Spike et al,
Similar problem here. Don't want to go public and
tell potential psychokillers. Want to tell the fbi,
but don't want to be on their list of "friends" or any
other list they might be keeping. I like my
anonymity/privacy/invisibility. I value the freedom
to show up only on the radar of my choice.
The homeland defense people need to address US
vulnerabilities. To do so, they need to know about
them. Only the sum of the people possess the
requisite comprehensive knowledge. There needs to be
a mechanism in place to encourage people to offer up
this knowledge, and to otherwise participate
efficiently and enthusiastically in their defense.
My bias, strongly reinforced emotionally, sees the
cops, fbi, cia, etc as arrogant, politically
prejudiced, elitist, authoritarian, and contemptuous
of the "ordinary citizen", whom they look down upon
and refer to smugly as "civilians". Dampens *my*
enthusiasm, but that's just me and my Vietnam-era
attitude.
Who is a better person to tell? Your congressperson?
It feels safer, but face it, they'll "rat you out" in
a minute when the fbi asks for the source of the info.
Bill Wattenburg? I was impressed by his website at:
http://www.pushback.com/
Perhaps the time has come for John Walsh to expand his
tv presence. With "America's Most Wanted", he forced
the cops to swallow their smug superiority and accept
the help of ordinary citizens. Now, perhaps we'll see
"The World's Most Wanted!" I'm not a hundred percent
thrilled by this approach, but I like the
libertarian/citizen empowerment quality.
The fire department? I like this one. I have always
felt an abundant admiration, respect, and gratitude
for these guys. They actually DO risk their lives (a
fact recently proven so tragically and emphatically),
actually DO save the lives of others, and never say
"Freeze! Nigger" and then fire a warning shot through
the head.
Nuff said. I'm handing this one off to youse guys
now.
--- Spike Jones <spike66@attglobal.net> wrote:
> Question: if one of us had speculated during August
> that a small
> group of poorly funded terrorists could take over
> several planes
> simultaneously and crash them into tall buildings,
> would the
> authorities now come knocking? Might they assume we
> must
> be in on it?
>
> Reason I am asking: I thought of a most dreadful
> thing the
> terrorists could do with very little money and make
> an enormous
> psychological and financial impact on our society.
> They could
> easily destroy a billion dollars of value for each
> thousand
> they spent, and might not even need to die. If I
> post
> the idea, do I run the risk of giving the terrorists
> a notion
> that they hadn't already discovered? Or would I
> help
> protect against such a fate by alerting the good
> guys?
> Would the feds come visit me? spike
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:58 MDT