns once the conflict with China intensifies, for example. Once you become a "human resource" and nothing more in the eyes of the political structures, you will need to be managed and in 2020s the tools for it are plenty and powerful.
NYC is the most strict, but they are also the most densely populated. Beyond that, I just don't feel like I've given up any rights.
Can't say the same about a shoeless, invasive patdown where a stranger runs their hand down your butt crack after having waited in line for an hour and gone through a nude scanner.
Fortunately, those restrictions were cancelled after 3 weeks, because you know, voting day is coming and we don't need angry citizens to vote against ruling party. But the infrastructure is there and it may be used again any time now.
It's very difficult to falsify death stats on a mass-scale especially in a country like the US.
Terrorism kills something like 28k/year whereas Covid has killed 5 million.
Same with comparing covid deaths to WWI deaths. On the one hand you have thousands of healthy 18-year-olds dying, and on the other you have thousands of elderly, obese, and sickly people dying. Not quite a fair comparison.
Even in the 25-44yr age range, we see a pretty significant increase in deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm#F2_down
How a person can deny the existence of something that can test it personally?
No, they cratered the middle class while making the rich richer.
Now they know not to lock down to destroy the economy but instead push to destroy personal freedoms.
Isn’t this economic policy, not lockdown policy? Any government could decide to pay laborers 100% of their salary to stay out of work. They could decide “essential workers” would be paid on top of their salary as compensation for the risk and danger. They could deice that corporate profit during a shutdown would go to support laborers. Lockdowns only hurt the middle class and help the rich because the government chooses to force the middle class to stay home while not forcing the rich to stop profiteering off it.
This happens all the time in politics and it's infuriating.
You can't judge the effectiveness of a plan if the plan is modified as a shitty compromise or just plain ignored. But people do judge them, which makes those compromises an effective form of sabotage.
The economy is not destroyed. Assets are appreciating, GDP is growing faster than it has in a decade and employers are desperate to find workers. The unemployment rate is near 5%.
If there is a weak spot in the economy, it is that rising case numbers of the Delta variant are causing people to voluntarily limit their in-person activities. When you ask business leaders what can help the economy, they say “more people getting vaccinated” because it’s the fastest way to reduce new COVID cases.
I said middle class. Small business was destroyed. The corporations got richer.
How does your neighborhood look? All businesses still intact?
Not talking about the stock market.
Done properly, of course a lockdown would be effective. Why? Because of the Germ theory. The viruses exist and they don't teleport.
If anything, I would have much preferred if we had a month of global lockdown instead of years of slow burn battle. We wouldn't have had to convince people for vaccination too. It worked for Wuhan.
Vitamin D and open air works, not lock downs.
Allowing and encouraging people to go outside is the happy medium.
When you approach airport security (theater) you wonder what their capabilities are _today_. Are they sniffing the air at large with their GCMS? Is there going to be a dog today? Its intimidating to think of it as a theoretical attacker because of its large and multifaceted apparatus, which is part of its deterrent power.
Masks are somewhat similar, they have a vanishingly small chance of actually intercepting a virus particle/droplet that was going to infect you on a case by case basis BUT they make people approach you differently. They say "stand back".
It was done by picking a population of 350K, then separating them to test and control groups, encourage mask for the test group.
The results are that at 39% mask use in the test group the covid cases were %12 lower than the control group.
There was also a difference between surgical mask(%12) and cloth mask(%9) use.
[0] https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1433036933400305673/phot...
When you wear a mask (as I do) in addition to blocking some particles you signal to others "lets play the not kill eachother game by limiting virus vectors!"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2013_Volgograd_bomb...
Take a peek at a hospital if you have some time.
And vaccines and etc are backed by science?
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/26/960872502/2020-firearm-catch-...
Edit: Since some HN commenters want to play disingenuous games and insert words into my mouth, I’ll clarify my specific problem is with these apps having zero standards. If my state makes its own app or devises a law to prosecute this kind of use of private data, I would have less of a problem with it as a temporary measure.
if you did not get that option, that sucks, and it sounds a bit inconvenient, but, uh, yeah, over 600,000 people in the US have died so far, i don't think that's a "scare", that sounds like a valid concern to me.
also your data is almost assuredly at 20 different marketing analytics firms already, regardless of how secure or open-source the digital vaccine record is.
If you think vaccine passports are bad just wait until you hear about all phones...
Tell me again how it's different.
This amount of disrespect is unwarranted.
> when discussing homeless people being told to move somewhere cheaper.
What an absolutely insane whataboutism. This has nothing to do with what we're discussing and you look like a joke. You're asserting that vaccine passports infringe upon your freedoms. Just don't go to those bars. Jesus.
Now you can't go to any bars. That hurts minorities the most as they are the most unvaccinated.
Its new world segregation essentially.
But yes those people could just pick up and move, and many are. Look at the numbers.
Unfortunately many cannot because they aren't on a SWE salary.
Also calling me a nazi isn't really appropriate, I don't think.
If you're okay with forcing people to show their medical history to drink, I think you can handle a word being thrown at you. Nazi.
This is the obvious troll. You're not forced to show anything _to drink_. You're forced to comply with a business's requirements as per their rights, to be allowed to drink _in their establishment_.
Also please go back to reddit if you cannot resist the urge to call names.
The mRNA vaccines are especially worrisome to some because they are relatively new and aren't fully approved in the US (where I live).
I have a co-morbidity and by the time I was eligible to get vaccinated it looked obvious to me that I'd be better off getting it based on how well they were performing and how low the risk appeared. Things could have turned out wildly different with vaccines that turned out to be both mostly ineffective and potentially dangerous, causing me to assess things differently.
I encourage my friends who aren't vaccinated to get jabbed, but I have no wish to have the government force them to get a medical procedure they specifically don't want.
Natural immunity as I mentioned before.
Religious reasons.
Just because. You don't need a reason, it's your body.
The reason is to help protect and care for your fellow human beings.
"It's your body" only counts if what you're doing with it isn't putting unconsenting others at risk. Forgoing the vaccine without a solid medical reason is putting others at risk.
By your logic, you should be able to punch anyone in the face at any time, because your fist is part of your body, and "it's your body".
Not according to pro-abortion stances.
If you want to get the vaccine, it should protect you. If you can't there are therapeutics. You don't need to force others to inject mRNA shots into them.
Your analogy was awful. Such a false equivalency, there's nothing even remotely the same about that example.
The point of vaccines is to help protect society at large, not so much you specifically. Failing to take reasonable steps that help keep your friends and neighbors safe is simply reprehensible.
As far as I know, natural immunity is conferred if and only if you've recovered from the virus. And one of the goals of the vaccine is to avoid getting it in the first place. But to get natural immunity, you have to be infected first. It seems a bit like burning down your house to prevent arson from a stranger. Have I misunderstood "natural immunity"?
If you don't want to catch the virus, get the vaccine. Don't worry about others.
They will get the virus and then get natural immunity. People will have adverse reactions to both covid and the vaccine. Let them weigh the risk to which one.
One downside of this though, is that ICU beds are full. I'll also hope I don't need one. I very rarely have before, so I'll probably be ok.
Only if they, y'know, survive, and only after being a nuisance to the healthcare system that the rest of rely on
You've got a point that verifiable natural immunity as of _now_ should probably be acceptable in lieu of vaccination (though efficacy against variants is worth considering) for mandates.
Offering 'natural immunity' as an option to the currently un-vaccinated un-infected population is just crazy. People will assume the risk, get sick, got to hospital, and die. Just ignoring those 'others' isn't an option for public-health since the downside costs of the risk they assume are borne by everyone in the form of healthcare burden. 'They' still expect to be a priority when they get sick...
I don't understand what that means.
What happened to thinking of other people?
When I think of getting a vaccine... I just do it as a part of normal life. It doesn't change my life at all, outside of added immunity.
That's exactly my point. You aren't thinking, you're just following.
> What happened to thinking of other people?
My point as well. It's the same "think of the children" argument that was being discussed above.
That itself is not a reason. People have immunity. The curve is flattened, the goal posts have been moved out of the stadium.
You're talking about "aren't thinking" but most of your posts just involve nebulous throw away phrases like "People have immunity"... clearly you know that phrase doesn't mean anything right?
In the meantime we can all see for ourselves actual impact, real things, in areas where vaccination rates are low. These aren't nebulous concepts like your phrases, they're real.
Case numbers! Case numbers! Hospital rates are NEARLY at capacity!!!!
Yeah that has been said over and over. Things are fine.
Go outside of the city, noone respects this stuff and hasn't the whole time, noone is dying more than usual.
Worry about cars and obesity if you want to make a difference.
just because rural folks don’t care the hospital is full doesn’t mean the hospital isn’t full
All the fear mongering articles say is the ICU is at 90%~
They are always around that number. Show me the percentage of covid patients in that ICU. Show me the normal number of the ICU.
Worry about obesity if you want to stop the number one and two killers of humans and relieve our healthcare system.
Don't believe anything you read on Reddit, especially anecdotes.
I'm not saying I believe everything I read on Reddit, but I know r/nursing is a longtime subreddit of mostly medical people and has a history of being as such for a long time. If I wanted to know what the actual medical field is dealing with day to day, I think a community with a history of being where healthcare people talk about what they're dealing with day to day is a pretty good bet.
I guess Reddit only gets one type of anecdote. I doubt the other side gets voted up and probably even removed.
How are you quantifying that? The original intent of flattening the curve was to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system and here we are... overwhelming the healthcare system(s) again. A quick check of capacity of ICU beds in the SE USA shows that on average, hospitals are running 92% capacity(1). Obviously you want right-sized ICU capacity, but I doubt 92% is a comfortable margin.
(1)https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...
In Europe getting the decease and beating it is considered good enough for immunity. Talk to your local authorities if you are not happy with your local practices.
The vaccines on the other hand are much more practical and safer. They seem to lose some efficacy over time against getting covid but the results against getting seriously ill are very promising. Which probably means, if you get Covid-19 naturally later on, it would be a natural booster with much lower risk compared to a non-vaxxed person.
Others have agreed with me, they either get greyed out or flagged. Even in this thread, look below.
I'm sorry the majority follows blindly and can't see the similarities between the loss of freedom after 9/11 and covid.
Some have likened it to a jobs program that both increases the surveillance capability of the government as well as provides political creds for the representatives in those districts where airports exist, similar to the Military Industrial Complex.
Theres a mass of people, but few cameras. Much worse cost/benefit ratio in terms of whatever craziness terrorists would supposedly consider benefit.
(feel free to spend the rest of your day thinking up silly wordplay involving "bang for the buck", I wish you were alone in this if you do)
When I was in college, campus security already banned a range of items at sports games. In 1989, they made national news for adding marshmallows to the list of banned objects: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/26/sports/michigan-to-ban-ma...
That suggests to me that college stadium security is mainly about policing mundane behavior at college stadiums, and very little to do with terrorism.
At college football games this is all done to drive up the price of concessions.
No longer high on the list of priorities for politicians, so insufficient benefit for risking being seen as the politician that wants to make life easier (regardless that this is not true) for terrorists.
I kinda miss it too, and it's a bit of a shock seeing it happen in old movies now, but I already struggle to find seating at the gate. Even if the security concerns went away entirely in a magical world, I'd bet this restriction would stay.
I dont think they can easily ban that.
edit:// OP clarified this was meant for sports games.
That's not a thing at games I've been to.
Lots of drunken folks, but fights are exceptionally rare.
They killed 17 people in a pair of suicide bombings there and injured many more, which were followed up by a similar attack on the Metro. There were enough cameras and coverage that the terrorists achieved their objective (publicity).
Doing it at the gates is not going to be seen live by millions. Having it seen by the masses in real time and without warning is far more effective than having it merely reported.
I think we are doing these mostly useless things in order to signal that as a society we're somewhat careful in order to reassure people. I feel our best security defense is that most people are not terrorists?
If I'm being charitable, it might also be about protecting the buildings that planes can crash into.
But sure, let's forget about morals for a second (lives lost and all that) and be very cold and cynical about the pricing. Still - reputational damage, political outcry, people suing the company/government for "failing to do even basic security checks like belts and shoes" - $100 million is nothing.
The "Homeland Security" apparatus is hungry and must grow.
It's about jobs, power, and money for these bureaucrats.
The "Homeland Security" apparatus is the most powerful political force in America, and is more dominant than either political party.
Another term for this is the police-military-industrial complex.
Secure ID is designed so people on various no fly lists won’t be allowed to fly should they acquire a fake ID. How well this works in practice remains to be seen, but it’s the theory at least.
To any motivated anti-society organization or person, this is huge leverage. A few deaths leading to a noticeably more authoritarian state? What's not to love?
It doesn't even matter if the authorities do their job and punish those responsible, the people will still choose to restrict their own freedoms and makes their lives worse for more "security".
The US had at least 3 major responses to 9/11:
1) seek revenge (invade Afghanistan, kill Bin Laden),
2) armor up (Dept. of Homeland Security), and
3) unify under nationalism (flags everywhere).
step 1: have big terrorist attack on American civilians
step 2: American civilians ask "why me?", his words not mine btw.
step 3: civilians find out what US gov has been doing in the middle east and call for change.
In hindsight its an incredibly naïve plan. And I think it ironically shows a lack of knowing your enemy on his part. Americans don't take well to being attacked or intimidated. If you want them to leave you alone the worst thing you can do is provoke them to action.
The stated goal of the attacks was to show Americans that their continuous war and support for secular dictators in the Muslim world would come with high cost, and to force the American government to retreat from the Middle East.
This of course backfired spectacularly. Revenge is certainly a primary motivation, too, but I really don't think there is much room on the interpretation for the initial motivation because Al Qaeda was always very open and clear about it.
We fracked our way back to being the worlds largest oil producer. That, and our transition to a greener economy is bad news for middle eastern oil producers. We're much more willing to leave the entire region to their own miserable devices.
Biden is getting a lot of flack for pulling out of Afghanistan, and yes, he completely dropped the ball on the organization of the withdrawal, but if it means that not one more drop of american blood is shed, it's worth it.
The US has abandoned Syria, Iraq, Kurds. It still has some sway with Saudi Arabia and Israel, none in Egypt or Libya.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a culmination of that.
The neo-conservative response to Al Qaeda was exactly what was needed to provoke this collapse over 20 years.
The purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to get the American public to demand the US withdraws support to Israel and Saudi Arabia. This has clearly failed.
It wasn’t much involved in any of those (and indeed had already abandoned the Kurds after the conflict which motivated the formation of al-Qaeda) when al-Qaeda actually got organized. It got reinvolved with them largely enabled by the political fallout from 9/11.
> The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a culmination of that.
Again, that's mostly a reversion to the status quo ante.
No, this was not his goal, and no it did not fail. His stated goal was to recreate the mujahedeen success against the Soviet Union, where they used low cost guerrilla fighting to draw out a costly and unpopular war until it bankrupted the Soviets and then they retreated from Afghanistan. It is debatable how much effect the cost of the Afghan war had on the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the key is that Bin Laden believed it.
His goal was to drive out the Americans eventually. There is no evidence or reason to believe he thought that 9/11 would directly lead to American withdrawal from the Greater Middle East.
>”We—with Allah's help—call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.” Osama Bin Laden’s 1998 Fatwa [1]
Even in 2004, we knew that Al Qaeda propaganda fueled by US invasions of Muslim countries was strengthening, not weakening, Al Qaeda.
“Any assessment that the global terror movement has been rolled back or that even one component, Al Qaeda, is on the run is optimistic and most certainly incorrect. Bin Laden's doctrines are now playing themselves out all over the world. Destroying Al Qaeda will not resolve the problem.” 2004 M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London think tank [2]
And in his own words, what Bin Laden wanted out of the Afghan war, in 2004. Russia lasted 10 years before they were “forced to withdraw in defeat”. The US made almost made it to 20.
>”Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred”
>”All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.”
>”This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.” Bin Laden Interview in 2004 [3]
[1] https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
[2] https://www.globalissues.org/article/512/the-new-face-of-al-...
[3] https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/september-11th/911-ac...
Suggestions that we shouldn't overreact because it plays right into their hands and that we shouldn't give up rights to the government out of simple fear that we'd just regret later didn't just go unheeded, they were vehemently attacked. It was worse polarization by far then we're seeing now, and it wasn't a more-or-less 50/50 split and didn't follow party lines.
People flying flags everywhere weren't a thing in the 80s or 90s?
Now we can go in to various conspiracies from “Bush planned 9.11 as a false flag” to “Bush ignored intelligence reports so he could launch the war on terror,” but those are mostly just unproven conspiracies unrelated to what al-Qaeda wanted.
States can, have, and do engage in terrorism.
Do we have a word for "imperialist government uses violence against people to achieve political goals"?
Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a technicality.
There seems to be a trend of calling every terrifying event “terrorism.” People sometimes colloquially refer to even non-political mass shootings as terrorism.
I believe it’s important to separate different types of mass violence. For example a gang-related mass shooting might be de-escalated by a mediator engaging the belligerents, whereas a war crime should be sent to international criminal court and a terrorist should be dealt with in a manner to minimize the earned media attention.
Huh. Do we call operation condor a war crime?
Yes, we call this "war".
> Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a technicality.
No, it's not. Nobody is trying to dogde the bad aspects of the word, it's just that terrorism specifically is, by definition, not from a state.
Note that the word "terror" appears 34 times in that Wikipedia article.
How many Americans even know Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan for years after 11/9?
When I first seen 9/11 on TV as an 11 year old, I instantly thought that Ryadh will be turned into a crater within a few hours.
I dropped my jaw out of suprise, when I heard US going to declare war on Iraq — Saudis' biggest enemy. It made zero sense. I kept on watching the satellite TV at my neighbour's house, and was hoping that it was my knowledge of English failing me. It didn't.
You're being more than a little disingenuous ignoring the fact that we invaded Afghanistan specifically to go after the extremist group that was responsible for 9/11 about 2yr prior to invading Iraq, which was done for different reasons and "harboring terrorists" took a back seat to WMDs on that list of reasons.
There is a memo from Rumsfeld around then. [1]
The fact that all the terrorists were Saudi, that Bin Laden was Saudi, that Iraq was an enemy of the Saud regime, that Iraq was a "buffer" between the rest of the Middle East and Iran, all of that was ignored.
The war in Iraq was the US worst foreign affairs decision in the last 50 years.
All of the "WMD" and then "bringing democracy" was retconning the original desire to finish the first Iraq war, which had nothing to do with 9/11.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-...
There are many possible motives for terrorism but I highly doubt this is one of them, even though people love to repeat it for some reason.
I don't think that makes sense.
If say terrorist actions resulted in the opposite, say a nation providing less security / fewer restrictions:
We would then logic it out and say the goal of terrorism is to restrict fewer freedoms and thus allow the terrorists more freedom to do whatever it is they wanted.... including more terrorism.
But that's obviously also not the point of terrorism.
Terrorists are pushing their own political agenda via violence, that's it, the result isn't necessarily some intent / scheme. If they don't get what they ultimately want, I don't think they give a damn about security or etc.
No it isn't. Not any more than it is the goal of burglars to get people to invest in home security. The goal of terrorism is to use attacks on civilians to achieve political goals, like getting Northern Ireland out of the UK or get the US out of the Middle East.
Why would terrorists care how much the enemy restricts their own freedom? Just because something hurt your enemy does not mean it helps you get closer to your goal.
I think that's a good general observation, but a key assumption of terrorism is that hurting your enemy /will/ pressure them to do what you want.
Terrorism is all about out unconventional ways of bringing pain to your enemy, rather than just defeating their military in combat. So I think terrorism can definitely be intended to sow fear, paranoia, overreaction, internal division, etc within the enemy civil society.
Not as the end goal, but as part of the strategy of inflicting paint to pressure them to capitulate.
We have to be careful to not assign whatever motivation or outcome we don’t like as “the goal of terrorism.” You can justify anything that way, and people do. “If you do the thing I don’t like, the terrorists win” can cut both ways.
Terrorists have specific goals they are trying to achieve with violence, usually ideological or political or both. Bin Laden thought his ideology would have room to grow if he could scare the U.S. into leaving. He was wrong about that. The fact that we still have to take shoes off at the airport (annoying as it is) does not mean he won.
Terrorists do what they do for many reasons. Some are political, some are due to sectarianism. Sometimes its because they are crazy and have irrational motivations.
Rarely is it the goal of the terrorist to force a society into tyranny.
Timothy McVeigh was seeking revenge.
Bin Laden was trying to force the US to change its foreign policy.
ISIS was trying to conquer the middle east.
Aum Shinrikyo were a doomsday cult.
So on and so on.
Terrorism is a tactic and wars on Nouns (Terror, Drugs, etc) never make sense.
Terrorism is killing a lot of innocent civilians in order to incite terror in a population to bend to your demands. They have an agenda and feel they are justified.
I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security.
It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out.
If someone did want to do something at such a sporting event, nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates where there is a reliable and unsecured mass of humanity, and I don't think anyone is bothering with that ...
I used to wheel my grandfather into games on a wheelchair... they didn't check anything, just waved you through. A wheel chair sized bomb would be easy to bring in, but you don't even have to bring it in.
We have secure ID schemes that I believe most if not all of the 9/11 attackers would have qualified to get ...
In the US we don't have mass terrorist events that any of this would prevent.
Why do we keep subjecting non-terrorists to these systems?
What are we doing this for?