From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Tue Sep 11 2001 - 23:56:15 MDT
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 6:00 PM Mike Lorrey mlorrey@datamann.com
wrote:
> The primary problem of trust in this world is that we are not a one
> world society. We are many societies, each of which has its own internal
> trust quotient toward individuals and the state. We cannot, therefore,
> expect to be able to automatically trust others outside of our
> societies. There does need to be trustability verification on this
> score, but this does not mean that individuals within a society should
> be treated as foreigners by their government. As it stands, here in the
> US, our primary weakness is that we do not discriminate in our
> trustability between citizen and alien. This failure results in us
> trusting fellow citizens too little, resulting in social strife and
> creeping domestic fascism, and in trusting foreigners too much, too
> easily, resulting the security weaknesses we saw exploited in today's
> attacks.
I can see what you mean, but the more fundamental problem is Why would
someone want to exploit those weaknesses? Granted, you'll always have a
random nut, but today's events were anything but random. They seem aimed at
a deliberate result.
That said, even if you beef up security, revise standards of trust, and the
like, you will have others going for the same deliberate result. Recall,
airport security, as flawed as it is in the US, has, in the past, been
upgraded.
I think the key here is US policy. Granted, the ones who committed today's
mass killings and their backers deserve punishment. Yet going forward, US
policy should be revised to only focus on areas of national interest. Why
get involved, e.g., with people you [meaning you Michael] don't trust? By
disengaging from regional conflicts, such as those in that cauldron known as
the Middle East, the ever balkanizing Balkans, Africa, and Latin America,
there would be less [foreign] people who would see the US as a party to
those conflicts and a potential target.
The Swedes and the Swiss seem to have a very low incident of terrorism for
that very reason. Note all the First World nations that do have high rates:
the US, Britain, France, and Italy. Don't you see the connection?
> I think the solution to this is to hold United and American Airlines, as
> well as the two security companies, and the airports from which the
> airplanes flew from, financially responsible for the damages of today's
> attacks, for their negligence in ensuring the security of their
> airlines. The pressure of this financial impact will most certainly
> force all other airlines to beef their security up to professional
> levels.
As an interim measure, security should be revised, but I don't know if there
really was negligence. Negligence implies some degree of foreknowledge.
However, the long range solution involves disentangling the US from
conflicts that have little to do with the real interests or defense of the
US. Maybe if some of that big aid package to Israel had gone to defending
the US's borders and airspace this wouldn't have happened.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
See "Knowledge is Power" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/IP1_Know.html
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