If you took the weekend off and haven't had a chance to read this corner of cyberspace I have about 1000 words worth of nonsense for you to catch up on. And if you are still in need of more reading material here is a collection of links that I found to be interesting and or noteworthy.
Psychotoddler has a link about how to give to the family of the woman who died in that tragic automotive accident. The paypal link can be found at:
http://www.kerendevorah.org/
Neil's post about what it would be like to be a woman caught my eye. Just for the record I really enjoy being male, so I am happy to let others try this, but it did make me think for a moment.
I love Edgar Allen Poe, but admit to not having immediately caught the reference on Annabel Lee's blog. But it was her Drop Dead Fred title that made me smile.
The Shmata Queen is still on vacation but will soon be returning. In the interim she left math puzzles for you to play with.
Brian's post about basketball made me smile. He has size, a solid shot and fundamentals going for him whereas I have Charles Barkley's tuchus and 230 pounds of bulk that I use to rebound like a fiend. That is no joke, I can't do all that much on the court, but I can rebound well, even against the taller guys.
One of these days I need to blog about the LA versus Boston game we held in Jerusalem back in 1985. It was right after the Lakers finally destroyed the hated celtics. I am pleased to say that we beat those Beantown teens silly, some of them are probably still in shock.
Old Doc Bean wrote about his thoughts regarding London and I have to say that I echo many of his sentiments.
Chaim highlights a site called We are Not Afraid that makes me wonder. I hate to be a cynic, but I really do wonder if these people have any real sense of what is going on and what may be required.
Not to go off on a tangent or a downer, but there is a war going on right now outside of Iraq. There are Muslim fanatics who think that slaughtering people is acceptable if it furthers their goals. In order to defeat them a multifaceted approach is required and there are a number of fundamental questions that I think need to be answered, but let us focus on the one:
What are we willing to do to protect ourselves?
Do we give up civil liberties or do we compromise on that and accept more risk. I am not offering an opinion on that right now. What I am willing to say is that I think that we need to be willing to kill people. I am not happy about this and as I said in an earlier post we are going to have to be brutal about it. I hope that this is kept to a minimum, but if you think that we can just pay these people to go away you are fooling yourselves.
They are bringing the war to us. We need to do what we can to stop that. Ok, enough of this. It is getting late. See you in the AM.
5 comments:
Jack what your saying may be right, they might not how large this really is. But at least the first step is the entire world standing on soapboxes, telling these murderers. Your terror won't scare us.
I am afraid you're right. It is going to come down to civil liberties vs. safety. What's the answer? I wish I knew.
Chaim,
I don't fault people for doing this. I think that it is necessary, but I am concerned about whether they/we/us understand that this is going to be a long and dirty mess.
Lejend,
Don't we all.
My fear is that people will end up with reduced civil liberties without reducing the risk of a terrorist attack.
The USA is a vast country with a vast perimeter. Look how little success government has had in keeping illicit drugs out of the country.
So, if people accept an erosion of their civil liberties, will they be significantly safer as a result? There's no easy way to trace cause and effect, in order to demonstrate the benefit of security measures as they are introduced.
Q
My fear is that people will end up with reduced civil liberties without reducing the risk of a terrorist attack.
That is a reasonable concern and I think that the hardest part is as you alluded to, measuring the success rate.
For example, there has not been a successful incident of terrorism within the US since 911.
Do we take that to mean that the preventative measures that have been implemented since then are working or does it mean that no one has tried to attack the US.
I am inclined to say that they have been effective at preventing terror because I have a hard time believing that no one has tried anything since then, but maybe that is just me being hopeful.
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