[ExI] Behavioral Screeners

[John Grigg]

Samantha Atkins wrote:
The best solution is to stop being so gullible to the message of the
terror mongers.  The US administration would have us believe that we are
facing a very highly organized international terror cabal that would put
the old Cold War spy and intelligence networks to shame.  We have been
led to believe there are terrorist cells replete with sleepers
everywhere.  We spent a LOT looking all over the Afghanistan mountains
for the purported highly sophisticated underground command and control
bunkers to coordinate it all.  The result?  We found squat.  Pretty much
all the supposed terrorist cells uncovered in the US have turned out to
be nothing or very very little.   *Yet what has been accomplished?
Besides the biggest bureaucratic boondoggle and super pork barrel in US
history, the DHS being created and a trillion or two poured out in Iraq
and Afghanistan to basically pound sand and in the case of Iraq make the
country and its people a lot worse off than they were, what else has
been accomplished?   The what else is that everyone is up in arms and
thinking in terms of terrorist behind every bush to this very day.
Perfectly rational wonderful people have had their thinking and
priorities all screwed up for years.   The administration has got away
with bold power grabs, out and out illegal activity and pretty much
wiping its collective ass with the Constitution.  We the people have
pretty much just gone along as we bleat "whatever it takes to keep us
s-a-a-f-e".   What a charade, a farce, a tragicomic dark and depressing
travesty!
>>>*
**
Amen to that!  It really bothers me that conversations about this subject on
the Extro-list turn "comical" with discussions of flying naked on planes.
Is losing much of our civil liberties as the Western world turns into a
massive high-tech police state amusing to Extro list members??  Or are the
people here hiding behind humor because they are afraid of big brother
monitoring them, should the conversation turn serious and insightful?

Samantha continues:
Please wake up.  It is no Muslims, or Al Qaeda (pitiful little group of
fanatics it really is) that you need to worry about.   *It is the end of
all freedom as you know or have known it.  It is living and being pushed
about constantly by fear.  It is sinking into a deep dark place where we
forget about a bright future along with our freedom and turn our not
inconsiderable intellects to every possible threat and search for,
Einstein help us, some "final solution".
*>>>

I think *up to a point* Al Qaeda (and their allies) is going to be a chronic
problem (but not a terminal disease, mind you) and the big question is
whether the United States and other nations can do the required balancing
act to effectively deal with them and yet not irreparably violate our
own Western values and the concepts/laws regarding civil liberties and the
rights of individual citizens.

I definitely believe a "bogeyman is going to get you/ let me protect you
(but never seriously question/defy me...) mentality" is being used by many
in power to slyly manipulate the general public and violate our own
principles and laws and get away with it.  We as citizens of our respective
nations must stand up for the bright future we aspire to, or else it may be
stolen from us (for our own good of course...).


John Grigg
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