I Am Not A Terrorist. You're Almost Certainly Not, Either.

[MineralMan]

I have no tendencies toward violent actions of any kind. You can count on me to behave as a sensible person, wherever I am.

You don't know me from Adam. You read some stuff online from some guy named MineralMan. You wouldn't recognize me on the street or anywhere else, unless you knew me.

I'll bet you're not a terrorist, either. Odds are extremely good that you're not.

I don't know you from Adam or Eve. In real life, you could be any random person I encounter as I go about my normal activities. So, it doesn't help much that I've read your posts and know something about what you think. I couldn't recognize anywhere but here.

There are other people I encounter on the internet from time to time. I don't trust them. Some call for violent revolution. Some are racist extremists. Some write that their deity wants various groups of people dead. Some may well act on those beliefs at some point in their lives. We've seen the news stories of those who do act on those beliefs.

I don't know them in real life, though. I couldn't pick them out from the crowd at a football game, in the supermarket, or at the airport. I have no idea who those people actually are. I don't know what they're thinking. I don't know their intentions. Mostly, I shrug this off, as I go around doing whatever things I have to do in public.

Sometimes, though, I'm forced to be in a small, confined place with a large group of people I don't know. It could be people from DU. It could be people from some racist website, or someone who is irrationally angry about one thing or another. Back when I lived in California, a commuter airline was brought down by a former employee of that airline company who had recently been fired. He shot the pilot and copilot and killed them. The plane crashed not far from where I lived. When a plane I'm on is 30,000 feet in the air, it's a bit of a concern. Not a lot. I don't dwell on it. I do sometimes wonder silently about the people I see on the plane. Who are they? What do they believe? What are they thinking about?

I'd just as soon the people who are on that airplane aren't carrying weapons or destructive devices. Since I have no idea of their intentions, I think it's good that they've all been through some sort of security screening to make sure they aren't carrying those things. I don't know them, and they don't know me. But, we've all been through security screening, so I can be reasonably confident, at least, that they don't have any obvious weapons or other dangerous things with them. They can have the same degree of confidence that I don't either. That's reassuring, at least to some degree.

Now, I don't know what's in the cargo compartment of the plane. I know that passenger luggage has been x-rayed and maybe even opened for inspection. I'm not as sure about the mail and packages being carried down there, though. I don't dwell on it, but I'd like it if screening for that stuff was done more thoroughly. I think we should be looking more closely at that stuff.

How much security screening is enough? I don't feel any more comfortable than I did before, when there were no scanners that looked under people's clothes and when almost nobody got a serious frisking to make sure. I was comfortable before that, and I'd still be comfortable if those new measures weren't in place. But, I don't know everything, so I'll put up with that, just in case there's a threat I don't know about. I'm not up on all the ins and outs of current security concerns.

I'm not a terrorist. You're probably not one, either. But you don't know me, and I don't know you. On a flight with 200 people on board, I know only myself and my wife, who usually travels with me. That's it. The other 198 could be anyone on the planet. I don't know them, so I'm glad we all got screened before getting on the plane. I am.

I don't know you from Adam or Eve. I only know your screen name, and little else. You know no more about me.

[geckosfeet]

1. I. Don't. Dwell. On. It.

I like irony.

[MineralMan]

2. I like irony, too. None was intended.

It's the topic du jour, isn't it? Look at the General Discussion list. Seems like everyone's talking about it. So am I.

[geckosfeet]

7. Understood. Just that you seem fond of the phrase - and that's a bit ironic.

[ibegurpard]

3. good boy

[katnapped]

8. Yes, nice and compliant like the government wants! n/t

[hobbit709]

4. What odds are you comfortable with

http://www.anotherperspective.org/advoc530.html

For those of you who wonder just how safe you will be once you've given up all of your Constitutional freedoms and rights, it may be a valuable exercise to see what the odds are that you, personally, will die in one of these terrorist attacks now so often alluded to by Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and their little puppet, the moron.

Using the odds of dying a terrorist related attack during your lifetime as noted below from the CDC, let's compare them to the odds of dying from a long list of real, everyday dangers.
1 in 88,000 of a terrorist attack
1 in 1,500,00 of a terrorist-caused shopping mall disaster assuming one such incident a week and you shop two hours a week
1 in 55,000,000 in a terrorist-caused plane disaster assuming one such incident a month and you fly once a month ( 1 )

More odds on other things at the link

[seabeyond]

5. you could take down the same number of people in a football stadium. lets strip.....

we have a constitution that tells us where the line is. that simple. for those confused.

[treestar]

6. With planes, something can be done about it, too

And a plane has potential to injure people on the ground when it goes down.

For all the ranting on this board, they'd blame the TSA if a plane did get bombed.

[lunatica]

9. Be afraid. Always be afraid. Let's scan and frisk everyone who

boards a train, a boat or a bus. Let's scan and frisk everyone who enters a building, goes to school, shops in a supermarket or goes to work.

[treestar]

13. Not practical, but with airplanes it is

And there are buildings with security. In fact since 911 it's not just the courthouses, but most government buildings.

[jaxx]

10. A very even handed post, MineralMan.

And one of the few on the subject that has made any sense to me.
Thanks.

[CreekDog]

11. Are 20 xrays necessary for people wearing prosthetics or casts

you keep saying this is all okay.

TSA: keeping you safe from disabled bombers! :eyes:

[avaistheone1]

12. Give it up

[madinmaryland]

14. If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear...

except the loss of your civil rights.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. If I honestly believed any of this kabuki was keeping us safer, it might be justifiable.

But it's not. The 3 oz's of liquid, the x-ray nude scans, the invasing groping, the nail clippers.. it's not keeping us safer. Like someone said on the TSA blog- if they're assuming the liquids they make you throw out are explosives or explosive components, why do they have you dump them into a big open trash bin? Isn't that unsafe, too?

Or is it just about "you can't have that because it's prohibited and it's prohibited because you can't have that- but lucky for you, you can buy another bottle of water just inside the security checkpoint--- for 4 time$ a$ much".


The nudie-scopes? Honestly, I was all set not to care. Honestly, I figured a good portion of the outrage was 100 Million Merkins taking a long-overdue look at themselves in a full length mirror, for the first time in 15 years or so, when they heard a stranger might see under their layers of made-in-china clothing. But radiation is another matter. I might take a dose, again, if there was a real security offset, but for no good reason? Um, no thanks.. To make sure someone doesn't have a bag of weed in their pocket (the other, secret real driving force behind the extra looky-looking in security, if you ask me) .. no, not worth getting even 1/10th of a chest x-ray.

There seems to be a wide consensus that not only is this shit out of control, it has gone way past any reasonable point where you could balance safety versus inconvenience or privacy or humiliation or whatever. And they're dolloping it onto a flying situation that already sucks beyond belief. This is NOT going to be good for the economy, and this is not going to be good for the airlines' bottom line.

[jpgray]

16. Relax. No one wants to blow up Paul Bunyan statues

I'm from MN, so it's okay. :D

But seriously, this is the kind of isolation and paranoia that is emblematic of our society these days. We prefer to sit at home with our things and a chosen few loved ones. Anything beyond that starts to rattle us--the more strangers and the more enclosed the space the more we worry. Who is this guy? What is his deal? Do I have to talk to him? I'll pretend to read this magazine.

If the person is different enough or the situation is far enough outside our control, well, the paranoia goes further.

The final irony is that the biggest life-impacting risk many take on is in the stock market. And their brokers get them into shit neither understands, but both pretend to, and bundles are lost. Yet none of those interactions really push the fear and contempt buttons, 'cause hey--it's a nice man in a suit who sounds serious and informed about money.