rudis dot net

We can only hope to get folks into our government as intelligent as Macdonald:

The words "war on terror" will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country's chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.

Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless "death cult."

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: 'We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language."

London is not a battlefield, he said.

"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."

Ref: Military.com; Via Schneir

[Editor's note: Mary's blogging!]

Some of the other real tragedies of 9/11 as reported by Bloomberg:

• there were senior members of the Bush administration determined to "get" Saddam Hussein
• George Bush was looking for just the right reasons to get the goods on Hussein
• senior officials in Hussein's own government were secretly hoping to see him fall
• the ones who would suffer the most from a war in Iraq would be Iraq (at least in the short term)
• the only justification now for going to war in Iraq is to liberate the Iraqi people, and that is not good enough
• the secondary reason for going to war in Iraq was to keep the terrorists from coming to America, and that is an unthinkable excuse for putting our own soldiers on foreign soil defending American freedom that increasingly is becoming a memory
• The biggest tragedy is that we may have created a bigger monster than before. By seeking to fashion Iraq into a maleable tool to be used for our purposes, we may have played right into the enemy's hands. The Bush plan may backfire. I hope our children don't have to see the results of that mistake.

According to Chertoff on Meet the Press this past weekend:

"We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants."

It's not like we can't trust the enforcement arm of the law or anything [warning: the pic on that page of someone who was beaten is not exactly breakfast material]. Personal rights and freedoms are overrated anyway.

Thankfully, we seem to have found a way to nullify the impact of lipstick-based-explosives.

To those of you who think those actions are A Good Thing, can you tell me what happened to make the treat of lipstick-based-explosives any less real in the past two days? Do you not see how arbitrary and senseless this reactionary approach to security is?

What happens when a meeting you attend attached to some organization suddenly ends up on the suspicious list? Are you *sure* you have nothing to hide in your house...your car...your computer...your shed?

As I said in an earlier post, this whole thing now wreaks of deliberate attempt to give more power to the authorities.

Thankfully, though, some folks who can do something about the morons in power do listen to him. If you're as frustrated about the new "safety procedures" at airports, take a look at his latest blog entry:

...Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won't make us safer, either. It's not just that there are ways around the rules, it's that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.

Sadly, the whole entry is worth reading.

(why can't he go back to fluff IT security reporting!)

I admitted to a few folks today that halfway through the NPR reports (this morning) about the current "thwarted terror" crisis, I actually believed the story. I believed there were 20-ish people detained and that there was a plan in place to coordinate liquid bomb making and synchronized airplane detonation.

After looking at these two pictures (one from CNN - you'll need to hunt alot for it since I can't find the original story it was attached to) and the other from The Citizen-Times):

I'm beginning to wonder.

Let's see...we are worried abotu a bomb coctail whose components are spread across disperate liquids being carried on the same flight. It would be a *great* idea to mix them all together in one big vat then, right? No worries there. Nope.

Looks like it's what I predicted would happen in the near future. Let the manipulation begin! The ring-leaders of the whole "war on terror" needed to re-engage the masses somehow. What better way then to impact their business and vacation travel (again) and relay an elaborate plot that sounds kinda plausable. Then, have it originate in a country where they almost have no personal freedom left (since the courts there can do pretty much anything they want to do).

Now, we just need a "successful crisis" to warrant suspending the two-term Presidency law. It's gonna get ugly, folks.