I am really amazed how the whole world wants to ignore one simple fact that until now costs us a lot of lives: (9/11 and many other terrorist attacks all over the world) There is a group of people (mainy Muslim)that want all: Jews, Americans, and "free" world countries to perish or convert the Islam (and if not pay special "Muslim" taxes) This is not a conspiracy and this message is played on national TV in many Muslim countries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GvsNFWRbM0&feature=share what pisses me off is that most of the word ignores this completely and blames Israel and the US for it because of our foreign policy. What scares me most is that it seems to me like were back to the 1930s when Hitler was talking about killing most non Aryan races and the whole world not caring and doing anything about it.
So wake the fuck up and realize that we do have a problem in hand, and it's not a joke many people have died and will continue dying terrorism is a world problem not only American, there were dozens of terrorist attacks outside the US, sorry even more then the US.
Any ways wake up people and stop being scared of saying the obvious.
Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#22[deleted]
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#23That's all great, but consider a situation. I get on the plane and sit next to a guy who avoids eye contact, does not respond to Hi and then starts praying, seemingly detached from the reality. Shall I just ignore this and refuse to be terrorized? I will tell you more. As someone who rode on a subway train that was next to the one blown up in a terrorist attack, I will walk out of a coffee shop if I see a person leav…
Seriously, why are you all voting this guy down? He's expressing an honest opinion, not trolling.
Just because you disagree is no reason to downvote, especially since HN fades the text until it's near impossible to read, making discussion harder.
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#24There are roughly 20 Million Flights world wide per year. During the period of those 5 incidents, there were over 220,000 flights. (4 days) Yes, it would suck to be on one of those flights, but your chances are extremely low. 00.0023% of flights are impacted. You have less than a 1 in 43,000 chance of being on one of those flights. But... if you are on one of those flights where there is suspected terrorist activity,…
I don't know what sort of maths you're arguing for here, but your argument doesn't make any sense to me at all.
If we assume there are about 100,000 flights per day worldwide (a quick Google suggests this is a reasonable round-figure estimate) then there are 36.5 million flights per year. If there is 1 actual attack attempt per year, then your chance that a flight you are on is a target is only 1 in 36,500,000 or so. Then, of course, many such attacks apparently do not succeed if your one-per-year rate is accurate, and even a successful attack may not kill you, so your real odds of dying due to a terrorist attack on an aircraft are going to be lower.
Even someone who flies a few times per year probably has lifetime odds of dying due to such an attack of 1 in 1,000,000. In other words, you're more likely to be hit by an asteroid, drowned in a tsunami, blown up by a firework, or fatally attacked by a dog. Of course, you are also 50x more likely to die in a non-terrorism-related air accident, and 200x more likely still to die in a motor accident. (See, for example, http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html)
The one I find most amusing is when the advocates of the virtual strip search machines trot out the line about how statistically only a handful of people per year are likely to get cancer as a result of those machines who wouldn't otherwise have done so, while conveniently overlooking the fact that the odds of being killed in the hypothetical air-related terrorist attack they are "protecting" us from are even lower.
Basically, the reality is that terrorism is real but the threat it poses is insignificant compared to numerous much greater risks that we don't rewrite our lives for. The extra danger created directly by the "improved security" is probably at least as bad. The extra danger created indirectly, for example because more people choose to drive than to fly, is very much greater than the original threat.
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#25It amazes me that people freak out when they see "Muslim-looking" people on flights. The politically-correct response is along the lines of "OMG That is highly prejudicial!", but that's irrelevant. From a purely practical perspective, why would a terrorist leader send an attacker whom many Americans immediately view as "suspicious", when he could send someone who appears more "normal"? On another note, people these d…
yeah, well, 9/11 still happened with people that didn't appear "normal".
"The way to fight it is to alter the conditions. To do this we must understand why people hate America."
We should bend over backwards to make the terrorists happy so they don't attack us? What if they hate us because we aren't part of their religion..is the answer to make the US a Muslim country? Negotiating with terrorists that clearly aren't interested in negotiating is not what we should be doing here.
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#26It amazes me that people freak out when they see "Muslim-looking" people on flights. The politically-correct response is along the lines of "OMG That is highly prejudicial!", but that's irrelevant. From a purely practical perspective, why would a terrorist leader send an attacker whom many Americans immediately view as "suspicious", when he could send someone who appears more "normal"? On another note, people these d…
Military action is part of the "let's pretend we're doing something useful"-strategy. Dropping bombs and sending soldiers is MUCH easier than trying to tackle the very complex social problems that drive people to blow themselves up. I'm not claiming I know the root cause of the problem, but terrorism does seem to be connected with poverty and oppressive governments. Blowing yourself up is obviously a last and desperate & futile resort.
At the end of the day, we're all human, and we're all more or less equal in what we're capable of and in what we want. We all want a bit of happiness for ourselves and our loved ones. And I dare say that happy people don't blow themselves up.
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#27That's all great, but consider a situation. I get on the plane and sit next to a guy who avoids eye contact, does not respond to Hi and then starts praying, seemingly detached from the reality. Shall I just ignore this and refuse to be terrorized? I will tell you more. As someone who rode on a subway train that was next to the one blown up in a terrorist attack, I will walk out of a coffee shop if I see a person leav…
>I get on the plane and sit next to a guy who avoids eye contact, does not respond to Hi and then starts praying, seemingly detached from the reality. Shall I just ignore this and refuse to be terrorized? That depends. Are his prayers Christian prayers, or Muslim prayers?
[deleted]
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#28That's all great, but consider a situation. I get on the plane and sit next to a guy who avoids eye contact, does not respond to Hi and then starts praying, seemingly detached from the reality. Shall I just ignore this and refuse to be terrorized? I will tell you more. As someone who rode on a subway train that was next to the one blown up in a terrorist attack, I will walk out of a coffee shop if I see a person leav…
>I get on the plane and sit next to a guy who avoids eye contact, does not respond to Hi and then starts praying, seemingly detached from the reality. Shall I just ignore this and refuse to be terrorized? That depends. Are his prayers Christian prayers, or Muslim prayers?
Why does that matter? And fuck you for thinking that if a muslim prays it means they're involved in terrorism.
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#29But if we refuse to be terrorized, the terrorists have already won!
Re: Refuse to be terrorized (2006)
#30This has always been one of my biggest issues with "counter-terrorism". If the costs of fighting terrorism outweigh the damage that a genuine terrorist group could inflict... who really wins?
As a US citizen, I don't doubt that some of our spending has directly stopped particular terrorist plots. However, my point for the past ~10 years has been: they [terrorists] are tricking us into burning money chasing them around the world. If we had invested a fraction of this to take care of people who have suffered from non-terrorist causes we would result with a net benefit.[1]
I want to reiterate that there undoubtedly threats to be addressed, but sometime I wish that politicians (and a fair amount of the general population) would leave the whack-a-mole terrorism game alone, take their (our) coin home and find something better to do.
[1] Admit, this is an assumption. But I don't think it's a huge leap.