War on Terror – Page 5 – Wis[s]e Words

Data protection, the Internet and the European Parliament

Published on May 30, 2002Leave a comment

Damn, the European Parliament has just approved an EU proposal which will make it compulsory for ISPs to log and save all internet traffic of all their users. This so it can be used by the police or other security services in case they need to backtrack a suspect’s activity on the internet. Apparantely, this is also needed for national security reasons, to prevent September 11 style attacks on the EU.

It’s hard to fully state the stupidity of this decision. Privacy, including online privacy is a great good that should not be offered on the altar of “national security”, especially since I doubt this proposal will makes us the least bit safer. Think about the amount of data that will be gathered if this new directive will be put into practise. Think how difficult it will be to find anything useful in there and the possibilities for mischief. I don’t think everybody should be treated as a criminal because it just might help capturing a real criminal.

“Let’s roll”

Published on May 23, 2002Leave a comment

September 11, 2001, a few minutes before two o’clock in the afternoon. I was idly channel surfing, having become bored with the deadly dull Kingsley Amis interview I was watching, when my eye was caught by an image on one of the local news channels. Some sort of skyscraper, one tower of which was on fire, a big hole in its side. I recognised the New York WTC and heard the newsreader say it some sort of airplane had crashed into the tower. Not conciously knowing the scale of the towers, I thought it had been some light sports plane or so which had gotten too close to the building and kept watching, switching between Dutch channels and CNN. Not that long after I started watching, while some reporter or other was talking I saw a second plane crash into the towers. Then I knew it was some sort of terrorist attack and started calling people, yelling to my brother, who was also watching upstairs in his room.

As it turned out, those would not be the only planes crashing that day: a third airplane crashed into the Pentagon and minutes later a fourth crashlanded somewhere in Pennsylvania. It’s because of that fourth airplane that I tell you this by now overly familiar story all of us experienced that day.

Because today, just minutes ago in fact, one of the dutch networks showed a reconstruction of what happened on that flight, flight 93. And once again it grabbed me by the throat, hit me deep inside.

It was the only one of the four hijacked flights not to hit its target, because of the heroism of several of its passengers and crew, because thanks to a delay of 41 minutes taking off they knew that three other planes had hit the WTC in New York and the pentagon in Washington and they knew they were going to be the fourth plane to hit an unsuspecting target, killing more innocent people. And they knew they had to stop the terrorists from doing so.

Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Sandy Bradshaw, who knows how many other passengers and crew attempted to do so. They failed in winning back control of the plane and landing safely, but they succeeded in stopping the terrorists -at the costs of their lives. In life, they had little in common other then that they were American, shared the same flight and were not afraid to do what was the right thing to do, even if it would cost them their lives. So in death they shared one more thing: they had become heroes. The US can be proud of them.

Gary Farber doesn’t get it

Published on May 19, 2002Leave a comment

Yesterday, Gary Farber ranted about reactions to the news that the Bush administration DID know an attack was imminent in early september, even that was likely to involve hijacked airplanes. Unfortunately, he completely misses the point:

CRYSTAL BALL TIME: I’ve made the error of looking at various leftist blogs ranting on about how Bush Should Have Known About 9/11, and He Is All To Blame, because We Had The Information.

Notices Gary doesn’t mention which blogs, so there’s no way of checking for ourselves whether said blogs are talking sense or bullocks. Nice way of Using Capitals For Ridicule as well as good use of the Dreaded Label of “leftist”.

Fine. We now have new warnings. Put up or shut up. Reveal, due to these Warnings, what the next attack will be. It’s As Clear As before 9/11. Or pay attention to the fact that intelligence doesn’t work that way: it analyzes what happened, and what has been heard; it’s not, in fact, a Predictor Of The Future By The Force.

Not that anybody’s been saying that.

What people like Avedon Carol (to mention just one leftist blogger) have been saying is that the attacks were predicted, were not something new or out of the blue (remember the 1993 WTC attack?) and that it was the Bush administration not taking terrorism seriously as a threat that helped make the attacks possible.

And the attacks were predicted, as Glenn Reynolds noted. Then again, you really cannot trust such a loony leftist as Glenn.

(I just looove Gary’s little challenge there. I would even take him up on it, if I could get the keys to the various US intelligence systems.)

Nitwits. You can blame Clinton, or Bush, and each blaming is equally, um, uninformed. And, how do we say in English? Stupid. Or simply partisan. Yeah, it’s all the fault of the last President you don’t like. Snore. Also, God is to blame for my pants tearing. I’m sure it’s terribly comforting to find a source to put blame to.

Now this is just silly. Contrary to what Gary thinks, it is important to know who failed their duties, to have an inquest into why the September 11 attacks had not been prevented. If only to make sure it won’t happen again. If the US leaders have been asleep on the job, I personally would like to know it. Perhaps we could, you know, replace them or at least get them to take their jobs seriously and actually go after the responsible parties, instead of attacking such threats to national security like Cuba and elected Venezuelan presidents.

(Do you notice the way in which Gary compares this wholly justified criticism of Bush with the ravings of the Hate Clinton Brigade, as if the two were equivalent?)

A partisan political source in America, that is. Because that’s what’s important. Domestic quibbles: all important. Mere world-wide enemies trying to kill us: oh, wait, they’re out there, too?

Yeah Gary, that’s all this is, partisan quibbles. Uh huh. How could any criticism of the Fearless Leaders be anything but?

I’m so glad so many people grasp what’s important.

If only this went for Gary as well…