Al Qaeda threat

[Guest q650]

"An official said most of the flights fitting this description originate in Canada, and that U.S. officials have been working with Canada to ensure it is improving security measures"

[Guest M. McRae]

The real headline was: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Department of Homeland Security advisory issued Thursday warns that al Qaeda is working on plans to hijack airliners flying between international points that pass near or over the continental United States.

The article then goes on to say that most of the flights fitting this description originate in Canada.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/09/04/homeland.advisory/index.html

[Guest M. McRae]

Some of the answers to your questions may be found in this document.

http://www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/english/about_propos/pdf/2003.pdf

[Guest Gino Under]

...now, now. Before some 'bleeding heart' liberal accuses you of racial profiling....

[dagger]

why buy the American party line, spread by unnamed sources through the White House patsy new service, CNN.

It's just under a week to the anniversary of Sept 11. The Homeland Security Department has to look real busy to justify its billion-dollar budget. If I have learned anything in my cynical years, is that people talking under the cover of anonymity usually have an axe to grind.

If there is a threat, why didn't the Homeland Security Department raise its official threat level?

Frankly, having travelled transborder a number of times since Sept 11, I think our security is at least as good as the US, and this bull manure about helping us improve our practices is just that. I tihnk our security is plenty improved, right down to the checks of my electronic equipment, my belt buckle and on occasion, my shoes. You pilots should all have reinforced doors, or at least it looked that way when I flew the last time, a couple of weeks ago, on Tango.

There are air marshals on some flights, and they are using explosives detection equipment on hand luggage, at least in Toronto. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I don't see how the Americans are doing any better. In Ottawa in particular, the person at security who looked at my boarding pass and processed my briefcase was polite, efficient and thorough. It struck me that he had been well-trained, and had more than half a brain.

So why not accept that maybe the Americans will gild the lily to suit their own purposes, like to remind the American voter 14 months before the next election how hard Bush's minions are working to protect them from people hijacking Canadian planes. Now if they can only do something about the Al Queda members training at US flight schools to hijack US planes at US airports, then maybe we are getting somewhere.

[Don Hudson]

Precisely.

Set up familiar circumstances for widespread fear, using what you have correctly identified as the US government News Patsy, CNN, then "manage" it to asuage fears.

Big benefits...Homeland Security looks like heros and get to keep the money, prestige/power.

Side benefit, they get the public side-tracked and the media off their backs from the inconvenient stories about Bush and The WMDs, which his friend Tony Blair was unable to accomplish.

Guaranteed success every time.

[Guest M. McRae]

I have yet to read it but I understand that the following book will give one a great insight into W.

Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!

Author: Michael Moore

[Don Hudson]

Its a great book and Moore's films, "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine" are worth seeing.

[Guest Orange Gloves]

[its a great book and Moore's films, "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine" are worth seeing.]

Just be aware that you are watching fiction. The “creative editing” (I’m being kind) in Bowling for Columbine would make The Toronto Star green with envy.

[Guest Orange Gloves]

Website calls for revoking Moore's Oscar

[Guest Orange Gloves]

Website calls for revoking Moore's Oscar

[Don Hudson]

Hello OG...

No, I'm not watching fiction.

I'm aware of editing techniques as I am editorial techniques. But I wouldn't call the NRA showing up in Littleton or in Flint right after children were killed by other children "fiction". It revealed something about the NRA which Moore wants to highlight. I think he did it in a creative way alright. Certainly that's editing, but it happened.

Regardless of each of our views on the NRA and gun control, the NRA action was intentional and horribly insensitive to the victims of both shootings. That's not fiction. The fact that banks gave out guns for opening accounts wasn't fiction either.

We could certainly understand the reactions of Dick Clark and Heston from the intrusions into their "private" lives. The brashness is Moore's schtick which is both popular with the younger in-yer-face crowd and efficient at making a point. But it wasn't fiction...these guys were pixxed off at being filmed. We might ask why. Moore did. Was he misrepresenting these people through "creative" editing, or was he revealing "inconvenient" truths about their lives? Was leaving the picture of the six-year old kid who was shot by another youngster an intentional heart-tugging editorial comment? You bet. That wasn't fiction. The audience gets to make up their mind, don't they.

For me, frankly, some parts were over the top but still, he's far more cantankerous and a good social mirror than any of the US media are.

The Toronto Star is fully capable of caring for its own editorial abilities and demonstrates that daily.

On the Oscar, well, so what? Keep it/Take it away...why does it matter?

[Guest ECB]

Good point.

My wife and I rented 'Bowling for Columbine' last week. Enjoyed it a lot. Sure Mike was a bit over the top and sure you can argue stats but the basic premise seemed sound.

Like most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the gray foggy middle. I'll bet somewhere closer to Mike's side.

Are Osama's gang all gone to Martyrdom? I doubt it.

Would it make sence to attack the soft under belly of the U.S.? Historically it always has.

Are we the soft area? Yes, one of a few.

Should we be gripped by fear and panic? No

Increase our vigilence? Yes.

[Don Hudson]

ECB;

Re "Should we be gripped by fear and panic? No

Increase our vigilence? Yes."

Its what rational people living in a world which has always been risky, do.

The US government relies heavily on the story of Chicken-Little.

Let me follow a seemingly unrelated rabbit-trail...

I watched a tv interviewer ask a guy (from New York I think) if he was "more worried" about an attack (recent "news" item), and he said no, he was a lot more worried about what was in his bank account.

There's two stories there...that's a rational guy who keeps things in perspective and that's a guy who likely has been "right-sized" sometime in his life and, like most workers these days, is feeling under attack not by strangers from overseas but from his own employer, probably an employer who has, like many, been successful in transferring the "liability" of (pampered, remember) employee wages and benefits over to the profit (asset) column.

The same phenomena is occurring in Canada (and will accelerate under Martin) but is far quieter.

Remember, when we criticize attempts by employees "elsewhere" to do better for themselves, we criticize ourselves, for our turn is only around the corner. Piecemeal work, part-time work, low wages, little/no growth, high unemployment are all factors of an economy which began to change after 1970...really, after the Wagner Act was destroyed around 1937 or so.

So the rabbit-trail digression into economics isn't a digression at all, really....these issues are related, for there are a lot of angry people "out there" who are shadow-boxing instead of turning to that which is casting the shadow over their daily lives.

For those who are struggling, this is not a nice, or easy fight. The story (in B for C) of the young mother, forced off welfare as part of Michigan's "work for welfare" program who had to take a bus 40 miles each way to a job which paid around $5/hr leaving around 5am and returning around 7 or so, so she could support her child, is not unique or unusual.

A society which allows that to occur, not once-in-a-while, but endemically on an institutional basis so that wages are transferred to the profit column, is a business-run society, not a society with a conscience.

"Business" itself, like weapons, is not "bad"...but the focus on profit to the absolute exclusion of all else is that which casts the shadow in American society. Always has been.

Its great if you're on the right side of the ledger, but as Bill Cosby said in a skit many years ago, talking about being down and out: - "What about the llaaaass' guy?......He don't even have a ditch t' lie in...".

Moore's work brings substance and outline to that which casts the shadow.

Don

[dagger]

Should we set up a website call for the revocation of Mel Gibson's various awards, considering his highly controversial portrayal of Jesus Christ is being criticized for its potential to insight anti-Semitism? Should there be a website seeking the revocation of all wards given to Barabara Striesand because she regularly attacks Republicans, or fanother seeing the revocation of Charleton Heston's awards because he has supported every US war, is a former head of the NRA, etc, etc.?

[Mitch Cronin]

Geez Don, I like how you think...

Every so often your Rabbit Trails are such a nice dose of allspice to the average publicly expressed thought....

""What about the llaaaass' guy?......He don't even have a ditch t' lie in""

And all for the sacred Shareholders who attempt to "earn" their hordes while adding no value.

Cheers Don,

Mitch

[Don Hudson]

Mitch;

Re "And all for the sacred Shareholders who attempt to "earn" their hordes while adding no value."

The illusion of risk underlies "investment", as does the illusion of thousands of small investors putting their little all into stocks of companies they hope will do well.

This casino-like system mocks the small investor who can't possibly compete with the knowledge-base and rapid-fire information flow which occurs round the world. If the small investor makes any money at all, its through luck, because even with a bit of inside information and guile, the forces at work in today's stock market are far too massive to call "winning" in the stock market anything more than coat-tailing.

As such, its a mug's game or a lottery and has very little to do with having confidence in one company or another.

The fact that stock prices rise when a company "gets tough" with employees (or for that matter, goes on strike), means that investors like reduced costs regardless of where those slices come from. In the 3-legged stool model, such imbalances have been shown, no proven to be insufficient to sustain a viable organization. The current American business scene has been falling all over itself to show that it can control corporate greed, CEO/COO etc malfeasance and just plain insider cheating. Nonsense. Its "Image Management", nothing more.

That Ebers has been led off to the clink means nothing. He's just the 10,000A fuse in a system which is far beyond the ken, access, control or benefit of ordinary people. Nothing will change.

Its why stock-instead-of-wages is wrong. An employee cannot be paid in stock and at the same time keep his/her own best interests at heart, for what is good for the stock is, these days anyway, generally bad for employees. Investment decisions belong in private, individual hands and not in contracts which substitute stock for wages. Just pay what people are worth and let them make their own investment decisions.

And no, I am not a burned investor. Never have been. I am not an "investor" at all, unless books are considered an investment...

[Guest AME]

"If I have learned anything in my cynical years, is that people talking under the cover of anonymity usually have an axe to grind"

Interesting comment "dagger" lol (

[Guest M. McRae]

Now tht is funny AME...... (6) Malcolm

[zipped]

Thanks Orange....I appreciate the link to Morre...He is an extreme wakko. From another planet I suspect.

[Mitch Cronin]

Books. Now there's a worthwhile investment!

My biggest investment shock came after 8 years of "investing" coin in RESP's for our kids and learning we had almost nothing 'cause the buggers had lost it all in Asia. I still remember the guy who sold us on the plan telling us how their plan was so foolproof...

I guess there's no fool quite like a man giving his kid's money to someone else.

[Guest PilotsWife]

Good One!

[Moon The Loon]

by Noam Chomsky. Now there's an enlightening read. Most would be surprised at the parallels.

[Don Hudson]

This book (M.Consent) came out at about the same time that Chomsky did the Massey Lecture Series on CBC...1988 or so, and the book (by Anansi Press) on the series is equally worth reading. If one ever wants to have a quick lesson in media crap-detecting, Manufacturing Consent's first chapter or two are all that one needs to read.

None of this is to say that media is all bad of course...An appreciation of "gray" areas is needed.

Like Vaughan says in her book, The Challenger Launch Decision as she grows to understand the NASA culture and the pathways which led up to the Challenger accident, "Only much later would I fully understand the extent to which oversimplification obfuscates, and complexity brings understanding."

Such wisdom can be applied to any aviation occurrence as well as any social phenomena such as the topic(s) of this thread.

No criticism of the US or the Americans ever completes itself without the requisite, "you must hate Americans" comment. This is, of course, not true, nor is bashing the US or the Americans the goal of such discourse. The goal is to understand what is going on behind the curtains.

There is an enormous, perhaps unique disconnect between the American people and their government. The depth of isolation from the democratic process, (where ordinary people have a say more than every four years!) is significant when compared with, say, even Britain or Germany. The US is a business-run society, not a democratically-run society and as such, because business is secretive, beyond the FOIA where ordinary citizens cannot exercise their right to know what's going on in organizations which control the vast majority of their lives.

This disconnect is the focus of most of my posts and commentary. The American people themselves, as I continually say, are among the world's most generous and compassionate, but their government is not. Public polls constantly (although not universally) show that the US government is out of step with the wishes of the American people.

"Government is the shadow cast by big business", - John Dewey...about 60 years ago.

[Don Hudson]

Mitch;

We put the original baby bonus, (the few dollars per month which were given to families with children...remember? That's when child care for families was actually tax deductible? Anyone under 35 remember that?), into the Canadian Scholarship Trust, the oldest plan. When those family tax breaks were lost to, I think, Mulroney's government, we continued and today its helping but not nearly as much as promised.